Israeli air strikes across southern Lebanon have caused destruction and casualties, within a day of a ceasefire extension being agreed upon by the two countries for another 45 days.
Published On 17 May 202617 May 2026
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The killing of Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the recently appointed head of Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has dealt a symbolic blow to the Palestinian group in Gaza, but the impact on its military operations is far from certain.
Al-Haddad was killed on Friday in a sophisticated dual-strike on a residential apartment in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood and a vehicle attempting to flee the scene. The delivery of heavy munitions into a densely populated area, packed with displaced civilians, killed seven other Palestinians, including women and children, and wounded 50 people.
Yet, despite Israeli claims that the killing will cripple the group’s operational capacity, analysts argue that its decentralised nature is built to absorb such shocks. As the region watches to see how the resistance faction will respond, al-Haddad’s death raises critical questions about the future of the fragile “ceasefire” and who remains to lead the Qassam Brigades.
The killings of Qassam Brigades commanders, including Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa, and Yahya Sinwar’s brother Mohammed, left al-Haddad as the key military figure managing the fight against Israel.
Saeed Ziad, a Palestinian political analyst, told Al Jazeera that while the loss is a “massive symbolic and moral blow” to Palestinians, the immediate operational impact on Hamas’s armed wing will be limited.
“The Qassam Brigades are not built on a hierarchical, sequential structure, but a parallel one,” Ziad explained. “Over the past two decades, Hamas has transitioned into a decentralised guerrilla force. Units operate as isolated, self-sufficient groups with their own logistical supply lines and combat doctrines.”
“If a brigade or battalion loses its commander, the group already knows its mission and has the resources to execute it independently,” he said. Reorganising the Qassam Brigades’ central command to cope with the loss will likely take mere days, not months.
Furthermore, al-Haddad had successfully utilised the October ceasefire with Israel to rebuild the group’s infrastructure. “Over the past 200 days, he reconstructed the resistance’s capabilities – its tunnels, weaponry and combat formations – making it capable of defending itself once again,” Ziad noted.
Israeli officials have boasted that they are close to dismantling Hamas’s central command, claiming that only two members of the military council before the pre-October 2023 attacks on Israel – Mohammed Awad and Imad Aqel – are alive.
However, analysts point out that Hamas’s military wing, which boasted roughly 50,000 fighters before the war, possesses a deep bench of cadres and a strict protocol for leadership succession that enables it to quickly recover when commanders are killed.
“The resistance typically appoints a first, second, and third deputy for every active commander, from the general commander down to the platoon leaders,” Ziad said. “Filling these voids happens rapidly.”
Hamas immediately confirmed Haddad’s death, with spokesperson Hazem Qassem officially mourning him as the “General Commander” of the Qassam Brigades. He stressed that despite his death being a “massive loss”, the group’s “long journey of resistance continues”.
Born in the early 1970s, al-Haddad joined Hamas upon its inception in 1987. He rose through the ranks from an infantry soldier to commander of the group’s Gaza City Brigade, overseeing six battalions – each consisting of 1,000 fighters plus 4,000 support personnel.
He played a foundational role in establishing al-Majd – Hamas’s internal security apparatus designed to track down Israeli intelligence collaborators. But it was his ability to survive multiple assassination attempts – including bombings of his home in 2009, 2012, 2021, and three separate times during the current genocidal war on Gaza – that earned him the moniker “Ghost”.
Al-Haddad left an indelible strategic mark on the movement as a primary architect of the October 7, 2023 attacks. He personally oversaw the breach of the eastern fence, directed elite units that stormed the Re’im military base and the Fajja outpost. According to intelligence reports, it was al-Haddad who handed localised commanders a paper hours before the attack detailing the operation and ordering the capture of Israeli soldiers.
In January 2025, an Israeli air raid killed his son, Suhaib, but al-Haddad survived and continued to command operations and oversee the detention of Israeli captives until a deal was reached.
Shortly after Friday’s strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a rare joint statement, boasting that the killing was carried out under their direct orders.
Mohannad Mustafa, an analyst of Israeli affairs, said al-Haddad’s killing shows that Israel is attempting to “normalise” blatant violations of the “ceasefire” agreement, while the Netanyahu-Katz statement was an appeal to Washington to allow it to continue the killing campaign. At least 871 Palestinians have been killed since the “ceasefire” was announced on October 10, 2025, most of them civilians.
“Netanyahu is pitching this to the US administration as a necessary step to ‘disarm Hamas’ under the Trump plan,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera. “But the reality is that Israel never wanted this ceasefire. It was imposed on them.”
By systematically killing civilians, police, and military figures without offering immediate justifications for “ceasefire” breaches, Israel aims to provoke a response. “The ultimate goal is to force Hamas to retaliate, leading to the collapse of the agreement and giving Israel the green light to launch ‘Gideon 2’ – a military operation to occupy the entirety of the Gaza Strip,” Mustafa added.
With Netanyahu lacking a definitive strategic victory, such as the total surrender of Hamas, Ziad said the Israeli leadership is now leaning heavily on a “philosophy of assassinations” to project a “picture of victory” to its domestic base.
But history has shown that killings of leading military figures, such as al-Haddad, rarely have a significant long-term impact on armed Palestinian movements like Hamas.
“For the fighters and the society in Gaza, these killings create a blood covenant,” Ziad said. “It hardens their resolve. Retreating after the loss of leaders like Deif, Sinwar, or Haddad is viewed as a betrayal of that blood.”
Bulgaria has won Eurovision for the first time, pushing Israel into second place amid boycotts and protests over Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The result reignited debate over the apparent double standard with Russia banned for invading Ukraine.
Published On 17 May 202617 May 2026
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Every major war in the Middle East has left the region permanently altered in ways that nobody fully anticipated at the time. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war created a refugee crisis whose consequences are still being negotiated seventy-eight years later. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran reorganized the entire regional security architecture around a new fault line that nobody had planned for. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq created a vacuum that Iran filled faster and more effectively than anyone in Washington had anticipated, reshaping the balance of power across the Levant in ways that took a decade to fully understand.
The 2026 Iran war belongs in that category. Not because the outcome is clear, it is not, and the ceasefire that is currently holding is fragile enough that anyone claiming certainty about what comes next is not paying close enough attention. But because the war has already crossed several thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, set several precedents that will shape behavior for years, and broken several assumptions that the regional order was quietly depending on without anyone fully acknowledging it.
Here are seven dynamics that will define the Middle East that emerges from this war, whenever the shooting finally stops for good.
The Tehran regime is still standing. That matters, and it is worth saying plainly before anything else, because a significant part of the war’s logic, the publicly unstated part, was the hope that Operation Epic Fury would produce regime collapse or at minimum regime change. It did not. The Islamic Republic absorbed the largest US-Israeli military campaign in the region’s modern history, lost its Supreme Leader, saw its nuclear facilities damaged and its military degraded, and is still there.
What has changed is the calculation the regime makes about its own survival. Iran’s leadership watched the same sequence of events that every other government in the region watched: a country that was in active nuclear negotiations got bombed twice during those negotiations. The deterrence lesson available from that sequence is not subtle. Iran’s longstanding policy of maintaining a threshold nuclear capability, staying close to the bomb without building one, using ambiguity as leverage has been tested and found insufficient. The regime that emerges from this war is going to look at that record and draw conclusions about what kind of deterrence actually works. North Korea tested a weapon and got personal summits with an American president. Iran negotiated in good faith and got bombed. Those two data points are now sitting side by side in every serious strategic conversation happening in Tehran.
The regime will also be more paranoid domestically. The war followed the January 2026 protests in which security forces killed at least 30,000 people. A weakened regime with depleted military resources and a traumatized population is not a stable combination. The survival instinct will dominate everything else in the near term, including any serious diplomatic engagement, which is part of why the Islamabad nuclear talks failed and why any future negotiations will start from an even lower baseline of trust than the ones that preceded the war.
The Gulf Cooperation Council states did not start this war. They absorbed it anyway. Bahrain depleted 87% of its Patriot interceptor stocks. Kuwait and the UAE spent roughly 75% of theirs. Saudi Arabia’s critical east-west pipeline was struck directly. Abu Dhabi’s main gas complex caught fire. Fujairah’s oil refinery burned. More than 60 combined drone and missile attacks hit Kuwait and the UAE in a single day during the Project Freedom escalation. The Gulf’s carefully constructed image as a zone of stability, safety, and economic transformation, the image that had attracted trillions in foreign investment and tens of millions of expatriate workers, was shattered in a way that will take years to rebuild, if it can be rebuilt at all.
The Middle East Council on Global Affairs described the war as having “irreversibly shaken” the region’s image, exposing deep-seated fragility beneath the facade of the Gulf’s rapid economic transformation. The word “irreversibly” is doing real work in that sentence. Previous crises, the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 2019 Aramco attacks, were absorbed and the narrative of Gulf stability recovered relatively quickly. This war lasted over seventy days, struck civilian infrastructure repeatedly, disrupted food supplies across countries that import the vast majority of their calories, and demonstrated that the bilateral security relationships with Washington that Gulf states had invested so heavily in did not prevent them from becoming targets.
The UAE’s decision to leave OPEC on May 1 is one visible expression of the strategic rethink underway. The Gulf states are going to emerge from this war less willing to subordinate their security architecture to any single patron and more interested in building the kind of integrated regional defense capacity that would give them options Washington cannot or will not provide. The differences among the six GCC states will make a NATO-style collective defense treaty unlikely, but closer integration is no longer aspirational. It is a necessity that the war has made impossible to defer.
Before February 28, the Abraham Accords logic seemed to be holding. The UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco had normalized relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia was the prize, and the conversations about a potential Saudi-Israeli normalization — in exchange for a US defense pact and civilian nuclear cooperation — were genuinely advanced. The underlying premise was that Arab publics had moved far enough past the Palestinian cause that their governments could afford to formalize what was already functionally a security alignment.
The Iran war destroyed that premise in full view of everyone. Arab public opinion, which was already running at 87% opposition to normalization in the Arab Opinion Index before the war, has hardened further after watching Israel conduct sustained bombing campaigns across Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran simultaneously over more than seventy days. For many Arab observers, the war is not an isolated conflict. It is the latest chapter in a broader Israeli military dominance project that encompasses Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and now Iran, enabled throughout by American military and diplomatic support.
Any Arab leader who signs a normalization deal with Israel in the current environment faces a domestic political cost that no US security guarantee or economic package can fully offset. The Saudi normalization conversation is not dead permanently, the strategic logic that made it attractive for Riyadh has not entirely disappeared but it is frozen for long enough that the entire US regional architecture that depended on it as a centerpiece needs to be rethought. Washington’s ability to build a US-Israel-Gulf security framework against Iran was the strategic bet the war was supposed to vindicate. The war has made that framework harder to assemble, not easier.
American support for Israel has been the most durable constant in US Middle East policy across administrations since 1948. It has survived Israeli settlement expansion, military operations in Gaza that generated international condemnation, and political disputes that have occasionally grown heated. The 2026 Iran war has introduced a new variable into that relationship that previous strains did not: the growing belief among a significant portion of the American public that Israel drew the United States into a war it did not want and cannot easily end.
More than 60% of Americans disapprove of the Iran war. Trump’s approval ratings sank to record lows partly on the back of rising energy prices and cost of living impacts that are directly attributable to the Hormuz closure. The war’s unpopularity has given political traction to positions that were previously confined to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: conditioning military assistance on specific Israeli behavior, demanding accountability for civilian casualties in Lebanon and Iran, and subjecting the strategic value of the bilateral relationship to the kind of cost-benefit scrutiny it has historically been shielded from.
None of this means the alliance is breaking. It is not. But the domestic political foundation that made unconditional US support for Israel possible regardless of what Israel did has developed a crack that the Iran war has widened. Future US administrations will face a political environment in which the Israel relationship is a genuine electoral liability in ways it simply was not before, and Israeli policymakers who have operated on the assumption that US support is structurally guaranteed regardless of circumstances will need to update that assumption.
Beijing did not fire a shot. It did not spend significant diplomatic capital publicly. It did not take on any formal mediation role. What it did was position itself, with considerable patience and skill, as the actor that both Washington and Tehran needed more than either wanted to admit, and then collect the diplomatic credit when the ceasefire materialized.
China helped bring Iran to the Islamabad table, according to Trump’s own public statements. Wang Yi hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi in Beijing days before the Trump-Xi summit, called for Hormuz to reopen, and generated the impression of Chinese diplomatic activism at exactly the moment when Washington needed Beijing’s cooperation and was prepared to pay for it. China invoked its blocking rule against US sanctions on Chinese refiners buying Iranian crude — the first time that tool had ever been used — demonstrating that it had economic instruments available to defend its interests that it had not previously deployed. And it arrived at the Beijing summit as the power that had something Trump badly needed, which is a considerably stronger negotiating position than the one it occupied at Busan in October.
The 2023 Saudi-Iran normalization deal established China as a capable Middle East diplomatic actor. The 2026 Iran war established it as an indispensable one. The distinction matters. Capable means you can play a role when conditions are right. Indispensable means the outcome changes if you are not involved. Beijing has crossed that threshold, and it has done so without making any of the military commitments, incurring any of the costs, or absorbing any of the domestic political blowback that Washington’s Middle East involvement routinely generates.
Iran was bombed twice during active nuclear negotiations. That sequence of events is now permanently part of the strategic record, and every government that has been quietly calculating its own nuclear options has updated its spreadsheet accordingly.
Saudi Arabia has been the most explicit. Mohammed bin Salman said before the war that if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would pursue one too. The war has moved that conversation from hypothetical to urgent. Riyadh has been building civilian nuclear infrastructure with American assistance and insisting on retaining enrichment rights in any cooperation agreement. The Islamabad talks’ collapse on the nuclear issue, Iran refusing to permanently renounce enrichment in exchange for promises from a government that had bombed it twice during negotiations, has removed any expectation that a clean nonproliferation settlement is achievable in the near term.
Turkey, South Korea, and Japan are all running versions of the same calculation at different registers. The Iran war gave each of them new data points. US Pacific munitions were depleted to feed the Iran campaign. THAAD components were pulled from South Korea. US allies in Asia were publicly rebuked for declining to join the coalition. The message received in Seoul, Tokyo, and Ankara was not the one Washington intended to send, and the conclusions being drawn in those capitals about the reliability of American security guarantees will shape nuclear policy decisions that play out over the next decade.
The nonproliferation architecture was already under serious strain before February 28. The Iran war has accelerated the deterioration of a regime that depended on the belief that non-nuclear states were better off without weapons than with them. That belief is harder to sustain after a country was bombed during the negotiations designed to preserve it.
There is a dimension of what the Iran war changed that resists purely strategic analysis, and it is worth naming directly. The Gulf states spent the past two decades building a narrative about themselves: modern, open, economically dynamic, safely removed from the instability that characterized other parts of the Middle East. Dubai and Abu Dhabi positioned themselves as global hubs. Riyadh launched Vision 2030. Doha hosted the World Cup. The region was selling itself as a destination, not a danger zone.
The war shattered that narrative in ways that will outlast the ceasefire. The conflict was described by one analyst as marking the “end of the narrative” that the Gulf is a permanently safe destination for expatriates, immigrants, and tourists. The psychological impact on the tens of millions of people who live and work in the Gulf, who sheltered from missile alerts, watched refineries burn, and scrambled to find formula and medicine during the food import disruption, is not something that press releases about ceasefire agreements can quickly undo.
Foreign investment into Gulf real estate and infrastructure had been tracking the region’s stability narrative for years. That narrative is now complicated by the demonstrated reality that the Gulf can be struck repeatedly during a regional conflict in ways that its air defenses cannot fully absorb. Rebuilding the confidence that underwrites that investment will require not just a ceasefire but a durable regional security architecture that the current situation is nowhere near producing.
The Middle East that emerges from the 2026 Iran war will be defined by the space between what was promised and what was delivered; by US security guarantees that did not prevent the Gulf from being struck, by Israeli military operations whose strategic gains remain unclear, by an Iranian regime that survived when the operational logic suggested it might not, by a ceasefire that is holding without resolving anything, and by a regional order that has been disrupted deeply enough that the shape of what replaces it is genuinely unknown.
That uncertainty is not a failure of analysis, but it is the honest description of where the region actually is.
Iran to reveal its plan for Strait of Hormuz soon as Israel attacks Lebanon and Gaza, killing and wounding dozens.
Published On 17 May 202617 May 2026
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Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia all withdrew in protest against Israel’s participation in the midst of its war on Gaza.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
As the Eurovision Song Contest took to the stage for the Saturday night final in Vienna, thousands protested outside against Israel’s inclusion, and five countries boycotted the event over the genocidal war on Gaza.
Protesters marched through the Austrian capital to highlight what critics described as a double standard. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) organisers refused to exclude Israel, despite banning Russia following its invasion of Ukraine four years ago.
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Eurovision, which attracted 166 million viewers last year, is seeing the largest boycott in its 70-year history.
Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia all withdrew because of Israel’s inclusion, with some of their national broadcasters refusing to air the show.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has emerged as one of Israel’s strongest critics in Europe, said on Friday that the decision puts Spain on “the right side of history”.
Last month, more than 1,000 artists called on fans to boycott Eurovision in an open letter against Israel’s participation. Among the artists were outspoken critics of Israel, Macklemore and Paloma Faith. Macklemore has released songs protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza.
On Monday, Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard denounced the EBU for allowing Israel to participate.
“The failure of the European Broadcasting Union to suspend Israel from Eurovision, as it did with Russia, is an act of cowardice and an illustration of blatant double standards when it comes to Israel,” she said.
Reporting from Vienna, Al Jazeera’s Charlie Angela said 2,000 demonstrators gathered in the city earlier on Saturday to protest against Israel’s participation.
Angela reported that protesters accused the competition of normalising Israel’s actions in Gaza, adding that Eurovision was “bending over backwards” to justify including Israel while excluding Russia.
Russia has faced a widespread cultural boycott following the Ukraine invasion. It is banned from international football tournaments, and FIFA and UEFA have excluded Russian domestic teams from all competitions, including the Champions League.
The winner of Eurovision will be selected by both a professional jury and TV viewers voting for their favourite act.
Austria won the competition last year, with Israel second.
The Israeli government was later accused of unfairly influencing voting. New rules have since been introduced.
Video shows German police violently hitting and pepper-spraying protesters as thousands gathered in Berlin to mark the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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During his first year, U. S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive negotiating style led to some gains with other countries, but when it comes to Iran, this approach seems to be failing. Instead of softening his stance, Trump has shown increasing frustration over the ongoing crisis, which has lasted for 11 weeks, and his tough tactics might hinder efforts to end the conflict that is impacting the global economy.
Analysts believe that one key issue is the Iranian leaders’ need to maintain their image at home, complicating any negotiations. Despite the U. S. and Israeli strikes weakening Iran’s military, Iran still controls the important Strait of Hormuz, allowing it to exert significant influence. Trump’s strategy has been marked by extreme demands and mixed messages, which may not lead to a quick resolution. His desire to frame any outcome as a U. S. victory, while expecting total defeat for Iran, poses further challenges, as no government, including Iran’s, can afford to be seen as surrendering.
The deadlock with Iran happens as Trump faces domestic pressures, including rising gasoline prices and low approval ratings due to an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections. White House spokesperson Olivia Wales defended Trump’s tactics, claiming that he is a skilled negotiator and suggesting that Iran is becoming more desperate for a resolution.
In a notable threat, Trump warned on social media of destroying Iran’s civilization if a deal is not reached. He later backed down but has repeated his threats to damaging Iranian infrastructure. Trump’s harsh language towards Iranian leaders has continued, and while he claims Iran is on the verge of collapse, the Iranian response has been to portray their endurance as a victory.
Inside the White House, there has been no effort to moderate Trump’s messaging. Polls show his core supporters remain behind him, but some former allies now criticize his extreme threats and the ongoing conflict.
Some of Trump’s strongest statements on his Truth Social platform have come at crucial moments, like when he announced a blockade of Iran’s ports, which led to Iranian retaliation and threatened a fragile ceasefire. He recently rejected a peace proposal from Iran, calling it a “piece of garbage. ” Analysts like Dennis Ross said Trump’s lack of consistency in messaging undermines his intentions. During a visit to Beijing, Trump avoided harsh comments on Iran, focusing instead on relations with China, an ally of Iran.
Some experts believe it would be beneficial for Trump to lower his rhetoric if he truly wants to resolve the conflict. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, criticized Trump for talking too much. Trump claims that his unpredictability is a negotiation tactic, which has sometimes worked in trade discussions. However, in situations like the military actions in Venezuela and the Gaza ceasefire talks, his pressure tactics had positive outcomes.
Despite his desire to seem dangerous in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, analysts say this strategy is unlikely to succeed, given the entrenched nature of Iran’s leadership and their pride. Trump’s threats may have strengthened Iran’s current hardline rulers, who trust him even less after U. S. attacks during negotiations. Nate Swanson, a former State Department official, noted that the expectation of Iran capitulating under pressure is a misconception.
Barbara Leaf pointed out that Trump’s approach has been based on a misunderstanding of Iran’s resilience. Some experts warn that his tactics could backfire, making Iran more determined to develop nuclear capabilities for self-protection. There is a mismatch in timelines, as Trump prefers quick deals while Iran often prolongs negotiations. Academic Abdulkhaleq Abdullah suggested that Iran’s inflexibility is a bigger issue than Trump’s statements. Trita Parsi argued that Iranian leaders might see Trump’s unpredictable behavior as a sign of desperation, leading them to wait him out.
With information from Reuters
As criticism of Israel mounts over its wars on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, along with the escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank, the country is ramping up its PR offensive.
From a carefully managed appearance of Benjamin Netanyahu on CBS’s 60 Minutes to a major expansion of Israel’s Hasbara operation, the push includes pouring money into digital campaigns and media messaging.
The goal is to reverse the collapse of public support for Israel, especially in the US, but no amount of spin can make audiences unsee what they have watched in real time.
Contributors:
Miriyam Aouragh – Professor of digital anthropology, University of Westminster
Matt Lieb – Host, Bad Hasbara podcast
Emily Schrader – Journalist, ILTV News
Oren Ziv – Reporter, Local Call
Israeli officials have dismissed a recent New York Times report on sexual violence against Palestinians as “blood libel”.
But while the government denounces the allegations, many of the claims in the report have been openly discussed in the Israeli media.
Nicholas Muirhead reports.
The generative AI boom is prompting a global race to build vast, energy-hungry data centres. In Spain’s Aragon region, authorities have welcomed tech giants and the jobs, investment and digital transformation they claim to bring.
But behind the glossy narrative lies a different reality – one in which enormous facilities consume natural resources and exploit legal loopholes, often at the expense of the communities that live alongside them.
Featuring:
Alonso Llorente – Journalist, Arainfo
Pablo Jimenez Arandia – Investigative reporter
Mar Vaquero – Vice president, Aragon Minister of Economy, Employment & Industry
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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An armed Israeli settler blindfolded and detained a Palestinian man near the village of Beit Iksa in the occupied West Bank, dragging him onto a road as Israeli forces stood nearby. The Palestinian farmer was reportedly trying to reach his land before he was captured.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has defended Spain’s boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation, saying ‘silence is not an option’ while citing the genocide in Gaza and the ‘illegal war’ on Lebanon.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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At least seven Palestinians were killed when Israeli air strikes hit a residential building and a civilian vehicle in Gaza City Friday night. Israel says it was targeting the head of the armed wing of Hamas in Gaza. Al Jazeera has not independently verified Israel’s claims.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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British artist Matthew Collings says his exhibition “Drawings Against Genocide”, depicting Israeli violence against Palestinians, has been falsely portrayed as anti-Semitic. After outrage and protests, the London show has been cancelled.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.
Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026
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EXPLAINER
The US and Chinese leaders agreed during talks in Beijing that the Strait of Hormuz should remain open to ensure global energy supplies.
Published On 15 May 202615 May 2026
United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the Strait of Hormuz during talks in Beijing, with the White House saying Xi agreed the strategic waterway “must remain open to support the free flow of energy” as tensions over the Iran war continue to roil global markets.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi urged fellow BRICS nations at a meeting in New Delhi, India, to condemn the US-Israel war on Iran as a violation of international law, insisting Tehran would “never bow to any pressure”.
At the same time, a third round of direct talks between Lebanese and Israeli negotiators is under way in Washington, DC, aimed at ending hostilities, even as Israeli attacks continue across towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
Here is what we know:
When European Jewish settlers embarked on brutal ethnic cleansing to establish Israel in 1948, they thought the Palestinian population would be the least of their problems. In fact, Zionist leaders like David Ben-Gurion believed that “the refugee problem would resolve itself”.
There was deep-seated conviction among Zionists that the Palestinians lacked an identity, and they would just flee to neighbouring Arab countries and assimilate. They would not come back to claim their stolen land.
But what happened was the exact opposite.
Decade after decade, the Palestinian national cause grew stronger. Today, few survivors of the Nakba of 1948 remain, but the national commitment to Palestinian rights and historical justice is as strong as ever. That is because the older generations did not teach the younger ones to forget the trauma and move on; they taught them to remember and to keep the keys to their ancestral homes in their minds.
The “refugee problem” did not “resolve itself” not just because of Palestinian determination and resilience, but also because the Israeli policies of violence and dispossession backfired.
Israel’s theft of land and resources and violent displacement of Palestinians was the starting point for every Palestinian generation to reject and resist occupation.
As Israel succeeded in usurping more and more Palestinian land, it failed miserably in controlling the Palestinian consciousness.
Despite continuous Israeli efforts to turn refugee camps into isolated enclaves, recruit agents and collaborators to undermine unity, and introduce international bodies to redefine the refugee issue as a purely humanitarian one, it failed to dismantle the Palestinian national cause.
Those who were dispossessed and violated – the Palestinian refugees – became the most ardent carriers of the idea of resistance. Refugee camps became the centres of peaceful and armed struggle. These camps gave birth to prominent Palestinian thinkers, doctors, educators and leaders, who spread one message: the rejection of the Israeli occupation and the insistence on Palestinian rights.
Palestinian refugees were the drivers of the first Intifada of 1987 and the second Intifada of 2000. They were at the centre of any subsequent mobilisation to resist the Israeli occupation.
The colonial project saw no option but to ratchet up its brutality. Repeated massacres, mass imprisonment and relentless efforts to uproot communities did not achieve subjugation. This approach failed and the Gaza Strip – where 80 percent of the population are refugees – stands as the clearest evidence of that failure.
After the launch of its genocidal assault on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli government repeatedly described the war as “existential”. If Israel itself acknowledges today that the fourth generation of Palestinians, the descendants of the survivors of the Nakba, represent a threat to its existence, then this is in itself an admission of the collapse of Ben-Gurion’s prediction and the strategic failure of the Israeli project to eliminate the Palestinian people.
But Israel has not just failed, it has also become trapped. It is stuck in the paradox of the futility of its own brutal power. The more violence, mass killings and displacement it carries out and the more it reproduces the Nakba, the more determined the Palestinian people become to resist. Repression is not uprooting Palestine, it is helping it take deeper root.
The Gaza genocide is perhaps the best illustration of this deadly paradox. More than 72,000 Palestinians have been massacred, more than 170,000 injured, and 1.9 million displaced. Most homes have been damaged or destroyed.
What is the result of all this? When a Palestinian child is born today in a tent and grows up without most of his family, without a school, a playground, proper healthcare, or a home, he or she won’t need a complex historical narrative to understand who is responsible for this and what needs to be done to achieve justice.
But the self-defeating impact of Israeli brutality is not limited to Palestine alone. Israel’s genocide has backfired on a global scale. It has allowed the Palestinian cause to grow beyond the confines of a marginal, left-wing issue into one that increasingly attracts attention across the political spectrum in the West but also elsewhere in the world.
Activists and ordinary citizens of different political convictions now stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Many do so, despite facing retribution, arrest and prosecution for their support of Palestinian rights.
The Palestinian cause has also become an influential factor in local elections in many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, where support for the Israeli occupation and genocide can cost candidates an electoral win.
As a result, the Palestinian issue has grown beyond a regional struggle to become a defining moral question for people across the world.
This has left the occupation locked in a permanent confrontation with what cannot be defeated: memory. The more it tries to erase the Palestinian cause, the more it is etched in the Palestinian and global consciousness.
If he had been alive today, Ben-Gurion would have been dismayed to learn that Zionism secured its own defeat the moment it embarked on the Nakba.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
On International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, Al Jazeera’s @avawarrinerr explains what it means for people who object to fighting in wars today and what happens when they do.
Published On 15 May 202615 May 2026
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Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo reports from Washington, where the first of two days of US-mediated ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon concluded on Thursday. A ceasefire between them expires on Sunday, though Israel has killed 512 Lebanese since its implementation on April 17.
Published On 15 May 202615 May 2026
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A third round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon has kicked off in Washington, DC, days before the expiration of a “ceasefire” that hardly halted Israeli attacks and Hezbollah’s response to them.
The talks, which began on Thursday, represent a step towards more serious negotiations, with higher-level envoys from Lebanon and Israel taking part after the initial preparatory sessions were headed by the ambassadors of the two countries to Washington.
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Lebanese officials are hoping that the two-day negotiations will yield a new ceasefire deal and pave the way for tackling a series of thorny issues, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who attended the first Israel-Lebanon meetings in Washington in April, was with US President Donald Trump on a visit to China and did not attend Thursday’s session.
Lebanon’s envoy heading up Thursday’s talks, Simon Karam, is an attorney and well-connected former Lebanese ambassador to the United States who recently represented Lebanon in indirect talks with Israel over implementation of the ceasefire that preceded the latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah.
On the Israeli side, Deputy National Security Adviser Yossi Draznin was set to attend.
“We do not want to downplay the significance of these talks, but they are ambassador-level talks, excluding top leadership from Israel, Lebanon and the US,” said Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo, reporting from Washington, DC, adding that there is no diplomatic relationship between Lebanon and Israel.
Trump has publicly called for a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Aoun has declined to meet or speak directly with Netanyahu at this stage – a move that would likely generate blowback in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is not part of the talks and has been vocally opposed to Lebanon engaging in direct negotiations with Israel.
A lawmaker from the Iran-backed group, Ali Ammar, on Thursday reiterated his group’s rejection of the direct talks, saying they amounted to “free concessions” to Israel.
Still, “there is optimism”, said Al Jazeera’s Rapalo.
“The cessation of hostilities agreement is due to expire on Sunday, so there is an expectation that this will be front and centre in discussions,” he said.
“Of course, the immediate objective is to prevent the situation along the border from escalating into a broader regional conflict.”
The United Nations earlier on Thursday expressed hope for the new round of direct negotiations.
“We hope that the latest round of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington, planned for today and tomorrow, will contribute to an effective and durable ceasefire and open a path towards lasting peace,” deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told the reporters.
Haq said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) continues to observe “significant” aerial and military activity across its area of operations, including multiple air strikes on Wednesday by Israel.
“We reiterate our call on all the parties to exercise maximum restraint, ensure the protection of civilians and humanitarian personnel and fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law,” he added.
In Lebanon, people also hope for an end to violence as the diplomatic efforts continue.
“I think people here in southern Lebanon are cautiously optimistic about the possible results from these meetings,” said Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto, reporting from Tyre, Lebanon.
“Everyone understands that Lebanon is not ready for normalisation, legally speaking. There is a part of the constitution that prevents Lebanon from actually having normalisation with Israel. People realise this might be a huge obstacle to move forward and find a way to live in peace with Israel.”
Still, the Lebanese population wants the violence to stop, said Hitto.
“It’s been more than two months of ongoing Israeli strikes, artillery strikes, air strikes, drone strikes, coordinated, systematic demolitions of entire towns and villages,” he said.
The Israeli army continues daily strikes in Lebanon despite a ceasefire that was announced on April 17 and later extended until May 17.
Three people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday, Lebanese media reported.
Since March 2, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 2,896 people, injured over 8,824, and displaced more than 1.6 million, about one-fifth of the country’s population, according to Lebanese officials. In that time, at least 200 children in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli attacks, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.
Istanbul, Turkiye – When investigations by Al Jazeera and other media outlets in 2024 revealed that Israeli-linked artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Lavender and Gospel had helped generate thousands of military targets in Gaza, critics warned that warfare was entering a new era – one driven not only by soldiers and bombs, but by algorithms, data, and surveillance technology.
Then, in September 2024, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah exploded in coordinated attacks in Lebanon, widely attributed to Israeli intelligence operations that had turned ordinary communication devices into weapons.
And, last year, reporting by Al Jazeera also raised concerns about the use of cloud and data infrastructure linked to major US technology companies in Israeli surveillance operations involving Palestinians.
For a growing number of scholars, economists and political thinkers, such developments reflect more than just the changing nature of conflict. They show how power in the modern world is increasingly exercised not just through military force, but through technology, finance and control over information.
That argument has revived broader debates around decolonisation – a term historically associated with the dismantling of European empires after World War II, when countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East gained formal independence.
But many proponents of what is termed “decolonial theory” – a school of thought arguing that colonial-era systems of power and hierarchy still shape modern politics, economics and knowledge – argue that colonial power structures never fully disappeared. Instead, they evolved, embedding themselves in global financial systems, technology platforms, media networks and even the production of knowledge itself.
Dependence of Global South countries on Western technology, digital infrastructure and global markets can create new forms of political and economic vulnerability, particularly across the Global South.
“A generation may have grown up believing they had never experienced colonialism or exploitation,” Esra Albayrak, board chair of the NUN Foundation for Education and Culture and daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Al Jazeera during the World Decolonization Forum in Istanbul on May 11-12.
“Yet, mentally, they may still be living under colonial influence.”
The war in Gaza marked a turning point, Albayrak says, shining a spotlight on how international principles are not applied equally. Global institutions have so far failed to stop what many countries and rights groups have described as genocide against Palestinians.
“The world is sounding an alarm, and we can no longer afford to remain indifferent to it,” she said.
Albayrak argues that a handful of technology companies are emerging as new, invisible centres of power, shaping how information is produced, circulated and consumed in the digital age.
She describes the digital sphere as the realm of what she calls “future colonialism”, warning that AI systems trained largely on Western-centric data risk reinforcing existing global inequalities.
“When AI systems are run by those tech companies and trained on Western sources, they risk carrying the hierarchies of the past into tomorrow’s digital world, as they now have personalised data, suppressing identity,” Albayrak said.
By this, she means that most major AI models are still trained largely on English-language and Western-produced data – a pattern critics say risks sidelining non-Western languages, cultures and perspectives.
On social media platforms, algorithms tend to amplify some conflicts while rendering others nearly invisible, effectively shaping what billions of users see, discuss and remember online.
Walter D Mignolo, professor at Duke University, argues that while what we historically see as “formal colonialism” may have largely ended, systems of Western dominance continue through economics, culture, technology and knowledge production.
“Coloniality is not over. It is all over the world,” Mignolo said, arguing that modern ideas of development and progress often have the effect of pressuring societies to conform to Western norms.
Rather than simply resisting those systems, he said, societies must find a way to “re-exist” by rebuilding intellectual and cultural autonomy outside dominant global frameworks.
The March 2026 Global Debt Report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveals that 44 countries face severe debt burdens, often aggravated by global conflicts, forcing some governments to spend more on interest payments than on health or education.
This is not a new phenomenon, as developing countries have been labouring under the weight of foreign debt for decades.
But British political economist and author Ann Pettifor told Al Jazeera that modern forms of domination are now increasingly embedded not in empires or nation-states, but in financial systems operating beyond democratic oversight.
Pettifor points to the growing influence of “shadow” banking networks – financial institutions operating largely outside traditional banking regulations – and giant asset managers such as BlackRock, which manages $13 trillion in assets.
Much of the global financial architecture now functions largely outside the regulatory control of governments, she says, including that of Western states themselves.
“This is not a state colonising other states,” Pettifor said. “This is the financial system colonising the whole world, including my country and the US.”
She argues that elected governments increasingly struggle to control key economic realities – from energy prices to commodity markets – because those systems are dictated by global financial actors operating far beyond public accountability.
In Nigeria, for example, Pettifor says, efforts to expand domestic refining capacity continue to face pressure from international financial institutions and global energy markets to keep fuel prices tied to global markets and maintain reliance on imported refined oil products, despite its vast oil reserves.
Coordinated cooperation between developing nations may be necessary to challenge the dominance of Western-centred financial systems, Pettifor says, pointing to growing efforts across parts of West Africa to expand regional refining capacity and reduce dependence on imported fuel. Yet such ambitions can also leave critical sectors dependent on the decisions and influence of a small number of powerful private actors.
Global financial markets, algorithm-driven platforms, and foreign-controlled digital infrastructure increasingly define everyday life – from fuel and food prices to the information people consume online and the technologies governments and societies depend on, observers say.
As wars become increasingly influenced by AI, digital infrastructure and financial dependency, debates around colonisation are focusing less on territorial control and more on who influences energy prices, lending systems, access to technology and the flow of information across borders, observers say.
Albayrak draws a parallel between today’s debates around technology and global power and Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden”, published as the US took control of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. The poem framed colonial expansion as a moral obligation to “civilise” other societies rather than an exercise of domination.
Albayrak said such traces of “mastery complex” still survive today, though in different forms – not necessarily through military occupation, but through technological, financial and informational influence.
But what the world really needs, she argues, is a global order built not on hierarchy, but on shared responsibility.
“The burden should belong to humanity collectively.”
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes targeted the Ezzedine residential project in Srifa on Thursday morning.
Published On 14 May 202614 May 2026
Israel has ramped up its attacks on southern Lebanon, killing two people and issuing several forced displacement orders as the two sides prepare for United States-brokered talks on extending a ceasefire.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday morning that Israeli warplanes targeted the Ezzedine residential project in the town of Srifa, killing two people.
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The Israeli army announced in a post on Telegram that it had begun targeting alleged Hezbollah infrastructure sites in several areas in southern Lebanon.
Earlier, the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, announced on X the forced evacuation orders for the towns and villages of Libbaya, Sahmar, Taffahata, Kafr Malek, Yohmor (Bekaa), Ain Tineh, Houmin al-Fawqa and Mazraat Sina.
NNA reported that one person was injured following a raid by an Israeli drone near the vocational school between the towns of Breqa and Zrarieh.
An air strike was also reported on the town of Ain al-Tineh in the Western Bekaa.
Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said in the past few days Israel has launched one of its “most intense periods of aerial bombardment in weeks”.
“There have been many individual strikes – usually by drones – on cars and motorbikes. Several of these have happened on the main coastal highway that leads south from Beirut,” he said.
According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday, at least 2,896 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the conflict resumed in early March.
At the same time, the Israeli army announced on Telegram that a drone launched by Hezbollah had fallen in Israeli territory near the shared border, injuring several people who were evacuated to hospital for treatment.
Representatives from both sides are expected to meet in Washington, DC, on Thursday for a new round of talks aimed at extending the ceasefire, which is scheduled to expire on Sunday.
“The discussions are controversial here in Lebanon. One of the reasons is that Hezbollah is not at the table. Hezbollah doesn’t want these talks to go ahead at all,” Challands explained.
“It says any direct discussions between Lebanon and Israel are basically capitulation. It wants first a full-on ceasefire, for Israel to have withdrawn from the country, for hundreds of thousands of displaced people to return to their homes, and for reconstruction to have started,” he said, adding that the Lebanese government, however, believes these points can be discussed during the talks with Israel.
US sanctions imposed on UN expert Francesca Albanese by the Trump administration have been temporarily blocked by a judge.
Published On 14 May 202614 May 2026
A federal judge has temporarily blocked United States sanctions against Francesca Albanese, a United Nations expert on the occupied Palestinian territory.
UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was sanctioned in July 2025 after she publicly criticised Washington’s policy on Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.
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Albanese’s husband and daughter filed a lawsuit in February against the Trump administration over the sanctions. It argued that the sanctions were an effort to punish Albanese for bringing attention to Israel’s rights abuses against Palestinians.
In his court order on Wednesday, US District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction against the sanctions.
He found that the Trump administration sought to regulate her speech because of the “idea or message expressed”.
“Albanese has done nothing more than speak,” judge Leon wrote in his memorandum opinion. “It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions – they are nothing more than her opinion.”
Albanese, who said the US sanctions were “calculated to weaken my mission” when they were first imposed, celebrated the ruling on social media.
“Thanks to my daughter and my husband for stepping up to defend me, and everyone who has helped so far,” Albanese said in a statement on X.
“Together we are One.”
Since 2022, Albanese, a legal scholar, has served as the special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, where she monitors human rights abuses against Palestinians. The UN Human Rights Council selected her for the position.
The Trump administration sanctioned her last July, calling her “unfit” for her role and accusing her of “biased and malicious activities” against the US and its ally, Israel. Albanese had also recommended that the International Criminal Court (ICC) pursue war crimes prosecutions against Israeli and US nationals.
The sanctions barred the Italian lawyer and human rights expert from entering the US, using US banks and payment systems, and prevented anyone else in the US from doing business with her.
Albanese’s husband and her daughter, a US citizen, claimed in the lawsuit that the US sanctions were “effectively debanking her and making it nearly impossible to meet the needs of her daily life”.