IsraelPalestine

The pontiff is set to meet Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and deliver a speech to authorities and diplomats later today.

Pope Leo XIV has reiterated the Vatican’s insistence on a two-state resolution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying it’s the “only solution” that can guarantee justice for both sides.

Leo made the comments as he flew from Turkiye to Lebanon on Sunday for the second and final leg of his maiden international voyage as pope.

On the flight, the pontiff was asked by reporters about his private talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upon his arrival in Ankara, and whether they discussed the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

Leo confirmed they had and said Turkiye has an “important role to play” to end both conflicts.

On Gaza, he repeated the Holy See’s longstanding position supporting a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. The creation of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza has long been seen internationally as the only way to resolve the decades-long conflict.

“We know that in this moment, Israel doesn’t accept this solution, but we see it as the only one that can offer a solution to the conflict that they are living in,” said Leo. “We are also friends with Israel, and we try with both sides to be a mediating voice that can help bring them closer to a solution with justice for all.”

The pope has avoided any direct mention of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza while in Turkiye.

There was no immediate response from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has long asserted that creating a Palestinian state would reward the Palestinian group Hamas and eventually lead to an even larger Hamas-run state on Israel’s borders.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu said Israel’s opposition to a Palestinian state has “not changed one bit” and isn’t threatened by external or internal pressure. “I do not need affirmations, tweets or lectures from anyone,” he said.

‘Glimmer of hope’

The American pontiff landed in Beirut and is now set to meet Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, the Arab world’s only Christian head of state, and deliver a speech to authorities and diplomats at the presidential palace later in the afternoon.

“Many people are meeting him on the side of the road towards the presidential palace and he’s expected to meet Lebanese officials. He’ll also hold a huge mass in the centre of Beirut, and then visit several cities across the country,” reported Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem from the scene.

About 30 percent of the population of Lebanon is Christian, while the vast majority are Muslim, roughly half of whom belong to the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam.

Travelling abroad has become a major part of the modern papacy, with popes seeking to meet local Catholics, spread the faith, and conduct international diplomacy.

‘For the sake of peace’

Lebanon’s diverse communities have also welcomed the papal trip with leading Druze cleric Sheikh Sami Abi al-Muna saying Lebanon “needs the glimmer of hope represented by this visit”.

Reinforcements from the Lebanese army and internal security forces were deployed to the airport before Leo’s arrival.

His convoy will pass through Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area where Hezbollah holds sway and where the terrain was battered in last year’s Israeli air strikes. Hezbollah’s Imam al-Mahdi Scouts are to hold a welcoming ceremony by the roadside as the convoy passes.

Leo’s schedule includes a prayer at the site of a 2020 explosion at the Beirut port that killed 200 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage.

He will also lead an outdoor mass on the Beirut waterfront and visit a psychiatric hospital, one of the few mental health facilities in Lebanon, where healthcare workers and residents are eagerly anticipating his arrival.

Leo will not travel to the south, the target of Israeli attacks. Despite a United States-brokered ceasefire in November 2024, Israel continues to launch near-daily air strikes on southern Lebanon.

The pope “is coming to bless us and for the sake of peace”, said Farah Saadeh, a Beirut resident. “We have to wait and see what will happen after he leaves, and we hope nothing is going to happen after his departure,” Saadeh said.

Before Leo’s arrival, Hezbollah urged the pope to express his “rejection of injustice and aggression” that the country is being subjected to, a reference to the Israeli attacks.

Major Israeli offensive has also destroyed roads, water networks and private property.

Israeli forces have wounded more than 200 Palestinians in raids on the West Bank governorate of Tubas, as a major offensive on northern parts of the occupied territory that began on Wednesday continues to inflict widespread destruction.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) told Al Jazeera that 78 of the people wounded in Israeli attacks on Tubas since Wednesday required treatment in hospital.

After withdrawing from Tammun and Far’a refugee camp on Friday, Israeli soldiers have shifted the focus of raids to the city of Tubas, as well as the nearby villages of Aqqaba and Tayaseer.

Local officials said Israeli forces have detained nearly 200 Palestinians in the past four days. Most were interrogated on site and let go, but at least eight people were arrested and taken to Israeli military jails.

At least nine Palestinians were detained in other military raids in Qalqilya, Jenin and Nablus. The Wafa news agency quoted local sources as saying on Saturday that two children and a woman were among five arrested at dawn in Qalqilya.

Violent raids by Israeli soldiers and attacks by armed settlers have escalated since October 2023, with 47 army incursions taking place on average every day across the occupied West Bank in November.

The mayor of Tammun told Al Jazeera that while the town in the Tubas governorate was subject to dozens of raids in the past couple of years, the ones this week were the worst in terms of scale, destruction and violence.

He said that more than 1.5km (one mile) of roads have been torn up, water networks destroyed, private property vandalised and people severely beaten, repeating the pattern of other major Israeli military attacks across the occupied West Bank.

In the Jenin refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers have been advancing in a major offensive launched in January, Israeli bulldozers are making way for the demolition of at least 23 more Palestinian homes.

This comes several days after they issued notices claiming that the demolitions were necessary to ensure “freedom of movement” for the Israeli forces within the camp – even though the area remains largely empty as most families have been displaced.

The condemned buildings were home to 340 Palestinians. Only 47 of them, mostly women, were allowed to retrieve their belongings on Thursday.

A member of the Jenin Refugee Camp Services Committee told Al Jazeera that residents were given two hours to collect possessions, and some could not even recognise their homes due to the level of destruction after the Israeli assault.

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said on Friday its fighters carried out a series of attacks on Israeli soldiers during raids in Jenin and Tubas.

The group said its fighters in Tubas targeted an Israeli foot patrol with an antipersonnel explosive device in the Wadi al-Tayaseer area. Fighters detonated explosives against Israeli military vehicles in the al-Ziyoud and al-Bir areas of the town of Silat al-Harithiya in Jenin, it added.

Since October 2023, Israeli soldiers have killed at least 1,086 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including 223 children. At least 251 were killed in 2025.

At least 10,662 Palestinians have also been wounded since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, with more than 20,500 rounded up. As of the beginning of November, there were 9,204 Palestinians in Israeli jails, 3,368 of whom are detained without charges.

Palestinian deaths have also surged in the custody of both the Israeli army and the Israel Prison Service, with at least 94 deaths documented since October 2023.

Video shows funeral processions in Syria’s Beit Jinn, after Israeli raids and missile strikes killed at least 13 people. Violent clashes erupted after Israel claimed it entered the village to arrest members of the Jama’a Islamiya militant group.

16-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim is recovering after spending 9 months in an Israeli prison, for allegedly throwing rocks. The Palestinian American boy’s plight sparked widespread outrage and condemnation at Israel’s abuses in the occupied West Bank.

Judges are reviewing the UK government’s decision to ban the activist group Palestine Action under counter-terror laws. Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego was at the court where police were arresting people for displaying pro-PA signs.

Berlin, Germany – Organisers of a pro-Palestine conference are suing authorities in Berlin who shut the event down last April soon after it began.

They hope a panel of judges at the Berlin Administrative Court will rule that police acted unlawfully in cracking down on the Palestine Congress, a forum of solidarity activists and human rights experts who were gathering to discuss Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Germany’s alleged complicity.

The hearing begins on Wednesday.

The defendant, the State of Berlin, argues the police were right to act preemptively as they predicted criminal statements would be made at the conference, specifically incitement to hatred, dissemination of propaganda or use of symbols of unconstitutional and “terrorist” organisations.

The police justified this prediction in part on the basis that in a news conference held prior to the event, organisers allegedly did not distance themselves from the Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

On the day in question, April 12, 2024, officers in riot gear descended in their hundreds on the venue usually used for wedding receptions and pulled the plug – cutting off the power to ensure that none of the planned speeches could be heard or broadcast via livestream.

“I’m not aware of any other instance where a conference was shut down without any crime having been committed,” Michael Ploese, the lawyer representing the conference organisers, told Al Jazeera.

He said that German law only allowed restrictions on gatherings in private rooms where there was  high probability that a criminal act would be committed, and that the right to freedom of expression usually took precedence.

Among the groups organising the conference was Juedische Stimme (Jewish Voice), a sister group of the US collective of the same name that organises Jewish peace activists who are critical of Israeli actions regarding Palestine.

“I saw it as a success that we had even been able to begin it at all, but I wasn’t expecting it all to end an hour later,” said Wieland Hoban, the chair of Juedische Stimme, who gave opening remarks at the conference.

Adding to the sense of repression, the British Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah, one of the main speakers, said officials at the airport in Berlin prevented him from continuing his journey and told him to return to the United Kingdom.

Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek left-wing economist and former minister of finance, posted online the speech he had planned to make. Like Abu Sittah, Varoufakis faced an entry ban after the furore. The Berlin Administrative Court later ruled that the ban on Abu Sittah’s political activity was unlawful.

Throughout Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, German police and security services have repeatedly claimed protests in support of those being bombarded are anti-Semitic or are to be interpreted as revering Hamas. Thousands of individual protesters have been arrested, and many planned demonstrations have been banned outright.

Germany is Israel’s biggest diplomatic supporter in Europe and enforces strict limits on speech that criticises or attacks Israel, with some arguing this is necessary because of Germany’s genocide of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

It is a justification that Wieland Hoban rejects, saying the laws are even used against Jewish people who speak up for Palestine.

“Even if you lost family in the Holocaust, you can still be lectured by some German about what you can say,” said Hoban. “Simply mentioning the Holocaust can get you accused of relativierung” – a word that is used to suggest someone is playing down the Holocaust by drawing comparisons to other, lesser, crimes against humanity.

Last month, a group of United  Nations experts said they were alarmed by the “pattern of police violence and apparent suppression of Palestine solidarity activism by Germany”.

If this week’s case goes in favour of the conference organisers, it will be a blow to Germany’s controversial stance.

Videos of police using force to shut down nonviolent protests for Gaza on the streets of German cities have coursed around the world.

But what marked the state’s intervention in the Palestine Congress apart was that it represented the silencing of an event consisting of talks and debates in an indoor venue – a sphere of political expression that lawyers had previously thought was off-limits for police repression.

Houthi authorities in Yemen want to publicly execute the convicted individuals, and also sentenced two others to prison.

Houthi judges working with prosecutors in Yemen have sentenced 17 people to death by firing squad over alleged espionage on behalf of Israel and its western allies.

The Specialized Criminal Court in the capital Sanaa handed down the sentences on Saturday morning in the cases of “espionage cells within a spy network affiliated with American, Israeli, and Saudi intelligence”, Houthi-run media said.

The court sentenced the 17 men to execution “to be carried out in a public place as a deterrent”, Saba and other outlets said, also publishing a list of names.

A woman and a man were sentenced to 10 years in prison, while another man was acquitted of all charges, bringing the total number of people put on trial in this case to 20.

Houthi-run media said state prosecutors had charged the defendants, who can theoretically appeal the sentences, with “espionage for foreign countries hostile to Yemen” in 2024 and 2025, which also included the United Kingdom.

Israel’s Mossad spying agency reportedly “directed” intelligence officers who were in contact with the accused Yemeni citizens, whose work allegedly “led to the targeting of several military, security, and civilian sites and resulting in the killing of dozens and the destruction of extensive infrastructure”.

The United States and the UK conducted dozens of deadly joint air strikes across Yemen after the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, as the Houthis launched attacks on Israel and international maritime transit through the Red Sea in a stated attempt to support Palestinians under fire.

The Houthis have stopped their attacks since last month’s Gaza ceasefire deal.

Israel has also unleashed huge air attacks on Yemen and its infrastructure, repeatedly hitting fuel tanks, power stations and a critical port city where desperately needed humanitarian aid flows through, killing political leaders and dozens of civilians.

In August, the Houthis confirmed that an Israeli air raid killed the prime minister of their government in Sanaa.

Ahmed al-Rahawi was killed with “several” other ministers, the Houthis said in a statement at the time.

Houthi authorities, who control Sanaa and parts of Yemen to the north after an armed takeover more than a decade ago, made no mention of any links with the United Nations or other international agencies in the cases announced Saturday.

But they have, over the past year, increasingly raided UN and NGO offices, detaining dozens of mostly local but also international staff and confiscating equipment.

Amid condemnation and calls for the release of staff by the UN and international stakeholders, the Houthis have framed the efforts as necessary to stave off Israeli operations.

A series of artillery, air attacks hit near Rafah, Khan Younis in the south, and Deir el-Balah in the centre, as well as Gaza City.

Islamabad, Pakistan – When the United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a United States-authored resolution that paves the way for a transitional administration and an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) in Gaza, Pakistan – which was presiding over the council – had a seemingly contradictory response.

Asim Iftikhar Ahmed, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, thanked the US for tabling the resolution and voted in its favour. But he also said Pakistan was not entirely satisfied with the outcome, and warned that “some critical suggestions” from Pakistan were not included in the final text.

Though the resolution promises a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood, Ahmed, in his comments to the council, said it did not spell that path out, and did not clarify the role of the UN, a proposed Board of Peace (BoP) to oversee Gaza’s governance, or the mandate of the ISF.

“Those are all crucial aspects with a bearing on the success of this endeavour. We earnestly hope that further details in coming weeks will provide the much-needed clarity on these issues,” he said.

But the country had already endorsed US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan in September – the basis for the UN resolution. And while several other Arab and Muslim countries have also cautiously supported the resolution, Pakistan, with the largest army among them, is widely expected to play a key role in the ISF.

The vote in favour of the resolution, coupled with the suggestions that Pakistan still has questions it needs answers to, represents a careful tightrope walk that Islamabad will need to navigate as it faces questions at home over possible military deployment in Gaza, say analysts.

“The US playbook is clear and has a pro-Israel tilt. Yet, we need to recognise that this is the best option that we have,” Salman Bashir, former Pakistani foreign secretary, told Al Jazeera. “After the sufferings inflicted on the people of Gaza, we did not have any option but to go along.”

Pakistan’s rising geopolitical value

In recent weeks, Pakistan’s top leaders have engaged in hectic diplomacy with key Middle Eastern partners.

Last weekend, Jordan’s King Abdullah II visited Islamabad and met Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, the army chief. Munir had earlier travelled to Amman in October, as well as to Cairo in Egypt.

Pakistan has traditionally had close relations with Gulf states, and those ties have tightened amid Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Pakistan has long called for “Palestinian self-determination and the establishment of a sovereign, independent and contiguous State of Palestine based on pre-1967 borders with al-Quds al-Sharif [Jerusalem] as its capital”.

But in recent weeks, Pakistan – the only Muslim nation with nuclear weapons – has also emerged as a key actor in the region’s security calculations, courted by both the United States and important Arab allies.

In September, Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) with Saudi Arabia, days after Israel had struck Doha, the Qatari capital. Then, in October, Prime Minister Sharif and Field Marshal Munir joined Trump and a bevy of other world leaders in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh for the formal signing ceremony of the Gaza ceasefire agreement. Sharif lavished Trump with praise on the occasion.

By then, Trump had already described Munir as his “favourite field marshal”. Following a brief escalation with India in May, during which Pakistan said it shot down Indian jets, Munir met Trump in the Oval Office in June, an unprecedented visit for a serving Pakistani military chief who is not head of state.

In late September, Munir visited Washington again, this time with Sharif. The prime minister and army chief met Trump and promoted potential investment opportunities, including Pakistan’s rare earth minerals.

Now, Pakistan’s government is mulling its participation in the ISF. Though the government has not made any decision, senior officials have publicly commented favourably about the idea. “If Pakistan has to participate in it, then I think it will be a matter of pride for us,” Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on October 28. “We will be proud to do it.”

That’s easier said than done, cautioned some analysts.

Palestine is an emotive issue in Pakistan, which does not recognise Israel. The national passport explicitly states it cannot be used for travel to Israel, and any suggestion of military cooperation with Israeli forces – or even de facto recognition of Israel – remains politically fraught.

That makes the prospect of troop deployment to Gaza a highly sensitive subject for politicians and the military alike.

Government keeps cards close to chest

Officially, the government has been opaque about its position on joining the ISF.

Even while describing any participation in the force as a cause for pride, Defence Minister Asif said the government would consult parliament and other institutions before making any decision.

“The government will take a decision after going through the process, and I don’t want to preempt anything,” he said.

In a weekly press briefing earlier this month, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said the question of Pakistan’s contribution would be decided “after consultation at the highest level”.

“The decision will be taken in due course, as and when required. Certain level of leadership has stated that the decision will be taken with the advice of the government,” he said.

Al Jazeera reached out to Asif, the defence minister, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, and the military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations, but received no response.

Legal, operational ambiguities

Some retired senior officers say Pakistan will not decide the matter behind closed doors.

Muhammad Saeed, a three-star general who served as Chief of General Staff until his 2023 retirement, said he expects the terms of reference and rules of engagement for any ISF deployment to be debated in public forums, including Pakistan’s National Security Council and parliament.

“This is such a sensitive topic; it has to be debated publicly, and no government can possibly keep it under wraps. So once the ISF structure becomes clear, I am certain that Pakistani decision-making will be very inclusive and the public will know about the details,” he told Al Jazeera.

Kamran Bokhari, senior director at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, DC, said the mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia meant that Pakistani troops in Gaza would likely be representing both countries. He, however, added that Pakistan would likely have participated in the ISF even without the Saudi pact.

Still, the lack of details about the ISF and Gaza’s governance in the UN resolution remains a stumbling block, say experts.

Several countries on the council said the resolution left key elements ambiguous, including the composition, structure and terms of reference for both the BoP and the ISF. China, which abstained, also described the text as “vague and unclear” on critical elements.

The resolution asks for the Gaza Strip to be “demilitarised” and for the “permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups”, a demand that Hamas has rejected.

Hamas said the resolution failed to meet Palestinian rights and sought to impose an international trusteeship on Gaza that Palestinians and resistance factions oppose.

So far, the US has sent nearly 200 personnel, including a general, to establish a Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) near Gaza on Israeli territory. The centre will monitor humanitarian aid and act as a base from which the ISF is expected to operate.

US-based media outlet Politico reported last month that Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Indonesia – all Muslim-majority states – were among the top contenders to supply troops for the ISF.

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates, which joined the Abraham Accords in 2020 and recognised Israel in Trump’s first tenure, has said it will not participate until there is clarity on the legal framework.

King Abdullah of Jordan also warned that without a clear mandate for the ISF, it would be difficult to make the plan succeed.

Costs, incentives and Pakistan’s historical role

Bokhari argued Pakistan has limited options, adding that many of its close allies are “deeply committed” to the initiative and have sought Islamabad’s participation.

“Pakistan’s economic and financial problems mean it will need to reciprocate militarily in order to secure” the goodwill of the US and Islamabad’s Gulf allies, he said. “We have to assume that the current civilian-military leadership is aware of the domestic political risks.”

Others point to Pakistan’s long experience with UN peacekeeping. As of September 2025, UN figures show Pakistan has contributed more than 2,600 personnel to UN missions, just below Indonesia’s 2,700, ranking Pakistan sixth overall.

Qamar Cheema, executive director of the Islamabad-based Sanober Institute, said Pakistan has emerged as a security stabiliser for the Middle East and has “extensive experience of providing support in conflict zones in the past”.

Pakistan currently faces security challenges on both its borders – with India to its east and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to the west. But it “may not have to cut troops from its eastern or western borders, since the number of troops [needed in Gaza] may not be that big, as various countries are also sending troops,” Cheema told Al Jazeera.

Saeed, the retired general, said Pakistan’s historic position on Palestine remained intact and that its prior peacekeeping experience meant that its troops were well-equipped to help the ISF.

“Pakistan has one of the richest experiences when it comes to both peacekeeping and peace enforcement through the UN. We have a sizeable force, with a variety of experience in maintaining peace and order,” he said.

“The hope is that we can perhaps provide help that can eliminate the violence, lead to peace, bring humanitarian aid in Gaza and implement the UN resolution,” the former general said.

Domestic political risks and the Israeli factor

Despite those arguments, many in Pakistan question the feasibility – and political acceptability – of serving alongside or coordinating with Israeli forces.

Bashir, the former foreign secretary, acknowledged the risks and said the demand that Hamas deweaponise made the ISF “a difficult mission”.

Still, he said, “realism demands that we go along with a less than perfect solution”.

Bokhari of New Lines Institute said stakeholders often sort out details “on the go” in the early stages of such missions.

“Of course, there is no way Pakistan or any other participating nation can avoid coordinating with Israel,” he said.

Saeed, however, disagreed. He said ISF would likely be a coalition in which one partner coordinates any dealings with Israeli forces, meaning Pakistani troops might not have direct contact with Israel.

“There are other countries potentially part of ISF who have relations with Israel. It is likely they will take the commanding role in ISF, and thus they will be the ones to engage with them, and not Pakistan,” he said. He added Pakistan’s involvement – if it happens – would be narrowly focused on maintaining the ceasefire and protecting Palestinian lives.

But Omar Mahmood Hayat, another retired three-star general, warned that any operational tie to Israel “will ignite domestic backlash and erode public trust”.

Hayat said Pakistan has no diplomatic ties with Israel “for principled reasons” and that blurring that line, even citing humanitarian considerations, would invite domestic confusion and controversy.

“This is not just a moral dilemma, but it is also a strategic contradiction,” he said. “It weakens our diplomatic posture.”

A 15-year-old Palestinian boy was shot by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank and was not given medical attention, leading to his death. He is among dozens of children who have been targeted and killed by Israeli troops in the occupied territories.

The air attack in the Bani Suheila area, east of Khan Younis, comes a day after Israel killed 30 people across Gaza.

Montreal, Canada – Canadian human rights activists are demanding answers from their government after a former United Nations special rapporteur who investigated Israeli abuses against Palestinians was interrogated at the Canadian border on “national security” grounds.

Richard Falk, 95, was stopped at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Thursday and questioned for several hours. He said a security official told him that Canada had concerns that he and his wife, fellow legal scholar Hilal Elver, posed “a danger to the national security of Canada”.

The treatment of the couple has sparked anger and calls for an explanation from Ottawa.

“We need answers – and from the highest levels of government,” said Corey Balsam, national coordinator at Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, a group that supports Palestinian rights.

Despite the outcry, Canadian authorities have not publicly addressed the incident. But the office of Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has acknowledged the case in a statement to Al Jazeera, saying he is seeking more information about what happened.

“National security safeguards are an integral part of our immigration and border-management framework and, while we cannot comment on specific cases, we are committed to ensuring that our border screening processes respect due process and international obligations,” Simon Lafortune, a spokesperson for Anandasangaree, told Al Jazeera in an email.

“To that end, Minister Anandasangaree has asked the CBSA to provide more specific details on how this particular incident occurred.”

Falk told Al Jazeera on Saturday that he and Elver were asked about their work on Israel, Gaza and genocide as well as about their participation in an event in Ottawa looking into Canada’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza, which a UN inquiry and numerous rights groups have described as a genocide.

After more than four hours of questioning, the pair – both US citizens – were allowed to enter Canada and take part in the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility.

‘Patently ridiculous’

Alex Paterson, senior director of strategy and parliamentary affairs at the advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, called the government’s treatment of the couple “patently ridiculous”.

“I think it just lays bare for everyone the reality that they wanted to hamper the tribunal’s work and try and keep Canadian complicity in Israel’s genocide … in the shadows,” Paterson told Al Jazeera on Monday.

He added that the Canadian government “has been trying to avoid questions of its complicity in arming the genocide, and that’s reason enough to do this”.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Canadian human rights advocates have been calling on the government to apply pressure on Israel, a longstanding ally, to end its attacks on the Palestinian enclave.

Those calls for concrete action from Canada have grown as Israel’s military assault and restrictions on aid have killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.

Last year, the Canadian government announced it was suspending some weapons export permits to Israel amid the atrocities in the territory.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who took office in March, also voiced opposition to Israel’s blockade on aid to Gaza and a surge in Israeli military and settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile, along with several allies, Carney’s government recognised an independent Palestinian state in September.

But researchers and human rights advocates said loopholes in Canada’s arms export system have allowed Canadian-made weapons to continue to reach Israel, often via the United States.

They have also urged Canada to do more to stem continued Israeli attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and to support efforts to hold Israel accountable for serious abuses, including at the International Criminal Court.

‘Climate of governmental insecurity’

In his interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, Falk, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory from 2008 to 2014, said he believed his interrogation was part of a wider push to silence those who speak the truth about what is happening in Gaza.

“It suggests a climate of governmental insecurity, I think, to try to clamp down on dissident voices,” he said.

Al Jazeera has contacted multiple relevant Canadian government agencies to ask whether Ottawa views the 95 year old as a threat to national security – and if so, why.

A CBSA spokesperson said in an email on Monday that the agency could not comment on specific cases, but stressed that “secondary inspections are part of the cross-border process”.

“It is important to note that travellers referred to secondary inspection are not being ‘detained,’” spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said.

“Foreign nationals seeking entry into Canada can be subjected to a secondary inspection by an officer to determine admissibility to Canada. In some instances, the inspection may take longer due to information being gathered through questioning.”

Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian foreign ministry, has not yet responded to a request for comment from Al Jazeera sent on Saturday.

Balsam of Independent Jewish Voices-Canada said treating someone like Falk as a security threat sends a message that “actually none of us are safe from the suppression of dissent and crackdown on voices that are critical of the Israeli regime“.

“We all deserve an answer and an explanation from the government as to this incident, which casts a chill for all Canadians that are speaking out about human rights in general and Palestine in particular,” he told Al Jazeera.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The measure mandates transitional administration for Gaza and floats ‘credible pathway’ for Palestinian statehood.

The United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution mandating a transitional administration and an international stabilisation force in Gaza, which envisions a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood.

The resolution, drafted by the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, passed in a 13-0 vote on Monday, paving the way for the crucial next steps for the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Russia and China abstained from the vote.

Arab and other Muslim countries that expressed interest in providing troops for an international force had previously indicated that a UN mandate was essential for their participation. At their behest, the US had included more defined language about Palestinian self-determination in the draft to get it over the finish line.

The draft now says that “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” after the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-governance in the occupied West Bank, carries out reforms and advances are made in the the redevelopment of Gaza.

That language angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Sunday that Israel remained opposed to a Palestinian state and pledged to demilitarise Gaza “the easy way or the hard way”.

US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said after the vote that “today’s resolution represents another significant step that will enable Gaza to prosper and an environment that will allow Israel to live in security”.

Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the UN, said his country was grateful to Trump “whose personal engagement has been instrumental in establishing and maintaining the ceasefire in Gaza”.

“But we underline that genuine peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without justice. Justice for the Palestinians who have waited for decades for the establishment of their independent state,” he said.

Hamas rejects resolution

The US resolution says the stabilisation troops will help secure border areas, along with a trained and vetted Palestinian police force, and they will coordinate with other countries to secure the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. It says the force should closely consult and cooperate with neighbouring Egypt and Israel.

It also calls for the stabilisation force to ensure “the process of demilitarising the Gaza Strip” and “the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups”, authorising it to “use all necessary measures to carry out its mandate”.

Hamas, which has not accepted disarmament, rejected the resolution, saying that it failed to meet Palestinians’ rights and demands and sought to impose an international trusteeship on the enclave that Palestinians and resistance factions oppose.

“Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation,” the group said.

As the international force establishes control and brings stability, the resolution says Israeli forces will withdraw from Gaza “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarisation”. These would be agreed by the stabilisation force, Israeli forces, the US and the guarantors of the ceasefire, it says.

Russia’s rival resolution

Trump said on Truth Social that the Board of Peace overseeing Gaza would “include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World”, thanking countries that “strongly backed the effort, including Qatar, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkiye, and Jordan”.

Russia had circulated a rival resolution stressing that the occupied West Bank and Gaza must be joined as a contiguous state under the Palestinian Authority and underlining the importance of a Security Council role to provide security in Gaza and for implementing the ceasefire plan.

Reporting from New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said: “There is some certain criticism of [the US] draft resolution. A lot of people are saying that it simply changes the dynamics, but it still leaves Gaza essentially occupied, just by a different entity.”

Washington and other governments had hoped Moscow would not use its veto power on the UN’ most powerful body to block the adoption of the US resolution.

New attacks near Bethlehem and Hebron underscore intensifying Israeli violence in occupied Palestinian territory.

Israeli settlers have launched two major arson attacks on Palestinian villages near Bethlehem and Hebron amid a wave of rising violence by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Dozens of settlers rampaged through the village of al-Jaba, located 10km (six miles) southwest of Bethlehem, on Monday, torching three Palestinian homes, one shack and three vehicles, according to Dhyab Masha‘la, the head of the local council.

Masha‘la told Palestinian news agency Wafa that the attackers caused extensive damage to the village, but that locals had managed to extinguish the flames. No casualties were reported.

Earlier on Monday, Wafa said settlers set fire to a home and two vehicles, and physically assaulted several civilians in Sa’ir town, northeast of Hebron, under the protection of Israeli forces.

The Israeli settlers beat the Palestinians with batons and sharp instruments, resulting in injuries to a number of women, with Israeli forces blocking fire engines and ambulances from reaching the scene, the agency reported.

Violence in the West Bank has broken new records this year, with settlers carrying out almost-daily attacks on Palestinians that have involved killings, beatings and the destruction of property, often under the protection of the Israeli military.

Last wek, settlers set a mosque ablaze in the village of Deir Istiya in the north of the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission says that Israeli forces and settlers carried out 2,350 attacks across the West Bank last month alone in an “ongoing cycle of terror”, which has been taking place in the shadow of the war in Gaza.

The violence is rarely prosecuted.

Referring to the attack on al-Jaba, an Israeli military spokesperson said security forces were “searching for those involved” after being deployed to the village following reports of “dozens of Israeli citizens” torching and vandalising houses and vehicles.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has overseen the rapid expansion of settlements, denounced Monday’s attack, calling the assailants a “small, extremist group” and signalling that he would convene cabinet ministers to address the problem.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said on X that the government would “not tolerate the attempts of a small group of violent and criminal anarchists who break the law to take the law into their own hands and tarnish the settler community”.

But his statement backed the continued expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

The government, Katz said, would “continue to develop and foster the settlement enterprise throughout Judea and Samaria”.

Last year, the International Court of Justice – the top United Nations tribunal – ruled that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal and called for removing Israeli settlements from the territory.

Settler violence has spiked as members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government push to formally annex the area, which has long operated under a system of apartheid, according to leading rights groups.

The United Nations’ human rights office warned in July that the settler violence was being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.

Last week, in a rare public rebuke, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and army chief Eyal Zamir condemned the burgeoning settler attacks.

The Security Council is set to vote on a US resolution detailing the long-awaited Gaza stabilisation force.

Israeli authorities have been systematically abusing Palestinian prisoners with impunity, according to PHRI.

The number of Palestinians that have died in Israeli detention facilities has surged amid the war in Gaza, according to a report issued by a human rights group.

At least 94 Palestinian deaths have been documented since October 2023, the report published on Monday by Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said.

The report is just the latest accusation regarding Israel’s jails, in which critics say thousands of Palestinians taken from Gaza and the occupied West Bank are routinely abused.

The nonprofit organisation expressed “grave concerns that the actual number of Palestinians who have died in Israeli custody is significantly higher, particularly among those detained from Gaza”.

It said Israeli authorities have consistently failed to hold those responsible for the deaths to account.

Of the 94 deaths that the report documents, 68 were from the Gaza Strip, while 26 were from the West Bank or held Israeli citizenship.

Israeli military prisons were responsible for at least 52 of the deaths. The remaining 42 were documented in facilities run by the Israel Prison Service (IPS).

Amid the war, Israeli soldiers have detained thousands of people from across Gaza. PHRI’s report asserts that they are now effectively “disappeared”.

The Israeli authorities have stopped sharing detainee information with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and barred all access to detention sites.

PHRI called those moves a “direct breach of both international and domestic law”.

Israel also refuses to acknowledge that it is holding many Palestinian prisoners, or that some have died in custody, leaving families in the dark for prolonged periods.

Some families found out about the death of their loved ones from Israeli media reports.

PHRI pointed at the case of Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the renowned director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, for whom Israeli authorities claimed for days that they had “no indication of the individual’s arrest or detention”.

Israel continues to hold the doctor, who was taken from the hospital in December, despite an international outcry. His lawyer asserts that he has been subjected to torture and humiliation.

Deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody have been recorded in almost all major IPS facilities, including Ktzi’ot Prison, Megiddo, Nitzan and Ofer, as well as military camps and bases, including the notorious Sde Teiman, the report says.

Physical violence, including bruising, rib fractures, internal organ damage and intracranial haemorrhage, has been a leading cause of death, followed by chronic medical neglect or denial and severe malnutrition.

“Given the grave conditions faced by Palestinians in Israeli incarceration facilities, and in light of Israel’s policies of enforced disappearance, systematic killing, and institutionalized cover-ups, PHRI calls for an independent international investigation into the deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody,” the NGO said.

Bundled into vehicle with blacked-out windows, British journalist recounts detainment in US due to Palestinian support.

British journalist Sami Hamdi, who says he was held illegally for more than two weeks by United States immigration authorities for his pro-Palestinian commentary, has described his detention as “like something from the movies”.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Hamdi accused the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of using “loopholes” to abuse people, and he directed attention towards the plight of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention.

The 35-year-old British citizen was stopped at San Francisco International Airport in California on October 26 midway through a speaking tour discussing Israel’s war on Gaza.

Hamdi said Laura Loomer and other right-wing activists and allies of President Donald Trump created the grounds for his arrest by posting his lectures and calling for his visa to be revoked.

Homeland Security Department authorities stopped Hamdi at the airport and told him his visa had been revoked. However, they refused to allow him to immediately leave the US by flying to London instead of his planned domestic flight.

“And then four other ICE agents appeared out of nowhere,” he told Al Jazeera. “They surrounded me, and then they escorted me outside of the airport where a black car with tinted windows was waiting for me. They told me, ‘Get in the car.’”

He was given a few moments to use his phone after insisting on his legal rights as a United Kingdom citizen, which he used to contact the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The civil rights group agreed to help him get legal representation and inform his family of his detention.

After three car rides in handcuffs, he arrived at an ICE detention facility and was checked in with a number of other people of various ethnicities.

He later discovered through a lawyer that he was being held in Golden State Annex in McFarland, California, in what he labelled “a very politically motivated manoeuvre”.

Hamdi said he and 20 other men were held in a small cell with no facilities. Inmates repeatedly had their cases delayed through bureaucracy, he said.

One Latino man named Antonio whose wife and children are US citizens had been in detention for 10 months without charge, Hamdi said.

“This is the tragedy. You have these people who are illegally detained, who shouldn’t be there longer than six months, according to all habeas corpus rules, but who stay there longer because of bureaucratic loopholes,” said the journalist, who returned to London on Thursday.

ICE agents were “particularly aggressive” and most displayed “little sympathy for the people they were dealing with”, Hamdi said. They appeared to feel that they could act with “impunity”, he continued.

The journalist noted that while his case has received much attention, he believes it is important to remember that thousands of Palestinians remain incarcerated in Israeli military prisons in appalling conditions.

“It’s important to note that arbitrary detention for the sake of expression of freedom of speech isn’t something that’s under threat just in America or in the UK.”

Israel is engaged in a last-ditch bid to change the wording of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution on the next phase of United States President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan that was recently amended to mention a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that his opposition to a Palestinian state had “not changed one bit”, one day before the UNSC votes on the US-drafted resolution, which would mandate a transitional administration and an international stabilisation force (ISF) in Gaza.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Sunday that Netanyahu’s government was engaged in a last-minute diplomatic push to alter the draft resolution, which the US had changed to include more defined language about Palestinian self-determination under pressure from Arab and Muslim countries expected to contribute troops to the ISF.

The draft now says that “conditions may be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” after reforms to the Palestinian Authority are “faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced”.

There has been criticism that Palestinian voices and aspirations have been sidelined in the whole spectacle of Trump’s Gaza plan from its launch, which came with the US president’s customary fanfare.

Later on Sunday, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions called on Algeria – a non-permanent member of the UNSC – to reject the plan for stabilisation forces to be deployed in Gaza.

In a statement, the resistance factions called the efforts “a new attempt to impose another form of occupation on our land and people, and to legitimise foreign trusteeship”.

“We direct a sincere and fraternal appeal to the Algerian Republic, government and people, to continue adhering to its principled positions supporting Palestine, and its steadfast rejection of any projects targeting Gaza’s identity and our people’s right to self-determination,” the statement added.

On Friday, a joint statement with eight countries – Qatar, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkiye – urged “swift adoption” of the draft resolution by the 15-member UNSC. Potential contributors to the force have indicated that a UN mandate is essential for their participation.

Israel has already said it will not accept Turkiye, a key Gaza ceasefire mediator, having any role on the ground.

Turkiye has maintained staunch criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza over the past two years and recently issued arrest warrants for genocide against Netanyahu and other senior officials.

Ahead of Monday’s crucial vote, which is expected to garner the nine votes needed to pass, with the likely abstention of Russia and China, Netanyahu confidants and officials from the Foreign Ministry were said to be engaged in intensive talks with their US counterparts, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (Kan).

Netanyahu under pressure

A far-right walkout over the ceasefire plan, in which Trump has heavily invested his own prestige, could bring down Netanyahu’s right-wing government well before the next election, which must be held by October 2026.

On Sunday, Israeli government officials lined up to express their opposition to any proposals backing a Palestinian state.

“Israel’s policy is clear: no Palestinian state will be established,” Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on X.

He was followed by Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who said on X that his country would “not agree to the establishment of a Palestinian terror state in the heart of the Land of Israel”.

Far-right firebrand and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called the Palestinian identity an “invention”.

Hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a major backer of Israel’s settler movement who has been sanctioned by a number of countries for “incitement of violence” against Palestinians, urged Netanyahu to take action.

“Formulate immediately an appropriate and decisive response that will make it clear to the entire world – no Palestinian state will ever arise on the lands of our homeland,” he said on X.

Russia’s rival resolution

The UNSC resolution would give the UN’s blessing to the second phase of Trump’s 20-point plan, which brought about a ceasefire after two years of genocidal war that has killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians.

The ceasefire came into effect on October 10, although it has been repeatedly breached by Israel with near-daily attacks that have killed hundreds of people.

There has been plenty of jockeying ahead of the vote.

Meanwhile, Russia is circulating its own resolution to rival the US version, offering stronger language on Palestinian statehood and stressing that the occupied West Bank and Gaza must be joined as a contiguous state under the Palestinian Authority.

In a statement, Russia’s UN mission said that its objective was to “to amend the US concept and bring it into conformity” with previous UNSC decisions.

“We would like to stress that our document does not contradict the American initiative,” said the statement. “On the contrary, it notes the tireless efforts by the mediators – the United States, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkiye – without which the long-awaited ceasefire and the release of hostages and detainees would have been impossible.”

Earlier this week, a flight carrying 153 Palestinians from Gaza landed in South Africa without documentation. The passengers were stuck on the plane for 12 hours before the South African authorities, who claimed they had not been informed by Israelis about the deportation flight, allowed them to disembark on humanitarian grounds.

The Palestinians on board had paid between $1,500 and $5,000 to a company called Al-Majd Europe to leave Gaza. The operation is run by a few Palestinians on the ground in coordination with the Israeli occupation authorities. At least two other such flights had already been made since June this year.

This is the latest scheme Israel is deploying to depopulate Gaza – a longstanding goal of its apartheid regime that goes back to the early 20th century.

Since the beginning of the Zionist movement, Palestinians have been perceived as a demographic obstacle to establishing a Jewish state. In the late 19th century, Theodor Herzl, one of the founding fathers of Zionism, wrote that the displacement of Arabs from Palestine must be part of the Zionist plan, suggesting that poor populations could be moved across borders and deprived of employment opportunities in a quiet and cautious manner.

In 1938, David Ben-Gurion, a key Zionist leader who would later become Israel’s first prime minister, made clear he supported forced “relocation” and saw nothing “immoral” in it. Part of this vision was carried out 10 years later during the Nakba of 1948, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in what Israeli historian Benny Morris has called “necessary” ethnic cleansing.

After 1948, Israel continued efforts to displace Palestinians. In the 1950s, tens of thousands of Palestinians and Palestinian Bedouins were forcibly transferred from the Naqab (Negev) desert to the Sinai Peninsula or Gaza, which was under Egyptian administration at that time.

After the June 1967 war, when Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it adopted a strategy of what it called “voluntary migration”. The idea was to create harsh living conditions to pressure residents to leave, including demolishing homes and reducing employment opportunities.

In parallel, “emigration offices” were established in the refugee camps of Gaza to encourage people who have lost any hope of return to their homes to leave in exchange for money and travel arrangements. Israel also encouraged Palestinians to go work abroad, especially in the Gulf.  The price Palestinians had to pay for leaving was never being allowed to come back.

After October 7, 2023, Israel saw another chance to carry out its plan of ethnically cleansing Gaza – this time through genocide and forced expulsion. It thought it had the necessary international sympathy and diplomatic capital to carry out such an atrocity, as statements by various Israeli officials, such as ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, show. They even came up with the so-called “General’s Plan” to fully depopulate northern Gaza.

The new scheme for forcing Palestinians out of Gaza fits well into this historical pattern. What distinguishes it, however, is that Palestinians are made to pay for their own forced displacement and their desperation is exploited by Palestinian collaborators who seek to make easy profit. This, of course, is meant to further the financial depletion of the Palestinian population and create more internal fissures and tensions.

This scheme, like previous ones, also has the central feature of denying Palestinians return. None of the passengers on the plane received Israeli exit stamps on their passports, which was the reason the South African authorities struggled with the admission process. Having no legal record of leaving the Israeli-occupied territory of Gaza means these people are automatically classified as illegal migrants and have no possibility of returning.

It is important here to clarify why Israel is allowing these flights to take place while impeding the evacuation of ill and injured Palestinians and students accepted in foreign universities. These exits of patients and students would be legal, and they imply the right to return – something Israel does not want to allow.

That there are Palestinians willing to fall for this flight scheme is unsurprising. Two years of genocide have driven the people of Gaza to unimaginable desperation. There are that many Gaza residents who would willingly board those planes. And yet, Israel cannot fly us all to South Africa.

Through decades of Zionist occupation, Palestinians have persevered. Palestinian steadfastness in the face of wars, sieges, home raids, demolitions, land theft, and economic subjugation confirms that the Palestinian land is not merely a place to live, but a symbol of identity and history that people are not willing to give up.

In the past two years, Israel has destroyed the lives and homes of two million Palestinians. And even that has failed to kill the Palestinian spirit and drive to hold onto the Palestinian land. The Palestinians are not flying out; we are here to stay.

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

In the quiet of his Ramallah studio in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian artist Nabil Anani works diligently on artworks deeply rooted in a movement he helped create during the political tumult of the late 1980s.

Cofounded in 1987 by Anani and fellow artists Sliman Mansour, Vera Tamari and Tayseer Barakat, the New Visions art movement focused on using local natural materials while eschewing Israeli supplies as a form of cultural resistance. The movement prioritised self-sufficiency at a time of deep political upheaval across occupied Palestine.

“[New Visions] emerged as a response to the conditions of the Intifada,” Anani said. “Ideas like boycott and self-reliance inspired a shift in our artistic practice at the time.”

Each of the founding members chose to work with a specific material, developing new artistic styles that fit the spirit of the time. The idea caught on, and many exhibitions followed locally, regionally and internationally.

Nearly four decades later, the principles of New Visions – self-sufficiency, resistance and creation despite scarcity – continue to shape a new generation of Palestinian artists for whom making art is both an expression and an act of survival.

Anani, now 82, and the other founding members are helping keep the movement’s legacy alive.

Why ‘New Visions’?

“We called it New Visions because, at its core, the movement embraced experimentation, especially through the use of local materials,” Anani said, noting how he had discovered the richness of sheepskins, their textures and tones and began integrating them into his art in evocative ways.

In 2002, Tamari, now 80, started planting ceramic olive trees for every real one an Israeli settler burned down to form a sculptural installation called Tale of a Tree. Later, she layered watercolours over ceramic pieces, mediums that usually do not mix, defying the usual limits of each material, and melded in elements of family photos, local landscapes and politics.

Sixty-six-year-old Barakat, meanwhile, created his own pigments and then began burning forms into wood, transforming surface damage into a visual language.

“Other artists began to embrace earth, leather, natural dyes – even the brokenness of materials as part of the story,” Mansour, 78, said, adding that he had personally reached a kind of “dead end” with his work before the New Visions movement emerged, spending years creating works centred around national symbols and identity that had started to feel repetitive.

“This was different. I remember being anxious at first, worried about the cracks in the clay I was using,” he said, referring to his use of mud. “But, in time, I saw the symbolism in those cracks. They carried something honest and powerful.”

In 2006, the group helped create the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah, which was open for 10 years before being integrated into Birzeit University as the Faculty of Art, Music and Design. The academy’s main goal was to help artists transition from older ways of thinking to more contemporary approaches, particularly by using local and diverse materials.

“A new generation emerged from this, raised on these ideas, and went on to hold numerous exhibitions, both locally and internationally, all influenced by the New Visions movement,” Anani said.

A legacy maintained but tested

The work of Lara Salous, a 36-year-old Palestinian artist and designer based in Ramallah, echoes the founding principles of the movement.

“I am inspired by [the movement’s] collective mission. My insistence on using local materials comes from my belief that we must liberate and decolonise our economy.”

“We need to rely on our natural resources and production, go back to the land, boycott Israeli products and support our local industries,” Salous said.

Through Woolwoman, her social enterprise, Salous works with local materials and a community of shepherds, wool weavers and carpenters to create contemporary furniture, like wool and loom chairs, inspired by ancient Bedouin techniques.

But challenges like the increasing number of roadblocks and escalating settler violence against Palestinian Bedouin communities, who rely on sheep grazing as a basic source of income, have made working and living as an artist in the West Bank increasingly difficult.

“I collaborate with shepherds and women who spin wool in al-Auja and Masafer Yatta,” said Salous, referring to two rural West Bank areas facing intense pressure from occupation and settlement expansion.

“These communities face daily confrontations with Israeli settlers who often target their sheep, prevent grazing, cut off water sources like the al-Auja Spring, demolish wells and even steal livestock,” she added.

In July, the Reuters news agency reported an incident in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, where settlers killed 117 sheep and stole hundreds of others in an overnight attack on one such community.

Such danger leaves Palestinian women who depend on Woolwoman for their livelihoods vulnerable. Several female weavers working with Salous and supporting her enterprise have become their families’ sole breadwinners, especially after their spouses lost jobs due to Israeli work permit bans following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the start of the Gaza war.

Visiting the communities where these wool suppliers live has become nearly impossible for Salous, who fears attacks by Israeli settlers.

Meanwhile, her collaborators must often prioritise their own safety and the protection of their villages, which disrupts their ability to produce wool to sustain their livelihoods.

As a result, the designer has faced delays and supply chain issues, making completing and selling her works increasingly difficult.

Anani faces similar challenges in procuring hides.

“Even in cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem, where the situation might be slightly more stable, there are serious difficulties, especially in accessing materials and moving around,” he said.

“I work with sheepskin, but getting it from Hebron is extremely difficult due to roadblocks and movement restrictions.”

Creating vs surviving

In Gaza, Hussein al-Jerjawi, an 18-year-old artist from the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City, is also inspired by the New Visions movement’s legacy and meaning, noting that Mansour’s “style in expressing the [conditions of the occupation]” has inspired him.

Due to a lack of materials like canvases, which are scarce and expensive, al-Jerjawi has repurposed flour bags distributed by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as canvases for creating his artwork, using wall paint or simple pens and pencils to create portraits of the world around him.

In July, however, the artist said flour bags were no longer available due to Israel’s blockade of food and aid into the Gaza Strip.

“There are no flour bags in Gaza, but I’m still considering buying empty bags to complete my drawings,” he said.

Gaza-born artist Hazem Harb, who now lives in Dubai, also credits the New Visions movement as a constant source of inspiration throughout his decades-long career.

“The New Visions movement encourages artists to push boundaries and challenge conventional forms, and I strive to embody this spirit in my work,” he said while noting that it has been challenging to source the materials from Gaza that he needs for his work.

“The ongoing occupation often disrupts supply chains, making it difficult to obtain the necessary materials for my work. I often relied on local resources and found objects, creatively repurposing materials to convey my message.”

Anani, who said the conditions in Gaza make it nearly impossible to access local material, added that many artists are struggling but still strive to make art with whatever they can.

“I believe artists [in Gaza] are using whatever’s available – burned objects, sand, basic things from their environment,” Anani said.

“Still, they are continuing to create in simple ways that reflect this harsh moment.”