Middle East

Donald Trump has rejected Iran’s latest proposal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz as experts say the United States president believes Washington has more to gain by waiting than by accepting Tehran’s terms at this moment.

“I reject their proposal,” Trump told reporters on Saturday, arguing that Iran wants an agreement because it is “losing so badly”.

“They want to make a deal, and I think that’s fine,” Trump said. “I’d like to make a deal too. But that deal would not be acceptable.”

On Sunday, Iranian ⁠⁠Foreign ⁠⁠Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had ⁠⁠seen the initial reaction from ‌‌Trump to its proposal but had yet to receive a response through ⁠⁠mediators. In the latest diplomatic efforts, Qatar has played a role in mediating talks between Iran and the US on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

Iran’s seven-day proposal included Washington lifting its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waiving sanctions on Iranian oil sales, releasing an estimated $12bn in frozen Iranian assets and observing a wider regional ceasefire, including in Lebanon and Yemen.

Iran would then reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin negotiations with Washington on a final agreement.

The latest proposals are similar to the June memorandum of understanding (MoU) the two countries signed. But the MoU collapsed last month due to differences on the terms of the deal, which resulted in an escalation in attacks, particularly in and around the Strait of Hormuz, which essentially remains under Iranian blockade.

According to experts, Trump’s rejection suggested that while both sides continue to publicly leave the door open for diplomacy, they remain far apart over who should make the first concessions.

“Trump’s calculation looks fairly straightforward. He believes the combination of the naval blockade and economic isolation is finally squeezing Iran hard enough that Tehran’s latest proposal is evidence of weakness rather than an offer Washington needs to seize,” Andreas Krieg, associate professor at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

His public argument that Iran is “losing badly” is important because it suggests he thinks time is improving the US bargaining position, Krieg said.

Why does Trump think he can wait?

A key part of Trump’s calculation appears to be a belief that the economic pressure on Iran has not yet run its course.

The Trump administration has escalated economic pressure on Tehran, tightening its naval blockade while imposing sanctions targeting Iranian oil revenues and threatening secondary sanctions against countries doing business with Tehran.

Last week, the US imposed aviation sanctions on Iran, disrupting flights. This came weeks after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an economic pressure campaign against Iran, promising to target Tehran’s financial interests across the world.

Richard Weitz, a senior nonresident associate fellow at the NATO Defence College, told Al Jazeera that the White House may believe it can “wait a bit and get better terms”.

There is also concern in Washington about Iran’s proposed sequencing, he said.

Therefore, Weitz said Washington may be calculating that “economic pressure over time will induce the Iranian government to make more concessions”.

“This is what occurred arguably a decade ago, leading to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as the Iranian government decided it [the US] needed to end the economic sanctions in return for making concessions on its nuclear programme,” he added.

It is, therefore, possible that “we could see the same kind of trade-off in the coming months”.

Iran could make Trump ‘pay’

However, waiting for a deal also carries considerable political risk for the US president, experts said, because his Republican Party could lose November’s midterm elections.

A late August Reuters/Ipsos poll suggested 63 percent of Americans opposed the US-Israel war on Iran while 31 percent supported it. Rising fuel and transportation costs could also feed into broader cost-of-living concerns before the elections.

The problem for Trump is that time does not only increase pressure on Iran, Krieg said. “The gamble is that time cuts both ways,” he noted.

With the midterms approaching, Trump does not want to appear to lift the blockade, waive oil sanctions and release Iranian assets simply to regain access to a waterway that Iran itself disrupted, Krieg said.

“But every additional week also means elevated energy prices, continued military exposure and mounting pressure on Gulf partners.”

The essential closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted oil and gas flows from the Gulf nations, which depend on energy exports to finance their budgets.

Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera that Iran’s proposal could be viewed as “kind of throwing a bone to Trump” by offering a potential route towards lower oil and gas prices before the vote.

However, Iran may decide “to make Trump pay for declining the proposal and the increased economic pressure the country is under”, he told Al Jazeera.

“They may decide that this is the time to escalate … just as the midterms are approaching.”

The Republican Party is not doing well in the polls, and a number of its candidates are “distancing themselves” from Trump, he noted. Polls indicated that Republicans could lose their slim majorities in the US Congress.

It’s not just the Iranians under severe economic pressure because of the US naval blockade and ongoing sanctions, “it’s also the Trump administration,” Elmasry said.

Trump’s wait for more Iranian concessions could ‘backfire’

Trump “wants Tehran to reopen Hormuz without Washington paying the full economic and political price Iran is currently demanding”, Krieg said.

“The danger is that he is confusing Iranian pain with Iranian willingness to capitulate. Those are not the same thing.”

Iran is undoubtedly under pressure. Krieg said the sanctions and blockade are “biting”, which is precisely why Tehran needs an agreement.

But additional pressure does not necessarily produce additional concessions.

Iran could instead increase the costs of the conflict for its adversaries, Krieg said, including through the Strait of Hormuz, regional infrastructure and potentially Bab al-Mandeb, another strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

In recent weeks, the strategic weight of Bab al-Mandeb has increased dramatically after the Iran-aligned Houthis expanded their control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline.

This advance in effect has handed the Houthis unrestricted access to the narrow waterway, a worrying development for global shipping given the group’s track record of targeting vessels, including Israeli-linked ships, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthis have already declared a naval blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, which Riyadh began to use as an alternative shipping route to Hormuz for its oil exports.

“So this can backfire,” Krieg warned. “Trump thinks Iran’s clock is running faster than America’s. Tehran thinks the opposite: that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, global energy markets and ultimately Trump himself have a lower tolerance for prolonged disruption than Iran has for economic punishment.”

Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, similarly told Al Jazeera that Tehran may now be “less worried about overplaying their hand than they are underplaying their hand”.

According to Harrison, Tehran now sees the risk of escalation as less costly than agreeing to something prematurely or appearing willing to compromise, particularly after Washington’s response to the proposal.

In an interview with Al Jazeera that aired on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country no longer trusts negotiations with Washington after attacks occurred during previous rounds of talks and were followed by sanctions.

“We have no trust in the American side and do not know on what basis an understanding can be reached with it,” Pezeshkian said.

Tehran betting ‘heavily’ on time

US-based analyst Harrison noted that Tehran was probably “not surprised at all” by Trump’s rejection and viewed the offer partly as a way to demonstrate to Iranians and the American public that it remained willing to negotiate.

Experts said Tehran understands the US president wants an exit he can present as a victory.

“Iran is betting heavily on time. … Its strategy is to keep the pressure high enough that he eventually comes back to negotiations while making that exit progressively more expensive,” Krieg said.

“The Iranian calculation is essentially: Do not give Trump the deal cheaply when he may need it more badly several weeks or months from now.”

Harrison said the Iranian offer was a “show of goodwill” intended to demonstrate Iran’s willingness to negotiate to both its domestic audience and the American public.

According to Krieg, “protraction” of the conflict was the “most likely outcome”.

“Both sides need a deal, but both currently think waiting will improve the deal they eventually get,” he added.

Yemen’s government forces have conducted multiple air and ground operations in the southwestern governorate of Taiz in 24 hours as they intensify attacks against the Iran-backed Houthi group.

The government’s military media centre on Sunday claimed a number of operations against the rebels, including air strikes on Houthi positions in five locations across the governorate.

More than 146,000 people have been displaced since the fighting erupted in July after a period of relative calm since a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in 2022.

In recent weeks, the Houthis have made dramatic territorial gains against the government forces, seizing the strategic Red Sea coastal city of Mocha and expanding their control over the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a global maritime chokepoint connecting Europe to Asia.

⁠Rashad ⁠al-Alimi, the head of the Presidential Leadership Council, has called on citizens to mobilise and join the fight against the Houthis as the government has stepped up its attacks against the Iran-backed group in an effort to stop their advance and regain lost territory.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which has faced Houthi attacks on its soil since fighting escalated further this month, has been turning to its allies, including Pakistan and Turkiye, for support.

Saudi Arabia backs Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

Here’s what we know about the latest fighting and the humanitarian conditions the impoverished country faces:

What to know about the latest fighting

According to the military media centre on Sunday, dozens of Houthi fighters, including field commanders, were killed or wounded in the previous 24 hours of fighting near Taiz’s capital, which is also named Taiz.

Government forces have carried out operations in several areas of the governorate, including the al-Waziiya district in the west, weapons sites and ammunition depots at Mafraq Mawiya and al-Dhukrah in the east, a Houthi gathering in the Hayfan district in the south and against military vehicles in the Gurab area in the northwest.

Government forces also thwarted infiltration attempts on the al-Ahtoub front and in Hadran as they carried out shelling of Houthi gatherings on the al-Kadha and al-Aqroud fronts, the media centre said.

It added that several Houthi military vehicles were damaged in the attacks.

Al Jazeera could not verify the battlefield claims.

“Government forces say they have made advances in the southern Taiz governorate, taking control of several areas and higher ground. Among them is Jabal Bazel, a mountaintop that places Houthi supply lines within target range,” Al Jazeera’s Maha Ali said on Saturday, reporting from Taiz.

“These developments point to significant and potentially decisive ground operations in recent hours.”

Ali said al-Alimi expressed confidence that government forces were capable of restoring control over the whole country. Houthis currently control vast swaths of northern and western Yemen while the government controls the south and east.

Since the current fighting erupted, the Houthis have accused the Saudis of carrying out attacks in Yemen and promised to prevent Saudi tankers from passing through Bab al-Mandeb, which Riyadh has been using as an alternative shipping route to the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran in effect has closed the Strait of Hormuz since the United States and Israel began a war on it in February. Before the conflict, a fifth of the world’s oil supplies had passed through that waterway.

Government forces, meanwhile, accused the Houthis of using Iranian air defence weapons and said they pose a danger to aircraft.

“These Houthi weapons pose a serious threat to international flight paths over the Red Sea and operate using a heat-tracking system,” Brigadier General Majed al-Nazili, the official spokesperson for the Yemeni government forces, said on social media.

“The weapons employed are capable of attacking military or civilian targets without the ability to distinguish between them, thereby endangering the safety of civil aviation and the lives of passengers.”

Early on Saturday, a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said its air defence systems intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles and two drones launched by the Houthis towards Riyadh and Khamis Mushait in Saudi Arabia.

What has been the regional response to the conflict?

On Saturday, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, addressed the UN General Assembly and called on the international community to condemn Houthi actions against the kingdom and in Yemen.

At the same forum, Yemeni Vice President Abdullah Abdulkader al-Alimi-Bawzer warned that the Houthis were using shipping security “as a tool for blackmail”.

“It is taking hostage the entire global economy,” he said.

The secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jassim Mohammed al-Budaiwi, on Saturday strongly condemned the recent Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia.

“This dangerous escalation constitutes a flagrant violation of the Kingdom’s sovereignty and poses a direct threat to the security and safety of civilians and the stability of the region,” al-Budaiwi said in a statement.

Iran has denied it has any role in the Yemen conflict. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera that the actions of the Houthis were not connected to Iran and Tehran stands in solidarity with “everyone subjected to injustice”.

He urged the Houthis and Saudi Arabia to resolve their differences through dialogue, saying “a brother should not fight his brother,” and offered Iran’s help in ending the dispute. “We will not be warmongers,” he said.

On Friday, Iran delivered a ceasefire offer, which US President Donald Trump has rejected. It included Yemen and Lebanon. Tehran offered to open the Strait of Hormuz if the US fulfils its conditions, which include the lifting of Washington’s naval blockade on Iranian ports, a sanctions waiver and the release of Iran’s frozen assets.

Could Saudi allies join the conflict?

Saudi Arabia’s allies have rallied behind it amid intense fighting between the Yemeni government forces and Houthis.

Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman said on Saturday that there would be continued joint efforts with Pakistan to confront attacks against the kingdom in accordance with the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed last month.

He held talks with Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir on Thursday. A day earlier, the military chiefs of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye jointly reviewed threats facing Saudi Arabia at a meeting in the Saudi capital.

Multiple Saudi cities, including Riyadh, have been hit by drones and missiles attributed to the Houthis.

Meanwhile, France confirmed on Friday that it was sending troops to guard the major oil terminal at Yanbu, a Saudi port city on the Red Sea, but added that it was not joining the conflict. Yanbu has major oil storage and refining facilities and is connected by the East-West Pipeline, which can carry up to seven million barrels a day. The pipeline was damaged in a drone attack carried out from a group based in Iraq.

The US has so far not pledged military involvement, but the Saudi foreign minister said the kingdom was “continuing to work with our partners in the US”. On September 14, the commander of the US military’s Central Command, Brad Cooper, met the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Jeddah in the wake of the Houthis’ seizure of Mocha.

What’s the state of humanitarian conditions?

At least 146,000 people have been displaced in the Arab region’s most impoverished country over the past three weeks, most of whom were uprooted from or within Taiz governorate, according to Yemen’s UNICEF country representative, Akhil Iyer.

More than 3,000 people fled across the Red Sea to Djibouti over several days earlier this month, Djibouti state media have reported, with the UN warning that number could rise.

The number of casualties is still not confirmed as the rival sides have made conflicting claims. As per media reports, the death toll runs into the hundreds.

UNICEF has verified that at least 15 children have been killed and 14 injured in the conflict since early September while three have been reported missing.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 22 million people in Yemen require humanitarian assistance and protection services; 18.3 million people face acute food insecurity; and more than 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished.

The United States-led Board of Peace (BoP) has said the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) will have no role in Gaza – echoing a longstanding Israeli demand to sideline the organisation considered a lifeline for millions of Palestinians.

The board, which has been tasked with overseeing the “ceasefire” and Gaza’s reconstruction, said on Friday it would work only with partners it deems reliable and who it believes can meet the needs of Gaza’s population – a standard it says UNRWA does not meet.

The move comes as the BoP unveiled a multibillion-dollar plan on Wednesday aimed at beginning Gaza’s reconstruction, nearly a year after a so-called “ceasefire” came into effect in the devastated Palestinian territory.

The plan, presented on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), comes as key elements of the “ceasefire” remain stalled, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disarmament of Hamas.

UNRWA was established in 1949 to cater to tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes by Jewish militias from areas that currently form part of Israel.

BoP’s stance on UNRWA comes as Israel’s genocide in the coastal enclave continues, with Palestinians facing nonstop attacks, severe restrictions on humanitarian aid and stalled reconstruction plans.

So what has BoP said about UNRWA, and does it keep toeing the Israeli line on the future of Gaza?

What did the Board of Peace say?

The BoP unveiled a 66-project reconstruction blueprint on the sidelines of the UNGA, with $2.4bn proposed for projects aimed at beginning Gaza’s recovery.

UNRWA was left off the list of UN agencies the board identified as partners.

“The Board of Peace’s policy as it relates to UNRWA’s involvement in Gaza is unchanged,” the BoP said in a post on X on Friday.

“We will only work with trusted partners who will deliver for the people of Gaza and contribute to a deradicalised Strip. UNRWA fails on those litmus tests.”

However, a BoP official, speaking to The Associated Press news agency on condition of anonymity, confirmed that board members had met UNRWA officials several times.

The official said the agency’s programmes could continue if they served Gaza’s residents well, but maintained that “UNRWA’s days are over”.

The BoP, which US President Donald Trump launched earlier this year, was conceived to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza after nearly three years of Israel’s genocidal war on the Strip.

What has UNRWA said?

In an indirect response, UNRWA acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders said on Friday in Gaza, “UNRWA remains an institution of considerable humanitarian and strategic value, with capabilities and expertise that are difficult to replicate today.”

“To disregard these capabilities at a moment of such profound need is neither logical nor responsible,” Saunders said in a statement.

Former UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini on Thursday warned that removing the agency would have a “devastating” effect on Palestinians.

“They want to get rid of the agency, but on the other hand they know that if you get completely rid of the agency today, it might have a further … devastating impact on the population,” Lazzarini told AP on Friday.

In a separate statement on X, Lazzarini said, “grandiose plans are what the Board of Peace does best”, noting widespread suffering across Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing genocide.

The agency has about 11,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza and remains heavily involved in healthcare, education, water and sanitation services. Its exclusion is particularly significant given the scale of displacement and the continuing restrictions on aid entering Gaza.

UNRWA has for decades provided aid and education services to Palestinians in Gaza, occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – the neighbouring countries where the Palestinian refugees have been living.

Palestinians see the agency as safeguarding their right of return to their homeland, while Israel wants it dismantled.

What has been Hamas’ response?

Hamas accused the BoP of adopting Israel’s position.

Spokesperson Hazem Qassem on Saturday called the decision to exclude UNRWA “a complete alignment with the Zionist [Israeli] position”, saying it was aimed at ending the agency’s operations, preventing it from delivering aid and undermining Palestinian refugees’ right of return.

Qassem said it was “strange for the peace council to adopt this hostile stance towards UNRWA while simultaneously failing to provide aid to Gaza or compel the occupation to abide by the ceasefire agreement and halt the daily killings of Palestinians in the Strip”.

Does the Board of Peace toe the Israeli line?

Experts say the workings and demands of the BoP align closely with Israel’s vision of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinians.

UNRWA

Israel has for years sought to remove UNRWA from Gaza, accusing the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas.

The International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion in October, said allegations that “a significant part of UNRWA’s employees are ‘members of Hamas … or other terrorist factions’” had not been substantiated.

The BoP’s position strengthens the Israeli efforts to dismantle the UN agency.

Hamas disarmament

Hamas and other Palestinian factions agreed in July to a roadmap under which weapons would be surrendered in stages as Israeli forces gradually withdrew. The two processes were explicitly linked.

But following an August meeting between Nickolay Mladenov, the BoP’s director-general, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the board said Israeli forces would not withdraw beyond the “Yellow Line” until Hamas’s decommissioning was complete, including “light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike”.

Hamas maintains that it will not implement its obligations unless Israel fulfils its own.

Israel currently occupies more than 60 percent of Gaza while most of the territory’s 2.3 million people remain displaced.

Reconstruction

Article 17 of the BoP plan calls for “temporary reconstruction” beginning in areas designated free of Hamas control, including humanitarian compounds for unarmed civilians.

The proposed system would direct reconstruction, aid and shelter towards areas outside Hamas’s control while Israeli forces remain behind the so-called “Yellow Line”.

However, Israel has refused to allow the Palestinian technocratic committee into Gaza, open crossings or begin reconstruction until Hamas is completely disarmed.

After unveiling the reconstruction plan on the sidelines of the UNGA, BoP high representative Mladenov said once again the proposed plan depends on Hamas’s disarmament.

What is the situation in Gaza?

Almost a year after the October 2025 ceasefire, reconstruction has yet to begin on any meaningful scale and Israeli forces continue to occupy large parts of the Strip.

At least 1,451 Palestinians have been killed and 4,953 wounded in Israeli attacks since the “ceasefire” began in October 2025, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

The healthcare system is on the verge of “total collapse”, the ministry said last week, while shortages of fuel, medical supplies and spare parts have disrupted hospitals, water and sanitation services.

The scale of destruction is also immense. More than half of Gaza’s hospitals and clinics remain nonfunctional, less than 1.5 percent of cropland is accessible and undamaged, and reconstruction needs have reached an estimated $71.5bn.

Nearly 84 percent of Gaza’s population – more than 1.76 million people – are living in displacement sites or damaged and inadequate shelters, the UN has said.

Tulkarem, occupied West Bank – Hakim Mar’i spends his days lying on a single bed, his disfigured leg raised. The windows of Mar’i’s dilapidated apartment, his latest temporary shelter, are covered with old blankets. Unable to work, Mar’i has no money for electricity, so the blankets have to do. At night, his family lives in near darkness.

The apartment is just around the corner from mounds of rubble and gnarled iron structures that mark one entrance to the now-emptied Tulkarem refugee camp. For Mar’i and other Palestinians, the camp was a home once considered temporary. But now, even the physical structure – their home – that tied those generations together is gone.

The apartment is just around the corner from mounds of rubble and gnarled iron structures that mark one entrance to the now-emptied Tulkarem refugee camp. For Mar’i and other Palestinians, the camp was a home once considered temporary. But generations lived there, and now, the physical structure – their home – that tied his family together over the years is gone.

Impoverished, Hakim’s family is in disarray. With its debts mounting and its members facing another eviction, he said he has considered taking his life several times over the past year and a half.

Mar’i cannot afford treatment for his debilitating leg injury, which has developed severe infections. He said he sustained it while working as a labourer inside Israel in 2019. The wound worsened after Israeli soldiers severely beat him when they forced his family from the Tulkarem camp. Diabetes and other untreated conditions have piled on, but he is unable to pay for the needed medical care.

“This joint here is completely gone,” he said, gesturing at the swollen, blackened lower leg that prevents him from working.

“The medicine – by God, the medicine, I haven’t been able to get. My wife and kids tell me: get out travel. Go to America, Turkey – so I can the medical treatment I need… I’m a sick man.”

His mother, Salwa, sat beside him, less than a kilometre (0.6 miles) from their former four-storey home. She wept when asked about the family home that was built floor by floor after they were first displaced in 1948 from al-Khudayra, the Arabic name for Hadera, a city in Israel. “We really put a lot into that house,” she said.

After their removal, the Israeli military razed the Mar’i home so a road traversing the now-emptied camp could be built. “Seeing it destroyed was really painful for us – all of us,” she said.

It has been more than 20 months since Israeli forces emptied the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps in a sweeping military operation in the northern West Bank, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians whose families had already been refugees for three generations. Constantly renewed orders for a closed military zone now prevent their return.

Since January 2025, Hakim’s family has been forced to move four times. First, they fled to a converted youth centre before landing in a cramped apartment with their four children, all under 15.

Unable to pay rent, the family could see the landlord’s generosity run its course as this once-temporary housing arrangement now has no end in sight. Hakim owes money at the local shops for food he bought on credit. Some nights, the children eat at neighbours’ houses.

“I have children. I have food. I have drink,” he said. “My hands are empty. Nobody is with me. Nobody is standing beside me.”

‘We’re already at the brink’

The Mar’i family is among more than 33,000 Palestinians forcibly removed from the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem camps by Israeli forces in early 2025. This is the largest single episode of forced displacement in the West Bank since Israel’s occupation began in 1967, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

UN satellite imagery shows that 20 percent of all buildings across the three camps have been destroyed and another 28 percent are damaged.

“The level of destruction we are seeing is severe and unprecedented,” said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

According to Friedrich, 85 percent of those displaced have no regular income after many lost jobs when the camps were emptied. More than 80 percent of residents are renting, an unfamiliar expense for families who never paid for housing or utilities inside the camps.

The closed military zone covering the camps is renewed every two months, Friedrich said, with no indication of when – or whether – residents will be allowed to return. “What we saw there is forced displacement,” Friedrich said. “The UN’s position is very clear: People have to be allowed to return. The camps must be rebuilt.”

Unlike after the 2000-2005 second Intifada when the Jenin camp was rebuilt, displaced families and UNRWA staff fear there is no return plan this time.

The Israeli military stated the camps were emptied for “operational security” in its effort to root out fighters from the camps. Friedrich worried the aim of the military operations is to “change the geographical expression of the Palestinian refugee issue”.

Now more than 20 months into what was meant to be an emergency response, funding shortages have left UNRWA unable to cover the vast needs of the displaced population. It has moved some operations to keep schools and basic health clinics functioning. With funds dwindling, the agency has shifted to a “targeted approach”, leaving thousands without support.

Friedrich pointed to a rise in gender-based violence linked to the economic strain on families and to growing depression and anxiety among displaced children observed by UNRWA’s psychosocial teams. “We’re already at the brink now,” he declared.

‘Everyone went their own way’

While Hakim’s displacement plays out in the shadow of the camp, the family of Khadija Zbeidat face their own imminent eviction on the outskirts of Tulkarem. They live in the neighbourhood of Dhinnaba, where sparse houses are interspersed with greenhouses. They are unable to afford a residence closer to the city centre.

As Khadija sat on a couch in the middle of the yard, her many children and grandchildren ran past a small patch of plants she has planted – one of her few remaining joys. “I love plants,” she said. “We had many flowers in our home in the camp. Having the plants here is all I have to feel like myself,” she told Al Jazeera.

Khadija, a widow, shares a tiny spartan room with nine family members, nearly all children, along with a small bathroom and a kitchen barely big enough for one person to cook in. A worn couch takes up one corner. The ceiling is peeling above it.

The room was given to them rent free by a relative of Khadija’s brother-in-law after they spent four months crammed into her daughter’s house with nine other people. “It got really cramped, the pressure on each other,” Zbeidat said. “And we became a burden too.”

Khadija’s family was displaced in January 2025 from the Tulkarem camp’s Haret al-Nadi section, a significant part of which has been destroyed, she said.

“The camp was excellent,” she said of their life before. “I swear, I wish they’d take us back. Everything was close to us, dear – … the closeness, that sense of belonging and the warmth, the company and the neighbours.”

The memories that she cherishes most dearly and that bring her to tears are of food: the stuffed grape leaves and the maamoul cookies made as a neighbourhood together for Eid. This year, there was none of it.

“Nothing. No cookies,” she said. “Nobody even had it in them to do anything any more. Everyone went their own way – scattered.”

Like the Mar’i family and others, they were not allowed to bring their belongings during their abrupt displacement. Some residents have since been allowed to retrieve belongings once or twice from their homes in the camps, but much of what they own remains left behind. Khadija’s daughter-in-law at one point returned to the ruins of the camp – at the risk of being shot – to retrieve a doll left behind that Khadija’s granddaughter Sandy would not stop crying about.

In Tulkarem, displaced families live either in the poorest areas closest to the camp, like the Mar’is, or on the cheaper outskirts, like the Zbeidats, remaining close enough to the health and schooling services that UNRWA still provides. But even a simple trip to buy groceries requires Khadija, who has no car, to travel 2km (1.2 miles).

At night, the family sits outside rather than in the stifling heat of the poorly ventilated room, watching Israeli military drones pass low overhead. “What to do? We’re used to seeing them, to having them around, to them raiding houses,” Khadija said. “It doesn’t matter any more.”

The military raids that always haunted life in the refugee camps have now come to wherever the displaced refugees have fled to. “We don’t feel safe,” Khadija said. “Nor the kids. It’s dangerous. When they want to go out somewhere, my heart stays busy until they come back.”

Waiting to be kicked out again

For months after the displacement, landlords, relatives and shopkeepers absorbed much of the shock, allowing families to stay for free or buy food on credit. But as the emergency stretches to almost two years now, that informal safety net is fraying. The pressure is felt particularly in economically moribund Tulkarem, where many families had relied on jobs inside Israel before Palestinian work permits were revoked after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel and the start of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023.

The owner of the property where Khadija’s family is staying recently sent his sister to tell Khadija’s family to leave. “They think it’s been too long,” Khadija explained. “They want the land, to benefit from the land and the room. … But where can we get money, where to pay from? The rent is very high, and we can’t afford it. We don’t know what to do if she comes again and kicks us out.”

Hakim’s family is on the brink of eviction too. Like others, he received from UNRWA a one-time rental subsidy of 3,000 shekels ($985) and a separate 1,700-shekel ($560) multipurpose cash payment for short-term assistance. “Every minute, I am waiting for the landlord to kick us out,” he said.

Khadija’s family survives on credit from shopkeepers who know their situation and, for now, still extend it – but patience is wearing thin.

Hakim said this goodwill is collapsing: “You tell them: ‘Give me a day, two days. Be patient with me.’ They won’t bear it.”

As distant as a return to her family’s lands in 1948 feels now, Khadija still hopes to return to the camp one day. But she worries that her children may inherit an even more precarious existence than the one that preceded this latest dispossession – refugees for generations displaced yet again. “Only God knows what tomorrow will bring us,” Khadija said.

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

Smotrich told Ynet News that Israel needs to “go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza’.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the Israeli military should “go to war” in the occupied West Bank and repeat what it “did in Gaza”.

Using a biblical term for the occupied West Bank, the minister told Ynet News in an interview published on Sunday that Israel needs to “go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which is a terror authority”.

Smotrich was responding to a question on how Israel should combat the increasing “security tensions” in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli violence against Palestinians has been steadily growing since the eruption of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, but the attacks have intensified significantly this year.

“We need to tell” Israeli forces, he said, “Just as you dismantled Hamas in Gaza, there won’t be terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria”. “No terrorists, no weapons, no tunnels.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank from January to late July, averaging six a day, the highest rate in about 20 years.

Various settler groups, often supported or protected by Israeli soldiers, have attacked Palestinians in several ways, including shootings, besieging homes and engaging in other forms of communal violence that experts have described as “pogroms“.

Rights groups warn that settlers are increasingly armed with military-issued weaponry and wear military uniforms during attacks, blurring the line between settler and soldier.

Military closure

The comments come as Israeli authorities announced a comprehensive military closure across the occupied West Bank, citing the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The heightened restrictions on the movement of Palestinians are set to remain in place until October 3.

Meanwhile, in occupied East Jerusalem, hundreds of Israelis stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy protection from Israeli police on Sunday.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the Israelis entered the compound through the Moroccan Gate and performed Talmudic rituals, as Israeli forces increased restrictions around the mosque and across Jerusalem’s Old City.

Five opposition leaders agree to cooperate to boost voter turnout to secure a majority in the October 27 elections.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised the opposition leaders who began coordinating to replace his government ahead of the October 27 Knesset elections.

The five politicians met at opposition leader Yair Lapid’s home in Tel Aviv on Saturday to coordinate their strategy before the elections, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

In his first response to the agreement, Netanyahu claimed Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot would seek to form a government with Yair Lapid, Yair Golan, Bennett 2026, Yisrael Beiteinu and Arab parties.

“Only a strong Likud will stop them,” Netanyahu posted on X, referring to his right-wing political party. He posted an AI-altered photo of the politicians meeting where he added United Arab List leader Mansour Abbas and Hadash-Ta’al leader Ahmad Tibi.

The meeting was attended by Lapid, the leader of Yesh Atid; Naftali Bennett, the leader of Bennett 2026; Avigdor Lieberman, the head of Yisrael Beiteinu; Gadi Eisenkot, the head of Yashar; and Democrats leader Yair Golan.

Lapid posted a group picture and a document listing their principles for coordination until the election and afterwards.

Under the document, each party leader pledged to work within their respective constituencies to boost voter turnout and attract support from various sectors of society, to secure a majority and form a new government.

The document also says three joint working groups are to be established within 48 hours.

The first will focus on boosting voter turnout for the bloc and what the opposition leaders described as “safeguarding the integrity of the election”. A second group will draft the basic guidelines of the government the opposition seeks to form, including establishing an official commission of inquiry into the attacks of October 7, 2023, and drafting a new constitution. The third group will coordinate media activity and try to counter what the document described as “fake news and smear campaigns”.

“I am filled with hope again tonight. I am confident that we can win 63 seats and work together to fix Israel,” Bennett, a former prime minister, said in a statement on X.

“We have agreed to fully cooperate until the election, on election day, and after the election, with the aim of forming a government that will fix Israel,” he added.

Army chief accuses Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s federal military has said it is handling rising tensions in the country’s north with restraint, as fears grow that Ethiopia could be heading towards another civil war.

In his first comments on the recent military developments, Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Berhanu Jula said the army was responding to what he called provocations from the Tigray front with “wisdom and restraint”.

He accused Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia, describing the “Tsimdo” alliance as an extension of a longstanding pattern of hostile alliances, which he said cannot confront the state without outside backing.

Eritrea, wary that landlocked Ethiopia may be seeking to invade it to gain access to the Red Sea, denied the accusations.

The fighting has spread from Tigray into neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions after seven armed groups announced an alliance, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, committed to removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

In Afar, the latest battles have taken place around Abala, where the military has been trying to prevent rebels from seizing control.

Separately, in North Wollo, a zone of Amhara bordering Tigray, the army said on Thursday it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 in a counter-offensive, reporting heavy losses for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The TPLF’s Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” involving infantry, mechanised units and drones.

Abdisalam Balema, a TPLF central committee member, told Al Jazeera the situation had become a “full war”.

Fighting has also continued around Sama, Soqota and Raya Alamata, with government forces reportedly closing in on the town of Alamata.

The army command said it prefers a strategy of “strategic calm” over a large-scale military confrontation, arguing the Tigray front’s popular support is dwindling and its leadership divided.

Internet access was reportedly cut across northern Ethiopia on Friday, a day after the UN said it was alarmed by reports of drones being used against civilians there.

The renewed fighting has put the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended a brutal two-year civil war in Tigray, under severe strain. It comes weeks after Washington lifted sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea tied to atrocities from the last war, saying the “national emergency … has expired”.

It marks the most serious challenge yet to that agreement, raising fears of a wider regional conflict that could draw in armed groups from across Ethiopia.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Ethiopia’s president sought to portray the country as a force for regional stability, accusing unnamed external actors of meddling in Ethiopia’s affairs while highlighting Addis Ababa’s role in supporting peace efforts in neighbouring Sudan.

Alemayehu Weldemariam, a professor of law at Indiana University, told Al Jazeera that the federal government bears much of the blame for the collapse of the Pretoria Agreement.

“This war has been in the making for a while now. Much of the provisions in the cessation of hostilities [in the 2022 agreement] were primarily sabotaged by the federal government itself,” he said, citing fuel, service and cash restrictions imposed on Tigray, and the government’s failure to set up the interim administration the deal had promised.

“What was supposed to be an interim arrangement turned out to be permanent,” with Tigray excluded from national elections since, he added.

Tunis, Tunisia – For nine-year-old Yassar Naouar, visiting his father in prison has become an exercise in staying strong. He tries not to cry in front of Wael, fearing that seeing his son in tears would make an already painful situation harder for him. After leaving the prison, Yassar finds a corner where he can finally let the tears fall.

Hichem Naouar, Yassar’s grandfather, says the boy has changed since his father was detained. He now sleeps beside his mother after waking up screaming at night and his results at school have worsened. When Yassar told his mother that other children kept asking whether his father was a thief, she asked him what he thought.

“Never,” the nine-year-old replied.

Wael’s youngest child, four-year-old Sumud, is too young to understand why her father is in prison. Hichem says he took her to visit him. When she saw her father behind the glass, she leaned forward to embrace him, only to hit her head against the barrier.

Hichem spoke to Al Jazeera on Wednesday outside the Tunis Court of Appeal, where he had gone to follow the latest challenge to Wael’s detention. He repeatedly choked up as he described what he had seen during his most recent visit.

Wael was sitting with his hand against his cheek, his father said, his elbow trembling and his gaze fixed in the distance. He was struggling to see clearly and to keep water down without vomiting. He was dizzy and had difficulty controlling his left leg. Wael later told Hichem that other prisoners had said he sometimes wakes during the night calling out his youngest daughter’s name.

For his father, however, Wael’s story is also about the kind of person he has been. He recalled an incident during the Sumud land convoy in Libya in May, when armed men tried to kidnap another participant. Wael intervened, pulled the man away and helped him escape before returning to the men and telling them they could take him instead.

During the first Sumud flotilla, a female fell into the sea and was close to drowning. Wael immediately jumped in and rescued her.

“Wael’s strength is in the strength of his ideas and in his commitment to his people. Whenever he heard about any injustice against workers or employees, you would always find him at the forefront,” Hichem said.

The case and its wider fallout

Wael, 41, began a hunger strike on August 16 to protest his continued detention and was transferred to hospital as his condition deteriorated. He suspended his strike after 38 days following appeals from his lawyers and supporters, saying the decision did not mean abandoning his demands.

Four activists, Wael Naouar, Ghassan Henchiri, Ghassan Boughdiri and Nabil Channoufi, have been held since March following an investigation by Tunisia’s Economic and Financial Judicial Pole, a specialised body that handles financial and economic crimes. The investigation concerns alleged financial irregularities linked to fundraising for the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international campaign seeking to deliver aid to Gaza and challenge Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory.

The state-owned TAP news agency, citing judicial sources, reported that investigators are examining the origin and use of funds collected for the flotilla and whether any were diverted for other purposes. The activists and their defence team have repeatedly denied wrongdoing and maintain their innocence. None of the four has been convicted.

For their lawyers, the issue is also why the men should remain in prison while the investigation continues.

Ghassan Ghribi, a member of the defence committee, described the latest extension of their pretrial detention as an “exception to the exception”, arguing that freedom should be the rule and detention the exception. The four-month extension was ordered on September 11 and the defence challenged the decision before the Court of Appeal in Tunis.

“The investigating judge spent six months on the case without carrying out any investigative work, other than questioning the activists,” Ghribi told Al Jazeera. He said the extension should be based on clear reasons and that the four men were being made to pay the price for what he described as a lack of investigative work.

The Court of Appeal rejected the challenge on Wednesday, leaving the quartet in pretrial detention for another four months while the investigation continues. Henchiri, Boughdiri and Channoufi remain on hunger strike.

Authorities have presented the case as a financial investigation into the handling of funds raised for the flotilla, rather than a prosecution linked to the men’s political or pro-Palestinian activities. The government has rejected accusations that the judiciary is being used to silence opponents, saying the judiciary is independent and that legal proceedings are conducted according to the law.

The fallout has also widened beyond the four men. Fourteen people detained after the September 19 protest calling for their release have since been placed in pretrial detention, lawyer Rafed Rabbeh confirmed to Al Jazeera on Friday. Among them is a 17-year-old who was brought before a juvenile judge. Tunisia’s Child Protection Code says priority should be given to preventive and educational measures and that pretrial detention should be avoided as much as possible for children.

Rabbeh said the detainees face several charges, including participating in a gathering allegedly intended to disturb public order and commit an offence, publicly attributing unlawful acts to a public official without proof, and making public statements deemed to damage the reputation of a person or official body. The charges are based on several provisions of Tunisia’s Penal Code.

The toll on those left behind

Speaking by phone from Gafsa, Ghassan Henchiri’s father, Sebti, said his son remains conscious but is visibly exhausted after being on hunger strike since September 9.

“According to what his sister told me after visiting him, he is still holding up. The fatigue is visible. He is exhausted, but he is still conscious,” Sebti said.

Ghassan has not been taken outside the prison for further medical examination of a head injury sustained during his detention in Israel, Sebti told Al Jazeera. Ghassan and his family have raised the issue with both the prison administration and investigating judge. They were promised that he would receive the necessary medical examinations, but that has not happened, Sebti said.

“It could be a superficial injury, but with the conditions in prison and the high temperatures, it has exhausted him,” he said.

Ghassan also has other health problems, including living with one kidney and suffering from back problems, Sebti said. He has developed a skin rash that keeps him from sleeping, but his request to see a dermatologist was rejected because the prison doctor did not consider it serious, Sebti said.

“I will remain steadfast, I will not give up my right and these malicious accusations are false,” Ghassan told his father.

“He is my son, my brother, my companion, my whole life,” Sebti said. “Ghassan is a man of integrity. I am not saying that because I am his father. Everyone knows that about him.”

Ghassan’s detention has also reshaped family life. He had been working at a high school and was recently engaged, Sebti said.

He described Ghassan’s political commitment as something rooted in the family. He has been involved in student activism and later trade unions since 1978, campaigning for freedom, the right to organise and a better, more dignified life for Tunisians. Ghassan grew up with those principles and was influenced by his father’s activism.

“This is what Ghassan was raised on and what influenced him,” Sebti said.

Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns over the use of financial and money-laundering investigations against civil society actors in Tunisia.

For the Naouar and Henchiri families, the impact of the detentions is being felt at home, in prison visits, anxious phone calls and children asking when their fathers will return.

Yassar still asks about his father and has told his grandfather he is ready to go on hunger strike too.

Asked where her father is, four-year-old Sumud answers: “Palestine. Prison”.

US president rejects Iran’s seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying the deal is not ‘acceptable’.

Demonstrators are demanding early elections and accuse Pedro Sanchez’s government of negligence.

Thousands of people have rallied in the Spanish capital to protest the government’s policy on irregular migration and its handling of a recent migrant influx into the North African enclave of Ceuta.

Saturday’s protest in Madrid was organised by right-wing civil society group Sociedad Civil Espanola and backed by the mainstream conservative People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox.

According to the government, 20,000 people attended, while protest organisers put the turnout at 180,000.

At the end of July, more than 70,000 migrants stormed into the autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco, before most of them were returned. However, thousands remain stranded.

Demonstrators accused Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his government of failing to protect the borders of Ceuta.

They are calling for an early election to be held by mid-November, with Vox demanding Sanchez be tried for treason. Spain’s next general election is not due until August 2027.

PP’s secretary-general Miguel Tellado said there was a “widespread feeling that the government has not acted responsibly; there has been a dereliction of duty, extreme negligence”.

“Spanish society has to take to the streets to ask the government to defend our territorial integrity,” he added.

The July 30 and 31 surge of people into Ceuta led to unprecedented scenes and the deaths of dozens of migrants.

Sanchez said on Tuesday that Moroccan border control failed to adequately handle the incident and that an investigation was still under way, adding that Rabat had been asked for answers.

The Spanish government estimates that between 6,000 and 10,000 stranded migrants remain in Ceuta.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal is demanding that everyone who arrived in late July be deported to their country of origin.

Abascal said Ceuta remained “invaded because Sanchez continues to be Morocco’s servant”.

Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Saturday that the government is planning to approve a decree on Tuesday to accelerate the return of migrants from Ceuta to Morocco.

The protest is the second under the March for Dignity banner. That demonstration was held in late May before the incident in Ceuta and attracted 40,000 protesters, according to the government.

United States President Donald Trump has rejected a roadmap submitted by Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz within a week.

“I reject their proposal,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday, before departing for Tennessee by helicopter.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that Tehran formally submitted a seven-day roadmap to the US via mediator Qatar, and was awaiting Washington’s response.

“It appears as though the proposal is dead in the water,” said Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC.

Late on Friday, US media reports indicated Trump would reject the proposal.

Trump was “privately sceptical” that Tehran would meet his demands, and reportedly told aides that he expects a renewed bombing campaign on Iran after the November US midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported, quoting unnamed US officials.

“President Trump has vacillated between extreme optimism, saying that ‘talks are going well’ to ‘I want to annihilate Iran’,” Hanna said about the recent diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.

“There is no consistency in terms of the [Trump] administration’s reaction,” he said.

But “the one thing that has been made clear by President Trump is that he is content to stay in the status of limbo”, Hanna added, despite concerns from much of the American public that the Iran conflict is turning into another “never-ending war”.

The Strait of Hormuz, a waterway key to the world’s oil supply, is central to the conflict between the US and Iran, which is at an impasse after nearly seven months, though new mediation efforts took place this week.

Earlier in the week, Araghchi held talks with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, and previously set out conditions for ending the war and reopening the vital shipping channel.

On Friday, the top Iranian diplomat said: “Iran has conveyed to the United States, through Qatar, a concrete seven-day plan. If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, and normal maritime passage restored within seven days.”

He was speaking at the United Nations in New York, where he and other senior Iranian officials were attending the General Assembly.

Under the plan, Washington would lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, release an estimated $12bn in frozen Iranian assets and observe a ceasefire covering the region, including Lebanon and Yemen.

“The choice now rests with the United States. Iran does not accept coercion, threats or intimidation, and Iran will not surrender its sovereign rights under pressure,” Araghchi had said.

On Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera that Tehran no longer trusts negotiations with the US after previous rounds of talks were followed by attacks and sanctions.

“We have no trust in the American side and do not know on what basis an understanding can be reached with it,” said Pezeshkian, who was also in New York for the UNGA.

He denied that Iran was responsible for blocking the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US “closed the routes before us”. He described the closure as “a natural response when routes are cut off to Iran”.

The Iranian president said the crisis could be resolved through negotiations rather than force, and that the waterway would reopen to commercial shipping if talks ended the war.

Egyptian FA has decided to rest Salah to protect him from playing on artificial turf, which has a higher risk of injuries.

Mohamed Salah will not travel with ⁠Egypt’s ⁠squad to South Sudan for their second Africa Cup of Nations qualifier because the ⁠match will be played on artificial turf, the Egyptian Football Association said ⁠on Saturday.

Record seven-time AFCON champions Egypt were held to a goalless draw by Angola at Cairo International Stadium on Friday in their opening qualifier.

Two-time African Footballer of the Year, Salah, who ‌joined Turkiye’s Trabzonspor from Liverpool last month, started against Angola but did not complete the match after coach Hossam Hassan substituted him midway through the second half.

“The Egypt national team’s technical staff, led by Hossam Hassan, has ⁠decided to rest Mohamed Salah ⁠for the match against South Sudan scheduled for September 29 because of the playing surface,” the EFA said on social ⁠media.

“It was agreed between the national team’s technical staff and ⁠Mohamed Salah before the Angola ⁠match that he would not play against South Sudan, and the technical staff preferred this approach in order to ‌protect the player,” the EFA added.

Salah has scored 68 goals for Egypt and is just one short of matching coach and ex-player Hassan’s all-time record of 69 for The Pharaohs.

Tuesday’s match between South Sudan and Egypt will be played ‌at ‌Juba Stadium, which has an artificial turf pitch. Such surfaces pose a higher risk of injuries than those with natural grass.

Egypt are in Group B of the AFCON 2027 qualifiers, alongside Angola, South Sudan and Malawi. The 2027 AFCON will be co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, featuring 24 teams.

Though Egypt are the most successful African side, they haven’t won the championship since 2010.

Ireland are due to play Israel in the Nations League in Hungary on Sunday, but boycott pressure mounts on and off-field.

The Ireland team’s news conference and training session the day before its first Nations League game against Israel have been delayed as pressure to boycott the matches grows.

Journalists in Debrecen, Hungary – where Israel’s “home” game is to be played Sunday – were left waiting Saturday after being told the news conference was being pushed back until after training. That was 15 minutes before it was supposed to begin.

Training was also significantly delayed, however, with Irish broadcaster RTE reporting the players were still in their hotel more than two hours after the training session was supposed to begin.

RTE reported that some players had decided they did not want to play the games.

“And if they stay to their stated ambition that they have to be all in it together, if one or more want to be out, maybe they will all be out,” reporter Tony O’Donoghue told RTE Radio 1.

The team has been coming under increasing pressure in Ireland, where affinity with Palestinians is strong, to boycott the two games – the first on Sunday and the second, Ireland’s “home” game, in Backa Topola, Serbia, on October 4.

Ireland midfielder Jason Knight said after Thursday’s 1-0 loss in Kosovo that the players were in a difficult situation and that he didn’t think the matches should be going ahead.

Ireland coach Heimir Hallgrimsson previously said “we’re not playing with genocide, we’re playing against genocide. We’re playing against Israel, we’re not playing with Israel” – drawing a furious reaction from the Israeli football federation, which accused the Icelandic coach of “stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy”.

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) had resisted calls to boycott the matches, arguing the team could be hit by punishing sanctions by UEFA. Ireland is cohosting the 2028 European Championship with England, Wales and Scotland.

More than 160 Irish sportspeople signed an open letter urging the FAI to reconsider its decision to go ahead with the fixtures.

There were protesters outside the team hotel in Dublin last week calling on the players to boycott the games. The SIPTU trade union displayed a huge poster in central Dublin beside the River Liffey asking the players to “Go with your conscience!” and “Don’t play with genocide” beside an image of a blood-splattered ball.

Former Ireland coach Brian Kerr said the FAI had “lost the respect of the Irish people” for going ahead with the games.

“The Irish people and the soccer-going public don’t want the games to be played,” Kerr said. “I think they’ve made their opinions clear over the last year. The FAI back in November actually went to UEFA and requested that Israel be put out of the tournament on principle. And yet they went against that principle.”

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – The partially collapsed roof above Masada Abu Jarad’s apartment is now made up of broken concrete with twisted steel bars protruding from its edges.

And underneath the section of the room that is now open to the elements after the building’s partial collapse, Masada’s family have pitched a tent to provide shelter.

The 60-year-old knows the structure is dangerous. The Palestinian Red Crescent and the Civil Defence visited the family last week and warned them that they should leave. But in Gaza, where Israel refuses to allow proper reconstruction to take place after almost three years of its genocidal war, there are few places for them to go.

“We have no options,” Masada says. “I want to leave, but who will give me an alternative?”

She has lived in the building in Gaza City’s Palestine Square area for the past year, after returning to northern Gaza from displacement earlier in the war. But this still isn’t home. Masada’s family is originally from Beit Lahiya in the far north of the Strip, but had to leave early in the war after Israel decimated the area. They are still unable to return.

After repeated displacement, the prospect of moving again without a safe destination has become exhausting. And even if they could move, the cost is prohibitive.

“Even if there is a better place, tell me how I can afford to rent it,” Masada said.

Masada’s experience reflects a wider housing crisis across Gaza for the Palestinians who have survived Israel’s war, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians.

A joint assessment by the United Nations, World Bank, and European Union found that 371,888 housing units, 76.6 percent of the housing stock, had been destroyed or damaged as of October 2025. The assessment also found that rebuilding Gaza will need more than $71bn over the next decade.

The dangers of Gaza’s depleted and damaged housing stock became starkly visible on September 16, when a six-storey war-damaged residential building in Gaza City collapsed, killing 21 people, including 12 children, according to the UN and Gaza Civil Defence.

The collapse has become a warning for families living in other damaged structures.

‘I stay awake so they can sleep’

Abdullah Abu Hajar, 40, lives with his wife and five children in the al-Najma building in Gaza City’s southern Remal neighbourhood.

The six-storey building is severely damaged and unstable. About 17 families, roughly 50 to 60 people, are living there, according to Abdullah.

On the outside walls, municipal notices warn residents and passers-by that the building is unsafe and at risk of collapse.

At night, while his wife and children try to sleep, Abdullah stays awake and listens.

Every unfamiliar sound, such as concrete shifting, stones moving or an unexplained creaking somewhere inside the building, puts him on alert.

“I stay awake all night, keeping watch,” he said. “I can’t close my eyes. I keep just listening to sounds around me.”

Abdullah explained that he feels worried for his children, even though they have adapted to the danger. But he has not.

And after the September 16 building collapse, he grew even more fearful. Since then, he said, he has barely slept.

“I’m already on edge,” he said. “But I don’t know where I can go.”

Abdullah and his family were displaced from Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza after it was attacked by Israel, and moved repeatedly during the war, eventually finding the al-Najma building.

His extended family faces the same uncertainty. Abdullah said that one of his relatives has been moving between southern and northern Gaza, looking for a place where he can pitch a tent.

“I told him to come and stay with us,” Abdullah said. “But he is hesitant because of the condition of this building. At the same time, he has nowhere else to go.”

A room among the rubble

For Islam Hassanein, 36, the same fears are entwined with the place she calls home.

A mother of five, Islam has spent nearly a year living with her family in a single room on the third floor of a damaged building.

She found the room after searching for somewhere to stay. It was filled with rubble and debris.

“We cleaned it and stayed in it,” she said.

The building is leaning and visibly damaged. The plumbing doesn’t work, so the family uses a bathroom outside. There is little that resembles a family home.

But leaving has proved no easier than staying. “We keep looking, but we can’t find anywhere,” she says. “They might even force us out of here. What are we supposed to do?”

Islam says she would leave immediately if she were offered a safe place.

“If they find us a good place and provide us with a tent, we will leave from the morning,” she says. “But where is this place? And where is the tent?”

The building itself regularly reminds her of the dangers.

“Every day, you hear the cracking,” she says. “People who live here tell us, ‘It’s cracking.’ Then a column fell, and they took us out of the building temporarily.”

The potentially deadly risks will become harder to manage as winter approaches, with its colder and wetter weather.

Water can enter through exposed roofs and walls, and the already weakened structure will face additional pressure from heavy rain.

“Last winter was terrifying,” Islam said. “We were constantly afraid that the building would collapse. I spent most days in my family’s tent because this building was full of openings and would flood whenever it rained.”

“Now, I am very afraid of this winter, and I don’t know what we are going to do.”

The UN says thousands of people are sheltering in damaged buildings considered unsafe because better housing options are unavailable.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of tents, tarpaulins and other essential shelter materials are making the situation more difficult, leaving Gaza in a state of limbo, unable to move on from the war, particularly as Israel can choose to escalate the conflict at any time.

UNICEF estimates that nearly 84 percent of Gaza’s population, more than 1.76 million people, are living in overcrowded displacement sites or damaged and inadequate shelters, with little protection from cold, heavy rain and flooding.

Islam says the war has forced families to take risks they once would have considered unthinkable.

She worries about her five children, but sees few choices available to her.

“They are all afraid,” she said. “But what can we do? If there is an alternative, I will leave. We leave it to God.”

A Pew Research poll in April indicated 60 percent of the US adult population held an unfavourable view of Israel.

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says that the recent souring of public opinion in the United States towards Israel is the result of a lack of “biblical literacy”.

In an interview with NewsNation on Thursday, the ambassador suggested there were three sources of declining support for Israel.

He cited disinformation and foreign propaganda, a hatred of those who believe “there is a God and that he’s made up the rules for life”, and not knowing the Bible.

“You add all that together, I guess you just want to be mad at Israel and blame them for everything,” he said.

Huckabee claimed that accusations of genocide in Gaza and that Israel is an apartheid state are false, and Americans would have a more favourable view of Israel if they would “look at the truth”.

A Pew Research poll in April indicated that, although favourable opinion of Israel remained relatively strong at 65 percent among white evangelicals, such as Huckabee, 60 percent of the US adult population held an unfavourable view of Israel.

An AP-NORC poll from July suggested that Americans who believed Israel committed genocide in Gaza outnumbered those who did not, although roughly half said they did not know enough to answer.

For Israel, the decline in support has become alarming as prominent critics of Israel won several elections, including Zohran Mamdani, who became New York City mayor.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used part of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly to lambast Mamdani, claiming that Jews in New York told him that they no longer feel safe in the city.

Netanyahu, too, has seen declining popularity in the US, with the same Pew survey indicating more than half of Americans did not trust him to do the right thing regarding world affairs.

Mamdani has previously said that he opposes hatred and bigotry, including anti-Semitism, but promised to execute an International Criminal Court warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes when the Israeli leader next visited New York City – before eventually concluding that the city did not have the legal authority to do so.

US Central Command says they redirected 122 commercial vessels to “ensure strict compliance” with the US blockade against Iran.

Kylian Mbappe scores the only goal of France’s win in Turkiye, but Real Madrid striker immediately forced off by injury.

Kylian Mbappe scored the only goal of the game before having to come off grimacing with a knee injury, as France won 1-0 in Turkiye in the UEFA Nations League in new coach Zinedine Zidane’s first game in charge on Friday.

The Real Madrid star was moved out to the left wing by his new coach after being used through the middle of the France attack under former coach Didier Deschamps at the recent World Cup, which he ended as the top scorer with 10 goals.

It was from the left that Mbappe, France’s all-time top scorer, notched his 67th international goal, controlling and firing into the net low at the near post after being set up by Michael Olise.

He winced in pain as his teammates came across to celebrate the goal at the Kocaeli Stadium in Izmit, about 100km outside Istanbul.

Mbappe tried to carry on after receiving treatment, but eventually slumped to the ground and looked concerned as he prodded the outside of his left knee, before walking off to be replaced by Desire Doue.

France and Real will now nervously wait to discover the extent of the injury, with Les Bleus playing three more games over the next 10 days before the club season resumes.

The sight of his star player and skipper coming off overshadowed Zidane’s first match since being appointed coach in late July on a deal to 2030.

The France legend and 1998 World Cup winner is making his return to elite coaching for the first time since his second stint in charge of Madrid ended in 2021.

France, beaten in the semifinals at the World Cup by eventual winners Spain, are in Group A1 of this edition of the Nations League and will now go to Brussels to face Belgium on Monday. Belgium won 2-0 away to Italy on Friday.

Zidane, whose last match as a player came for France against Italy in the 2006 World Cup final, will then make his home debut as coach against the Italians at the Stade de France next Friday.

His first team selection was not dramatically different from the side that regularly played at the World Cup, although Bournemouth’s Adrien Truffert was in at left-back while Manchester City’s Rayan Cherki came into the starting XI.

Olise, the Bayern Munich star who lit up the World Cup, was unlucky not to open the scoring late in the first half when his superb strike was tipped over by home goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir.

France goalkeeper Mike Maignan responded at the start of the second half as he tipped over an attempt by Abdulkerim Bardakci for Turkiye, who finished bottom of their group at the World Cup, despite a 3-2 win over cohosts the United States.

Mbappe’s goal came shortly after, and the visitors later saw Jules Kounde hit the post before Turkiye were reduced to 10 men late on.

Cakir came flying out of his area to halt Bradley Barcola as the France substitute raced through on goal. German referee Felix Zwayer initially waved play on before undertaking a VAR review, after which he decided the goalkeeper had handled the ball, which meant a red card.

Turkiye, coached by former Italian international Vincenzo Montella, will host Italy next on Monday.

Shehbaz Sharif speaks as Islamabad, Riyadh and Ankara army chiefs meet to discuss Mecca pact, closer military ties.

Pakistan’s prime minister has condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, warning that any “threat to the sanctity” of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina is a “red line that must never be crossed”.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday, Shehbaz Sharif denounced recent Houthi attacks as “deplorable”.

He added that an attack by the Iran-aligned Yemeni group, which Riyadh says targeted Mecca, “outraged Muslims across the globe”. The Houthis have dismissed the accusations as a “heinous lie”.

Last month, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye signed a trilateral defence pact, formally known as the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement. The pact states that an attack on any member will be treated as an attack on all. However, Islamabad and Ankara have refrained from getting involved in Riyadh’s ongoing fight with the Houthis.

The ⁠military ⁠chiefs of all three countries met in Riyadh on Friday and ⁠discussed enhancing intelligence sharing and military ⁠coordination, ‌the Pakistani military said. The chiefs reviewed the security situation and ⁠threats facing Saudi Arabia, ⁠affirmed a commitment to collective defence and ⁠pledged to turn ⁠Mecca Agreement commitments into effective cooperation, the ‌army added.

It is not clear what, if any, support Ankara and Islamabad may provide to Riyadh. In a written interview published by the US media outlet Newsweek on Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said support could include “intelligence, logistics or ammunition, with more extensive military assistance possible depending on the scale of the threat”.

Iran and Palestine

In Sharif’s UN address, he also referenced the US-Israeli war that was launched against Iran in late February, as well as Islamabad’s role as a co-mediator.

Pakistan’s efforts culminated in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, signed by Washington and Tehran, which was intended to help end the conflict.

The accord has since unravelled while regional countries push for a conclusive end to the war, which has caused a global energy crisis and exacerbated tensions across the Middle East.

“Yet amid the roar of missiles, drones and guns, the voice for diplomacy must echo even louder and stronger,” Sharif said.

He added that the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blockaded, and the Bab al-Mandeb waterway, which is now largely under Houthi control, are “arteries of the global economy” that should remain free and safe.

The Pakistani prime minister also denounced what he described as Israel’s “genocidal agenda” in Palestine, while condemning “Israeli aggression against Lebanon and Syria”. These were sentiments echoed earlier in the day by Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in his UN General Assembly address.

India, Kashmir, Afghanistan

Closer to home, Sharif’s speech touched on tensions with Pakistan’s neighbours.

Criticising India, he accused New Delhi of weaponising the Indus waters, which both countries have jointly managed for more than six decades. The two neighbours heavily rely on the Himalayan river network.

Sharif warned that “any attempt to stop, impede or divert Pakistan’s share of the waters will be treated as an act of war”.

He also called for what he described as a “just and fair solution” to the Kashmir dispute, which both Pakistan and India claim in its entirety. Sharif alleged that there have been attempts to “alter the legal status” of Kashmir through demographic engineering.

Another pressing issue for Islamabad is the threat posed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban. Sharif said groups operate from “sanctuaries inside Afghanistan, with the aim of destabilising Pakistan”, insisting that attacks launched from Afghanistan “must come to a grinding halt”.

This comes as the latest cross-border fighting left several Afghan Taliban fighters dead on Friday.