occupation

Footage shows Israeli protesters blocking aid trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing. They say Hamas broke ceasefire terms. WHO warns deliveries remain only a “fraction of what’s needed” and estimates $7 billion to rebuild Gaza’s shattered health system.

Hamas and Israel appear to have agreed to most of the conditions of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, which means there may be an end in sight to Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.

But there is a lot that is not yet agreed upon, including how the withdrawal of Israeli troops will take place; the presence of an Israeli security buffer zone inside Gaza; and what the interim governing authority will look like.

The ultimate question has also not been asked: When will Israel end its illegal occupation of all Palestinian territory?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Andrew Gilmour – Former United Nations assistant secretary-general for human rights

Victor Kattan – Assistant professor in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham and author of the book The Palestine Question in International Law

Simon Mabon – Professor of Middle East and International Politics at Lancaster University and author of The Struggle for Supremacy in the Middle East

US military action against a Venezuelan boat sparks condemnation and troop deployments.

Venezuela has accused the United States of illegally boarding and occupying one of its fishing vessels in the country’s special economic zone, further escalating tensions between Caracas and Washington.

In a statement on Saturday, Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the vessel, carrying nine “humble” and “harmless” fishermen, was intercepted by the US destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG-109) on Friday.

“The warship deployed 18 armed agents who boarded and occupied the small, harmless boat for eight hours,” the statement said, calling the incident a “direct provocation through the illegal use of excessive military means”.

The move follows a US military strike last week in the Caribbean that killed 11 Venezuelans and sank a boat that the administration of US President Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, had been transporting narcotics.

Venezuela has rejected these claims, with Minister of the Popular Power for Interior Diosdado Cabello insisting none of those killed was a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, as alleged by Washington.

“They openly confessed to killing 11 people,” Cabello said on state television. “Our investigations show the victims were not drug traffickers. A murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force.”

The White House defended the strike, with spokeswoman Anna Kelly calling the victims “evil Tren de Aragua narcoterrorists” and saying that Nicolas Maduro is “not the legitimate president of Venezuela” and is a “fugitive.”

Several countries deny Maduro’s legitimacy as a democratically elected leader due to what some have viewed as unfair elections, but the Trump administration has not provided evidence linking the Venezuelan president to Tren de Aragua. US intelligence agencies have said there is no sign of coordination between the government and traffickers.

Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Venezuelan President Maduro announced the deployment of troops, police and civilian militias across 284 “battlefront” locations, reinforcing previous troop increases along the Colombian border.

Speaking from Ciudad Caribia, Maduro signalled Venezuela’s readiness to defend its water, saying: “We’re ready for an armed fight, if it’s necessary.”

The US has also expanded its military presence in the southern Caribbean, sending warships and deploying 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.

Last month, Washington doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50m, citing alleged drug trafficking and criminal ties, a claim Venezuela denies, asserting it is not a drug-producing country.

Washington, DC, youth activist Afeni Evans has become the most recent symbol of US President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the city’s police.

On August 15, Metro Transit Police officers pepper-sprayed and forced the 28-year-old Evans to the ground at the Navy Yard subway stop for allegedly committing fare evasion. Evans and other Harriet’s Wildest Dreams volunteers were at the station on “cop watch” to ensure the federal takeover would not lead to harassment of Black youth. Yet, it happened to three Black youths anyway, prompting Evans to intervene, which led to her arrest.

After public protests in DC and on social media, she was released to cheering crowds outside the court, and the charges against her were dropped the next day.

Like with so many other issues related to Trump and his attempts at autocracy, his use of the National Guard and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stifle community ecosystems especially impacts Washington’s Black, Brown and Queer residents. This effort to squash potential dissent is more than a distraction from the Epstein files controversy or America’s economic troubles.

Locally, it is a partial end to the District of Columbia’s half-century of home rule, which otherwise makes the city independent of direct federal oversight. Nationally, it is an open question about whether DC can remain a site of protest, a place where marches and other gatherings can effect change or even occur at all in the current autocratic climate.

Trump’s executive order announcing his takeover of DC’s police force on August 11 should not have come as a surprise, especially given his attempts to bring the federal government’s power to bear in California back in June. “Crime is out of control in the District of Columbia”, the order reads, stating that the “increase in violent crime in the heart of our Republic… poses intolerable risks to the vital federal functions that take place in the District of Columbia”.

But the truth is, Trump’s executive order manufactured a crisis out of far-right fantasies. Six days before Trump’s announcement, two teenagers carjacked Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency, in DC’s Logan Circle. “We’re going to do something about it. That includes bringing in the National Guard,” Trump said in the aftermath of the incident.

However, the two alleged carjackers in police custody were from Hyattsville, Maryland, in Prince George’s County, and not DC.

Trump’s moves also fly in the face of another truth: Crime is no bigger an issue in DC than it is anywhere else in the United States. At the beginning of the year, a joint report from the US Attorney’s Office in DC and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) showed that the city’s violent crime rate had dropped by 35 percent in 2024, reaching its lowest rate since the mid-1990s. “Armed carjackings are down 53%,” according to the report.

Washington, DC, is a great stage for beta-testing how willing the rest of the US is to go to achieve Trump’s dream of autocratic rule. DC remains a majority-minority city, with Black Washingtonians making up a plurality (43 percent) of the population, despite 30 years of middle-class (mostly white) gentrification – white Washingtonians make up 39 percent of DC’s population.

So, it is not that surprising Trump would attempt such heavy-handed tactics in a soft occupation of DC, particularly in a city that was once famously nicknamed “Chocolate City”. In a capital where more than 90 percent of voters chose former Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Trump is also sending the unvarnished and racist message that Black folk, and especially Black youth, are criminals.

Imposing a heightened police presence and hundreds of National Guard soldiers on a multiracial city is nothing but a wannabe strongman’s attempt to appear strong to his anti-Black supporters.

DC is also known as a place that holds significance for Queer Americans. One out of every seven adults in the nation’s capital identifies as LGBTQIA+, roughly 80,000 Washingtonians in all. Northwest DC, particularly communities like Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Adams Morgan, and parts of Shaw and Columbia Heights, became a relatively safe space in the 1960s and 1970s for Queer culture and businesses to thrive. The inaugural National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights began in DC in 1979.

It should not shock anyone that an anti-Queer Trump administration would also target DC’s Queer and migrant spaces. The federalised police presence in DC has been especially noticeable along the 14th Street and U Street corridors, including the installation of not-so-random checkpoints over the past couple of weeks. Inevitably – between the National Guard, federal law enforcement and anti-immigrant agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in conjunction with the MPD – they have made dozens of arrests, and smothered nightlife and business traffic in these communities.

Trump, in his own ham-fisted way, is also attempting to erase DC’s history as one of protest and resistance. As the US evolved into a superpower, and DC transformed into the international community’s superpower city during and after World War II, the city also became a place for protest, particularly for racial justice and civil rights. Examples include the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, as well as a series of antiwar protests against Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. Marches and protests for the Equal Rights Amendment, for a Gay Rights Bill, for Chicano rights, Indigenous rights, and migrant and refugee rights came alongside civil rights marches and protests throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Massive protests like the 2017 Women’s March, the George Floyd protests in 2020 and the Free Palestine protests last year have made DC a target ripe for government overreach.

But what Trump is doing to DC in 2025 is not quite unprecedented – not for him, and not for the federal government. In 2018, during Trump’s first term as president, the US National Park Service (NPS) sought to shrink the available sidewalk space around the White House for protests “by 80 percent”, and to charge demonstrators permit fees “to allow the NPS to recover some of the costs” of public safety provisions. On June 1, 2020, the National Guard and the US Park Police tear-gassed, lobbed concussion grenades and violently arrested George Floyd protesters at Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House – all so that Trump could do a photo-op nearby on the steps of St John’s Church, calling himself “your president of law and order” along the way.

Trump has followed in the footsteps of another “law and order” president, Richard Nixon. In May 1971, Nixon unleashed the National Guard and local police against thousands of antiwar demonstrators in DC, in what became known as the Mayday protests, leading to more than 12,000 arrests over a three-day period.

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover authorised the use of military force against a ragtag group of 20,000 unemployed and unhoused World War I veterans known as the Bonus Army. At the height of the Great Depression and looking for the bonus money Congress owed them, the military responded with gas grenades, bayonets, flamethrowers and tanks, destroying their shantytowns along the National Mall and Anacostia River. Two veterans died, while the Army injured thousands of others. The resulting tear gas cloud over the city also led to the death of an infant.

Trump and his small army of occupiers are trying to make an example out of the nation’s capital, to destroy the DC of the past century, its vibrancy and resistance. The irony, of course, is that one of Trump’s first acts in his second term was to pardon more than 1,500 insurrectionists who had been part of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, a deadly and treasonous event.

Now, Trump wants to cower Washingtonians into accepting autocracy.

DC’s legacy as the national seat of power, as an international city, and as the centre of the so-called Free World, is in peril. But its most vulnerable and marginalised residents continue to resist, despite the dangers of Trump as a despot.

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

Protesters in support of hostages took to the streets of Jerusalem and marched towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence to voice their anger over his government’s plan to fully occupy Gaza City.

Former soldier, Max Kresch, marched holding a sign that read “I refused”.

“We’re over 350 soldiers who served during the war and were refusing to continue to serve in Netanyahu’s political war,” he told the BBC’s Emir Nader.

Protests took place across Israel in cities including Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Israel’s decision to expand its war in Gaza – a major escalation in the conflict – sparked condemnation from the UN and many countries including the UK, France, Australia, Turkey, Germany, Finland and Canada.

The UN has warned that a complete military takeover would risk “catastrophic consequences” for Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

The plan, approved by the Israeli security cabinet, lists five “principles” for ending the war: disarming Hamas, returning all hostages, demilitarising the Gaza Strip, taking security control of the territory, and establishing “an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority”.

Palestinians in Gaza City are fearful of being displaced yet again after Israel announced plans to occupy Gaza City. The Israeli cabinet also approved a proposal for full “security control” of the Gaza Strip. Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum is there.

Netanyahu’s war cabinet set to approve military operations across entire enclave, according to Israeli media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to announce plans to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, Israeli media have reported.

Netanyahu’s decision will see the Israeli military expand its operations across the entire enclave, including areas where Hamas’s captives are being held, i24NEWS, The Jerusalem Post, Channel 12 and Ynet reported on Monday.

“The decision has been made,” Amit Sega, chief political analyst with Channel 12, quoted an unnamed senior official in Netanyahu’s office as saying.

“Hamas won’t release more hostages without total surrender, and we won’t surrender. If we don’t act now, the hostages will starve to death and Gaza will remain under Hamas’s control.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the reported plans and called on the international community to “intervene urgently to prevent their implementation, whether they are a form of pressure, trial balloons to gauge international reactions, or genuinely serious”.

Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The reports come as Netanyahu is set to convene his war cabinet on Tuesday to discuss the next steps for Israel’s military in Gaza as its war in the besieged enclave nears the two-year mark.

Netanyahu is facing growing international pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and halt the war amid mounting Palestinian deaths due to malnutrition and Israeli attacks.

At least 74 Palestinians, including 36 aid seekers, were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday, according to medical sources in Gaza.

The Israeli leader is also facing mounting domestic pressure to secure the release of Hamas’s remaining captives in Gaza, following the release of footage of detainees Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing emaciated.

Netanyahu on Monday doubled down on his war goals, including eliminating Hamas and securing the release of the remaining captives.

“We must continue to stand together and fight together to achieve all our war objectives: the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages, and the assurance that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said at the start of a regular cabinet meeting on Monday.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Monday accused the United States and other Western countries of turning a blind eye to Israeli atrocities, and said that Netanyahu’s government bore “full responsibility” for the lives of the captives “due to its stubbornness, arrogance, and evasion of reaching a ceasefire agreement, and the escalation of the war of extermination and starvation against our people”.

More than 60,930 Palestinians, including at least 18,430 children, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.

Forty-nine captives, including 27 who are believed to be dead, are still being held by Hamas, according to Israeli authorities.

The scenes unfolding in Los Angeles should alarm every American who values constitutional governance. Federal troops have been deployed to a major American city not in response to an insurrection or natural disaster, but to suppress protests against immigration enforcement operations. The whole of downtown Los Angeles has been declared an “unlawful assembly area”.

This represents a dangerous escalation that threatens the very foundations of the US democratic system.

What began as routine raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on June 6 quickly spiralled into something far more ominous. Federal agents swept through Los Angeles, detaining 121 individuals from restaurants, stores and apartment buildings. The raids were conducted in broad daylight, with a calculated boldness that seemed designed to provoke.

The community’s response was swift. By the afternoon, protesters had gathered downtown, not as rioters but as a grieving community, holding signs and chanting “Set them free!”.

This was grief made public, anger given voice. But in today’s America, even peaceful displays of grief and anger are not allowed when they go against the narrative set by those in power.

The police responded with force. Tear gas canisters flew. Flash-bang grenades exploded. A peaceful demonstration transformed into a battlefield — not because protesters chose violence, but because the government did.

US President Donald Trump decided to escalate further. He signed a memorandum deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatening to mobilise active-duty Marines if protests continued.

The legality of these actions is questionable at best. Under the Insurrection Act, federal troops can only be deployed after a public proclamation calls for citizens to disperse. Such a proclamation has not been made, and Trump has not invoked the act. Governor Gavin Newsom, who has the power to decide on matters of security in the state of California, was not consulted; he was simply informed.

There is no widespread rebellion threatening the authority of the United States. There are no enemy combatants in Los Angeles, just angry, grieving people demanding dignity for their communities. What we’re witnessing is not the lawful execution of federal authority but improvisation masquerading as application of law, the slow erosion of constitutional order, replaced by declaration, spectacle, and muscle.

If challenged in court, this deployment would likely be deemed illegal. But that may not matter – and that is the most chilling aspect of this crisis. We are fast moving towards a place where illegality no longer matters, where muscle has arrived with or without paperwork, and law is merely a facade.

This moment cannot be understood in isolation. As scholar Aime Cesaire observed in his analysis of colonialism, violence in the periphery inevitably returns to the metropole. The tools of oppression developed abroad always find their way home.

In the US, this has been a decades-long process. In 1996, a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act allowed the Pentagon to transfer surplus military-grade weaponry to local police departments. In the following three decades, the same weapons that were used for imperialist violence abroad were transferred to police departments to deploy in poor and marginalised communities.

Then with the start of the “war on terror”, tactics to target and subjugate foreign populations were transferred at home to use against vulnerable communities. Congress passed sweeping laws like the USA PATRIOT Act and amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enabling mass surveillance and intelligence gathering on US soil.

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists allowed for indefinite military detention of US citizens, while a Supreme Court ruling in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project expanded the “material support” doctrine to criminalise even peaceful engagement with blacklisted groups.

Programmes like Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) turned schools and mosques into surveillance hubs, targeting Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities.

While outside the US government was pursuing a campaign of renditions, torture and illegal detention at Guantanamo Bay, at home, it was deploying lawfare against “suspect” communities.

The 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial introduced “secret evidence” in a US criminal court for the first time, with an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer claiming he could “smell Hamas” on defendants. Georgia’s prosecution of Cop City protesters under “terrorism” charges directly borrowed from this playbook, as did Tennessee’s Bill HB 2348, which extends policing powers to suppress peaceful protests.

After October 2023, the US government violated its own laws in order to participate directly in the genocide in Gaza, providing Israel with weapons and intelligence. The mass repression and erasure that Palestinians had suffered at the hands of their US-backed colonisers were transferred on American soil.

The government launched an unprecedented attack on free speech and academic freedom, cracking down on students protesting the genocide and encouraging retribution against pro-Palestinian voices. We’ve seen tenure revoked, protesters surveilled, and dissent criminalised. Palestinians and their allies have endured a fourfold increase in harassment, doxing, and employment loss; they have also faced violent attacks and murder.

All this started not under Trump, but under his “Democratic” predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, who also increased the budget of police departments by $13bn and expanded ICE’s powers.

The pattern is clear: repressive measures developed to target foreign populations have become tools to suppress all dissent at home.

What is happening in Los Angeles and other cities isn’t about law enforcement; it’s about power projection, about demonstrating that defiance will be met with overwhelming force and quashed.

The legal framework matters less than the spectacle. When federal agents fire flash-bang grenades at protesters outside Home Depot stores, when ICE directors accuse mayors of siding with “chaos and lawlessness”, when FBI officials tweet about hunting down rock throwers, we’re watching the construction of a narrative that justifies state violence.

This is how soft coups unfold: not with tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, but through executive memos, press briefings, and military logistics disguised as public safety. The Insurrection Act becomes a dead letter not through repeal but through irrelevance.

If this precedent stands, federal troops will become the standard response to resistance. Cities that don’t vote for the president will face occupation. Protest will be redefined as rebellion. The next time people gather in the streets demanding justice, they will not face police officers but soldiers.

When a president can deploy troops without following the law, and no one stops him, law loses its power. It becomes theatre, a facade for a system that has abandoned its own principles.

At this time, we don’t need just legal challenges, we need moral clarity. What’s happening in Los Angeles is not law enforcement: it’s occupation. What’s being called an insurrection is actually resistance to injustice. What’s being framed as public safety is actually political intimidation.

American imperialism has created the infrastructure for exactly this moment. The tools of empire, tested on peoples in the Global South, are now being deployed against American cities. If we don’t recognise this moment for what it is – a fundamental assault on constitutional governance – we will wake up in a country where imperial military force is the primary language of politics.

The US Constitution is only as strong as our willingness to defend it. In Los Angeles, that defence begins now.

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

With rare access to the governor of Ramallah and el-Bireh, this film offers an intimate portrait of life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Over one month, Governor Laila Ghannam navigates her city, which is marked by protests, mourning, celebration and resilience.

Amid political tensions, she reveals how Ramallah functions under occupation – how it breathes, resists and supports its most vulnerable. Moving between high-level politics and everyday encounters, Ghannam reflects on the emotional and political landscape of her people, offering a powerful glimpse into the quiet strength and steadfastness of Palestinians.

One Month in Ramallah is a documentary film by Sawsan Qaoud.