At least two Palestinians were killed and around a dozen wounded when an Israeli air strike hit a crowded cafe at Gaza’s seaport. Witnesses said people had gathered there to escape the heat and enjoy a public holiday, as attacks continue despite an October ceasefire.
Published On 1 Jun 20261 Jun 2026
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The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.
The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.
She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.
These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.
She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.
Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.
This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.
She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.
Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.
She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.
Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.
She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.
Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.
Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.
For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.
Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.
Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.
Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.
Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.
The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.
Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.
But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.
Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
A Palestinian doctor has been killed and three people injured in an Israeli attack in central Gaza, as Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian homes and property in northern and southern parts of the occupied West Bank.
The attacks across Palestine on Saturday, the fourth day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, came amid continued Israeli violations of a United States-backed “ceasefire” implemented in October aimed at halting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
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Dr Jamal Abu Aboun, the head of anaesthesia at Al-Yafa Medical Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, was killed in an Israeli strike near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, also in Deir al-Balah on Saturday.
“The body of Jamal Abu Aoun and three injured people, including a child, had arrived at the hospital following an Israeli drone strike that targeted a group of civilians near the hospital,” a medical source at Al-Aqsa hospital told the Anadolu news agency.
Earlier, Israeli artillery shelling targeted areas east and south of Khan Younis city in southern Gaza. Another artillery strike targeted al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
At least 922 Palestinians have been killed and 2,786 others injured in Israeli attacks since the October “ceasefire”, according to the Gaza Media Office.
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, killing at least 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000 others, according to Palestinian figures.
In testimonies to The Associated Press news agency, Israeli soldiers described a climate of dehumanisation, permissive rules of engagement and the routine killing of Palestinians during the “ceasefire”.
Reservists who served in Gaza between last October and January said Israeli troops frequently opened fire on Palestinians approaching or crossing the so-called “Yellow Line”, an often poorly marked boundary separating Israeli-occupied areas from the rest of the enclave.
One soldier said that fellow troops celebrated after a strike on a vehicle carrying Palestinians killed everyone inside. “It was a jungle,” the soldier told AP. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them.”
Another reservist said commanders repeatedly emphasised holding territory at all costs. “There was a general feeling that human lives are not valuable,” he said.
Elsewhere in occupied Palestine, Israeli settlers attacked several homes early on Saturday in the town of Beita, south of the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
They threw stones at houses and smashed several vehicles, Wafa reported.
State-run Voice of Palestine radio reported Israeli forces firing light bombs into the sky over the town.
In the southern West Bank, settlers attacked Palestinian farmland and damaged several trees in Khirbet el-Muraq in Masafer Yatta, activist Osama Makhamra, who follows Israeli violations south of Hebron, told reporters.
Israeli settlers carried out at least 540 attacks in April against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, according to a monthly report by the Palestinian state-run Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.
The attacks ranged from “direct physical violence, uprooting trees, burning fields, preventing farmers from accessing their land, seizing property, as well as demolishing homes and agricultural structures”.
Israeli army raids, arrests and settler attacks have intensified across the West Bank since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza.
According to Palestinian figures, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,168 Palestinians, injured 12,666, displaced about 33,000, and detained nearly 23,000 in the West Bank since October 2023.
Egypt races to salvage Gaza ceasefire as Israeli attacks and displacement threats push deal to the brink of collapse.
Published On 30 May 202630 May 2026
Egypt has launched an urgent diplomatic intervention to rescue a fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement that is on the brink of collapse.
The government warned Israel against expanding its occupation in Gaza, which would undermine efforts to end the war amid of wave of deadly air strikes.
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According to an Egyptian intelligence official who spoke to Al Jazeera, Egypt has also invited a senior Hamas delegation, led by chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, for urgent talks to salvage the peace process.
The source described contacts between the parties as intense, saying Cairo was racing to arrange negotiations before the end of the week in order to prevent all-out war in Gaza.
The diplomatic moves come in the wake of renewed Israeli military attacks on Gaza and statements from top Israeli officials that threaten to unravel months of diplomacy.
At least 141 Palestinians have been killed in the last two weeks in an intensification of Israeli attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday issued a directive ordering the military to expand the area under its control from 53% to 70%.
This fundamentally violates the US-brokered comprehensive peace plan signed in October 2025 under the Trump administration, mediators say.
Compounding the crisis, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz also triggered regional outrage by publicly reviving a blueprint for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians out of the enclave.
Speaking during an announcement confirming the assassination of Hamas’s newly appointed military chief, Mohammed Odeh, Katz asserted that the forced displacement scheme would be implemented “at the right time and in the right manner”.
Cairo sent a warning to the Israeli government, rejecting any measures designed to push Gaza’s residents towards voluntary emigration or direct Palestinians towards the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Egypt has been coordinating with mediators in Qatar and Turkiye, as well as US officials, to return the process to a negotiating track, including revisions to the addendum of the original Gaza peace plan, designed to reduce violence.
The source said Egypt and its fellow mediators were aware that Netanyahu’s recent statements on expanding Israel’s occupation of Gaza, as well as attacks that killed Hamas military figures Izz al-Din al-Haddad and Mohammed Odeh, were driven by electoral calculations and compounded by difficulties Netanyahu faces in Lebanon.
Egypt has contacted United States officials to ask President Donald Trump to urgently restrain Netanyahu, given the recent Israeli escalations in Gaza, the source said.
A senior Hamas official abroad told Al Jazeera that Hamas had received Egyptian communications aimed at containing the escalation and preventing talks from collapsing, suggesting a meeting in Cairo was expected within days.
Hamas said the ceasefire was on the brink of collapse due to repeated Israeli violations, and called on the US and guarantor countries to take “serious and urgent” steps to compel Israel to honour its commitments.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October to end two years of fighting, which had seen more than 72,000 Palestinians killed and the vast majority of Gaza’s population made homeless.
Despite a ceasefire still being in place, at least 929 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October.
After two years of relentless bombardment and ground invasions, Israel’s future in Gaza had appeared to be settled with the signing of United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan on October 9, 2025.
Under the terms of that agreement, Israeli forces were meant to withdraw behind what planners called the “Yellow Line”, maintaining control of 58 percent of the territory, with their full withdrawal to be set at a date to be determined.
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That withdrawal hasn’t happened. In fact, in the months since, as well as killing at least 922 people in near-daily strikes on the enclave during the “ceasefire”, Israel has expanded its territory by about 11 percent.
According to satellite data gathered in March, it has also established at least 32 military outposts, a ground barrier and infrastructure along what was supposed to be a temporary line.
Since October last year, numerous humanitarian agencies, including Oxfam, have accused Israel of compounding the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by restricting deliveries of aid and other essential goods.
Then, on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel will take over yet more territory in Gaza, telling a conference: “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60 percent of the territory of the Strip – you know this. We were at 50. My directive is to move to …,” he said, pausing briefly as someone in the crowd yelled, “100!”
“Let’s go step by step,” he responded, “First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”
Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli prime minister’s office for clarification of this, but received no response by the time of publishing.
“If Israel’s ultimate plan is to exercise permanent effective control over the entirety of the Gaza Strip, we are talking about unlawful annexation,” Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College in Dublin, told Al Jazeera.
“As the International Court of Justice reaffirmed in a 2024 advisory opinion, annexation constitutes a violation of the bedrock prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force.”
Nevertheless, to date, since the onset of its war on Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 72,819 men, women and children in Gaza, with many thousands more missing and presumed dead under the rubble.
By 2025, Israel had caused a confirmed famine in the enclave and has now decimated nearly all infrastructure needed to support life. It has done all this without experiencing any meaningful international sanctions and still takes part in numerous international sporting and entertainment competitions – despite protests.
Hopes that the US might enforce its own conditions on Israel also appear ill-founded. Since announcing a ceasefire in the enclave in October last year, the US has failed to react as Israel has expanded and entrenched its presence in Gaza, choking off access to about two-thirds of the enclave for its inhabitants by April 2026.
Al Jazeera also contacted the US State Department for comment about this, but received no response by the time of publishing.
It’s very hard to tell. Several agencies, including the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), have expressed deep concern about how Gaza’s remaining population can continue to subsist in an ever-shrinking space.
Israel’s answer to this is simple. “The plan for voluntary emigration from Gaza will also be implemented, all at the proper time and in the proper manner,” Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote in a statement marking the killing of Hamas leader Mohammed Odeh on Wednesday this week.
“Voluntary emigration” is a term used by a number of Israel’s government ministers, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Observers typically acknowledge that this means the ethnic cleansing of the enclave.
Israel’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions about this from Al Jazeera.
No.
“The idea of permanently removing Palestinians from Gaza smacks of forced displacement and would also violate the fundamental right to self-determination of the Palestinian people,” Becker said. The principle of self-determination serves as a “cornerstone” of the UN Charter, he said.
However, Becker said, the spotlight of international attention has now shifted from the crisis in Gaza to the US and Israel’s war on Iran, as well as Israel’s actions in Lebanon, where it has occupied large swaths of the south of the country.
“While the Trump administration may be willing to diverge from Israel’s interests in seeking a resolution to the disastrous and illegal war that the United States started against Iran, the United States seems to have lost interest in Gaza or pushing for restraint on the part of Netanyahu’s government. It is unclear what role the so-called Board of Peace is willing to play in terms of maintaining a future for the Palestinians of Gaza,” he said.
A digital register of land ownership in the West Bank is seen as an escalation of Israel’s occupation.
Published On 29 May 202629 May 2026
Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine – A controversial Israeli plan to digitally register property ownership in the occupied West Bank is a “dangerous colonial occupation step that represents a direct assault on the historical and legal rights of the Palestinian people to their land and property”, the Palestinian Land Authority has said.
The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate and the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC) have urged Palestinians in the West Bank not to engage with any Israeli “entities, committees, platforms, or procedures” of lands and property.
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Israel reportedly launched the online “Land Registry and Settlement of Rights” platform on which it plans to “update” property ownership in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday this week.
The Jerusalem Governorate and the CRRC have called on the international community, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and all international human rights and legal institutions to “take their urgent responsibilities to stop these illegal procedures and hold the occupying state accountable for its continuous violations against the Palestinian people, their land, and their resources”, they said.
Moayad Shaaban, head of the CRRC, which is part of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the move reveals “the occupation’s transition from traditional policies of field control to digital and administrative colonial engineering aimed at imposing permanent legal realities on the occupied Palestinian territory”.
In May 2025, the Israeli Security Cabinet launched a new, aggressive land settlement process throughout the West Bank, with the aim of “completing the legal and administrative annexation of the occupied territories through fully registering the lands under Israeli authority”, the Jerusalem Governorate said.
Then, in July 2025, Israel’s parliament approved a symbolic measure calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank. The move was first tabled in 2024 by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in an illegal Israeli settlement.
On February 15, 2026, the permanent acquisition and registration of approximately 58 percent of Area C – the part of the West Bank over which Israel exerts total control – began.
Under that decision, Palestinian land registration in the Israeli “Tabu” – the land registry extract – began for the first time since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967. It is a final measure that will be difficult to challenge in Israeli courts, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported in February.
With the onset of land settlement, the Israeli Land Registry unit will take over the regulation and registration of land ownership in Area C. It also has the power to issue sales permits and to collect fees. Israel aims to complete the full settlement of 15 percent of the West Bank by the end of 2030.
Some 700,000 Israeli settlers already live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as illegal settlement has expanded under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rights groups say settlement approvals, along with rising settler violence against Palestinian communities, have accelerated since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
EU says the sanctioned individuals and groups violated a range of rights, from the right to physical and mental integrity, to the right to education.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
The European Union has sanctioned four entities and three individuals it says are “extremist Israeli settlers” responsible for “serious” human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The EU said they had violated a range of rights, including the rights to physical and mental integrity, privacy and family life, freedom of religion and education.
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The announcement on Thursday is part of an EU sanctions package agreed earlier this month to punish Israeli settlers and Hamas leaders.
The sanctions include the Nachala Settlement Movement and its director, Daniella Weiss. The EU says the group “encourages and facilitates coercive acts that lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians”.
Israeli NGO Regavim and its director, Meir Deutsch, are also on the sanctions list for lobbying “for the demolition of Palestinian property” in order to expand Israel’s control over the entirety of the West Bank, plus the demolition of an EU-funded Palestinian primary school.
Also sanctioned is the Hashomer Yosh NGO and its president, Avichai Suissa for supporting “at least 28 violent outposts and settlements”. It also recruits armed volunteers and provides guards who engage in violent attacks, the EU added.
The Amana cooperative association of the settler movement Gush Emunim was also sanctioned, the EU stating it had likewise “played a key role in initiating, financing, and facilitating at least 30 violent outposts and settlements”.
With Thursday’s additions, the EU said it now sanctions 136 persons and 41 entities from a range of countries under its Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime.
The regime was created in 2020, and applies to acts such as genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations or abuses.
The measures targeting Israeli settlers because of violence against Palestinians were long-awaited, having been blocked by the self-styled illiberal government of Hungary’s former premier Viktor Orban.
However, the appointment of new Prime Minister Peter Magyar saw the veto quickly lifted earlier this month.
Israel earlier condemned the sanctions, asserting that Jews have the right to settle in the occupied West Bank, despite that being in violation of international law.
In 2025, the expansion of Israeli settlements reached its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking data.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the West Bank has been gripped by almost daily violence involving Israeli troops and settlers. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, according to the UN.
The Israeli army has already expanded its control of Gaza by 11 percent over the ‘Yellow Line’, beyond the terms of the ‘ceasefire’.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli army to expand its control of the Gaza Strip to 70 percent, according to remarks aired by Israeli media.
“At this point, we are fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip … and my directive is to get to … 70 percent,” Netanyahu said in footage recorded by Channel 12 and aired on Thursday.
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When someone in the audience shouted that Israel should take the entire besieged enclave, the prime minister said “we are going in order”, according to The Times of Israel. “First 70 percent,” he said without disputing that a complete takeover could take place. “We’ll start with that.”
The Israeli army had in mid-March quietly sent maps to aid organisations showing it had already expanded its control to about 11 percent beyond the so-called “Yellow Line” demarcating areas of the enclave occupied by Israeli troops. That line was agreed in a United States-brokered “ceasefire” in October 2025. That meant it controlled 64 percent of the Palestinian territory, instead of 53 percent.
Due to the Israeli army occupation, Palestinians cannot access about two-thirds of Gaza. A further seizure of the territory would force two million of them, already living in disastrous conditions, into an even smaller territory after enduring two years of genocidal war.
Despite the nominal truce reached last year, Israeli bombing in Gaza continues with near-daily attacks. An Al Jazeera tally from October to April counted at least 2,400 Israeli violations. Earlier on Thursday, health authorities said an Israeli air raid killed at least 10 people, including four children, and wounded 20 others.
According to the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) latest report, the humanitarian situation for civilians in Gaza remains critical, with displaced families living in overcrowded tents, schools or damaged structures. Clean water is scarce, and poor waste collection is increasing health risks, including the spread of rats and insects. Many neighbourhoods across Gaza are also still dangerous, with frequent air strikes, shelling and shootings happening in or near residential areas, the report said.
Last week, the high representative overseeing the US-founded Board of Peace for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that the deteriorating status quo in the enclave risks becoming “permanent”. Speaking to the UN Security Council, he urged the international body to use “every means at its disposal” to press Hamas to disarm and to push Israel to uphold its commitment under the October ceasefire, pointing to its continued killings and restrictions on humanitarian flow.
The war that Israel launched following the October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups has killed more than 72,775 Palestinians. The Israeli military continues to maintain a strict security regime, and many hundreds more have been killed in the past seven months. Conflict monitors warn that since the US-Israel war on Iran started in February, Israeli bombardment of Gaza has accelerated.
Israeli ambassador to the UN says Tel Aviv will cut ties with UN chief Antonio Guterres over the upcoming report.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
The United Nations has “added Israel to the blacklist of sexual violence in conflict zones”, prompting Israel to cut ties with UN chief Antonio Guterres, the country’s ambassador to the UN says.
“We are done with this secretary-general,” Israeli ambassador Danny Danon added in a video posted on X on Thursday, denouncing the upcoming report from Guterres’s office.
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The UN secretary-general’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence is customarily presented to relevant states before publication. Last August, the report warned that Israel could be added to the list of parties suspected of, or responsible for, sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.
“The decision to blacklist Israel and accuse us of using sexual violence as a weapon of war is an outrageous decision,” Danon said.
“The secretary-general and his team continue to spread lies against Israel. To put us and Hamas terrorists on the same list, that’s unacceptable.”
The Israeli mission to the UN said in a statement that it will have no contact with the secretary-general’s office as long as Guterres serves as head of the organisation.
The country’s foreign ministry also expressed anger over the upcoming report.
“The shameful and absurd UN decision to include Israeli entities in the annex to the CRSV (conflict-related sexual violence) report is further proof of the UN’s true nature: a politicised and corrupt organisation that has abandoned its founding principles and systematically targets Israel as its primary mission,” Oren Marmorstein, a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, said on X.
Guterres’s spokesperson said they were aware of Danon’s remarks.
“For our part, the secretary-general’s door remains open,” Stephane Dujarric said.
Last August, the UN cited “credible information” regarding sexual violence committed by Israeli security forces against Palestinian detainees in prisons and other detention centres, and said UN inspectors had been denied access to the facilities.
“We invited the representative of the UN to come to Israel to check those ridiculous allegations. They chose not to come,” Danon said.
Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, especially those taken from Gaza during Israel’s brutal war since 2023, have long revealed how they suffer dehumanising treatment by guards and soldiers, including torture and sexual violence. According to international human rights organisations, these testimonies are part of a broader and systematic pattern.
Furthermore, a report from the West Bank Protection Consortium last month found that sexual violence and other forms of gender-based abuse committed by Israeli settlers and soldiers are spurring Palestinians to leave the occupied West Bank.
Even foreigners, namely those on board a recent Gaza-bound aid flotilla, say that freed activists who were abducted from international waters faced abuse while in Israeli detention, including at least 15 separate cases of sexual assault or rape.
Earlier this month, Israel also rejected accusations of rape by its forces, which were detailed in a column by longtime New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. The Israeli government had responded to the report by stating that it would take the extraordinary step of suing the paper. Kristof’s reporting was based on the accounts of 14 male and female Palestinian victims.
Relations between the UN and Israel are fraught and have reached an all-time low since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack that preceded Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.
Israeli authorities have criticised Guterres and other UN officials for their condemnation of its brutal conduct in Gaza. The UN chief was declared “persona non grata” in Israel in 2024.
The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.
The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.
She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.
These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.
She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.
Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.
This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.
She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.
Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.
She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.
Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.
She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.
Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.
Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.
For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.
Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.
Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.
Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.
Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.
The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.
Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.
But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.
Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
A funeral has been held for Mohammed Odeh, believed to be the leader of Hamas’s military wing, who Israel said was killed in a strike on a busy area in Gaza City on Tuesday. Odeh’s family has reportedly confirmed his death, despite no official comment from Hamas.
Published On 27 May 202627 May 2026
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The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.
The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.
She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.
These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.
She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.
Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.
This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.
She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.
Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.
She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.
Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.
She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.
Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.
Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.
For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.
Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.
Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.
Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.
Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.
The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.
Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.
But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.
Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
As the US and Iran move closer to a peace deal, Israel says it reserves the right to keep attacking regional ‘threats’, including in Lebanon, despite any US‑brokered ceasefire. Meanwhile, criticism within Israel is growing over Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
Published On 25 May 202625 May 2026
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The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.
The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.
She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.
These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.
She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.
Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.
This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.
She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.
Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.
She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.
Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.
She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.
Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.
Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.
For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.
Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.
Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.
Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.
Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.
The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.
Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.
But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.
Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Australian activists from the Gaza-bound aid flotilla have arrived back in Sydney, reuniting with loved ones as they describe beatings, sexual assault and torture at the hands of Israeli forces who intercepted their boats in international waters.
Published On 25 May 202625 May 2026
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US president says any potential agreement with Tehran will be ‘good and proper’ as mediation efforts continue.
Published On 24 May 202624 May 2026
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Mohammad Abu Mallouh, Alaa Zaqlan and their child, Osama, killed in the attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp, medics say.
Published On 24 May 202624 May 2026
An Israeli air raid on a home in Gaza has killed three members of a family, including a six-month-old child, medical workers said, as Israel continues to violate the “ceasefire” brokered by the United States last year.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said it received the bodies of a couple and their young child in the early hours of Sunday morning.
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Medics identified those killed in the attack on an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp as Mohammad Abu Mallouh, his wife Alaa Zaqlan, and their child Osama, the Reuters news agency reported.
Medical workers said about 10 people were wounded in the attack.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Since the “ceasefire” came into effect in October, Israel has continued with its near-daily attacks across the besieged Palestinian territory, which Gaza health authorities say have killed nearly 900 people.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said Israeli bombing began on Sunday as Palestinians were fleeing following forced displacement orders. He said many people ran while carrying personal belongings, including mattresses.
Separately, Israeli forces continued demolishing homes and civilian infrastructure in eastern Gaza on Sunday behind Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line”, referring to Israeli-designated military zones and buffer areas inside the enclave, he said.
Israeli jets also carried out air raids on Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday, causing extensive damage near a hospital, Mahmoud said.
Earlier this month, the Gaza Government Media Office said it had documented at least 2,400 Israeli violations in the first six months of the ceasefire, including more than 1,100 air raids and at least 921 shootings targeting civilians.
More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. Israeli officials acknowledged the data was broadly accurate in January, after casting doubt on their credibility for two years.
On Saturday, five police officers and a 13-year-old boy were killed in an Israeli attack.
Talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent end to the war have stalled, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire. Israel says Hamas’s refusal to disarm is a key obstacle, while the Palestinian group says negotiations have been paused due to continued violations and restrictions on aid entering Gaza.
Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch said the territory’s humanitarian infrastructure remained in peril, more than six months after the start of the ceasefire.
Overnight Israeli strikes devastated the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza despite an ongoing ceasefire, injuring dozens. The strikes targeted residential areas, leaving behind piles of rubble. Israel has now destroyed or damaged around 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
Published On 23 May 202623 May 2026
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Video shows the moment Israeli forces struck Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza, injuring dozens despite an ongoing ceasefire agreement.
Published On 23 May 202623 May 2026
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For years, 64-year-old Najia Abu Lehia dreamed of performing Hajj with her husband. But before they could make the pilgrimage, her husband died during Israel’s war on Gaza. Now, as millions journey to Mecca, thousands like her are stranded in Gaza.
Published On 22 May 202622 May 2026
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Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed at least 3,111 people since March 2, with 9,432 injured, according to Lebanese Health Ministry.
Published On 23 May 202623 May 2026
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Washington, DC – US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has become the first official from the administration of President Donald Trump to join global criticism of Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
But as several countries summoned Israel’s ambassadors after Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting abducted foreign activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Huckabee’s response rang largely hollow, coming a day after the US Department of the Treasury had sanctioned the flotilla organisers.
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It was the latest incident underscoring a US double standard towards Israel, Palestinians and their supporters, analysts said, and one that showed the US and Israel increasingly out of step with the international community.
“We see a big difference between the US and other Western countries… who see things like freedom of navigation in international waters as a fundamental concept of international law that should be respected, not to mention the mistreatment of civilians,” said Michael Omer-Man, the Israel-Palestine director at the DAWN advocacy group.
Huckabee made his comments on Wednesday, shortly after Italy, France, the Netherlands and Canada summoned Israeli ambassadors over Ben-Gvir’s video, which showed detained activists kneeling on the floor with their hands bound, and at times being shoved to the ground.
Ben-Gvir is seen waving an Israeli flag, shouting and pointing over the detainees.
In a post on X, Huckabee referenced a slew of Israeli officials who have criticised Ben-Gvir for the video, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar.
Huckabee pointed to “universal outrage from every high-ranking Israeli official”, tagging Netanyahu, Saar, the office of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter.
“Flotilla was stupid stunt, but Ben Gvir betrayed dignity of his nation,” Huckabee wrote.
Rights observers have long documented Israeli abuses against Palestinian detainees and their supporters from abroad, including detained activists flotilla activists. Israeli authorities have largely dismissed such accounts.
Critics questioned whether the groundswell of condemnation from officials in Netanyahu’s government, which has emboldened far-right figures like Ben-Gvir, was motivated by the abuses committed or by Ben-Gvir’s decision to post it online.
“I do believe that they’re more focused on the public relations side of it,” Omer-Man told Al Jazeera, “both with regards to the international community… and because it’s election season [in Israel] and they’re trying to distinguish themselves as the more stately, less radical actors”.
Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Ben-Gvir’s actions should be seen not as an aberration, but also as part of a manifestation of a US policy that has long fostered impunity and emboldened Israel’s far right.
“Israel knows that as long as it has the unconditional support of the US, it will face no real consequences,” Sheline told Al Jazeera.
The former administration of US President Joe Biden had ruled out sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as its term ended in 2024, despite mounting calls from US lawmakers to do so.
In a letter that year, nearly 80 members of Congress charged that Ben-Gvir had played a role in “inciting violence against Palestinian civilians, encouraging the construction of illegal outposts, and preventing enforcement against violent settlers” in the occupied Palestinian territory.
That included using his position to “prevent police from protecting humanitarian convoys bound for Gaza, allowing settlers to attack and halt aid”.
Upon taking office, the Trump administration lifted a set of US sanctions imposed on violent Israeli settlers. Shortly after, the administration imposed sanctions on several Palestinian civil society organisations and rights groups for supporting an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into Israeli officials.
The administration has also imposed sanctions and travel restrictions on ICC prosecutors and Palestinian Authority officials.
The latest round of US sanctions targeted four organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla, seeking to break the siege of Gaza, deliver aid and show solidarity with Palestinians. Two of the organisers were from the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), and two others were from the Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network Samidoun.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the activists were part of a “pro-terror flotilla”, claiming the humanitarian effort was “in support of Hamas”.
Organisers have roundly rejected the statement, with Samidoun decrying the sanctions against flotilla activists and Palestinian organisations as “aiding and abetting genocide”.
DAWN’s Omer-Man said the latest sanctions further underscore that the Trump administration is “accepting [Israel’s] arguments – that trying to break the blockade is illegal in some way – at face value”.
“I think we can say that the United States, officially, is just never going to criticise Israel under the Trump administration,” he said.
The Quincy Institute’s Sheline said the rare instances of public rebuke from the Trump administration, including Huckabee in November last year, labelling settler violence as “terrorism”, mean little against the billions of dollars in military aid Washington continues to provide to Israel.
“Weak gestures… are insignificant in the face of billions of dollars a year,” she said.