Palestine

Israeli raids and attacks across Gaza and the occupied West Bank have continued as Trump and Netanyahu prepare to meet.

Israeli government moves to change rules around land registration in the West Bank, making it easier for Israeli Jews to buy property in the illegally occupied territory, are raising alarm among Palestinians, fearful that the new rules will establish defacto Israeli annexation.

The Israeli cabinet announced the decisions on Sunday. In addition to allowing Jews to buy property in the West Bank – a Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967 in defiance of international law – the Israeli government has also ordered that land registries in the West Bank be opened up to the public.

That means that it will be easier for Israelis looking to take territory in the West Bank to find out who the owner of the land is, opening them up to harassment and pressure.

The cabinet also decreed that authority over building permits for illegal Jewish settlements in Hebron, and the Ibrahimi Mosque compound, would pass to Israel from the Palestinian Hebron municipality.

Moataz Abu Sneina has seen Israel’s efforts to seize Palestinian land first hand. He is the director of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, a Palestinian national symbol and an important Islamic holy site due to its connection to the Prophet Ibrahim, also known as Abraham.

Abu Sneina said that the latest Israeli decisions reflect a clear intention to increase Israeli control over Hebron’s Old City, and the Ibrahimi Mosque compound.

“What is happening today is the most serious development since 1967,” Abu Sneina said. “We view it with grave concern for the Old City and the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is the symbol and beating heart of Hebron, and the shrine of the patriarchs and prophets.”

The Ibrahimi Mosque site is also revered by Jews, who refer to it as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

An Israeli Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians after opening fire on Muslims praying at the mosque in 1994. Shortly afterwards, Israeli authorities divided the site into Jewish and Muslim prayer areas, and far-right Israeli settlers continue to strengthen their control over areas of Hebron.

Despite only numbering a few hundred, the settlers have taken over large areas of the city centre, protected by the Israeli military.

Abu Sneina explained that Israel has repeatedly attempted to strengthen its foothold inside Hebron and the mosque, and that the latest government moves are a continuation of Israeli policy that has only increased since the October 2023 start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This has taken the form of increased settler incursions, restrictions on worshippers, control over entry and exit, and bans on the call to prayer – all part of a systematic policy aimed at complete control over the holy site,” Abu Sneina said.

“[Israel] continues to violate all agreements, foremost the Hebron Protocol, closing most entrances to the mosque and leaving only one fully controlled access point,” he added. “This paves the way for a new division or an even harsher reality than the temporal and spatial division imposed since the 1994 massacre.”

Taking over Hebron

Mohannad al-Jaabari, the director of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, a Palestinian organisation focused on the restoration of Hebron’s Old City, said that the Israeli government was already increasing its presence on the ground, in an effort to take control of the city.

He pointed to the confiscation of shops belonging to the Hebron Municipality in the Old City, the construction of dozens of illegal settlement units, and the reconfiguration of water pipes by connecting them to an Israeli water company’s network, creating what he described as “a massive apartheid system”.

Al-Jaabari warned that the ultimate goal is to establish a Jewish quarter linking settlements to the Ibrahimi Mosque by emptying Palestinian neighbourhoods of their residents.

“All Hebron institutions are preparing for a difficult phase,” he said. “We are bracing for a fierce attack on Palestinian institutions, foremost the Rehabilitation Committee.”

The Israeli government’s latest decisions open the door for what has happened in Hebron to happen elsewhere, with Israeli settlers establishing a presence in other Palestinian cities, forcing locals out, experts say.

Nabil Faraj, a Palestinian journalist and political analyst, called the Israeli government’s moves “dangerous” and added that they “have driven the final nail into the coffin of the peace process”.

He explained that Israel is reengineering the geographic landscape of the West Bank, expanding infrastructure to serve settlements, and seeking to strip the Palestinian Authority of administrative and security control.

The Hebron model

Palestinians in Bethlehem are now worried that they will get a taste of what Hebron has already experienced.

One of the Israeli cabinet’s decisions on Sunday stipulated that the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque in the city, known to Jews as Rachel’s Tomb, would be placed under Israeli administration for cleaning and maintenance, after previously being under the jurisdiction of the Bethlehem municipality. The mosque’s cemetery has also been affected.

“It will affect the living and the dead,” said Bassam Abu Srour, who lives in Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp. “Annexing the area would prevent burials and visits to the Islamic cemetery. This is extremely serious and completely unacceptable to us.”

In Bethlehem, Hebron, and the rest of the West Bank, Palestinians feel powerless to stop what they view as a creeping annexation.

Mamdouh al-Natsheh, a shop owner in Hebron, said he now has a growing sense that what is unfolding is an attempt to impose a permanent reality.

“The city is being taken from its people step by step,” he said. “Daily restrictions are turning it into a fixed policy that suffocates every detail of life.”

He added that the deepest impact is on children and young people, growing up in a city that is “divided and constantly monitored”, stripping them of a natural sense of the future.

“I fear the day will come when we are told this area has been officially annexed, and that our presence depends on permits,” al-Natsheh said. “In Hebron, a house is not just walls – it is history and identity. Any annexation means the loss of security and stability.”

Leqaa Kordia’s family say they were left in the dark when the 33-year-old was rushed from an immigration detention centre in Texas to a nearby hospital late last week.

For more than 12 hours, Kordia’s family and legal representation said they were given no information about her whereabouts and condition. Her cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, said the family was “stonewalled, like hardcore”, as they searched for answers.

“Full transparency: Many people in her family thought she might have died, especially with the secrecy of her condition,” Abushaban told Al Jazeera. “Sometimes, silence speaks for itself.”

Her family and legal team confirmed on Tuesday that she has been released from the hospital. Kordia had suffered a seizure, but her family has only had fleeting contact with her since the medical emergency.

The ordeal is the latest turn in Kordia’s nearly yearlong detention, which began when she was among several protesters targeted by immigration officials for taking part in pro-Palestine demonstrations at Columbia University in 2024.

Kordia remains the only person targeted in connection with the demonstration who is still in immigration detention.

Personal losses helped inspire her protest: Nearly 200 members of her family have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Her recent medical emergency underscores the dangers she faces from her continued detention, not to mention the urgent need for her release, according to Abushaban.

“She’s a fighter, but she’s not fooling anyone,” he said. “She’s still very sick”

‘Arbitrarily detained’

On Monday, Amnesty International joined calls for Kordia’s release, echoing her family’s assertion that she is being unfairly targeted for her pro-Palestine advocacy.

“She has been arbitrarily detained for over ten months for exercising her rights to free speech and protest,” Justin Mazzola, the deputy director of research at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.

“The Trump administration must stop playing cruel political games with Leqaa’s life. Leqaa Kordia must be immediately released, and there must be accountability for the flagrant violation of her human rights.”

Kordia’s lawyers have also alleged unjust treatment, noting that federal judges had twice ruled she was eligible to be released on bond.

Each time, her release has been blocked after immigration officials filed “discretionary stay” requests to keep her in custody while the government appealed.

Since March 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump has targeted a range of student activists for deportation. They include Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both of Columbia University, and Rumeysa Ozturk, who attended Tufts University in Massachusetts.

But those pro-Palestinian student activists have all successfully petitioned for their release as their cases continue in immigration court, though courts have signalled that they could be taken back into custody.

Kordia, however, has not had that same success.

Kordia came to the US in 2016 from the town of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Initially, she arrived using a visitor’s visa, later transitioning to a student visa.

Eventually, she applied for permanent residency through her mother, a US citizen residing in New Jersey.

But her legal team has said she was wrongly advised by a trusted mentor that the initial approval of her application meant she had legal status. She subsequently allowed her student visa to lapse.

Immigration officials have, in turn, maintained that Kordia was detained for overstaying her student visa, not for her pro-Palestine advocacy.

However, in an initial news release announcing Kordia’s arrest in March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security suggested that she and a second protester – who allegedly “self-deported” – were targeted for their advocacy.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in the release.

“When you advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

‘Intentionally dehumanising’

In his statement on Monday, Mazzola accused immigration officials of showing “blatant disregard” for Kordia’s human rights in detention, pointing to the deterioration of her health.

Kordia has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility, some 2,400km (1,500 miles) away from her family in New Jersey.

Laila El-Haddad, an author and advocate, said she visited Kordia in December, finding her “very thin, very gaunt” as she complained about unsanitary conditions and a lack of nutritious food at the crowded facility.

“She talked about this being a place that is intentionally dehumanising; that aims to strip her and others of their dignity and their humanity,” she told Al Jazeera.

Kordia’s lawyers and family, meanwhile, said she regularly suffers dizzy spells, fainting and other signs of subpar nutrition.

Still, El-Haddad found that Kordia remained upbeat, and she described the 33-year-old as a pillar of support for other detainees.

“She’s very humble. She kept talking about how ‘I’m not a leader or an activist,’” El-Haddad remembered.

El-Hadded added that Kordia’s case has not gotten as much attention as those of other student protesters, but her story is just as powerful.

“She wasn’t a public-facing activist or speaker in the way some of the other [targeted protesters] were,” El-Hadded explained.

“But she found herself in a position and felt compelled [to protest] because of her own humanity and because she was a person with a deep moral compass and consciousness to act and to speak out.”

Abushaban said he has felt Kordia’s absence acutely at family events. It has been a year of missed birthdays, holidays and other gatherings.

He called for US officials, regardless of political affiliation, to have empathy for her plight.

“I was born and raised here, and the rest of my family were all born and raised here,” he said. “And just because we are Palestinians, we still have to feel suppressed in this country.”

“Swept under the rug with no consequences.” Despite condemnation of Israeli moves tightening its grip on the occupied West Bank, observers like Fathi Nimer say they don’t expect the countries stating their opposition to actually do anything.

Departing for Washington, DC, Israeli prime minister hails his close ties to the US president amid nuclear talks with Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will present Donald Trump with “principles” for negotiating with Iran as he heads to Washington, DC, for his sixth official visit with the US president over the past year.

Netanyahu hailed the “unique closeness” between Israel and the United States and his own warm ties to Trump before leaving Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

“I will present Trump with principles for negotiations with Iran that are important not only to Israel but to everyone who wants peace and security,” Netanyahu told reporters, according to The Jerusalem Post newspaper.

“In my opinion, these are important principles for everyone who wants peace and security in the Middle East.”

His visit comes days after Washington and Tehran concluded a round of nuclear talks in Oman – the first negotiations since the June 2025 war that saw the US bomb Iran’s main nuclear facilities after waves of Israeli attacks.

Israel is not part of those talks, but Netanyahu has long sought to exert influence over US presidents to shape Washington’s policies in the region.

Netanyahu did not provide details about his “principles” for a potential Iran deal, but he has previously said Tehran should agree to full disarmament of heavy weapons, akin to Libya’s 2003 deal with the West.

Iran has ruled out negotiations over its missile programme, which it views as one of its most important deterrents against Israeli attacks.

When Israel launched its surprise assault against Iran in June of last year – killing several of the country’s top generals and nuclear scientists as well as hundreds of civilians – Tehran relied primarily on its missiles to respond after air defences were taken out.

Iran fired hundreds of missiles at Israel, dozens of which penetrated the country’s multilayered air defences, killing 28 people and causing significant damage.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera on Saturday that Iran’s missile programme is a defence issue that is “never negotiable”.

Israel and the US may also push Iran to end support to its network of allied non-state actors in the region – including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and armed groups in Iraq.

But that alliance, known as the Axis of Resistance, has already been weakened by Israeli assaults over the past two years.

Another sticking issue in the talks is whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium domestically.

While Tehran has said it would agree to strict limits and monitoring of its nuclear activities, it has maintained that domestic enrichment is a sovereign national right.

Despite Washington’s talks with Tehran, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee – who is joining Netanyahu on his trip – has stressed Israel and the United States have the same red lines when it comes to Iran.

“I think there’s an extraordinary alignment between Israel and the United States. Everyone would love to see something that would resolve without a war, but it will be up to Iran,” he told reporters.

“If they insist on holding nuclear weaponry and enriched uranium, then I think the president made very clear that this is not acceptable.”

The United States has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, destroyers, and fighter jets to the Middle East to pressure Iran into an agreement. Tehran says it won’t be swayed by threats of war.

An Israeli air attack on a residential building in western Gaza City has killed at least four people.

Several others were injured in the attack on a building sheltering displaced people as Israel continues to violate the ‘ceasefire’.

At least four Palestinians have been killed, and several others injured, after an Israeli air attack targeted a residential building sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, a further violation of an October “ceasefire”.

Emergency teams were seen rushing to transport injured people to nearby hospitals after Monday’s attack in the Nassr neighbourhood.

Last week, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported that Israel had violated the “ceasefire” 1,520 times since it came into effect on October 10. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said 581 people have been killed and 1,553 wounded since then.

Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al Khalili, reporting from Gaza City, said the residential building was being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians after it was struck and damaged during Israel’s genocidal war.

“People have been forced to shelter in this partially damaged residential building due to the lack and scarcity of shelter due to the destruction of most of Gaza’s residential buildings,” he said.

Al Khalili said this latest violation of the ceasefire agreement by Israel has raised significant concerns in the territory.

“This attack has spread panic and left people wondering what might come next in the light of this deadly escalation carried out by the Israeli military.”

Elsewhere on Monday, Israeli forces shot dead Palestinian farmer Khaled Baraka in an area to the east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, according to local sources who spoke with the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

In a separate incident, Israel’s military said it had killed four fighters who emerged from a tunnel in southern Gaza and attacked its troops.

Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida later described the incident as “heroic resistance”.

Hamas said in late November that dozens of its fighters were holed up in southern Gaza’s tunnels, beneath areas controlled by the Israeli military.

This was a sticking point in the early days of the ceasefire, with Israel insisting the fighters posed a security threat, while Hamas sought safe passage for them.

Since then, many of the fighters have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops during operations targeting tunnels near Rafah, according to the military.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

White House official says Trump sees stability in the Palestinian territory as a ‘goal to achieve peace in the region’.

United States President Donald Trump opposes Israel’s annexation of ⁠the occupied West Bank, a White House official has said.

“A stable West Bank keeps ‌Israel secure, and is in ‌line ‌with this ⁠administration’s goal to achieve peace ‌in the region,” the official said on Monday, according to the Reuters news agency.

The comment from the White House comes after eight Muslim-majority countries denounced Israel for approving controversial new measures to expand control over occupied Palestinian territory, making it easier for Israelis to acquire land for new settlements, which are illegal under international law.

On Monday, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates condemned Israel’s move “in the strongest terms”, according to a statement from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.

In joint statement, countries urge international community to ‘compel Israel to halt its dangerous escalation’.

Eight Muslim-majority countries have denounced Israel for trying to impose “unlawful Israeli sovereignty” in the occupied West Bank, after it approved controversial new measures expanding its control and making it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land.

Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates condemned Israel’s move “in the strongest terms” on Monday, according to a Saudi Foreign Ministry statement.

Israel’s new measures, greenlighted Sunday by its security cabinet, have major implications on property rights and Israeli security procedures in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Times of Israel, citing a joint statement by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz, said the new rules would allow Jewish Israelis to buy private real estate in the territory and open up previously confidential land registries to the public.

The measures will also allow Israeli authorities to take charge of managing some religious sites and increase Israeli supervision and enforcement in areas run by the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Israeli media reports.

Smotrich said the move was aimed at “deepening our roots in all regions of the Land of Israel and burying the idea of a Palestinian state”.

‘Dangerous annexation push’

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the decision amounted to de facto annexation, and called on US President Donald Trump and the United Nations Security Council to intervene.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the town of Birzeit in the West Bank, said Palestinians view the development “as the most dangerous push towards annexation and the most critical decision since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967”.

She noted that under the new rules, there was nothing that would prevent Israeli settlers from owning land and “coming to Palestinian city centres”.

In the joint statement, the eight Muslim-majority countries said Israel is trying to put in place “a new legal and administrative reality” that accelerates its “illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people”.

The countries affirmed Palestinians’ right to “self-determination and statehood” and urged the international community to “compel Israel to halt its dangerous escalation”.

The European Union also condemned the Israeli move, calling it “another step in the wrong direction”.

The West Bank is among the areas that Palestinians seek for a future independent state, along with the Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem. Currently, much of the West Bank is under direct Israeli military control, with extremely limited Palestinian self-rule in some areas, governed by the Western-backed PA.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, while some 3.3 million Palestinians live in the territory.

Israeli forces regularly carry out violent raids, conduct arrests, and impose restrictions in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have also intensified, often under the protection of Israeli soldiers.

In January alone, at least 694 Palestinians were driven from their homes in the West Bank due to Israeli settler violence and harassment, the highest number since Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza erupted in October 2023, according to the UN.

The rules will make it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land in the occupied West Bank and give Israeli officials more powers to enforce its laws on Palestinians in the area.

Four months into the Gaza “ceasefire”, Palestinians in the devastated territory are coming to terms with the post-war situation.

At this year’s edition of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, delegates are focusing on the power shifts created by Israel’s genocide.

A new committee of technocrats is expected to be in charge of Gaza’s governance.

The committee is to be overseen by the newly formed Board of Peace, headed by US President Donald Trump.

What are its chances of success?

Presenter: Sami Zeidan

Guests:
Mustafa Barghouti – general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative

Abdullah Al Shayji – professor of international relations and political science at Kuwait University

Ziad Majed – professor of Middle Eastern studies at The American University of Paris

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman detained in the United States by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency since March, has been rushed to a hospital after a medical episode, according to media reports.

Kordia is being held in Texas after being detained as part of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on college campuses across the country.

Her legal team said she was targeted for her protest against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza near Columbia University in New York in 2024, but the federal government said she was arrested for allegedly overstaying her student visa.

Since her hospitalisation on Friday, Kordia’s legal team and family said they have not been able to speak with her and do not know her whereabouts.

Here is everything we know about Kordia and why she continues to remain in detention:

Who is Kordia?

Kordia grew up in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah before coming to the US in 2016. She arrived on a visitor’s visa, staying with her mother, a US citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey, home to one of the largest Arab communities in the country.

She later transitioned from a tourist visa to a student visa, according to her habeas corpus petition.

After her mother applied for Kordia to remain in the US as the relative of a citizen, her green card application was approved in 2021. However, she received incorrect advice from a teacher that led to her student visa expiring in 2022, according to her lawyers.

Before her arrest, Kordia worked as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Palestine Way in New Jersey and helped to care for her autistic half-brother.

Kordia was moved to protest against Israel’s war due to personal loss. Since the start of the war in October 2023, Kordia said, more than 200 of her relatives have been killed.

Israel has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 170,000 in a war that human rights groups, a United Nations commission and a growing number of scholars said amounts to genocide. Since a “ceasefire” began in October, Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians and continues to impose curbs on the entry of aid into Gaza.

If deported, Kordia would be handed over to the Israeli government.

Why was Kordia arrested?

She was first arrested in April 2024 during a protest outside the gates of Columbia University, but the case was soon dropped.

On March 13, 2025, Kordia showed up at the ICE headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, for what she believed to be routine immigration questions. She was detained there, “thrown into an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles [more than 2,400km] away”, Kordia wrote in the USA Today newspaper last month.

Kordia was neither a student at Columbia University nor a part of political circles.

“Though I was not a student, I felt compelled to participate. After all, Israel, with the backing of the United States, has laid waste to Gaza, forcibly displacing my family, killing nearly 200 of my relatives,” she wrote in USA Today.

Today, Kordia is the only person who remains in detention from the Columbia campus demonstrations. She has been held at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

A leader of the protests, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student with Algerian citizenship and a US green card, and others have been released. Khalil, however, is still in a legal battle to remain in the US with his American wife and child. Last month, an appeals court panel dismissed a lawsuit Khalil filed challenging his detention and deportation order. The judges concluded that the federal court that ordered Khalil’s release last year lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

What are the charges against Kordia?

The US government has called Kordia’s money transfers to relatives in the Middle East evidence of possible ties to “terrorists”.

Kordia’s lawyers have continuously argued for her release, saying she was targeted by federal officials for her participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

The federal government has maintained that the case against Kordia is of overstaying a student visa.

“Her arrest had nothing to do with her radical activities,” the Department of Homeland Security said in April. “Kordia was arrested for immigration violations due to having overstayed her F-1 student visa, which had been terminated on January 26, 2022, for lack of attendance.”

Writing in USA Today last month, Kordia said she does not consider herself either a leader or an activist.

“I am a devout Muslim who is deeply committed to my faith and community. I’m a Palestinian woman who enjoys playing the oud, making pottery and hiking,” Kordia wrote. “Speaking out against what rights groups and experts have called a genocide is my moral duty and – I thought – a constitutionally protected right for all in this country. Except, it seems, when that speech defends Palestinian life.”

An immigration judge has called for Kordia’s release twice. However, it has been repeatedly blocked through a series of procedural and administrative moves.

“[The] Trump administration has exploited rarely used procedural loopholes to keep me confined, a practice now being challenged in federal district courts across the country, with many finding the practice unconstitutional,” Kordia wrote.

How has Kordia lived in ICE detention?

Since Kordia was moved to the ICE detention facility in Alvarado in March, she has been facing a range of issues, from sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor to being denied religious accommodations, including halal meals.

“Inside the ICE facility where I’m being held, conditions are filthy, overcrowded and inhumane,” Kordia wrote in her piece for USA Today. “For months, I slept in a plastic shell, known as a ‘boat,’ surrounded by cockroaches and only a thin blanket. Privacy does not exist here.”

Last year, when Kordia’s cousin Hamzah Abushaban visited her a week after her arrest, he told The Associated Press news agency in an interview that he was taken aback by the dark circles under her eyes and her state of confusion.

“One of the first things she asked me was why she was there,” Abushaban said. “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”

Rights groups and some Democratic Party leaders have called her a “political prisoner”, condemning the way her case has proceeded.

State Representative Salman Bhojani said the conditions at the detention facility were “suffocating”.

Kordia’s dorm, he said, had 60 mattresses crammed into a space designed for 20 women.

“She does not even have clothing that fully covers her body. Community organizations have tried to provide more appropriate clothing and have been turned away,” Bhojani said. “Male staff enter the dorm at any time, leaving her body exposed in violation of her religious obligations.”

Calling for her release, Amnesty International noted that ICE has “repeatedly violated” Kordia’s religious rights. “She has been served almost no halal meals, forcing her to eat food that doesn’t meet her dietary requirements and causing significant weight loss,” the human rights group said in a statement.

“During Ramadan, staff refused to let her save food for when she could break her fast, forcing her either to go hungry or to break her fast early,” Amnesty said. “She has not been provided with clothing suitable for prayer or a clean prayer space.”

Why was Kordia hospitalised?

On Friday, Abushaban said he heard about Kordia’s hospitalisation in the morning from a person formerly detained with his cousin.

Kordia had fallen, hit her head and suffered a seizure in a bathroom at the Prairieland Detention Center, he told The Dallas Morning News newspaper.

In a statement on Saturday, Kordia’s attorneys and family members demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and Prairieland Detention Center regarding her health and whereabouts.

“[Kordia] was reportedly hospitalised yesterday morning after fainting and having a seizure at the Prairieland Detention Center,” the statement said, adding: “Neither her legal team nor family have been provided answers about where she has been hospitalised, the specifics of her health status, and whether and how ICE will ensure her health upon discharge from the undisclosed, off-site hospital.”

“We have since learned that she is expected to spend another night there, but we still have not been able to speak with her directly or have any confirmation of what brought her to the hospital in the first place,” the statement said.

The family members told US media that they called all hospitals in the vicinity but could not locate Kordia.

What were the Columbia protests about?

In 2024, pro-Palestinian student encampments at Columbia University helped ignite a global movement against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The protest sites, however, were broken up after Columbia University allowed hundreds of New York City police officers on campus, leading to dozens of arrests.

The student protesters demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and the university’s divestment from companies linked to the Israeli military.

Columbia University imposed severe punishments, including expulsion and revocation of academic degrees, on dozens of students who participated in the protests. University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was criticised for the handling of the student protests, stepped down.

The protests also put Columbia at odds with the Trump administration, whose officials alleged anti-Semitism on campus. Campaigners said the campus crackdown violated US free speech rights.

Trump also cancelled millions of dollars in federal funding for the university, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students. Later, Columbia settled and agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years. In exchange, the Trump administration agreed to return parts of the $400m in grants it froze or terminated.

Palestinian medics say several of the 54 bodies were found to be mutilated and showed extensive signs of abuse.

Israel has returned dozens of Palestinian bodies and human remains to Gaza without providing any information about their identities or how they were killed, according to Palestinian medical officials.

The remains arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday in plain white bags and are now being examined by forensic teams in an effort to identify them and provide answers to grieving families.

“The bags carry the weight of lives lost. Now they’re undergoing examination, prolonging the grief of families desperate for closure,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported from al-Shifa Hospital on Saturday.

Palestinian medics say several bodies were mutilated.

“The International Committee of the Red Cross handed over 120 body bags containing 54 bodies as well as skull samples placed in 66 separate bags,” forensic official Omar Suleiman told Al Jazeera.

Previous exchanges of Palestinian prisoners’ bodies have revealed extensive signs of abuse, with many showing indications of torture, mutilation and execution.

In November, the rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel released a report saying at least 94 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody, citing causes including torture, medical neglect, malnutrition and physical assault.

The group said the actual toll could be significantly higher.

‘Missing for 10 months’

For many Palestinians, the search for missing relatives has shifted from streets and rubble to computer screens and improvised identification centres.

At al-Shifa, Shadi al-Fayoumi scrolled through blurred and graphic images, hoping to spot anything recognisable that might tell him what happened to his brothers.

“My brothers have been missing for 10 months. They disappeared in the Tuffah neighbourhood,” al-Fayoumi, whose brothers remain missing, told Al Jazeera.

“I went to al-Shifa Medical Complex, where we were told there were bodies we could try to identify. However, the images were unclear and lacked discernible features. How are we expected to identify them under these conditions?”

According to al-Fayoumi, his brothers had gone in search of food and water during the peak of the famine last year but never returned.

“We contacted multiple institutions, but none was willing to help or provide reliable information,” al-Fayoumi added.

Al Jazeera’s al-Khalili said al-Fayoumi’s mother has been “inconsolable”.

“His brothers’ children are silent, unwilling to voice their worst fears. Israeli forces hand over the bodies of Palestinians with little regard for human dignity,” he added.

“There is no information on how they died or how long they were held, leaving Palestinians with not only their grief but unanswered questions.”

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally partially opened this week after two years of Israeli-mandated closure. The news offers relief for many – particularly those Palestinians in urgent need of treatment abroad.

But for many elderly Palestinians in Gaza, staying in the enclave is an act of survival, resistance, and historical memory. Rafah may be open, but they are not planning to go anywhere.

In Kefaya al-Assar’s mind, that decision to stay is an effort to correct what she perceives to have been a historical mistake made by her parents – fleeing their village of Julis, which was depopulated in the 1948 Nakba, and is now within Israel.

“We blamed [our parents] a lot for leaving our home there,” said the 73-year-old Kefaya.

Kefaya has faced displacement during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza five times. Originally from Jabalia in northern Gaza, she now shelters in a classroom at a school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat.

Widowed in early 2023 and without children, she said displacement revives the trauma she inherited from her parents.

“History repeats itself now,” she said. “My parents lost all their money when they were forced to flee. We also used to have money, but now we are displaced and have lost everything.”

When Kefaya was a child, her family lived in tents in Gaza’s refugee camps, before they became more permanent structures in later decades. Now, she says that she is reliving that same fate.

“I don’t want to repeat history, I want to die in my own country,” she said. “Even here, being in Nuseirat, I feel like a stranger. I wish I could go back to Jabalia.”

Her home in Jabalia was destroyed during the war, meaning that, for now, she is staying in Nuseirat. But she is still adamant that it will not mean her departure from Gaza.

“I will not leave for medical treatment outside … I choose to die on my own land rather than be treated outside,” she said.

That’s despite her own medical issues – Kefaya suffers from high blood pressure, and has not been able to receive adequate medical care because of the war.

Hidden crisis

The Rafah crossing partially opened on Monday after being largely closed by Israel since May 2024.

The opening of the crossing is part of the second phase of the Gaza “ceasefire”, even as Israel continues to violate the agreement by regularly attacking the Palestinian enclave, killing hundreds.

Only a few dozen Palestinians have been allowed to leave so far, all patients needing treatments accompanied by family members.

Other Palestinians have also put their names on the list, some hoping to go abroad for education or simply to escape life in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 70,000 since the war began, and destroyed the majority of buildings, meaning reconstruction will likely be a years-long process, even if Israel cooperates.

“Israel is creating unlivable conditions in Gaza, denying Palestinians all essentials of life,” said Talal Abu Rukba, a political science professor at al-Azhar University in Gaza. “When people resist and stay in their homeland, they ruin the Israeli project of creating an Israeli state on a land ‘without a people’”.

Members of the Israeli right-wing, including members of the government, have repeatedly called for illegal settlements to be established in Gaza, and for Palestinians to be forced out.

The desire to stay in Gaza on the part of elderly Palestinians is despite a largely overlooked humanitarian crisis facing the demographic.

Research by Amnesty International and HelpAge International found that Israel’s blockade of aid and medicines to Gaza had contributed to a “physical and mental health crisis”.

“During armed conflict, older people’s needs are often overlooked. In Gaza, older people are enduring an unprecedented physical and mental health collapse as a direct result of Israel’s deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said after the publication of the report.

The two organisations found that 76 percent of the elderly people interviewed live in tents, with 84 percent saying that their living conditions harmed their health and privacy. In addition, 68 percent of respondents had been forced to stop or reduce medication because of a lack of availability. Nearly half reported skipping meals so that others could eat.

Many are also suffering from mental health problems, with 77 percent reporting that sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or insomnia had reduced their appetite and impacted their wellbeing.

Tired and lonely

Nazmeya Radwan, 85, is one of those struggling.

Ill, underweight and unable to access medication, she still refuses to leave Gaza.

Nazmeya has her own previous experience of displacement at the hands of Israel – like Kefaya’s parents, she was forced to flee her home in the 1948 Nakba, along with about 750,000 other Palestinians.

Originally from Jerusalem, her family was displaced to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, after 1948.

“All my life was displacement and wars since the Nakba,” Nazmeya said. “I am 85, and tired, lonely, ill and displaced, but I would never leave Gaza. I would live as a beggar and homeless and never leave Gaza.”

Leaked audio from the Epstein files suggests former UK prime minister and ‘Board of Peace’ member Tony Blair was known for earning large sums of money for advisory work after leaving office. Blair’s office told Al Jazeera the figures mentioned in the audio were ‘rubbish’.

Palestinian women tell of harrowing experience at hands of Israeli military at reopened Rafah border crossing in Gaza.

Palestinian women have described a “journey of horror” as they passed through the Rafah border crossing on their way home to Gaza from Egypt, with the few allowed to enter the war-torn territory being separated from their children, handcuffed, blindfolded, and interrogated “under threat” for hours.

For the 12 Palestinian women and children allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing on Monday, the journey back home was “long and exhausting, marked by waiting, fear and uncertainty”, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al Khalili said, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The small group of returnees was subjected to harsh security procedures by Israeli forces who hold the power at the Rafah crossing to determine “when and if” people will be allowed to return to their homes in the Palestinian territory, Al Khalili said.

“They took everything from us. Food, drinks, everything. Allowing us to keep only one bag,” said one of the returnees, speaking to Al Jazeera about her ordeal at the hands of the Israeli military on Monday.

“The Israeli army called my mother first and took her. Then they called me, and took me,” the woman said.

“They blindfolded me and covered my eyes. They interrogated me in the first tent, asking why I wanted to enter Gaza. I told them I wanted to see my children and return to my country. They tried to pressure me psychologically, wanted to separate me from my children and force me into exile,” she said.

“After questioning me there, they took me to a second tent and asked political questions, which had nothing to do with [the journey]… They told me I could be detained if I didn’t answer. After three hours of interrogation under threat, we finally went on the bus. The UN received us; then we headed to Nasser Hospital. Thank God we were reunited with our loved ones,” she added.

Another member of the group, Huda Abu Abed, 56, told the Reuters news agency that passing through the Rafah border “was a journey of horror, humiliation and oppression”.

Accounts of being blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated for hours by Israeli forces were given to reporters by three women, Reuters said.

Some 50 Palestinians had been expected to enter the enclave on Monday, but by nightfall, only 12 – three women and nine children – had been allowed through the reopened crossing by Israeli authorities, Reuters said, citing Palestinian and Egyptian sources.

Worse still, of the 50 people waiting to leave Gaza on Monday, mostly for critical medical treatment, only five patients with seven relatives escorting them managed to clear the Israeli inspections and cross into Egypt.

On Tuesday, just 16 more Palestinian patients were allowed to cross into Egypt via Rafah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said, reporting from Khan Younis.

The numbers being allowed to cross at Rafah are far below the 50 Palestinians who Israeli officials said would be allowed to travel in each direction via the crossing every day, Khoudary said.

“There is no explanation as to why crossings are being delayed at Rafah,” Khoudary said. “The process is taking an extremely long time.”

“There are about 20,000 people waiting [in Gaza] for urgent medical attention abroad,” she added.

“Israel, as the occupying power, has the obligation to ensure the needs of people are met in Gaza.” As he prepared to leave Gaza, the Red Cross’s Patrick Griffiths is hopeful the Rafah crossing’s “opening” will give Palestinians a chance to heal, but says more must be done.

Khan Younis, Gaza – The headlines read that Israel has finally reopened the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, allowing injured Palestinians desperate for medical aid to leave.

However, the reality is that on the first day of the opening, on Monday, Israel only allowed five patients to exit Gaza via the crossing, forcing hundreds, if not thousands, of others to wait.

Mohammed Abu Mostafa is one of the lucky five. The 17-year-old travelled on Monday with his mother, Randa, to southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, and then on to Rafah, which has been closed by Israel for two years as it waged its genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 70,000 Palestinians.

Randa told Al Jazeera that she had received a phone call on Monday morning informing her that Mohammed had been included in the first list of wounded patients scheduled to travel, and that they were instructed to head immediately to the Red Crescent Hospital in Khan Younis.

The reopening of Rafah, Gaza’s only land crossing that does not go through Israel, has been much touted as evidence of the progress of the second phase of the United States-backed Gaza “ceasefire” deal.

But events on Monday revealed a different reality, marked by strict security restrictions, complex procedures, and limited numbers being allowed to cross, falling far short of expectations and the scale of Gaza’s accumulated humanitarian needs.

Each of the five patients being allowed to leave was accompanied by two people as per Israeli orders, bringing the total number of travellers to 15, according to information provided to Gaza’s health authorities.

Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Medical Complex, told Al Jazeera that this was the only group that departed, despite prior plans with the World Health Organization (WHO) – the body overseeing coordination between Egypt and Israel – for the departure of 50 patients daily.

Egyptian official sources have told Al Jazeera that 50 Palestinians were also permitted to return to Gaza via the Rafah crossing, though no information is yet available on whether they have actually reached the Palestinian side.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office, highlighted just how low these numbers are compared with the approximately 22,000 people needing to leave Gaza for treatment abroad. Meanwhile, about 80,000 Palestinians who left Gaza during the war want to return, he said.

Eye injury

Mohammed was injured in an Israeli air attack a year and a half ago, near where his family had been displaced in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Randa said. He sustained a direct injury to his eye, severely affecting his optic nerve and ability to see.

“My son has been suffering immensely since his injury. Day after day, his condition kept worsening, and there is no treatment available for him in Gaza,” Randa said, while waiting in the hospital courtyard alongside other patients and their relatives.

Despite her joy at finally being able to accompany her son on his journey, Randa feels a sense of anguish at having to leave four of her six children behind, as she was only permitted to take one child as a second companion.

“What matters to me now is that my son regains his sight and can see again with his own eyes. That is my only concern at the moment,” Randa said.

“I also hope to return to Gaza soon after my son recovers, that the blockade will be lifted, and that all patients will be able to travel, just like my son.”

Israeli restrictions

In the Red Crescent Hospital courtyard, dozens of patients on travel waiting lists expressed frustration over the first-day restrictions at Rafah.

Several patients, including those with amputations, gathered at the hospital, hoping to be permitted to travel to Egypt for treatment.

Despite patients and their families arriving early in the morning with high hopes, Israeli authorities refused to permit more than five patients to leave, leading to widespread dissatisfaction with the complex mechanisms accompanying the crossing’s partial reopening.

The multi-stage security procedure of Palestinians moving through the Rafah crossing begins with the preparation of daily lists of candidates for travel, which are then referred to the Israeli side for pre-travel security screening.

No one is allowed to pass through the crossing or enter it without explicit Israeli approval. The European Union Border Assistance Mission deployed to Rafah is limited to monitoring the process and verifying identities.

Arrivals in Gaza, after initial identity verification at the crossing under European supervision, are subject to additional inspection procedures at checkpoints located in areas under Israeli military control.

Raed al-Nims, the Gaza Red Crescent’s head of media, told Al Jazeera that the organisation was still waiting for updates regarding the transfer of more patients for treatment through the crossing.

He added that a group of patients was successfully transferred to Israel on Monday through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing, in coordination with the WHO.

Desperate need

Ibrahim Abu Thuraya was also one of the five patients allowed to leave Gaza on Monday.

Ibrahim was injured in the early months of the war, sustaining wounds that led to the amputation of his left hand and an injury to his left eye, where shrapnel is still embedded.

“Day after day, my eye condition is deteriorating, and I feel severe pain, especially since the shrapnel is lodged behind it and there are no medical capabilities in Gaza to deal with it,” he said from Khan Younis, before he travelled to Rafah. “Doctors told me that I need to travel abroad.”

Ibrahim was informed on Monday morning by the WHO and Gaza’s Ministry of Health that he had been approved for travel. He will be accompanied by his wife, Samar, and their son.

“I have suffered greatly for two full years just to be able to leave for treatment, and there are thousands of wounded like me,” he said. “I hope the crossing will be opened permanently.”

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally reopened after months of closure as a result of Israel’s devastating war on the Gaza Strip.

Hopes were running high that the freedom of movement would ease the dire humanitarian crisis created by this war.

But Israel has set strict conditions on who can leave the Strip and who can enter.

Now, only a small number of people are allowed to move in both directions – mainly for medical evacuations.

But much-needed humanitarian aid and construction materials are still barred from entering the Strip, which is in ruins.

Will this reopening ease the suffering of Palestinians after two years of war?

Presenter: Maleen Saeed

Guests:

Hussein Haridy – Former Egyptian assistant foreign minister

Mosab Nasser – CEO of FAJR Global, an organisation that provides medical care, surgical missions and emergency evacuations

Akiva Eldar – Political analyst and contributor to Haaretz newspaper

Jamal’s nine-year-old body is paralysed. He experiences constant, uncontrollable, violent spasms. He cannot sleep through them. Nor can his mother. To keep the spasms under control, a drug called baclofen is required. It relaxes the muscles and stops the shaking. Suddenly halting the use of baclofen can have serious health consequences.

Jamal’s mother, my cousin Shaima, wrote to me from the family’s tent in al-Mawasi displacement camp in Gaza a week ago. It was her son’s seventh day without the medicine. The violent, neurological spasms that seize Jamal’s limbs leave him screaming out in pain.

Baclofen is unavailable anywhere in Gaza: not in hospitals, not in clinics, not in Ministry of Health warehouses, and not even through the Red Cross. Shaima has searched all of them. It is one of the many medicines blocked by Israel, along with painkillers and antibiotics.

Jamal now endures dozens of spasms each day. There is no alternative medication or substitute. There is no relief, only pain.

Jamal’s story is not to be told, if the likes of former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are to have their way.

Speaking at the United States-based, Israel-focused MirYam Institute last month, he said, “We need to make sure that the story is told properly so that when the history books write this, they don’t write about the victims of Gaza”. At this line, the audience applauded.

Pompeo went on to say that every war has civilian casualties, but the true victims in this case are the Israeli people. His concern is that October 7th and the war in Gaza would be remembered “incorrectly”.

It seems Pompeo wants to argue that the people of Gaza are just “collateral damage” in Israel’s war.  They are to remain nameless, faceless, forgotten. He wants their stories erased from the pages of human history.

His remarks reflect the next phase in Israel’s genocide. Dissatisfied with its progress in eliminating Gaza’s people, their mosques, their schools and universities, their cultural institutions, economy and land, Israel and its Christian-Zionist allies like Pompeo have now embarked on the erasure of memory and martyrdom.

The campaign is evident both inside and beyond Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) – an institution that has long preserved the status of the Palestinian refugee population and safeguarded their right of return under international law – is being systematically undermined and dismantled. TikTok – one of the few social media platforms where Palestinian voices have had a bit more freedom to speak – is now shadow banning and restricting pro-Palestinian accounts, after being taken over by an Israel-friendly conglomerate.

In the US, United Kingdom, and elsewhere, local laws are weaponised to come after pro-Palestinian youth, with scores being detained for using what should be their protected right to free speech. Laws are even passed at the state level in the US to shape what can be taught at schools about Israel and Palestine.

But what Pompeo – and those like him who misread biblical verses to justify their support for Israel and its genocide – do not understand is that Palestinians have faced erasure before and have overcome it. We will do so again.

In thinking about memory and bearing witness, the word “martyr” comes to mind. “Martyr” comes from the Greek word “martus”, meaning “witness”, and features prominently in the Bible. Similarly, the word “shaheed” in Arabic is derived from the root of the word for “witness” or “witnessing”. As the word evolved, it also took on connotations of violent suffering due to one’s beliefs, and even a sense of heroic steadfastness due to the scale of one’s sacrifice.

I can think of no better word than “shaheed” to describe Jamal and the people around him: they are living martyrs. Jamal’s little body has witnessed immense suffering; it has been pounded with the violence of the war, and he – like his mother – pushes on because of his overwhelming desire to live.

All around Jamal and Shaima’s tent are thousands of other tents. Day and night, each of them is pierced by the sound of Jamal’s screams. Inside the tents, cold and often wet from the recent floods, are thousands of other people who require urgent and important medical evacuation to hospitals.

The pain and suffering are immense, yet the likes of Pompeo continue to justify the ongoing and historically rooted process of the elimination of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian people are also poets at heart. And what Pompeo – who devalues language, memory and history – will never understand is that the poet is a witness.

As Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote in one of his verses:

Those who pass between fleeting words

Take your names with you and go

Rid our time of your hours, and go

Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea and the sands of memory

Take what pictures you will so as to understand

That which you never will:

How a stone from our land becomes the ceiling of our sky.

The Palestinian people will keep memory alive, just as we have kept alive the pain of Beit Daras, Deir Yassin, Jenin, Muhammad al-Durrah, Anas al-Sharif and the roots of every olive tree ripped from its soil. The Palestinian people, and millions in solidarity around the world, witnessed Israel’s destruction of Gaza. In defiance of Pompeo and honouring the living martyr Jamal, each of us will take the stones of Gaza and build a new sky.

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

Name of Israeli military facility at Gaza crossing with Egypt linked to Zionist anthem and pro-settler NGO, signalling a shift, analysts say. from security control to West Bank-style land grab and dehumanisation of Palestinians.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has reopened partially for a few Palestinians after an 18-month closure in tandem with an added restriction to control the movement of returnees. The Israeli army has set up a checkpoint called Regavim in an area under its control outside the crossing for those entering Gaza from Egypt.

As the first trickle of humanity passed through the gates on Monday, official Israeli military documents gave it a name that indicates the facility is no longer being treated as a border crossing but as an operation for population control.

In an official statement published on its website on Sunday, the Israeli army announced the completion of what it called the “Regavim Inspection Nekez”.

While the Israeli military frames this technical language as routine, analysts told Al Jazeera that the choice of the words “Regavim” and “Nekez” indicates Israel’s long-term intentions.

Al Jazeera spoke to Israeli affairs experts who argued that these terms reveal a dual strategy: invoking Zionist nostalgia to claim the land while using engineering terms to dehumanise the Palestinian people.

Historical code: ‘Clod after clod’

For analyst Mohannad Mustafa, the name Regavim is not random; it is a deliberate ideological trigger intended to resonate with the Israeli government’s far-right base.

“In Hebrew, Regavim means ‘clods of earth’ or patches of arable land,” Mustafa explained. “But it is not just a word. It is a trigger for the Zionist collective memory of land redemption.”

The term is inextricably linked to the Zionist children’s song and poem Dunam Po Ve Dunam Sham (A Dunam Here, a Dunam There) by Joshua Friedman, which was an anthem for the early settlement movement. The lyrics celebrate the acquisition of land: “Dunam here and dunam there/Clod after clod (Regev ahar regev)/Thus we shall redeem the land of the people.”

“By officially naming the Rafah corridor Regavim, the army is sending a subliminal message,” Mustafa said. “They are framing their presence in Gaza not as a temporary security mission but as a form of ‘redeeming the land’ identical to the ideology of the early pioneers.”

Political code: The ‘West Bank model’

Beyond the historical nostalgia, the name has a direct line to the present-day architects of Israel’s annexation policies: the Regavim Movement.

This far-right NGO, cofounded in 2006 by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has been the primary force behind the expansion of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. A 2023 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz detailed how the organisation essentially became the “intelligence officer” for the state, using drones and field data to map and demolish Palestinian structures in Area C, the 61 percent of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control.

Mustafa argued that applying this name to the Rafah crossing signals the transfer of the “civil administration” model from the West Bank to Gaza.

“It suggests that Gaza is no longer a separate entity but a territory to be managed with the same tools used to prevent Palestinian statehood in Judea and Samaria,” Mustafa said, using the Israeli terms for the West Bank.

Operational code: A ‘political brand’ and a ‘drain’

Analyst Ihab Jabareen takes the name Regavim a step further. He argued it has evolved beyond its linguistic meaning into a modern “political brand” for the settlement right and is being used to normalise a long-term Israeli presence.

However, Jabareen said the use of the term Nekez in the Israeli military statement portends even more danger.

“While Regavim operates as a political brand, Nekez reveals the cold, engineering mindset of the military,” Jabareen told Al Jazeera. “A Nekez is a drainage point. It is a hydraulic term used for managing sewage, floodwaters or irrigation – not for processing human beings.”

Jabareen argued that describing a human border crossing as a “drain” reflects three chilling assumptions now formalised in military doctrine:

1. Dehumanisation: “The Palestinian is no longer a citizen. They are a ‘fluid mass’ or a ‘flow’ that must be regulated to prevent overflow,” Jabareen said.
2. The end of negotiations: “You do not negotiate with a drain. Rafah is no longer a political border subject to sovereignty. It is an engineering problem to be managed.
3. Infrastructure, not a border: “Security is now being managed like a sewage system – purely technical, devoid of rights.”

“This is colder and more dangerous than standard settlement rhetoric,” Jabareen warned. “It converts the political issue of Gaza into a permanent technical function.”

A formula for ‘quiet control’

Both analysts agreed that the official adoption of these two terms points to a reality that is neither a full withdrawal nor declared annexation.

“It is a formula for ‘quiet control’,” Jabareen explained. “Israel doesn’t need to declare immediate settlement to control the territory. By treating the land as ‘Regavim’ (soil to be held) and the people as a ‘Nekez’ (a flow to be filtered), they are establishing a long-term reality where Gaza is an administered space, never an independent entity.”

Mustafa concurred: “The name ‘Regavim’ tells the settlers: ‘We have returned to the land.’ And the official designation ‘Nekez’ tells the security establishment: ‘We have the valve to turn the human flow on or off at will.’”

The long-awaited re-opening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing has been deemed too late for many seeking treatments, in life-or-death conditions. Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary spoke to a mother who had lost her sick child while waiting for the crossing to open.