Ten days before October 7, MBZ had informed Netanyahu of a major Hamas offensive.
Voltaire Network|September 11, 2026, https://www.voltairenet.org/article224921.html
According to חטופים – 843 ימים של הפקרה (Abducted: 843 Days of Abandonment), a
new book by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval (Kinneret Zmora Publishing), the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a few days before the October 7 attack.
He informed him that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas military chief, was preparing a major offensive against Israel. The call lasted 45 minutes. The Prime Minister replied that Israel was already prepared and that the attack would come from the West Bank, not Gaza.
According to the authors, MBZ’s call came after Netanyahu broke off negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The call reflected a direct threat from Yahya Sinwar, who was furious about the breakdown of talks. Sinwar spoke of ” Zinzal ” (earthquake), a word Arabs use to refer to wars and revolutions. Deeply concerned by Netanyahu’s dismissive attitude, MBZ reported the situation to William J. Burns, the CIA director . Burns then sent a confirming report to the Prime Minister.
Furthermore, the same book claims that Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Prime Minister of Qatar, telephoned David Barnea, Director of Mossad, on October 7, the day of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. He told Barnea that he had forced Hamas to release all its hostages in exchange for Israel’s commitment not to launch any further incursions into Gaza. However, Barnea replied: “If they want to release the civilians, let them release them. We are not ready to talk with Hamas.”
Furthermore, Yahya Sinwar had his right-hand man, in his presence, phone an associate of Mohammed Dahlan on October 8th. Dahlan pledged to release all civilian hostages, whether minors or over 50 years old, without any conditions. The offer was relayed to the Shin Bet, which responded: “Netanyahu doesn’t want to talk about anything anymore. He only wants war and the elimination of Hamas.”
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett commented on X: “This morning’s [Haaretz] article stating that Netanyahu was warned ten days before the October 7 massacre about Sinwar’s intentions is true.”
Netanyahu bears direct and personal responsibility for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis under his watch.
His disregard for the warnings constitutes criminal negligence, and therefore he is doing everything he can to prevent the creation of a state commission of inquiry that will reveal the truth […]
If we do not replace this government, we will never know the truth, which will only be revealed by a state commission of inquiry, because it is preventing its establishment for fear that we will discover the terrible truth.
• General Yair Golan, former deputy chief of staff and chairman of the Democrats, had provided aid to victims on the day of the attack. He commented on X: “The ‘They didn’t wake me up’ excuse is over; he knew it. He was warned […]
The investigation reveals that Netanyahu received an explicit warning from the Emir of the [United Arab] Emirates and deliberately concealed it from the army chiefs and the Shin Bet. This shatters all the lies he told us.
Now it’s clear: Netanyahu is unfit and illegitimate. He belongs in prison for his crimes against the State of Israel.
We need to replace it now!
Pack your suitcases’: Israel’s far right unveils its blueprint for emptying Gaza
Ben-Gvir’s party is demanding a new ministry dedicated to “voluntary migration.” Those living amid the rubble say they will not leave.
8 Sep, 2026 , By Elizabeth Blade, RT Middle East correspondent, https://www.rt.com/news/645274-pack-your-suitcases-israels-gaza/
Israel’s far-right national security minister has put a seven-year timetable on emptying Gaza of most of its people, and dressed it up as choice. Gazans RT spoke to call it what international law already names it: forced displacement.
Last week, Jewish Power chairman and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled ‘Disengagement 710’, a policy blueprint for what he calls the voluntary migration of Gaza residents to countries willing to take them. Destinations floated by his party include Türkiye, unspecified Arab states, Ethiopia, and Congo.
The numbers are not modest. The plan foresees the departure of about 250,000 people in the first year, 1.11 million within three years, and some 1.86 million within seven, encompassing the bulk of the Strip’s population.
To run it, Jewish Power wants the next government to create a dedicated ministry for “voluntary migration,” complete with a minister, a director-general, its own budget, an international negotiating team, and an implementation apparatus.
Ben-Gvir vows to make the ministry a coalition demand after Israel’s October 27 election. “Instead of illusions of peace now, we need actions of emigration now,” he said. “Instead of them digging tunnels, it’s time to pack suitcases.”
This idea is not new for the Jewish state.
A Zionist through-line
In 1937, David Ben-Gurion, then a leading Zionist figure, promoted the transfer of Palestinians and argued they should be moved to Transjordan. In the 1980s, the same ‘voluntary’ formula was championed by far-right politicians Rehavam Ze’evi – nicknamed ‘Gandhi’– and Meir Kahane. Their schemes never left the drawing board.
Ben-Gvir now presents his version as newly realistic, citing earlier public backing from US President Donald Trump. Trump floated mass relocation from Gaza in early 2025, then walked the idea back under Arab and international pressure.
His later 20-point framework stated that no one would be forced to leave and that residents should be encouraged to stay. Ben-Gvir treats the first Trump remark as political cover and the second as an inconvenience.
Gazans RT interviewed rejected the initiative as illegal under international law and a crime against humanity.
”People in Gaza and across Palestine know Ben-Gvir’s plans go far beyond our existence in the Strip,” said Abdallah Ali, a resident of central Gaza.
Ali said that is why Gazans, himself included, intend to stay put.
Rami Al Meghari, from Al-Maghazi camp in central Gaza, reached the same conclusion for a different reason: memory of exile.
“Many Palestinians found life in other countries, especially Arab states, awkward and humiliating,” he said. “They will not leave Gaza for a destination that cannot guarantee dignity, whether an Arab capital or some African country Israel has long suggested, like Somalia.”
Polls, rubble, and the meaning of ‘voluntary’
A PCPSR poll last year found 56% of Gazans interviewed unwilling to emigrate. A substantial minority, some 43%, said they would.
Ali and Al Meghari were not surprised. Despair is real, and the findings of various UN reports show it clearly.
As of June 16, 2026, satellite analysis by the UN Satellite Centre found 201,290 structures damaged, an estimated 82% of all buildings in Gaza. Of those, 134,422 were assessed as destroyed, 13,848 severely damaged, 28,096 moderately damaged and 24,924 possibly damaged.
Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million people remain displaced. The Shelter Cluster, surveying in June 2026, said 1.98 million people, 94% of the population, need shelter and household items.
Food and water continue to be an issue. Between mid-April and June 30, 2026, more than 1.2 million people (59%) were still in dire need of assistance.
Assessments in 2026 found 43% of households below the 15-liter humanitarian minimum per person per day, and 62% below the 6-liter drinking-water floor.
But Ali and Al Meghari insist the pull of the land is much stronger.
“Whatever the suffering, even with around 97 percent of cropland destroyed and most of the built environment gone, people are putting up tents and staying in displacement camps. They are not packing to leave,” Ali said.
Al Meghari still hopes the political weather will change. “Life can move forward in Gaza if there is serious international and Arab pressure to implement the second phase of the ceasefire. The United States has a particular responsibility to make that happen. Russia also needs to play a pivotal role to bring the suffering of the Palestinians to an end.”
Reconstruction as leverage
There is little movement on reconstruction. Israel is blocking construction materials, demanding that Hamas disarm and demilitarize first. The Board of Peace has pushed for weapons to be collected and placed under international supervision, a formula Israel rejects.
Ali sees the stalled effort as a policy, not an accident. “This is taking a very long time. I do not think Israel will accept Gaza’s reconstruction anytime soon. It will keep complicating reality until leaving becomes the only realistic option.”
Ahmed Al-Masri, a lawyer in Gaza, argues Israel has played this hand before and lost. “We lived this in 2014 [Operation Protective Edge – ed.]. Israel said Gaza should not be rebuilt. Then, under international pressure and with UN supervision, it was forced to comply.”
And he also pins some hope on Israel’s October 27 parliamentary vote. “If the far-right government is removed, there might be a beginning, a glimmer on the horizon, and a better political reality for people here, if Palestinians also insist on rebuilding political, social and economic life.”
That is the wager Gaza is making: that endurance outlasts a plan that needs other countries to open their doors, Washington to revive an idea it already shelved, and two million people to accept that ‘voluntary’ means leaving home because the alternative has been made unlivable.
Ben-Gvir is betting the opposite – that the wreckage, a ministry, and a slogan about suitcases can finish what earlier transfer schemes could not. Gazans say they have heard that speech before.
CIA ‘Proxy’: Unravelling Saudi Arabia’s True 9/11 Role
Kit Klarenberg Substack September 12, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/12/cia-proxy-unravelling-saudi-arabias-true-9-11-role/
In the leadup to 9/11’s silver anniversary, it was widely reported a forthcoming New York District Court civil case brought against notorious Saudi government operative Omar Bayoumi would deliver “smoking gun” proof tying Riyadh directly to the attacks. Compelling evidence Saudi Arabian intelligence not only managed several hijackers as agents, but did so as a “proxy” for the CIA, has lain unexamined in plain sight for years. Yet, the Agency’s sinister shadowplay remains eerily absent from media consideration, despite mounting recognition of Riyadh’s role.
Bayoumi has long-been accused by major news outlets and US officials of maintaining an intimate and suspicious relationship with hijackers Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar, immediately upon their arrival to the US in January 2000. A subsequent FBI investigation, dubbed Operation Encore, ruled there was a “50/50 chance” Bayoumi – and the House of Saud by extension – had detailed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. This explosive finding was not publicly divulged until March 2022.
However, the media remained steadfastly silent a year later when a bombshell filing from the Office of Military Commissions – the legal body overseeing prosecutions of 9/11 defendants – was released. The document summarises classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews conducted with anonymous high-ranking US intelligence officials. Its contents shed unprecedented light on how the CIA recruited at least Hazmi and Mihdhar if not others who participated in the 9/11 attacks, “via a liaison relationship” with Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID).
The same document elucidates how the 9/11 Commission was deliberately sabotaged by its chief Philip Zelikow, who personally endeavoured “to blunt” inquiries “into Saudi involvement with the hijackers.” Concurrently, senior FBI officials tasked with investigating the attacks were prohibited from interviewing Saudi nationals, despite “many” leads pointing directly to Riyadh’s Washington DC embassy. No wonder – probing those connections would’ve amply revealed how the GID was acting as a “cutout” for the CIA, in all its clandestine dealings with the 9/11 hijackers.
High-ranking FBI officials quoted in the filing discuss how the GID was a longstanding CIA “proxy”, exploited by the Agency whenever it was “unwise or not practical…to undertake an operation directly.” This need was particularly pronounced in the context of cloak-and-dagger CIA connivances conducted “on US soil.” After 25 years, it appears Riyadh could finally take the fall for a dastardly CIA operation that one way or another resulted in 9/11. As planned, there is little chance of the Agency itself landing in the dock.
‘CIA Team’
Among the court filing’smost dynamite excerpts is the insider testimony of an FBI special agent, who was posted to Alec Station – the CIA’s Al Qaeda tracking unit, ultimately responsible for recruiting Hazmi and Mihdhar as assets. When in January 2000 the special agent learned the pair – known Al Qaeda operatives under intensive CIA and NSA surveillance – had multi-entry visas to the US, they produced a report warning Bureau headquarters. Its dispatch was blocked by an unnamed CIA analyst.
The same analyst not only directed the GID to make contact with Hazmi and Mihdhar upon their arrival, but falsely claimed to subsequent US government inquiries into 9/11 they had personally informed the FBI about the pair’s presence in the US. The FBI special agent personally witnessed CIA director George Tenet and Agency operations director James Pavitt bragging about how they “conspired to obstruct the 9/11 Commission,” by concealing the analyst’s activities and identity from investigators.
In the process, an extraordinary, hitherto unreported component of Riyadh’s relationship with the hijackers remained determinedly unexplored. The FBI special agent alleged Hazmi and Mihdhar were explicitly provided US visas by the American consulate in Jeddah, “to facilitate the operation run by the Saudis’ GID and the CIA team.” This disclosure is all the more tantalising given 14 of the 19 hijackers all received their visas from the same consulate. In many cases, the paperwork shouldn’t have been granted at all.
Adding to the mystery, 12 of the 14 visas were approved by a single consular official, named Shayna Steinger. Almost immediately after being appointed to the Jeddah consulate in July 2000 with zero diplomatic background, she began rubberstamping applications of future 9/11 hijackers. At the time, the consulate’s approach to issuing visas was strict, specifically due to local “terrorism” concerns. Internal guidelines stated applicants – particularly young male Saudis – should always be interviewed in person, and have clear grounds for travel.
However, Steinger personally took it upon herself to reverse this policy. Moreover, she issued visas to future 9/11 hijackers despite their applications frequently being incomplete or error-strewn, based on forged documents, and their contents giving ample grounds for suspicion. Steinger nonetheless interviewed Hani Hanjour, who purportedly piloted Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon. Afterwards, she rejected his application for a three-year US visa, due to apparent doubts over his stated purposes in the country. Nonetheless, Steinger approved Hanjour’s renewed application two weeks later.
In ensuing official investigations, she offered wildly contradictory accounts of why the hijackers’ visas were granted. In Hanjour’s case, Steinger initially claimed he provided requested supporting documentation. She subsequently admitted he actually hadn’t, but Hanjour’s “middle class” background purportedly led her to conclude he was trustworthy. Thanks to the court filing, we know in reality future 9/11 hijackers were granted entry to the US so they could be recruited by the CIA upon arrival, suggesting Steinger was acting on Agency orders.
‘Local Dissidents’
Once Hazmi and Mihdhar touched down in Los Angeles in January 2000, almost immediately they crossed paths with Omar Bayoumi at an airport restaurant. FBI reports cited in the court filing indicate a witness who observed their meeting saw Bayoumi “dropping a piece of paper” near the pair’s table, “then striking up a conversation with them” in a manner that appeared “unnatural.” The witness relayed this account to the Bureau in 2002, but it was never publicised.
In interviews with Operation Encore investigators years later, Bayoumi maintained his meeting with Hazmi and Mihdhar was pure happenstance. The extraordinary assistance he gave them immediately thereafter – including finding them an apartment, cosigning their lease, setting them up bank accounts, and gifting them substantial sums towards their rent – was simply charity for fellow Muslims who could barely speak English and were unfamiliar with Western culture, Bayoumi asserted. But the filing offers numerous striking insights into the dark reality of his contact with the future hijackers.
For example, it appears Bayoumi was secretly instructed to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles, by extremist cleric and Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs official Fahad Thumairy. The filing cites evidence indicating Bayoumi was himself in California “to spy on local dissidents” of Saudi extraction. He was seen with the two 9/11 hijackers “on numerous occasions,” at one stage organising “a social gathering for the hijackers.” We can only guess who may also have been in attendance.
Another stunning exposure in the filing concerns Hazmi and Mihdhar lodging with longtime FBI informant and asset Abdussattar Shaikh from September 2000 onwards. That Shaikh failed to provide their surnames to his handler despite being asked has been known for many years. The joint congressional and senate intelligence committee probe into 9/11 ruled the pair’s stay with Shaikh was “the [US] intelligence community’s best chance to unravel the September 11 plot.” Insulating Hazmi and Midhar from Bureau scrutiny may have been his explicit objective.
The filing indicates he himself “was receiving funds” from Riyadh, while simultaneously serving as an FBI informant. “Prominent” Saudis “would stay at Shaikh’s boarding house while visiting California,” it states. His mission was “to monitor the activities of [Saudi] citizens while they were abroad.” Hani Hanjour also stayed with Shaikh alongside Hazmi, after Mihdhar returned to Saudi Arabia in late 2000. It appears at every stage Stateside, the hijackers were in intimate proximity with figures connected to Saudi intelligence.
Given the GID was acting directly on the CIA’s behalf, this contact raises the obvious prospect the Agency – via its Riyadh “proxy” – was directly monitoring the movements of Hazmi, Midhar, and Hanjour if not other Saudi-born hijackers from the moment they entered the US at the Agency’s direction, until 9/11 itself. The extent to which the CIA could’ve influenced their actions, behaviour and movements throughout is unknown, but the scope was self-evidently massive.
Saudi Involvement’
All along, Alec Station deliberately concealed the presence of Hazmi and Mihdhar in the US from the FBI, until it was too late. The filing records how in June 2001 Station representatives showed senior Bureau officials photographs of three Al Qaeda operatives, including Hazmi and Mihdhar. However, the CIA refused to answer questions about the individuals in the photos, or provide identifying information. Had they done so, the FBI could’ve readily found Hazmi and Mihdhar’s names and addresses listed in San Diego’s local phone directory.
This was a flagrant dangle, obviously intended to gauge the Bureau’s cognisance of the identities of the individuals pictured, and their presence in the US. The filing also indicates the FBI conducted a dedicated counterintelligence investigation into Omar Bayoumi prior to 9/11, due to suspicions “he was operating as an intelligence officer.” Yet, when the Bureau contacted the CIA for information on Bayoumi, they were told the Agency “held no files” on him at all – a “falsehood”.
In reality, the CIA maintained plentiful “operational” records on Bayoumi, which were “never passed to the FBI.” Such brazen stonewalling persisted long after 9/11. Upon learning tens of thousands of dollars had been sent from Haifa bin Faisal, wife of Saudi ambassador to the US Bandar bin Sultan, to Bayoumi’s wife, the Bureau attempted to subpoena their financial records from Washington DC’s Riggs Bank. Per the filing, “officials at Riggs thwarted the FBI’s efforts to obtain the records for a year.”
Riggs Bank – which counted US Presidents and CIA-installed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as clients – collapsed amid major money laundering scandals, in 2005. Post-9/11 investigations identified financial improprieties in accounts held by several wealthy Saudis – including a lack of required background checks, and consistent failure to alert regulators over large transactions violating federal banking laws. Riggs’ downfall precisely mirrors the unceremonious end of many confirmed CIA front banks past, such as Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which assisted criminal cloak-and-dagger connivances including Iran/Contra.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the filing records how “diplomatic pressure” was exerted on the FBI not to investigate Riyad’s myriad connections to 9/11. Bureau agents testifying to the joint inquiry into the attacks were moreover “instructed not to reveal the full extent of Saudi involvement with Al-Qaeda.” Senior officials at FBI headquarters knew “of both Bayoumi’s affiliation with Saudi intelligence and…the existence of the CIA’s operation to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar,” but “suppressed investigations” into these burning matters.
The filing concludes by noting Bayoumi was subsequently arrested in Britain on immigration charges immediately after 9/11, with authorities finding “extremist literature in his apartment.” The significance of this disclosure has gone entirely unnoticed, since 2022. Only now, as a result of the New York court case, has the media acknowledged how within days of the attacks, “game-changing” evidence directly implicating Bayoumi in 9/11 was seized from his British home by counter-terror police, then shared with the FBI, which actively buried the information.
Quite unbelievably, the incriminating haul supposedly included a phonebook listing over two dozen Saudi government officials in the US and Saudi Arabia; flight simulator software; tickets and travel documents; and a notepad featuring a sketch of an aircraft. An accompanying note from a British counter-terror officer stated of the latter: “contains handwritten notes mathematical calculations re height of planes.” A member of the 9/11 families’ legal team behind the court action boldly informed the BBC, “it’s the mathematical calculation of the [Pentagon] crash.”
By September 22nd 2001, this seemingly incontrovertible windfall was in the Bureau’s possession. So too highly illuminating home video tapes of Bayoumi roaming around Washington DC in 1999, highlighting security measures in place at the Capitol building, openly discussing nearby Reagan National Airport, and referencing an unspecified “plan” on camera. Other tapes feature Bayoumi in close quarters with senior Al Qaeda figures such as Anwar Awlaki, assassinated in a September 2011 US drone strike.
While British detectives apparently believed they possessed “more than sufficient evidence” to extradite Bayoumi to stand trial, Washington ordered him freed, and he returned to Saudi Arabia. US authorities’ resistance is understandable, given the overwhelming abundance of evidence pointing ineluctably to the CIA at the very least actively facilitating the 9/11 attacks, if not carrying them out, using the Saudis as scapegoats. Media determination to avoid mentioning how Bayoumi et al provably acted as “proxies” for the CIA shows the coverup continues today.
The Dancing Israelis: Newly Released FBI Docs Shed Light on Apparent Mossad Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks
Signs of the Times, Whitney Webb, Mint Press News, Sun, 19 May 2019
Four of the Israeli nationals arrested for “puzzling behavior” during the September 11 attacks are seen casually posing together in front of the Manhattan skyline while the September 11 attacks were in progress
New information released by the FBI has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7thhas brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men – later revealed to be Israeli nationals – had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and “high fiving” each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis’ van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story receivedcoverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten.
The men – Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari – were subsequently apprehended by law enforcement and claimed to be Israeli tourists on a “working holiday” in the United States where they were employed by a moving company, Urban Moving Systems. Upon his arrest, Sivan Kurzberg told the arresting officer, “We are Israeli; we are not your problem. Your problems are our problems, The Palestinians are the problem.”
For years, the official story has been that these individuals, while they had engaged in “immature” behavior by celebrating and being “visibly happy” in their documenting of the attacks, had no prior knowledge of the attack. However, newly released FBI copies of the photos taken by the five Israelis strongly suggest that these individuals had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The copies of the photos were obtained via a FOIA request made by a private citizen.
According to a former high-ranking American intelligence official who spoke to the Jewish daily Forward in 2002, the FBI concluded in its investigation that the five Israelis arrested “were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, NJ, served as a front.” At least two of the men arrested were determined to have direct links to the Mossad after their names appeared in a CIA-FBI database of foreign intelligence operatives. According to one of their lawyers, one of the men, Paul Kurzberg, had previously worked for the Mossad in another country prior to arriving in the United States. Another of those arrested, Oded Ellner, subsequently stated on Israeli TV that the five Israelis had been in New York at the time “to document the event,” meaning the attack on the World Trade Center.
The FOIA release of the photos is notable because responses to prior FOIA requests to the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, had previously claimed that all of the photos taken by the Israeli nationals had been destroyed in January 2014. The photos themselves are heavily redacted, making it impossible to see the Israelis’ facial expressions. However, previously declassified yet heavily redacted FBI reports state that the Israelis are “visibly happy” in nearly every photo, even when the burning towers are in the background. The photos released are also not original copies and instead appear to be photocopies of photocopies of the original pictures. In addition, of the original 76 pictures developed by authorities from the camera in the Israelis’ possession, only 14 were released.
FOIA Release of 9/11 Dancin… by on Scribd
However, three of these photos – despite the heavy redaction and poor quality – are damning. Since 2001, even though the photos were never released until now, it had been known that one of the Israelis arrested – Sivan Kurzberg – was seen in a photo “holding a lighted lighter in the foreground, with the smoldering wreckage [of the twin towers] in the background,” according to Steven Noah Gordon, then-lawyer for the five Israelis, as cited in a New York Times report from November 2001…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.sott.net/article/413373-The-Dancing-Israelis-Newly-Released-FBI-Docs-Shed-Light-on-Apparent-Mossad-Foreknowledge-of-9-11-Attacks
Gazans Feel Despair as Israeli Officials Cement Plans for Permanent Occupation
September 12, 2026, By Shahad Ali, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/12/gazans-feel-despair-as-israeli-officials-cement-plans-for-permanent-occupation/
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has described a plan to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries.
Nearly a year after Donald Trump announced the creation of the “Board of Peace,” which was ostensibly charged with ending Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and overseeing reconstruction, one of the figures most centrally involved in the body has warned that a complete collapse of the so-called ceasefire in Gaza could lead to a “point of no return.”
Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat who serves as Gaza’s High Representative on the Board of Peace, made the comments during a UN Security Council session on Wednesday, August 26. Casualty numbers in Gaza have dropped, he noted, but have not ceased, offering a pointed critique of Israel’s continued bombardment despite the supposed cessation of hostilities.
“If this ceasefire collapses and the strip spirals into another full escalation, there will be no road map to return to, there will be no administration to deploy, and there will be nothing left on the ground to rebuild,” he said.
In his remarks, Mladenov also noted that Hamas and armed factions in the Gaza Strip had agreed to disarm and transfer civilian and security responsibilities to a transitional authority recognized by the United Nations. This was the first time Hamas and the armed factions within Gaza had agreed to such a step, Mladenov announced, which is part of a plan for a new phase of the ceasefire in Gaza. The road map also includes the dismantling of all weapons in the Strip and its demilitarization, subject to verification and monitoring; the complete transfer of civilian and security governance in Gaza; the reconstruction of destroyed areas so people can return to normal life; and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza tied to progress in disarmament.
The full implementation of this 15-point comprehensive plan, which Mladenov had outlined to the council earlier this year, would provide an opportunity to “dramatically improve the lives of Palestinians in Gaza in a sustainable way, provide durable security for Israelis, and move from a conflict that has destabilized the region toward an environment that provides peace, prosperity and economic opportunities for the entire Middle East.”
These comments spread rapidly across Gaza. In displacement camps, Gazans gathered to discuss the details of the road map and the extent to which it might improve the horrific conditions they endure in overcrowded and flimsy tents, deprived of even the basic necessities of life. More than 2 million Palestinians concentrated in only around 30 percent of the Gaza Strip have been left so desperate that we scan news headlines for any indication of a possible end to our suffering. For many, the renewed interest in the Board of Peace plan became a lifeline they could cling to — hoping for a chance to live in peace, rebuild their destroyed lives, and return to areas now controlled by Israel beyond the so-called “Yellow Line.”
However, Mladenov’s announcement has been met with statements from Israeli officials that contradict the Board of Peace’s vision for Gaza’s future and reflect their unwillingness to withdraw from areas under Israeli control.
Before Mladenov’s address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already said he would reject the plan, despite the road map’s connection to U.S. President Donald Trump. During a September 2 visit to Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu also said he had no plans to withdraw from territory under Israeli control. “We are not withdrawing. We are staying along this line, and we control more than 60 percent of the Strip, and there is more still to come,” he said, stressing that military operations against those he described as threatening Israel’s security would continue.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also confirmed in a statement on September 1 that Israeli troops would remain inside the Gaza Strip even after Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarized. Moreover, at a September 2 conference hosted by the Israeli news outlet Yedioth Ahronoth, Katz described a plan to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries — which some Israeli officials falsely describe as voluntary migration rather than ethnic cleansing.
“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration. Hamas isn’t allowing them to leave, and there are no countries in the world taking them in,” he said. He also added that Israel was prepared to carry out the plan “by sea, by air, and by any means,” and suggested that Trump had only “frozen” the plan for ethnic cleansing due to the lack of countries willing to receive Palestinians from Gaza.
These statements have crushed the little glimmer of hope Gazans had clung to and deepened our collective fear that we will be forced to continue living amid rubble, tents, and an ever-expanding Israeli military occupation for years, with no end in sight — all while also facing the even greater threat of being displaced entirely from the Gaza Strip.
Diana Al Ajoz, 41, was displaced from her neighborhood in Al-Zaytoun, which is now under Israeli military control, and is being forced to live in a tent near Gaza City beach. She told me she felt optimistic when she first heard about the Board of Peace’s plan for Gaza, hoping that she would be able to return to a normal life in her beloved neighborhood where she was born and raised. However, when she heard about Israel’s intention not to withdraw from the so-called “Yellow Line,” which encompasses Al-Zaytoun, she felt even more desperate.
“The statements I heard about Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, reconstruction, and the return of life to Gaza gave me hope that we might finally live in lasting peace, away from war and suffering. But then, when I hear statements from Israeli officials saying the opposite — that they intend to keep their forces in Gaza, seize more land, and continue our displacement — it deeply devastated me.”
“After hearing the Israeli statements, I doubt that our living conditions will improve quickly. My biggest fear is that we will continue living in tents for the coming years while dreaming of living in a home that protects us from the cold of winter and the heat of summer,” Al Ajoz added.
“At the same time, I fear that we might continue to suffer the same hardships we face every day just to access the basic necessities of life, whether it is standing in a long line to use the bathroom or to get our share of food or water. I also fear continuing to live away from my beautiful neighborhood, Al-Zaytoun, and keep thinking about the day when I might be able to return to it.”
Alaa Zuatair, 39, lives in a tent in Khan Younis after Israeli forces destroyed her home in Jabalia and took control of her entire neighborhood within the so-called “Yellow Line.” She also told me that she had lost all hope in the plan proposed by the Board of Peace.
“Each time negotiations and talks about improving living conditions in Gaza and bringing an end to our suffering begin, Israel meets them with delays and rejections,” she said.
“I could talk to you endlessly about the harsh reality we are living through here. We have written, appealed, and pleaded with the world to put an end to our suffering, but nothing changes. We are living a life deprived of any stability or even a sense of safety. We have literally reached a point where we think about death every minute and go to sleep without knowing what might happen tomorrow.”
Zuatair also added that her current location offers her no real safety. The area in which she and her family have been displaced to is near the Yellow Line, and they hear gunfire from Israeli forces almost every day and remain at risk of further displacement at any moment.
“We always hear a new statement and a new plan about ending our suffering, while ultimately, we continue to live through the same harsh reality,” she said. “So, honestly, when you talk to me about a ‘Board of Peace,’ I ask: What peace are you talking about? How can there be peace while, at the same time, Israeli officials are talking about displacing Palestinians and seizing more land? How are we supposed to make sense of this equation?”
“I do not have any answers about what our future will look like,” Zuatair concluded. “The only thing we ask for is to live in peace. We want to wake up knowing that the day ahead will pass without fear, without bombardment, and without new displacement.”
Trump Is Planning Round Three of the US-Israeli War Against Iran — But Will Tehran Strike First?
In conversation with Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute
Ian Proud, Sep 11, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/trump-is-planning-round-three-of?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=215182894&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
This conversation with Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, was recorded before President Trump promised Americans $5,000 if he wins the midterms. That pledge does not change the argument. It sharpens it. With round three of the US-Israeli war against Iran looming, the big question is who will strike first?
Trita argues that the slow military escalation and economic warfare now under way are not the third round of the war against Iran. They are the preparation for it.
In his view, the United States and Israel are planning a much larger campaign after November. Trump believes he has already tried diplomacy, sanctions and what might generously be called limited war. What he has not tried is the menu of threats he issued and then abandoned: taking an island, striking desalination plants, hitting critical infrastructure.
After the midterms, Trita fears, that is the direction he will go. Israel is likely to be part of it. Washington kept the Israelis out of round two because it did not trust them to stay inside the box. If the United States no longer wants a box, Trump and Netanyahu may have another crack, despite prior efforts having proved a catastrophic failure.
That, Trita argues, is why Iran is hitting American bases in Jordan. Those sites matter because they help shoot down missiles bound for Israel. Tehran is clearing the path so that, when round three comes, more of its missiles get through.
The obvious objection is that Trump may emerge from the midterms a bruised lame duck. Trita does not think that restrains him. American institutions, he says, are weaker now than ever before. Congress has shown no appetite to defund the war. A Democratic House, and perhaps a Democratic Senate, would mean impeachment of Trump and a president playing defence at home.
However, that is when Trump has been most reckless before. After he lost to Biden in 2020, Mark Milley later said his fear was that Trump would look for an Iran war to block a peaceful transfer of power. He did not get that war. He got 6 January instead. Humiliation makes Trump dangerous, rather than cautious.
But the problem is that Tehran understands this and can see how critical the midterms will be to Trump’s power in the second half of his term. Trita therefore thinks there is a high likelihood that Iran starts the third round of the war a week or two before the midterms, to inflict the maximum political cost on Trump.
That may well damage Trump at the polls. But it may also leave him with fewer constraints and a taste for risk.
The escalation trap is now familiar. Washington reads every tactical gain — more oil leaving the Gulf, a weaker Iranian economy — as proof that time is on its side.
Trita’s warning is the opposite. If the squeeze actually works, Iran will not crumble. It will escalate. It has the options which it is demonstrating daily. Even if Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would not lift the blockade. The key demand on the American side has ratcheted up to state collapse, which appears no more likely to happen now than in February.
The Pentagon talks of bombing Iran periodically to degrade its ability to close the Strait. That is not a strategy, but rather “mowing the lawn”.
Yet, no one will be able to sell this war as a victory if in practice it means an on-off air campaign and no diplomacy as the world economy sinks further into depression. Which brings us back to the midterms and the fact that Trump may find that, despite the inducement of a $5000 bribe, many Americans will realise that what they need is a new lawnmower.
You can watch the full conversation here:
You can find Trita’s analysis on his Substack: tritaparsi.substack.com.
Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and religion, I wish you much peace.
Three Major Revelations About The Gaza Holocaust In The Israeli Press
Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 10, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/three-major-revelations-about-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=214991965&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The Israeli press has published three significant revelations about the Gaza holocaust, reporting (1) that Benjamin Netanyahu concealed advanced knowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7, (2) that Israel rejected a Hamas offer to release all civilian hostages immediately after October 7, and (3) that according to an IDF drone operator, the Israeli military was intentionally firing on civilians throughout Gaza during its operations in the Palestinian territory.
The first two come from a Haaretz article titled “Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs”, which was released ahead of an upcoming Haaretz book about the hostage standoff in Gaza.
Haaretz describes a call between Netanyahu and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, citing three foreign senior sources:
“A week and a half before October 7, 2023 the Emirati ruler called Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi and spoke with him for 45 minutes. In that conversation, bin Zayed warned that Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel. Bin Zayed expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords.”
Haaretz reports that rather than pass these warnings on to Israeli national security officials, Netanyahu chose to sit on information which an unnamed Shin Bet official said could have “changed our entire assessment picture.”
Haaretz also notes that Israel had received similar warnings about a coming Hamas attack from Egyptian intelligence, which had been reported earlier. These are just two items in the mountains upon mountains upon mountains of evidence indicating that powerful people in Israel knowingly allowed Hamas to inflict as much damage as possible on October 7 2023 in order to advance the murderous ethnic cleansing objectives we’ve seen rolled out in the years since.
Nothing will turn you into a conspiracy theorist faster than learning basic facts about what happened on October 7. But even without knowing those facts it already strains credulity to believe Israel had no advance knowledge of a complex attack which would require extensive open-air training in one of the most heavily surveilled strips of land on our planet. Especially when you look at all the pre-existing military agendas Israel was able to push forward in the aftermath.
Later in that same article, Haaretz quotes a Palestinian politician named Samir Mashharawi describing what Hamas leadership told him during his mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas after October 7:
“He told me that in the first stage, they had no problem releasing all civilians without anything in return,” Mashharawi recounts. “I swear, those were his exact words: all civilians, without anything in return. They had only one condition: They wanted us to bring in an agreed-upon mediator as quickly as possible, so that negotiations could immediately begin over everything else.”
Mashharawi said Israel rejected the offer. A senior Israeli defense official corroborated this, telling Haaretz:
“The release of the hostages did not even enter the list of war objectives formulated by the government on the night of October 7. Could the proposal have been properly discussed and a decision reached? In substantive terms, the answer is yes. But the prevailing mood was like after Pearl Harbor: We had just suffered a brutal blow, we were in the midst of war, who had the bandwidth to talk about stopping the fighting and starting negotiations now, even if it was to save the lives of dozens of people, whose final number was still unknown?”
So all that hasbara about the hostages and the Bibas kids and how Hamas needed to be destroyed because they were refusing to release innocent civilian captives was complete bunk from the very beginning. Hamas offered to release them with no conditions but the opening of communication lines. Israel refused, because what they wanted was to steal more Palestinian land. It was never about the hostages, and anyone who said it was is a liar.
Lastly, a separate report in Hebrew from Haaretz quotes an Israeli air force reserve major describing how IDF policies and culture ensured the deaths of large numbers of civilians. Here are a few quotes, translated by Israeli-American political analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim:
1) He was involved in the March 23, 2025 paramedic killings in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah and said, “You could clearly tell these were rescue vehicles even as fire was opened on them from the ground. For no apparent reason, the force on the ground charged the convoy. They shot the first vehicle, the medical personnel got out, hid behind the ambulances and begged for their lives, and the soldiers shot them one after another.”
“On how the yellow line was used as an excuse to kill innocent people: “The Palestinians didn’t know it existed, and the Air Force wasn’t always updated either. From the perspective of a farmer walking onto his own land — he has no idea he’s stepping into an area the IDF suddenly decided is a fire zone. And then all kinds of retroactive justifications started coming up. ‘He came for an arms deal.’ ‘He touched the ground, maybe he’s planting an explosive.’ To me it looked like they were trying to incriminate people with no intelligence and no proof.”
On how all morals were lost in Gaza: “”The feeling was that something tore, everyone had already become cynical about death, you can’t understand it from the outside. It’s not just fatigue, it’s an erosion of morality, of responsibility, of the sense that someone is still managing the event. Very quickly this whole business of ‘collateral damage’ disappeared from the considerations. They fire on anyone they see. The atmosphere started to be like the stands at a soccer match. The way you shout at a player, ‘Yalla, score,’ that’s how they shout at a soldier, ‘Kill him, strike him.’”
Like the other revelations, this report further discredits the lies the public was sold about Israel’s reasons for its atrocities in Gaza. All those lies about how Israel is taking extraordinary measures to protect civilian life in Gaza and only kills civilians because Hamas “hides behind human shields” has been thoroughly discredited by copious amounts of evidence that Israel was going out of its way to kill noncombatants throughout the course of the onslaught.
The world was lied to about the Gaza holocaust, just like it was lied to about every other act of mass military slaughter that the US involves itself in. Please carry these lessons into the future.
Satellite images reveal surge in building activity at Iranian nuclear site after Trump’s bomb threat
Trump said the US would have to hit Iran ‘very hard’ if they found they’d been working on Pickaxe Mountain
Bryony Gooch, Thursday 10 September 2026 , https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/satellite-image-iran-pickaxe-mountain-trump-bomb-b3048042.html
The UN’s nuclear watchdog has said that nuclear activity is taking place at Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, a day after new satellite imagery showed a surge in construction activity at the site.
Analysis of satellite images at the heavily fortified site, which is believed to host two deeply buried tunnel complexes, and the nearby damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility, suggests there has been active excavation.
The development threatens to bring further escalation between the US and Iran after Donald Trump recently warned the US would bomb the nuclear site.
Researchers from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies used six years of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) change detection with Sentinel-2 optical change detection and very-high-resolution (VHR) Airbus imagery from July 9, 2026, as well as a Satellogic image from August 9, 2026.
The images revealed that there was more road activity at Pickaxe Mountain in 2026 than at any point in the site’s history, suggesting the raising and hardening of the portal accesses, paving of the internal road network, reinforcement around access areas, they said.
It comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, told Bloomsberg on Thursday there was activity at Pickaxe Mountain.
Trump said at the midterm Republican convention on Wednesday that they would hit Iran “very hard” if the US found they’d been working on the nuclear site.
“We notice there’s a little activity at Pickaxe. I would advise Iran not to get cute because we will have to hit them very hard,” Trump said in a speech at the midterm Republican convention. He has been threatening strikes on Pickaxe Mountain since at least mid-July.
Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen has also escalated in the past few days, a second theatre of war that threatens global energy supplies from the Middle East.
Houthi militants have taken control of the Yemeni Red Sea city of Mocha and are launching attacks on the strategic Red Sea islands of Hanish, the Yemeni sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Government forces and their allies are relocating south to Dhubab, which sits directly on the strait, across from the island of Perim. Control of Dhubab and the island is key to gaining hold of the strait, they said.
Iran Targets US Warships With New Precision Munitions As Shock Offensive Rocks The ‘Greater Israel’
Robert Inlakesh MintPress News, September 10, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/10/iran-targets-us-warships-with-new-precision-munitions-as-shock-offensive-rocks-the-greater-israel/
Iran launches newly acquired precision missiles towards US warships in the Persian Gulf as the Trump administration’s ‘Economic D-Day’ backfires tremendously. In this Monday’s episode of The Target Stream Mint Press News’ Robert Inlakesh takes a look at the latest developments reshaping the US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic.
Tel Aviv has raised its level of alert anticipating a potential surprise attack during the Jewish holiday period of Yom Kippur, fearing that Tehran may have in store a major multi-front offensive in the coming month. Whether the fears of a large-scale missile attack are based upon dependable intelligence or not, the Israelis have decided to escalate the war on neighbouring Lebanon regardless.
The Israeli army recently claimed that it had secured full “operational control” over the strategically important Ali Al-Taher Hills area in southern Lebanon, without providing any proof that such control has in fact been established. Seemingly contradicting their claims, they have continued to launch hundreds of strikes against the Ali Al-Taher hills and its surrounding area, which is of military value due to its position overlooking southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh governorate. An advance of this magnitude, which includes an attempt to dismantle a known missile base there, constitutes yet another flagrant violation of the shaky Lebanon ceasefire.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has occasionally launched drone operations against Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, while holding itself back from reviving its daily operations against the occupying army.
On this edition of the stream we also look at the decision taken by the Ansarallah-led Yemeni government to launch new offensive actions to capture strategic locations towards the south of the country. The offensive led to major breakthroughs, including the encircling of the city of Taiz. In reaction, Saudi-proxy forces unsuccessfully launched their own counter-offensives in a bid to capture new territory in the province of al-Jawf and towards the city of Bayda.
Inlakesh also analyses the latest battle footage from Yemen, including new video documentation of the Yemeni Armed Forces using anti-personnel munitions dropped from Quadcopter drones and precision missile strikes, one of which eliminated an entire convoy of trucks carrying munitions.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also released footage of its missile strikes against US targets and for the first time drone strike documentation against tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. All of this contributes to the continued spike in oil prices, which US President Donald Trump has continually stated will begin falling.
Another issue addressed at length in the newest edition of The Target is the viral debate ongoing with Streamer Sneako, on whose show a number of guests have argued that former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for more civilian deaths than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We look at what the figures actually show and why so many people are engaged in spreading disinformation that works to undermine the Gaza genocide.
Israeli war minister orders army to prepare for ‘all-out war’ on Palestinian Authority
Monday, 07 September 2026 , https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/07/775858/Israeli-military-ordered-to-prepare-for–all-out-war–on-Palestinian-Authority
Israeli minister of military affairs Israel Katz says he and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have ordered the occupation army to prepare for an “all-out war” in the occupied West Bank.
Katz said on Monday that the offensive would be launched if Israel determines that Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces or groups affiliated with them are planning an attack similar to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood – the operation carried out by Gaza-based resistance groups on October 7, 2023.
Under the proposed plan, Israel would target senior PA officials, the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus, and resistance infrastructure across the territory.
The assault could include targeted killings and the forced evacuation of residents from cities and villages in the occupied West Bank, “just as we did” in Gaza and southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military has flattened large areas and driven people from their homes.
“If the security apparatuses of the Palestinian Authority and the bodies associated with them launch, or we know for certain that they are about to launch, an October 7-style attack against forces and Jewish settlements, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I instructed the army to prepare to launch an all-out war against senior officials and mechanisms of the [Palestinian] Authority, the bodies associated with them, and against all infrastructure in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] — in order to quickly bring about their complete defeat,” Katz threatened.
“We will not allow for a return to a reality of a continued intifada spanning years, as was the case in the past,” the Israeli war minister added.
The threat followed an incident on Monday morning in which a Palestinian reportedly stabbed an Israeli settler, about 20 years old, at a farming outpost in the occupied West Bank. Israeli troops later shot the Palestinian man dead after claiming he tried to stab them during a manhunt.
Hebrew-language media reported that the settler was stabbed at the Maoz Yehuda settlement farm near the village of Usarin in the northern West Bank and was wounded in the chest, back, and shoulders.
Hamas condemns surge in settler violence
The Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement condemned the sharp rise in settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, assaults carried out with the protection and backing of Israeli occupation forces.
“This is part of a systematic policy that targets our people and homeland, and intends to materialize annexation, forced displacement, and ethnic cleansing in the territory. This necessitates serious and effective action at all levels to put an end to such crimes, and hold the perpetrators to account,” Hamas said in a statement.
Hamas stressed that the blood of fallen resistance fighters will never be in vain, and that rising settler violence will not break the will of Palestinians or drive them from their ancestral land.
“Rather, it will strengthen their commitment to their rights. It will consolidate their resolve in the face of the occupying regime’s settlement and displacement plans,” the statement said.
Hamas called on Palestinians from all walks of life in the West Bank to confront Israeli military and settler attacks, protect their lands and properties, block plans for displacement, settlement expansion, and annexation, and defend their homeland and national rights.
About 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East al-Quds. They routinely carry out attacks aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians, according to Palestinian figures.
The international community regards these settlements as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions because they are built on occupied land. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activity in several resolutions.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of historical Palestine illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds. Those rulings, like so many before them, have remained mere words.
Inside Assad’s nuclear secrets
Al Majalla chose Bashar al‑Assad’s nuclear programme as this week’s
cover story following reports issued by the International Atomic Energy
Agency in early September, which revealed that the project was much more
extensive than previously believed. This investigation traces the hidden
history of the former Syrian president’s nuclear ambitions, while shedding
light on the roles played by North Korea and Iran, the depth of Israel’s
penetration into the most guarded leadership circles, the destruction of
the al‑Kibar reactor in 2007, and the 2008 assassination of Brigadier
General Mohammed Suleiman—one of the senior officials entrusted with
Syria’s most sensitive strategic weapons programmes.
Al Majalla 10th Sept 2026, https://en.majalla.com/node/332964/politics/inside-assad%E2%80%99s-nuclear-secrets
U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Deal Clears Vienna Hurdle As Congress Review Continues
Congressional Democrats have pushed back hard, joined by some Republicans, arguing the deal opens the door to a wider enrichment race across the Middle East. The White House, meanwhile, has tied the agreement to Saudi Arabia eventually joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel, a step Riyadh has so far declined to take without progress toward Palestinian statehood.
Oil Price, By Michael Kern – Sep 08, 2026,
- IAEA chief Rafael Grossi says Saudi Arabia won’t sign the Additional Protocol but will accept oversight powers over enrichment, conversion and reprocessing that closely mirror it.
- The underlying US-Saudi 123 agreement, signed July 22, opens a path to domestic uranium enrichment after a two-year study, a break from the UAE’s enrichment-free ‘gold standard.’
- Congress is 90 days into reviewing the deal, with Democrats and nonproliferation groups pushing back and two side letters still classified.
A planned nuclear cooperation deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia won’t include the toughest inspection regime the U.N.’s atomic watchdog has to offer, but it’s going to come close on the activities that matter most.
That’s the picture International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi laid out Monday in Vienna, speaking to reporters during the agency’s September Board of Governors meeting. Riyadh isn’t signing the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, the tool that lets inspectors show up unannounced at sites a country hasn’t even declared. But Grossi said Saudi Arabia is preparing to grant the agency verification and monitoring authority over its most sensitive nuclear activities, uranium enrichment, the conversion step that precedes it, and reprocessing, that functions almost the same way……………………………………………
Under the terms reported at signing, Washington and Riyadh have two years to study whether domestic enrichment makes commercial sense. Any enrichment plant built afterward would go up under a “black box” model, run by U.S. companies inside Saudi Arabia so the underlying technology never actually changes hands. It’s a sharp departure from Washington’s 2009 pact with the United Arab Emirates, the deal nonproliferation advocates still call the gold standard, under which Abu Dhabi permanently gave up enrichment and reprocessing altogether.
Congress Gets Its Say
The administration sent the agreement to Congress in late August, starting a 90-day review clock under the Atomic Energy Act. Lawmakers can let it take effect by doing nothing, or pass a joint resolution of disapproval to kill it, though that would need to survive a presidential veto. Two side letters attached to the deal remain classified, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which also notes that of the 51 countries with active 123 agreements, only Argentina and Brazil currently lack the Additional Protocol. Saudi Arabia would be the third.
Congressional Democrats have pushed back hard, joined by some Republicans, arguing the deal opens the door to a wider enrichment race across the Middle East. The White House, meanwhile, has tied the agreement to Saudi Arabia eventually joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel, a step Riyadh has so far declined to take without progress toward Palestinian statehood.
The Backdrop
For Riyadh, the deal is also part of a broader push under Vision 2030 to build out nuclear power alongside renewables and diversify an economy still tied to oil exports, with U.S. firms like Westinghouse positioned to compete for reactor contracts worth billions. The talks are unfolding against last year’s war between Israel and Iran, which has hardened Gulf calculations around nuclear deterrence. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said publicly the kingdom would pursue a weapon of its own if Iran ever built one. Iran, for its part, operated under the Additional Protocol from 2016 to 2021 under the nuclear deal that collapsed after the U.S. withdrew in 2018, a history nonproliferation groups keep pointing to as they push for tougher terms on Riyadh.
For now, the deal sits in a kind of holding pattern. Congress’s review runs deep into the fall. The bilateral safeguards text is still being finalized in Vienna. And whether the arrangement Grossi described Monday ends up satisfying skeptics on Capitol Hill, or just gives them a new set of details to pick apart, is still an open question.
Israel’s Quadcopter Drones Have Become a Weapon of Everyday Killing in Gaza
September 9, 2026, By Malak Hijazi & Ohood Nassar, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/09/israels-quadcopter-drones-have-become-a-weapon-of-everyday-killing-in-gaza/
No space, either on land or in water, sits outside the drones’ reach. The siege tightens by the day.
Sadeq Abdelhafiz, 26, noticed an unusual quiet around him as he stood in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza near the cemetery on Salah al-Din Street. A small quadcopter drone (about the size of a floor tile) had fired a volley of bullets just minutes earlier, and it was still there, hovering over the minaret of the nearby Ibn Marwan Mosque, adjacent to the cemetery.
Abdelhafiz turned his head to see his friend Mustafa Mushtaha leaning against a tree. At first, he thought Mushtaha was tired from walking, or taking shelter out of fear. Then he realized his friend had been shot.
Abdelhafiz and Mushtaha had traveled to the cemetery on June 10, 2025, along with members of Mushtaha’s family and friends, to bury Mushtaha’s sisters, who had been killed in an Israeli strike days earlier. However, when they reached the cemetery, they found the Israeli quadcopter hovering above them.
They never expected it would open fire.
“We were only doing the burial, and it was obvious,” Abdelhafiz told Truthout. After they placed both of his sisters in a single grave due to the lack of space, the quadcopter started firing randomly at them. “We buried them quickly, in a rush, without any order,” Abdelhafiz said.
Abdelhafiz suggested leaving the cemetery separately, since the graves left only a narrow gap, barely enough for one person to pass. “Mustafa was behind me, five steps away. I could hear his footsteps, until I couldn’t,” Abdelhafiz said. Then he heard him say, “I feel a sharp stab in my back.” Abdelhafiz, with Mushtaha’s brother and uncle, carried him toward the exit as the quadcopter fired again. When he took off Mushtaha’s shirt, he found a bullet wound in his back.
By chance, a Palestinian Ministry of Health service vehicle was passing them. It was transporting employees but lacked first-aid supplies. They placed Mushtaha inside, and Abdelhafiz put his hand on his neck to check if he was breathing. Abdelhafiz told me, “I felt he had passed away while we were in the car.” When they arrived at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, they brought Mushtaha into an emergency tent already overwhelmed with more than 100 wounded people. The doctor tried to give him first aid, but it was in vain: Mushtaha had already died.
The small drone that took Mushtaha’s life is part of an Israeli strategy to pull warfare down into the intimacy of everyday space.
A Killing Machine That Israeli Officials Say Is “Like a Video Game”
Quadcopters are small, multi-rotor tactical drones. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel deploys two models of armed quadcopters: the Matrice 600, which was originally designed for civilian use before being converted into a tool for surveillance and lethal strikes, and the Lanius, a purpose-built AI-powered military drone. Zeteo further reported that Israel appears to be the first military in the world to deploy an armed quadcopter in actual combat.
While the term “quadcopter” is now deeply ingrained in daily life in Gaza, associated with sudden bursts of gunfire through alleyways and windows, Israel’s usage of these armed drones began before October 7, 2023.
The technology first became familiar to Palestinians in Gaza during the 2018 Great March of Return, when Israeli forces, including reservists activated as drone pilots, used the DJI Matrice 600 model to drop tear gas canisters on unarmed demonstrators, causing severe injuries.
By 2019, some quadcopter models were adapted for targeted assassinations, as in the killing of Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu al-Ata. Three years later, in November 2022, the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems publicly unveiled Lanius, a palm-sized drone built for autonomous navigation and close-quarters strikes.
However, when Israel launched its assault on Gaza following the October 7, 2023, attack, these armed quadcopters moved from limited, targeted use, to broad deployment across the Strip.
Their use has intensified for multiple purposes: surveillance, issuing displacement directives, injuring, and killing. The drones have reportedly employed the tactic of terrorizing civilians with recorded sounds of crying infants, screaming women, and barking dogs to lure them into the open before opening fire.
Israeli security officials, speaking on Channel 14, confirmed the use of what they called “a new generation of lethal weapons.” They added that a quadcopter “does not hesitate, does not stop, and almost never makes mistakes,” comparing its operation to “watching a video game.”
Quadcopters Target Children
Children have paid a particular price as quadcopters have become more widespread. On August 12, 2026, despite the declared ceasefire, a quadcopter attack in Khan Younis wounded a father and critically wounded his 13-year-old son as they walked home after buying falafel. The father described a blast that scattered everyone nearby. He found his son on the ground, bleeding from shrapnel wounds to the head and leg.
A month earlier, on July 3, 2026, a quadcopter dropped a bomb on two children from the Tawtah family as they filled water containers behind Al-Omari Mosque, east of Gaza City. One child was killed and the other wounded.
The pattern repeats in hospital wards across Gaza. A report by the Costs of War project at Brown University documented 18 cases in a single month, from August to September 2024, of children admitted with single, small-caliber gunshot wounds to the head, neck, chest, or abdomen. In 90 percent of cases, families reported the children had been shot directly by quadcopter drones.
Sometimes the evidence comes from the perpetrators themselves. In May 2026, an Israeli soldier from the Kfir Brigade posted a video on his private Instagram account: a quadcopter firing upon two barefoot Palestinian children in Gaza. The children appear to survive a strike, but the video does not reveal their ultimate fate. A UN commission of inquiry later found that the Kfir brigade killed two brothers, aged 9 and 10, in a drone strike as they gathered firewood, more than 300 meters from any soldiers.
Enforcing the Siege
Today, these drones also serve as the primary enforcement mechanism of the so-called Yellow Line, a boundary originally marked by yellow blocks to delineate zones for expected Israeli withdrawal under the October 2025 ceasefire terms. But instead of receding, the line has expanded.
According to OCHA, the “Yellow Line” initially restricted Palestinians’ access to about 53 percent of Gaza after the October 2025 so-called ceasefire. Israel later introduced a further “Orange Line,” extending tighter restrictions to 64.9 percent of the Strip by June 2026, crowding more than 2 million people into a shrinking space. Quadcopters enforce these invisible boundaries, hovering over anyone who moves near them and blocking displaced people from returning home.
Israeli officials have given no indication this will change. On August 9, 2026, Netanyahu rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point plan, declaring Israeli forces would not withdraw until Hamas is disarmed. With no mechanism to inform residents when the line advances, many Palestinians wake to find their area has fallen under fire overnight.
The threat is not confined to land. On August 14, 2026, Israeli naval boats and quadcopter drones opened fire on a fishing boat west of Gaza City, wounding three fishermen. No space, neither on land nor in water, sits outside the drones’ reach, drawing the siege tighter by the day.
Silencing the Witnesses
Journalists trying to document these killings have themselves become targets. Iman Al-Ajla, a 24-year-old Gaza-based journalist who has survived multiple drone attacks, told Truthout how these weapons are turned directly against media workers on the ground.
In October 2025, after refusing to displace south and remaining in Gaza City, Al-Ajla went alongside six fellow journalists to Al-Shifa Hospital to document an Israeli strike. As they arrived, a quadcopter opened fire directly at the group. “They shot at us to prevent us from documenting the truth,” she recalled.
Months later, in early July 2026, Al-Ajla faced the drones again while covering the advance of the Yellow Line in eastern Shujaiya alongside two photojournalists.
“We fled the area immediately and saw the gunfire strike the tents, injuring dozens inside,” Al-Ajla told Truthout. “It was a horrific situation, made worse by the fact that it happened during a declared ceasefire. We later saw serious injuries coming to the hospital after that same shooting.”
Iman’s experience is only one fragment of a far wider toll. The number of people killed in Gaza continues to rise despite the declared ceasefire, now exceeding 73,000 — roughly 3.4 percent of the Strip’s pre-war population of 2.1 million — a figure that does not include the more than 174,000 wounded. The quadcopter has been a central tool in this relentless campaign. It does not hesitate. Neither, it seems, does the impunity that follows it.
Energy secretary says US might not reach nuclear agreement with Iran
Chris Wright tells ABC there ‘may not’ be an agreement that would prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons
Maya Yang, Guardian, Mon 7 Sep 2026
US energy secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday morning that the US may not be able to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran that would prevent the country from having nuclear weapons.
Asked on ABC on Sunday morning about any sign of such a deal, as negotiations appear stalled and the US-Israel war on Iran continues, Wright said: “There may not be a nuclear agreement.”
He talked about options for ending the “existential threat” of a nuclear armed Iran coming about by further US military action to knock out the country’s capacity to manufacture and deploy such missiles, saying: “It may be simply [a case of] destroying their capabilities to do it” or else “an agreement may await the next administration in Iran”.
He later said on CBS that the US was not shutting down diplomatic outreach and was “always open for a deal”. Wright told that network’s Face the Nation show that the “biggest role” of the US military in the Gulf region currently was to stop Iranian energy exports.
“We are strangling their economy to try to bring either a change in policy from the existing regime or a new regime,” he said.
In an earlier interview with CNN on Sunday, Wright declined to declare the strait of Hormuz safe for oil tankers – unless they are being escorted by the US navy – and stopped short of saying whether the navy would need to remain in the Gulf region “indefinitely” in order to keep the vital energy passageway operating, as the conflict drags on.
This came despite Donald Trump’s repeated claims that ships can safely navigate the narrow marine waterway, and the US president’s insistence last week that the US controls the strait, while floating the idea that it be named after him – statements that were followed by further strikes from both sides in the area.
Wright, appearing for an interview on CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday as well as ABC and CBS, was asked whether he could “unequivocally” assure safety to merchant ships transiting the strait. The question came after a New York Times report found that August was the deadliest month for merchant vessels in the area since March…………………………………………………………………………………
Wright was also asked by CNN if he would say the US is still at war. “We’re still in a conflict, for sure,” he said. On Thursday, the US vice-president JD Vance said at a White House press briefing: “I wouldn’t call it a war,” instead referring to a military conflict. Trump then defended Vance, saying: “A lot of people do not call it a war, I would call it a military conflict, because it’s small potatoes for us … it’s not a big thing.”
The Republican US senator John Kennedy of Louisiana was asked on Sunday by NBC if the war would be over by November.
“Probably not,” he said.
The conflict passed the six-month mark in late August. The former defense secretary Leon Panetta warned in an interview with the Guardian this weekend that it could last a lot longer. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/06/us-iran-nuclear-agreement-chris-wright
Dreams about Gaza: Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Proposals
5 September 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/dreams-about-gaza-israels-ethnic-cleansing-proposals/
I’m Let’s be done with the pretence of decency and soggy references to just resolution in the face of extreme circumstances. Be done with the hilarious stage acts of referring to legal doctrines that either do not exist or cannot exist in the bloodied context they are being forced to refer to. The State of Israel is intent, with every arm, administrative faculty and office bearer of consequence, to achieve ethnic effacing and utopic bliss with the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, with the former going first.
Speaking on September 2 at a conference organised by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz returned to a theme so rapidly hardening it is likely to ossify at any given moment: that a Gaza filled with Palestinians is not a tenable proposition from the perspective of his country’s interests. Whatever dubious tag is attached – immigration, migration, or depopulation – the current populace could simply not remain. “In the end, there is no real solution for Gaza without this migration.” The emigration of Palestinians would take place “by any means” (“by sea, by air, by every way possible”), the process having only been put on ice by US President Donald Trump.
It had been one of those moments of mental arrest, but Trump engendered a sharp frisson in the ranks of the Netanyahu government with his February 2025 proposal to relocate the residents of Gaza. Once done, developers and builders could come in and turn the strip into a tourist destination replete with the vulgar fripperies typical of such resorts. By October 2025, Trump’s peace plan envisaged something else; the relocation-development scheme seemed to have not so much stalled as died in its sleep, with the promise that the residents could stay and engage in the process of rebuilding the devastated territory. Point 12 of the plan is explicit on this: “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.” Not so, according to Katz. “The [depopulation] plan hasn’t been cancelled; it is being discussed all the time, even now, and I think there is no other solution for everyone’s good.”
When asked when this odious object might be facilitated, Katz airily suggested that the conduct of Hamas could be the catalyst, notably “when it becomes clear that [it] is not fulfilling its commitment[s]” under US peace plans. “Then we will get a green light to advance militarily, territorially, and in other areas as well.”
During a visit to an IDF post close to the Yellow Line demarcating Israel’s area of control from the rest of the Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his firm intentions. “We are not withdrawing,” he stated in a video message distributed by his office. “We are staying on this line. We control 60% of the Strip. And there is still more to come, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us – we do this day in and day out.”
Gallingly, Katz had the temerity to suggest that the Gazans wished to leave – some 80% – making passing reference to vague, unsubstantiated surveys that had been conducted by Israeli authorities. (It’s always curious how the rabidly patriotic always assume that no other group can cling, so desperately and tenaciously, to a strip of land, whatever the cost.) If only other countries were willing to accept those apparently willing residents of Gaza, the problems would vanish. “Hamas isn’t allowing them [to leave], and there are no countries in the world taking them in. President Trump put the issue on the agenda. Now every country needs to take people in – and that’s the big issue.”
This deplorable language, condemned by US Democratic Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen, received a boost of patriotic umami from Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The minister tends to make a habit of going to prisons to gloat about their ruinous conditions, all the time threatening Palestinian inmates with impending death, ensuring the deprivation of basic human rights (they, the reasoning goes, do not deserve them) while encouraging the inexorable de facto annexation of the West Bank. On September 3, he also advanced his oxymoronic version of a “voluntary emigration” plan dubbed “Disengagement 710”, a nod to Israel’s exit from Gaza in 2005 and the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
The plan entails the removal of 250,000 Gazans in the first year, 1.11 million within three years and 1.86 million within seven. A sinister “Emigration Ministry” will oversee the process. “Instead of [Gazans] digging tunnels, it’s time to pack suitcases,” reasoned Ben-Gvir. To sweeten the abuse, emigrants would receive an “absorption package” comprising “assistance with travel, initial housing, vocational training, employment and support for up to 24 months.” Payments would also be made to recipient States.
In his remarks, Ben-Gvir also had room to draw inspiration from Trump. Ignoring the Gaza Peace Plan, the minister preferred to focus on the President’s initial proposal to “encourage emigration [as] a solution to the Gaza issue.” From being “treated as a delusional extremist,” he mused about his own standing, plans of removing Palestinians had “become legitimate. Suddenly, everyone became Ben-Gvir.”
The second part of the Palestinian eradication program involves the full assertion of sovereign control over the West Bank, though the process there is necessarily staggered, a form of slow-motion extermination of a culture and people that is taking place before an international law system petrified and mostly silent. So far, things are coming along nicely – from the settlers’ perspective. They are the spear carrying proxies for an ethnic cleansing regime. The Israeli authorities have their backs and, when they do intervene to curb any zeal, a mild slap on the wrist is the best to expect. The consistently promoted narrative is that the more violent perpetrators are errant buffoons with a death wish yet sporting a good heart, buffoons in good standing with the broader annexation drive that has been approved by the Knesset in a non-binding motion.
A word, to finish off, on the very euphemistic term “ethnic cleansing.” To say cleansing is a ghastly concession to the supposed wickedness of impurity. Something needs rinsing, the stains need removal. This application of ideological detergent assumes that there is something deficient or suspect in a race, an ethnicity or a religious group, a people, in short. It follows that what is happening to the Palestinians is ethnic in nature and not so much cleansing as eradicative.
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