Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Hospitals. Now It’s Banning Doctors Without Borders.
Israel says it will start enforcing its ban on 37 aid groups in Gaza in March, putting more Palestinian lives at risk
.By Eman Abu Zayed , Truthout, February 12, 2026
On January 1, the Israeli occupation revoked the licenses of 37 international and local humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, and it has now warned they must “must complete the cessation of their activities by March 1, 2026.” These organizations provide essential services to civilians: delivering food aid to the poor, supplying clean drinking water, supporting hospitals with medicines and medical equipment, protecting children and women, and overseeing education and nutrition programs in camps and local communities. The decision to revoke the licenses affects more than just paperwork — it threatens the lives of thousands of civilians who rely on this aid daily to survive one of the most severe humanitarian crises the territory has faced.
The license revocation came at the same time that Donald Trump established the “Board of Peace” tasked with overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction and implementing the second phase of the ceasefire. This international group, which includes no representation of Palestinians themselves, is allegedly responsible for facilitating the delivery of aid and the rebuilding of war-damaged areas. However, the ban on humanitarian organizations creates a significant gap, threatening the continuity of vital relief programs and leaving thousands of Palestinians without real protection amid harsh living conditions.
According to international humanitarian law, all parties in conflict are obliged to allow humanitarian aid to enter and to enable neutral organizations to assist those in need, regardless of political or security considerations. This obligation includes protecting civilians and ensuring the continued delivery of food, medicine, and clean water to affected populations. Under these laws, Israel bears the responsibility to permit these organizations to operate in Gaza and facilitate their activities in a way that does not endanger civilians or staff. Denying access to essential services constitutes a direct violation of international law.
According to testimonies from staff within aid organizations operating in Gaza, such as Oxfam, the restrictions imposed by Israel are seen as a means of pressuring humanitarian organizations to halt the delivery of vital aid. One Oxfam employee based in Gaza, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal, explained that these measures are not merely about controlling aid — they aim to criminalize humanitarian work, weaken aid infrastructure, harm civilians, and increase daily suffering.
Staff members from the branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) based at Al-Aqsa Hospital confirmed to Truthout that the restrictions include detailed demands for employee information and operational locations, as well as strict administrative procedures, making it extremely difficult to continue their work and threatening the stability of food, medicine, and water services relied upon by thousands of civilians daily. In light of these pressures, employees believe that the real objective of these policies is not security, but rather to disrupt humanitarian work and widen the gap in aid delivery……………………………………………..
These restrictions come at a critical moment, as humanitarian workers face real dangers in carrying out their duties. Since the beginning of the Israeli assault in October 2023, at least 543 humanitarian workers have been killed while providing aid in Gaza, including staff from local and international organizations. Over 1,700 health care workers have lost their lives while attempting to deliver medical care to the wounded and other patients. Additionally, around 256 journalists and media personnel, as well as more than 140 civil defense workers, have been killed. These shocking statistics demonstrate how Israel has turned humanitarian work into a dangerous mission, threatening the continuity of essential services………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-destroyed-gazas-hospitals-now-its-banning-doctors-without-borders/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=6c4318efa8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_02_12_10_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-6c4318efa8-650192793
U.S. Tech Park in Israel May Have a Nuclear Power Plant
While President Trump has busted through a lot of international norms, and removed the U.S. from multilateral agreements like climate change, busting the bounds of the Nonproliferation Treaty would set a dangerous precedent that could be followed by similar actions by Russia and China
The fact that Israel has signed an MOU with the U.S. that could potentially involve it acquiring U.S. manufactured SMRs is a signal that if India can do it, so can Israel. Saudi Arabia will not be far behind in asking for the same deal should the Israeli industrial park agreement move forward beyond the MOU stage.
February 7, 2026 by djysrv, https://neutronbytes.com/2026/02/07/u-s-tech-park-in-israel-may-have-a-nuclear-power-plant/
Israel signed an agreement with the U.S. on 01/16/26 to build an industrial park to produce advanced computer chips at a location in the Negev desert that would use a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) to power the factory and nearby data centers also planned for this location.
Where things stand now, according to Israel news media, Israel and the US have inked an agreement to jointly build and operate a large technological park in Israel. The deal is part of a strategic cooperation agreement on AI signed in Jerusalem last month. (Israel government statement)
One of the surprising details to emerge from the discussions on the agreement relates to the energy infrastructure. The huge power demands of data centers and AI computer systems require a large, reliable 7/24/365 energy solution. As a result, the possibility appears to be kicking around of constructing one or more nuclear power plants, most likely SMRs, at the site.
The MOU, signed by the head of the National AI Directorate, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Erez Eskel, and the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg, reveals an ambitious plan to allocate 4,000 acres to the U.S. The park, which will be constructed in the Negev Desert or less likely in the Gaza Strip border area, and which will be called “Fort Foundry One”
Helberg travelled to Israel after signing similar agreements in Doha and Abu Dhabi. He said that Israel was an “anchor partner” in the effort, thanks to its technological ecosystem and its ability to produce “asymmetric results” in relation to its geographical size.
US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Jacob Helberg said, “With the launch of Pax Silica, the United States and Israel are uniting our innovation ecosystems to ensure the future is shaped by strong and sovereign allies leading in critical technologies like AI and robotics.”
Helberg comes to his role as a former lobbyist for Silicon Valley information technology firms and as a former executive for Google. One of his key interest areas has been addressing the national security risks posed to the U.S. by China. He wrote a book on the subject, The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power, (2021) calling for a stronger U.S. strategy against China’s technological ambition. According to the publisher’s book jacket, Helberg led Google’s global internal product policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference in U.S. domestic affairs.
U.S. Thinks a Contractual Fig Leaf Can Cover the Absence off a 123 Agreement
Israel to date has no experience with civilian nuclear power plants used for electricity generation. The country has reportedly produced an unspecified number of nuclear weapons used as a deterrence factor when dealing with hostile neighbors like Iran. Also, Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty due to policy of strategic ambiguity and its obvious reluctance to reveal the extent of its nuclear arsenal.
The official MOU for the Negev AI data center remains somewhat vague referring to a “high-intensity energy infrastructure” but it clearly is pointing to small modular reactors (50-300 MW). Due to the location in the extremely dry Negev desert, an advanced design, such as an HTGR, which does not require cooling water to operate, is likely to be chosen should the project reach a stage where a reactor design would be selected for this site.
The joint initiative is part of a broad international framework launched by the Trump administration called “Pax Silica“, a coalition of about twelve countries in technology, the aim of which is to secure supply chains of semiconductors and AI. Taiwan did not sign the agreement.
Israel joined the initiative in December 2025, and was the first country to sign a bilateral agreement with the U.S. in this framework. Among the other countries in the coalition are Qatar, the UAE, Australia, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and United Kingdom.
The Heavy Lift Associated with Civilian Nuclear Power in Israel
Israel has abundant natural gas supplies to support private wire gas power generation for data centers. It doesn’t need small modular reactors to power them.
The geopolitical heavy lift that would be required for a civilian nuclear power plant in Israel would probably set off a similar request from Saudi Arabia for the same kind of deal.
The Saudi government has been stalled for years in its quest for US nuclear reactors due to its insistence on the right to uranium enrichment as part of a 123 Agreement with the U.S. The Saudi government sees enrichment as a deterrence signal to Iran over its nuclear program. If the U.S. gives a green light to Israel, through some kind of three bank policy pool shot, to build U.S. supplied civlian SMRs, without a 123 Agreement, the Saudis would likely ask for a similar deal.
While President Trump has busted through a lot of international norms, and removed the U.S. from multilateral agreements like climate change, busting the bounds of the Nonproliferation Treaty would set a dangerous precedent that could be followed by similar actions by Russia and China.
This would move the planet into dangerous territory. For this reason, consideration of a U.S. managed nuclear power plant in Israel may be too hot a potato for even Trump to toss over the transom. Bipartisan opposition in the Senate would be almost certain for a civilian nuclear reactor deal with Israel without a 123 agreement.
Israel does not have an agreement with the U.S. under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy act as such a move would require it to declare its nuclear infrastructure. The Israeli government has relied on strategic ambiguity about how many nuclear devices it has as a deterrence measure. The Israeli government is not going to give that up military advantage away to get small modular reactors to power data centers in a white collar industrial park.
Finally, the news release by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office about the U.S. deal may be one of a series of trial balloons the Israeli government has floated over the years about civilian nuclear power so it should be viewed with some skepticism for that point alone.
The U.S. plan apparently is to cover these issues with a contractual fig leaf that depends on a unique model in which the reactor operates under U.S. safety regulation and supervision, despite being located on Israeli territory. It’s a pretty thin leaf.
Watch What We Do Not What We Say
It is not lost on the Saudi and Israel governments that India enjoys a special relationship regarding recent developments that open the door to India for acquisition of civilian U.S. nuclear reactor technologies, without having a 123 Agreement, while these two nations are locked out these opportunities.
Where things get complicated is that the Saudi government has undoubtedly been watching how U.S. nuclear reactor firms are faring with India for some time. Recently, India opened the door to U.S. nuclear reactors by terminating its supplier liability law that acted very effectively as a trade barrier for U.S. firms.
Almost at the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy granted Holtec permission to export its 300 MW SMR to India. The authorization names three Indian companies – Larsen & Tubro (Mumbai), Tata Consulting Engineers (Mumbai) and the Company’s own subsidiary, Holtec Asia (Pune) – as eligible entities with whom Holtec can share necessary technical information to execute its SMR-300 program. Holtec also plans to build a factory in India to manufacture the small reactors. Westinghouse is expected to seek to enter the Indian nuclear market.
What the Saudi government sees is that U.S. policy towards India shows a remarkably different approach to a country which has declared it has a nuclear arsenal, has tested its nuclear weapons, and is not a party to the Nonproliferation Treaty. Further, India does not have a 123 agreement with the U.S. and has no immediate plans to seek one. Israel has likely come to the same point of view.
The fact that Israel has signed an MOU with the U.S. that could potentially involve it acquiring U.S. manufactured SMRs is a signal that if India can do it, so can Israel. Saudi Arabia will not be far behind in asking for the same deal should the Israeli industrial park agreement move forward beyond the MOU stage.
Saudi Plans for AI Data Centers Points to Nuclear Reactor to Power Them
The Saudi government’s ambitious plans and programs to transform the oil rich company into a regional powerhouse for artificial intelligence will require significant investments in electricity generation to power the AI data centers needed to carry out this effort.
According to a report in the New York Times, Saudi Arabia is investing $40 billion to become a dominant player for the use of AI in the Middle East. Data centers to support this program will require enormous amounts of electrical power to support the advanced semiconductors that process AI software, to power the data centers themselves, and to keep them cool in one of the hottest regions on the planet.
It follows that the Saudi government will coordinate its plans for a nuclear new build with its massive investments in AI. It is likely that sooner or later Saudi Arabia’s need to break ground on the first two reactors in anticipation of the need for power for its AI program and related data centers.
It may decide that building commercial nuclear power plants to power its AI program is more important than the geopolitical consideration of having access to nuclear technologies with or without a U.S. 123 Agreement. Given the U.S. course of actions with India, Saudi Arabia may ask for the same kind of deal thus bypassing the entire enrichment policy issue it has with the U.S.
The Saud government has a tender outstanding, which has been on hold for some time, to build two 1,400 MW PWR type reactors. It has also explored options for SMRs for data centers and to power desalination plants to provide potable water for general and industrial uses. A award for the two reactors could be the first order of business the Saudi government will seek to pursue in asking for the same deal the U.S. gave India.
If You Think Our Rulers Do Bad Things In Secret, Wait Til You See What They Do Out In The Open.
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 09, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/if-you-think-our-rulers-do-bad-things?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187345674&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world.
They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world.
They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world.
They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in Ukraine in full view of the entire world.
They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world.
They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global south in full view of the entire world.
They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own enrichment in full view of the entire world.
They’re circling the globe with hundreds of military bases to secure planetary domination in full view of the entire world.
They engage in nuclear brinkmanship and wave around armageddon weapons like pistols in full view of the entire world.
People go homeless and die of exposure while billionaires buy private islands and choose the next president in full view of the entire world.
Weapons manufacturers lobby for wars and then profit from the death and destruction they cause in full view of the entire world.
The president of the United States has repeatedly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli in full view of the entire world.
The US Treasury Secretary has been repeatedly admitting that the US deliberately sparked the violence and unrest in Iran by methodically immiserating the population via economic warfare, in full view of the entire world.
I keep seeing people freaking out and asking how it’s possible that the individuals in the Epstein files haven’t been arrested for their secret nefarious behavior. And I always want to ask them, mate, have you seen the nefarious behavior they’re engaging in right out in the open?
Pay attention to the Epstein files. Pay attention to what little we can learn about how these freaks conduct themselves behind closed doors. By all means, pay close attention to these things.
But don’t forget to also pay attention to the far greater evils they are inflicting in full view of the entire world.
Left to Bleed: How Israeli Forces Treat the Killing of Palestinian Children as Routine
February 8, 2026, by Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/08/left-to-bleed-how-israeli-forces-treat-the-killing-of-palestinian-children-as-routine/
New reports have surfaced regarding a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, Jadallah Jadallah, who was shot by Israeli paratroopers in the al-Fawar (also spelled al-Faraa) refugee camp in the northern West Bank in November 2025. Video footage cited by Haaretz shows Jadallah bleeding on the ground for nearly 45 minutes while Israeli soldiers remained nearby, with no immediate medical assistance despite his pleas for help. The delay has drawn widespread scrutiny from rights groups and critics of the military’s conduct, raising questions about the handling of the incident and broader practices surrounding the use of force in occupied territory. The Israel Defense Forces have stated that troops engaged a threat and provided initial treatment, but the footage and eyewitness accounts continue to fuel debate over the response to the teenager’s wounding.
Jadallah Jadallah, a 14-year-old Palestinian, was shot by an Israeli paratrooper unit in the al-Far’a refugee camp. Video footage shows him bleeding on the ground while pleading for help, as his family reportedly watched from a distance. Israel is currently holding his body. According to the Israel Defense Forces, “a terrorist who posed an immediate threat was identified, the force fired at him and provided first aid.”
For more on the story
None of this is new. The killing of Palestinian children has become so routine that individual cases blur into one another, barely registering before the next name is added to the list. In today’s Palestine, Israeli violence is not an aberration or a “tragic mistake,” but a system—one sustained by decades of impunity, political cover, and media fatigue. Each child’s death is treated as an isolated incident, even as the pattern is unmistakable: an occupation that normalizes lethal force and renders Palestinian lives, especially those of children, disposable. With Al Jazeera reporting among others a long list of murders of Children with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem saying
“Israel’s army routinely fires live ammunition, tear gas, stun grenades, and other weapons at Palestinians in the occupied territories, often justifying the assaults by claiming stones were thrown. B’Tselem has described the military’s conduct as an “open-fire policy” that permits the “unjustified use of lethal force” and “conveys Israel’s deep disregard for the lives of Palestinians.”
The consequences are especially severe for children. “Decades of systemic impunity has created a situation where Israeli forces shoot to kill without limit,” Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCI-P) said last month following the killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank. “As Palestinian children are increasingly targeted in the West Bank, Israeli forces’ rules of engagement seemingly allow for the direct targeting of Palestinian children where no threat exists to justify the use of intentional lethal force.”
And so the killings continue—not because they are hidden, but because they are allowed and most damning is not that these deaths occur, but that they clearly no longer shock anyone who has the power to stop them.
The new era of Israeli expansionism and the war economy that fuels it
By Ahmed Alqarout February 2, 2026, https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/the-new-era-of-israeli-expansionism-and-the-war-economy-that-fuels-it/
While Israel’s current trajectory is being framed domestically as a triumph, its long-term outlook remains grim and costly. Permanent war locks Israel into permanent military mobilization, accelerates demographic and moral exhaustion, and increases long-term exposure to asymmetric retaliation from Palestinian resistance, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
How Israel’s war-driven economy, regional realignments, and Netanyahu’s push for military independence are ushering in a new period of Israeli expansionism in its quest for regional dominance.
Israel has entered a new era of territorial expansionism and military aggression beyond the borders of historic Palestine. Its belligerent actions have accelerated across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Qatar, Libya, and most recently, Somaliland. These developments aren’t due to a change in Israeli strategic ambitions, but rather to the loosening of constraints that had kept it bounded before October 2023.
This expansionist turn reflects a structural recalibration of risk, leverage, and international tolerance rather than a sudden ideological shift. But it is also due to the way Israel’s economy is now structured: the military industry has been carrying the economy ever since Israel experienced a level of global isolation that decimated most other sectors over the past two years. The result? Israel now has an additional structural incentive to be in a perpetual state of war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave voice to this reality when he announced that Israel would need to become a “super Sparta” — a highly militarized warrior state with a self-sufficient military industry, capable of defying international pressure and arms embargoes because it no longer has to rely on American military beneficence.
A crucial recent strategic declaration sharpens this trajectory. In January 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to end U.S. military aid to Israel within roughly a decade, framing this as a path toward military-industrial self-sufficiency and strategic autarky. This announcement signals that Israel is no longer content to remain subordinate to the U.S., instead seeking to operate as its strategic partner in the region at a time when the U.S.’s national security strategy is shifting attention from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.
Netanyahu’s declaration amplifies the urgency of the export-led growth model, which is largely based on arms and defense-linked industries. The problem is, if Israel is to replace $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid, it must dramatically scale up its domestic production and export capacity.
Also read: Israel moves to embrace its isolation.
The Israeli state is attempting to institutionalize this export surge through policy, committing roughly NIS 350 billion (equivalent to $100–108 billion) over the coming decade to expand an independent domestic arms industry. Economically, this means that military production will become central to Israel’s long-term industrial strategy, diverting capital, labor, and state support toward weapons manufacturing rather than civilian recovery, a strategy that is untenable during wartime. This also embeds Israeli firms deeper into global security supply chains, even as the state itself becomes diplomatically isolated.
The structural dimension: incentive for permanent war
Since 2023, Israeli military exports have become one of the few sectors compensating for its broader economic slowdown. In 2023, defense exports reached approximately $13 billion, and in 2024 they climbed further to around $14.7–15 billion, setting successive records. This expansion took place while civilian economic growth weakened, labor shortages and unemployment intensified due to the prolonged mobilization of the army, and large segments of the small and medium enterprise sector reported sustained losses and bankruptcies. Arms exports essentially functioned as a countercyclical stabilizer during wartime stress, but now they’re becoming a permanent part of how the Israeli economy aims to reproduce itself.
In 2025, this trajectory accelerated even further. Israel signed some of its largest defense agreements to date with the U.S., UAE, Germany, Greece, and Azerbaijan, covering air defense systems, missiles, drones, and advanced surveillance technologies. While full contract values are not always disclosed, these deals are expected to push total defense exports beyond the 2024 record, reinforcing the arms sector as Israel’s most dynamic export industry, even as other exports, such as agriculture, face an imminent “collapse,” according to Israeli farmers.
The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.
As civilian sectors stagnate, the war economy provides growth, foreign currency earnings, and political insulation. This creates a structural incentive for permanent mobilization: war sustains demand, shields the government from accountability, and reinforces a worldview in which force is treated as the primary currency of international relations.
In this configuration, military aggression and territorial expansionism are the mechanisms through which the Israeli economy now seeks to reproduce itself. As a result, Israel’s governing coalition rests on permanent securitization. The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.
The global dimension: the end of international law
The international dimension is equally decisive. Israel’s territorial expansionism and military aggression have been enabled by the hollowing out of global constraint mechanisms such as international law.
Western states have demonstrated that there is no meaningful red line when violence is framed as counterterrorism or civilizational defense. Legal norms remain rhetorically intact but operationally suspended. This has altered Israel’s strategic calculus, because if Gaza produces diplomatic noise but no material sanctions, then Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq carries even lower expected costs.
The collapse of normalization: no reason to play nice
Read more: The new era of Israeli expansionism and the war economy that fuels itNormalization politics also play a role. The collapse of Israeli-Saudi normalization talks — which had accelerated throughout 2023 under U.S. mediation but stalled after Israel launched its genocide in Gaza — did not discipline Israeli behavior, but liberated it.
Without Saudi recognition serving as a bargaining chip or incentive for restraint, Israel abandoned any pretense of using territorial compromises as a negotiating tool. It doubled down on the objective of establishing facts on the ground while seeking bilateral security ties with smaller or more vulnerable actors. Expansion now substitutes for Israel’s dying soft power, and recognition is increasingly extracted through leverage rather than negotiation.
What makes the post-2023 moment distinctive is Israel fighting across multiple theaters simultaneously, in the open, and with confidence that escalation will not trigger systemic pushback. Furthermore, Israel’s strategy has become structurally enabled by an ever-increasing reliance on new technologies developed during war. It is no longer a response to threats but a method of governance at home and influence abroad.
Since 2023, Israel has no longer pursued peace through containment, as it did during the Arab Spring period. Instead, it has shifted toward permanent occupation, land seizure, and the redrawing of political maps to sustain and expand its war machine.
How Israel is pursuing regional dominance
Domestically, Israeli territorial expansionism aims to permanently resolve the Palestinian question through a combination of expulsion, cantonization, co-optation, and ultimately displacement. The underlying logic is to eliminate what is perceived as Israel’s primary domestic security problem — the very presence of the Palestinian people on their land — once and for all, thereby restoring elite and societal confidence in the long-term survival of the state.
At the regional level, Israel pursues diverse objectives across the countries in which it intervenes, some involving territorial acquisition or semi-permanent occupation, others focused on subordination, fragmentation, and neutralization of perceived threats.
In Iran, aggression takes the form of seeking regime destabilization and military degradation through sustained airstrikes on nuclear and military facilities, alongside efforts to exacerbate social and political unrest. The June 2025 war between Israel and Iran marked the most direct military confrontation between the two states to date, yet it terminated in an informal pause rather than escalating into full-scale war, with neither side crossing recognized deterrence thresholds despite the intensity of exchanges.
Since then, large-scale protests inside Iran have introduced a new internal pressure point that external actors increasingly frame as a strategic vulnerability. This has coincided with explicit threats of war from Donald Trump and renewed U.S. military signalling, which together reinforce Israel’s long-standing view of Iran as an existential threat to be confronted through regime change. Yet the persistence of non-escalation reflects how aggression against Iran operates within implicit boundaries that territorial expansionism in Palestine or Syria does not face, even as the fusion of internal unrest and external coercive rhetoric makes this equilibrium more fragile.
In Lebanon, Israel seeks to dismantle Hezbollah not only as a military actor but as the backbone of a Shiite-led political order that obstructs Israeli regional dominance. The deeper objective is to fracture Lebanon into a minorities-based system in which Druze, Christians, and other groups are incentivized to seek external protection and economic linkage with Israel. A weak and segmented Lebanon provides strategic depth without the costs and liabilities of direct occupation. For now, the cross-border escalation in Lebanon functions less as a pathway to outright military victory and more as a tool for reshaping Lebanon’s internal political balance over time.
As of January 2026, despite the ceasefire nominally holding, Israel has maintained “temporary” positions in five “strategic” locations in southern Lebanon, refusing to complete its withdrawal. The result is a tense stalemate in which Israel maintains military leverage over Lebanon while withholding its commitment to a full withdrawal and leaving open the possibility of renewed major escalations.
Israel’s strikes across Syria are somewhat more complex, becoming a central theater of Israeli military intervention and engineered political fragmentation following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. The Israeli strategy in Syria involves both direct military action and efforts to prevent unified Syrian state consolidation by providing military support for and coordination with Syrian Kurdish forces (the SDF) aimed at fragmenting the new Syrian government’s authority.
In March 2025, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly announced that Israel would permit Syrian Druze workers to enter the Golan Heights for agricultural and construction work, framing this as a humanitarian gesture while simultaneously cultivating labour dependencies and economic ties that bind border communities to Israel. In July 2025, Netanyahu adopted a formal policy of “demilitarization of southern Syria,” declaring that Israeli forces would remain in southern Syria indefinitely and that no Syrian military forces would be permitted south of Damascus, effectively partitioning Syrian territory. Netanyahu framed this policy as “protection of the Druze.”
Israel’s setbacks in Syria
By late 2025 and early 2026, the SDF’s position had collapsed. Arab tribal defections in Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour, mounting pressure from Turkish forces to the north, and a lack of sustained external support led to a rapid SDF retreat from much of northern and eastern Syria by January 2026. This collapse of Israel’s primary Kurdish proxy, coupled with the failure of Israeli-backed Druze militia resistance to prevent Damascus’s consolidation of authority in southern Syria, has undermined Israel’s strategy of preventing unified Syrian state reconstruction through proxy warfare.
The Druze and Alawite populations represent potential economic and demographic assets at a time when Israel faces a structural shortage of both soldiers and workers. Since 2023, this shortage has become acute. The Syrian periphery offers a pool of labor that can be selectively incorporated under autonomy arrangements or informal annexation, which Israel has already done by allowing a number of Syrian Druze to work in the Golan Heights. What is emerging is a strategy of economic annexation without formal borders, integrating the southern Syrian periphery into the Israeli economy on subordinate terms.
As for Yemen, its alignment with Gaza and its demonstrated capacity to disrupt Red Sea shipping have elevated it from a peripheral conflict to a strategic threat for Israel, especially since Ansar Allah’s blockade undermines Israel’s global trade architecture and its security relationships with Western shipping insurers, logistics firms, and port operators.
Yemen’s growing ties with Russia and China have only compounded this threat. That’s why attacking Yemen isn’t about Yemen alone, but about preserving a Western-aligned maritime order in which Israel is embedded as its key security node.
This is where Israel’s recognition of Somaliland comes in, allowing Israel to bypass internationally recognized states and to work directly with sub-state entities. Somaliland has allegedly agreed to have an Israeli military base established in the territory and to accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza in exchange for this recognition.
Regarding direct Israeli involvement in North Africa more broadly, Israel has not pursued direct military operations in Egypt or sustained military intervention in Sudan or Libya, but it has pursued indirect strategies of influence and intelligence gathering, from maintaining contacts with both sides of the Sudanese civil war to secretly meeting with Libyan officials before October 2023.
The costs of expansionism and potential for resistance
While Israel’s current trajectory is being framed domestically as a triumph, its long-term outlook remains grim and costly. Permanent war locks Israel into permanent military mobilization, accelerates demographic and moral exhaustion, and increases long-term exposure to asymmetric retaliation from Palestinian resistance, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
Each absence of consequence recalibrates expectations on both sides. Within Israel, it reinforces the belief that force carries no meaningful cost. Among those targeted, it sharpens incentives to develop longer-horizon strategies of attrition and retaliation. Geographic overreach further compounds these vulnerabilities. Israel’s efforts to embed itself within overseas military infrastructures in places such as Somaliland and southern Yemen (and to establish bases through regional proxies like the UAE) expose Israel’s operational reach to extended supply lines that are distant, insecure, and vulnerable to interdiction.
Rather than Israeli-operated facilities, these arrangements rely on third-party bases (principally Emirati), whose stability depends on shifting regional power dynamics and state priorities beyond Israel’s direct control. Maintaining an effective presence at such a distance raises the likelihood of further military stumbling blocks, financial constraints, and unanticipated entanglements that may prove difficult to sustain over time, especially as Yemen’s Ansar Allah threatens to target any future military bases in Somaliland.
The U.S. occupation of Gaza has begun
The plans for Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” show that the goal is not just to make Gaza a playground for the wealthy, but to put it under permanent American occupation.
Mondoweiss, By Mitchell Plitnick January 30, 2026
This week, Drop Site News revealed a draft resolution from Trump’s newly christened “Board of Peace.” The resolution outlines what is, in essence, Phase Two of Trump’s unrealistic peace plan that ushered in a new phase of horror in Gaza under the guise of a ceasefire.
The actions outlined in the resolution ignore realities on the ground and paint a very grim picture of what the United States is planning for Gaza. Far from abandoning the ludicrous and offensive imagery Trump shared in that AI video from last year of himself and Elon Musk on a beach in an unrecognizable Gaza, this resolution is the battle plan to turn Gaza into the playground for the wealthy that Jared Kushner presented to the World Economic Forum at Davos last week. It’s a Gaza where the only Palestinians remaining are those chosen to be the servants in the new regime.
It’s a Gaza under permanent American occupation.
The “Executive Board” that would control Gaza
The Board of Peace (BoP) itself has drawn the most attention, but it is not the focal point for Gaza. The BoP is being set up as an international force to challenge the United Nations. It is currently populated entirely by far-right and autocratic figures, and will likely stay that way.
The BoP will be headed by Donald Trump and his role as Board Chair is personal, disconnected from his role as President of the United States. He has full power over the Board’s composition and full veto power over all of its actions. Trump will remain in control of the BoP until he decides to leave or he dies, and he has the sole authority to name his successor. You couldn’t build a clearer autocracy.
The BoP can delegate its authority as it wishes, and that is what it has done regarding Gaza. The “Executive Board” (EB) is the body that will govern Gaza. The EB itself will also have other areas within its portfolio, so it, too, has delegated its power to yet another group, dubbed the Gaza Executive Board (GEB). There is considerable overlap between the members of the EB and GEB.
The members of the GEB include some very familiar names like Steve Witkoff, Trump’s lead negotiator; Susan Wiles, his Chief of Staff; Jared Kushner, his son-in-law; and Tony Blair the former PM of the UK and a war criminal in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The rest of the names may be less familiar, but they are all important and, together, they draw a very worrisome picture of how this Board will behave ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Palestinians not included in planning Gaza’s future
While there are no Israelis on the Executive Board, it is stacked with extreme supporters of the Israeli right and of Netanyahu. This makes the vague mandate of the entire enterprise much more concerning.
The proposal published by Drop Site states that “the reconstruction and rehabilitation activities of the Board shall be dedicated solely to those who regard Gaza as their home and place of residence.”
But the proposal offers no opportunity for the people of Gaza to have any say at all in their present situation, let alone their future. The EB governs all of the laws. An American-led International Stabilization Force (ISF) controls all security.
The ISF is to be under the command of American Major General Jasper Jeffers. Trump, and Trump alone, has the power to remove the commander of the ISF and must personally approve any nominee to replace him.
The plan further states that “only those persons who support and act consistently [with Trump’s Comprehensive Plan for Gaza] will be eligible to participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance activities in Gaza.”
In other words, Palestinians who wish to be part of Gaza in any way must meet Trump’s litmus test of support for the external American control of the Gaza Strip. The same will be true for any business, NGO, or even individual who wants to participate in any way in rebuilding Gaza, physically, politically, or economically.
Ideally, for Trump and Jared Kushner, Gaza would be transformed into a giant “company town.” Most of the coastline would be dedicated to tourism. The bulk of Gaza’s eastern border with Israel would be dedicated to industrial zones and huge data centers, doubtless reflecting the massive investments Trump and his Emirati friends are making in AI.
In between would be residential areas separated by parks, agricultural, and sporting sites. In the West Bank, such parks and agricultural areas are frequently declared closed military zones and used for other purposes by the occupying force.
As has been apparent from the beginning, the only role currently envisioned for Palestinians is in the administration of the Executive Board’s decisions. In other words, Palestinian technocrats, laborers, and office workers would be “permitted” to carry out the decisions made for them by others.
The U.S. occupation of Gaza
This resolution provides only a bit more substance to the half-baked ideas Trump has been putting forward since October. And it continues to envision a near-future where Hamas has voluntarily disarmed, Israel has pulled out of Gaza, and the ISF has assumed security control that is welcomed by whatever Palestinians remain in Gaza.
All of that remains fully in the realm of fantasy.
Hamas has repeatedly made it clear that it is willing to discuss decommissioning its weapons, but would not disarm. Given that Israel is, once again, funding rogue Palestinian gangs in Gaza, complete disarmament is suicide for many members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other factions.
The United States is discussing offering amnesty and even a buy-back program for the weapons, but these offers are hardly useful if the lives of Hamas members are put at grave risk by disarmament, even if we assume that the U.S. keeps to its word and that Israel does not itself hunt these fighters down.
Moreover, Israel is bristling at this entire plan. They prefer to bring the hammer down again on Gaza, especially now that there are no hostages, dead or alive, to be concerned with.
Netanyahu is openly stating that Israel will allow no rebuilding in Gaza—where it is killing people, including infants, not only with its weapons but by denying Palestinians the materials to shelter from the winter elements—until Hamas is “disarmed.”
…………………………Israel has already reportedly drawn up a plan for a major military operation, a return to the full-blown genocide of last year, which it plans to launch in March unless the U.S. refuses to allow it to do so.
…………………..What is taking shape in Gaza is a new kind of foreign occupation. This time, the U.S. would be the leading force on the ground unless it allows Israel to renew its aggression, something Trump doesn’t want.
………………………….An American occupation of Gaza on Israel’s behalf will be just as unwelcome by Palestinians as an Israeli one backed by the United States. It may take some time for the people of Gaza to regroup from the past two and a half years to organize impactful resistance, but it will come, as it always has.
The solution is simple: allow Palestinians their freedom and their rights. But that solution is beyond the imagination of Washington and Tel Aviv. So, meet the new occupation. It will be no more pleasant than the old one. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/the-u-s-occupation-of-gaza-has-begun/
Israel’s War on Iran: The Overkill No One Calls War
| urbanwronski on February 3, 2026, https://urbanwronski.com/2026/02/03/israels-war-on-iran-the-overkill-no-one-calls-war/ |
Tehran, June 13, 2025, 4:17 a.m. The first explosions light up the sky over Natanz. Israeli F-35s, invisible to radar, drop JDAMs on Iran’s largest uranium enrichment plant. Within minutes, no fewer than five car bombs detonate across Tehran, next to government buildings and the homes of nuclear scientists. The IDF, ever the courteous occupier, issues a warning to Iranian civilians: evacuate the areas around weapons factories and military bases in Shiraz. Or else.
By dawn, Israel has struck over 100 targets. Not just nuclear sites, but missile depots, air defences, and the homes of Iran’s top military brass. General Hossein Salami, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, is dead. So is Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri. So are nuclear scientists Fereydoon Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.
The Mossad, meanwhile, has spent years smuggling precision weapons into Iran, setting up covert drone bases near Tehran, and recruiting Iranian dissidents to sabotage air defences from within. This is not a flare-up. This is not a crisis. This is war, waged by Israel, enabled by the US, and dressed up as something else entirely.
The US Joins the Party On June 22, the Americans arrive. Twelve B-2 stealth bombers, escorted by 125 aircraft, drop 30,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The GBU-57s, each capable of burrowing 200 feet underground before detonating, are the only weapons on Earth that can destroy Iran’s fortified nuclear sites. Trump calls it “Operation Midnight Hammer.” The Pentagon calls it “degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities.” The rest of the world calls it what it is: the US and Israel bombing a country that, by all independent accounts, is not building a nuclear weapon. Nor intends to.
The Body Count By June 28, the numbers are in. Iranian health officials report 1,190 dead, including 435 military personnel and 436 civilians. Another 4,000 are wounded. Israel loses 28. The US? Zero. Iran fires back with missiles at Tel Aviv, drones at Haifa, a barrage at a US base in Qatar, but the Iron Dome and Patriot batteries swat most of them away. The Iranian air force, such as it is, never gets off the ground. Its fleet of MiG-29s and F-14s, some half a century old, are no match for Israel’s F-35s and the US’s B-2s. Iran has no air force to speak of. It has missiles, proxies, and little else.
The Mossad’s Shadow War This is not just a war of bombs. It’s a war of knives in the dark. The Mossad doesn’t just strike from the air, it strikes from within. In the months leading up to June 2025, Mossad operatives and recruited Iranian dissidents disable air defences, plant explosives, and assassinate scientists. They infiltrate government databases, steal passport data, and turn Iranian software against itself. When the war “ends,” the Mossad stays.
“We will be there,” Mossad Director David Barnea promises, “like we have always been there.”
The Next Round And there will be a next round. The US and Israel have already authorised fresh strikes. The CIA and Mossad are busy preparing the ground with cyberattacks, sabotage, the occasional hanging of an accused spy in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Iran, for its part, threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz, block oil shipments, and unleash its proxies across the region. But the pattern is set: Israel strikes, the US backs it up, and the world calls it anything but war.
The Language of Impunity Why does this matter? Because language is the first casualty. When Israel and the US bomb Iran, it’s a “campaign.” When Iran fires back, it’s “escalation.” When 1,190 Iranians die, it’s “collateral damage.” When the Mossad assassinates a scientist, it’s “targeted killing.” When the US drops bunker busters, it’s “degrading capabilities.” This is not neutral phrasing. It’s a lie by omission, a way to wage war without consequence, to turn atrocity into policy.
The Spectacle of Overkill Israel has 345 combat aircraft. Iran has 312, most of them museum pieces. Israel spends 5.6% of its GDP on defence. Iran spends 2.6%. Israel has the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and the full backing of the US military. Iran has the S-300, a system so outdated that Israeli drones fly right through it. This is not a war. It’s a slaughter, dressed up as self defence.
What Comes Next The ceasefire is a pause, not an end. The Mossad is still in Tehran. The CIA is still running ops. The US with Donald Trump’s “beautiful Armada” is still offshore, waiting for the next excuse. And Iran? Iran is still standing, still defiant, still a target. Because for Israel and its American backer, the war never ends. It just gets rebadged.
Name it now. Or live with it forever.
Trump’s October 10 ceasefire, Board of Peace, simply continues Israeli Palestinian genocide in slow motion.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 26 Jan 26
That was some ceasefire Trump negotiated with Israel October 10. Since then Israel has killed nearly 500 Palestinians with bullets and bombs. Many more are likely dead from starvation and disease as Israel lets in less than 170 trucks of food daily instead of the required and promised 600. ‘Ha ha…little nourishment for you starving Palestinians.’
Water, medicine, everything needed to sustain life is restricted to drive out the beleaguered living in makeshift tents. Why tents? Israel, with over 50,000 tons of Biden, Trump bombs, pulverized over 80% of all Gaza buildings, including over 90 % of all housing. Likely over 10,000 Gaza corpses are rotting under the 60 million tons of rubble including over 9 million tons of hazardous material. Ceasefire notwithstanding, Israel has knocked down or damaged over 2,500 post ceasefire buildings.
In order to force Palestinians from Gaza, Israel has reopened the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. But it’s Israel’s version of a reverse Roach Motel. Palestinians can check out…but they can never check back into their rightful homeland. Every Palestinian that leaves, along with every Palestinian shot, bombed or starved to death, is one less pesky Palestinian to get rid of in absorbing Gaza into Greater Israel.
Israel has exploited the ceasefire to occupy over 50% of Gaza territory, shooting any Palestinian who strays over or close to Israel’s yellow boundary lines.
Astonishingly, the UN Security Council’s November 17 Resolution 2803 (2025) certified Trump’s Board of Peace which effectively makes Trump Gaza’s ruler, totally excluding Palestinian involvement. In doing so it upends over 70 years of UN resolutions and requirements that Palestinians in Gaza have the right to live and govern their homeland free from subjugation; indeed annihilation.
Why did this Security Council resolution pass? Simple, Trump essentially blackmailed Council members that it was either Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace, excluding Palestinians, or he would greenlight continuing the horrific 2 year bombing obliteration of Gaza and its citizens till they were all dead and gone. .
Israel, with US support, will never allow a Palestinian state in Gaza the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The horrific daily slaughter may be reduced to a trickle, but it will continue indefinitely till every Palestinian in Gaza is gone.
Trump’s ceasefire and Board of peace have the additional benefit to both Israel and Trump administration of removing the daily ethnic cleansing of Gaza from mainstream media coverage. They have moved on to more dramatic foreign hotspots in Venezuela, Iran and Greenland as well as Trump’s ICE thugs murdering fellow citizens in Minneapolis
Israel and the Trump administration’s slow motion genocide of Palestinians in Gaza should be opposed by all decent, moral nations and persons as fervently as their opposition to the preceding two yearlong all out genocide. Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace has put lipstick on the pig of Israeli genocide destroying Palestinians in Gaza.
The Magic System Of Zionism
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 24, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-magic-system-of-zionism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185598042&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime?
If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with “I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic”?
If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe?
Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion?
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
You don’t expect to see criticisms of the state of India framed as an attack on its majority religion because people in your society haven’t been conditioned to have that expectation. But we have been conditioned to have that expectation about Israel.
The association between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel isn’t natural. It’s not something that would organically occur to an untrained mind.
If a man who’d never heard of Israel or Palestine were shown footage of the genocide in Gaza, he would reflexively recoil in horror and say what he was looking at was a bad thing. If somebody then ran up and explained to him that what he just said was actually a hateful act of religious persecution, he would be very surprised and confused. Because he hadn’t been indoctrinated into making that association, in the same way you haven’t been indoctrinated into associating criticism of the Indian government with an attack on the religion of Hinduism.
It’s a completely counterintuitive association. There’s nothing about it that that you could find your way into through your own observation and reasoning. It’s something you’d need to be taught by others. You need it to be explained to you.
That’s the literal translation of the Hebrew word “hasbara”. It means “explaining”. Israel and its supporters have spent decades “explaining” to the world that criticism of the state of Israel is actually a terrible hate crime against Jews and their religion, because otherwise it would never occur to a normal person that that is the case.
It’s actually astonishingly impressive. The political ideology of support for this tiny apartheid state has been so effective at explaining to the world what thoughts they should think about it that those efforts touch all our lives. It’s so effective that you could be at a social gathering all the way across the sea in the United States and, unless you are very familiar with the people around you, if the subject of Israel comes up you’ll immediately understand that you could be in for a very uncomfortable evening.
It’s stunning how much influence this ideology has had throughout our society’s culture and institutions. It’s almost magical.
There was a segment in last year’s Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers that stuck with me where Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss refers to Zionism as a “magic system”.
“Jewish settlements in Gaza is a very difficult step that demands a lot of work,” Weiss told Theroux. “You have to influence the leftists, the government, the nations of the world, using the magic system: Zionism.”
It isn’t surprising to learn that Weiss views her operations as a kind of magic. On paper she and her ilk shouldn’t be able to do what they do. Forcefully dropping a foreign ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization and violently hammering it into place against every organic impulse of the region is freakish enough, but then convincing the rest of the world to support this? To the point that it actually affects our interpersonal relationships and interactions on the other side of the planet? It shouldn’t work. But it does.
I don’t really know what magic is, but it makes sense that some Zionists would see it that way. Because from the outside looking in all that mass-scale psychosocial manipulation kind of does look like an inexplicable sort of wizardry.
Luckily, the magic seems to be wearing off. The old tricks just aren’t working anymore. Calling someone who criticizes Israel an “antisemite” is widely recognized for the fraudulent manipulation that it is. Pro-Palestine politicians are winning elections despite highly coordinated smear campaigns saying their candidacy makes Jews feel unsafe. Everyone knows Israel lies about everything all the time. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, while awareness of the pro-Israel bias of the mainstream press is at an all-time high.
People are still showing up for protests and pro-Palestine events. The public is turning against Israel in unprecedented numbers. Nobody’s buying the old song and dance anymore.
Maybe the people are finding a little magic of their own.
It wasn’t Trump’s mind or morality that stopped his Iran attack.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, 21 Jan 26
A week ago President Trump was posturing about an imminent attack to overthrow the Iranian regime embroiled in massive protests. His declared motive was to save the Iranian protesters seeking internal regime change who were being slaughtered by the regime.
Then Trump pivoted, declaring since the regime was no longer planning to execute protesters, he wouldn’t attack.
But it wasn’t Iranian government benevolence that persuaded Trump to stand down. The two reasons Trump’s explanation was covering up were reality on the ground and a phone call.
The massive but failed protests were not solely a spontaneous internal revolt. They were fomented and supported by both the US and Israel to complete their long sought dream of regime change to destabilize Iran, Israel’s last hegemonic rival in the region. Israel’s Mossad was definitely on the ground and likely the CIA as well. Trump was cheering on the protests from the sidelines.
Trump was poised to attack to complete the regime change operation when protest success appeared imminent. But Iran’s government quickly and decisively snuffed out the protests, ending Trump’s dream of adding more thousands to his massive, murderous death toll bombing 7 countries in his first year of term two.
Trump also got a call from the real boss of US Middle East policy….Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. He told Trump that with the regime intact, Israel would be decimated by thousands of Iranian missiles once Trump attacked.
Iran’s government may be secure for now but Israeli, US dream of Iranian regime change will never cease.
Trump lied to the New York Times when he said the only thing that can stop him from foreign intervention is “my own mind, my own morality.” What stopped Trump from attacking Iran again, as he did in June, is what stopped him then… failure on the ground and a call from the guy giving Trump his orders on Middle East foreign policy.
A Cruel Truce: Israel’s Ongoing Demolition of Gaza
15 January 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-cruel-truce-israels-ongoing-demolition-of-gaza/
What matters peace if it permits killing, maiming and destroying the infrastructure of a society supposedly once at war? This is the situation facing Gaza as the occupying Israeli forces go about their business making the Strip even more uninhabitable for the Palestinian residents, ensuring that that land will be vacated, either through force or massaged consent, to enable its eventual seizure.
In a January 12 report, The New York Times found that Israel had razed over 2,500 buildings in the Strip since the ceasefire with Hamas commenced on October 10, 2025. These have been initiated on the Israeli side of the demarcated side known as the Yellow Line. The report, however, also notes the demolition of buildings on the side controlled by Hamas. “The scale of ongoing destruction is stark. Across eastern Gaza, in areas under Israeli control, satellite imagery reveals that entire blocks have been erased since the cease-fire, as well as swaths of farmland and agricultural greenhouses.”
The NYT quoted the grave words of Gaza-based political analyst Mohammed Al-Astal: “The Israeli military is destroying everything in front of it – homes, schools, factories and streets. There’s no security justification for what it’s doing.” A former Israeli official did not disagree. “This is absolute destruction,” assessed Shaul Arieli, commander of Israeli forces in Gaza in the 1990s. “It’s not selective, it’s everything.”
Under the thin covering of a cruel truce, Israel’s demolition campaign, according to the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, is intended to “deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and impose forced displacement and collective punishment on the people of Gaza.”
Justifications provided to the NYT were not reassuring, relying on that part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan affirming that, “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapons production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” An Israeli military official denied a lack of discrimination in the destruction. At times, buildings collapsed because of the IDF’s detonation of explosives in tunnels underneath them. The air force had also been striking structures deemed a threat to Israeli soldiers, some of them being adjacent to the Yellow Line. It was also conceded that demolitions were taking place on both sides of the Yellow Line, though Israeli forces had not crossed the line in doing so.
This pattern is not a newly discovered one. The BBC took note of this in November last year when it revealed that “entire neighbourhoods controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been levelled in less than a month, apparently through demolitions.” The broadcaster’s Verify unit had analysed satellite imagery showing “that the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale.” Many of the buildings destroyed showed no indication of being damaged prior to their razing, notably in such areas as eastern Khan Younis, around Abasan al-Kabira. Gardens, trees and a number of small orchards were also pulverised in the exercise.
Such actions should have been considered blatant violations of the ceasefire terms. Israeli officials, current and former, were having none of it. Ex-head of the National Security Doctrine Department, Eitan Shamir, suggested that the IDF had acted in accordance with the terms, seeing as they did not apply to areas of the Strip behind the Yellow Line. This gorgeous casuistry also found form in the cold language of an IDF spokesperson who explained that, in accordance with the agreement, “all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure.” The level of destruction permitted relies on the beholder’s definition of the threat posed.
In December, it was the turn of Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, which found much the same thing. “Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and the Tuffah neighbourhood.” The images also revealed demolitions in the southern city of Rafah and the levelling of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the destruction by an occupying power of real or personal property belonging either individually or collectively to private persons, or to a State, public authorities, or social or co-operative organisations, except in circumstances where it is absolutely necessary as part of military operations (Article 53).
In an email to Al Jazeera in December, Adil Haque of Rutgers Law School was sceptical that the systematically destructive activities of the IDF had complied with the provisions of the Convention. “With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.” Absolute necessity, he explained, had to “arise from military operations, that is, from combat or direct preparations for combat.”
In responding to the NYT report, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, summed up the grim state of affairs with characteristic sharpness. “The so called peace plan,” she fumed on social media, “is allowing Israel to ‘finish the job’: 450 killed; 2,500 structures destroyed; lifesaving aid blocked.” Less a peace plan, it would seem, than a state of ongoing, permitted violence falling just short of war.
Study reveals ‘persistent danger’ from Israel’s white phosphorus strikes in southern Lebanon
Middle East
An investigation mapping out 248 strikes highlights Israel’s use of white phosphorus during the recent conflict in southern Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024. Open-source researcher Ahmad Baydoun, who conducted the study, emphasises the serious and ongoing concerns regarding the substance’s impact on health, agriculture and the environment.
The FRANCE 24 Observers/ Djamel BELAYACHI, 03/12/2025, https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20251203-study-reveals-persistent-danger-israeli-white-phosphorus-strikes-southern-lebanon
Burnt olive groves, devastated fields and toxic fragments buried underground – in southern Lebanon, Israel‘s use of white phosphorus during the conflict with Hezbollah from October 2023 to November 2024 left a lasting mark.
Although not explicitly prohibited by international law, the use of white phosphorus is regulated as an incendiary weapon. Its use against civilians or in populated areas is prohibited. In June 2024, the Israeli army claimed that it did not use white phosphorus shells to target or set fires, adding that “Israel Defence Forces procedures require that such shells are not used in densely populated areas, subject to certain exceptions”.
‘91% of white phosphorus strikes took place before Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon’
Ahmad Baydoun is an open source intelligence (OSINT) researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. According to data from the study he led, presented in an interactive map published in October 2025, a significant proportion of white phosphorus strikes in southern Lebanon hit civilian and agricultural areas.
Collecting this data involved combining digital tools, verification of images posted on social media (particularly Facebook and Instagram), and testimonies from residents on the ground. Baydoun explains:
“Israel justifies the use of white phosphorus as a smoke screen to protect the movements of its troops or to mark targets. But according to my research, 91 percent of white phosphorus strikes took place before Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon in October 2024, which contradicts the official Israeli version. Furthermore, 39 percent of all phosphorus strikes we documented took place over civilian areas, 16 percent over agricultural land, and only 44 percent in uninhabited areas or areas far from residents.”
NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented the use of white phosphorus in or near residential areas, contradicting official Israeli statements.
‘A persistent danger to human life and livestock’
White phosphorus was used only with artillery during the last war, according to Baydoun. The munition explodes, scattering incandescent fragments over a wide area, reaching temperatures of up to 800°C.
Baydoun told our team:
“The munitions explode in the air and produce 115 small fragments that sink into the ground and continue to emit this toxic substance for ten to fifteen minutes. Fragments can remain active in the ground. They can remain dormant until they are exposed to oxygen again. Then they reactivate and produce smoke.
We had a farmer in southern Lebanon who, a year after the initial strike, hit a fragment with a stick, and the fragment started emitting toxic smoke again, demonstrating the ongoing danger to people’s lives and livestock.”
The study lists nearly 28,700 fragments scattered throughout the region, which are considered very difficult to extract.
“It is very difficult to extract them from the ground. If someone has livestock and that livestock eats one of these fragments, it dies immediately, and if a human consumes the meat from that livestock, they also die.”
Among the villages in southern Lebanon most affected by white phosphorus strikes are Al-Khiam (30 incidents), Meiss El-Jabal (28 strikes), Kfar Kila (26 strikes), Yaroun (24 strikes) and Rmaysh (17 strikes).
Fear of consuming local products
Thanks to the geolocation of hundreds of photos and videos, Baydoun’s project has precisely documented 248 strikes. Residents can check whether their land or homes have been affected.
Many residents express fear of consuming local products, particularly olive oil and vegetables, over concerns of invisible contamination. In February 2025, analyses conducted by the Lebanese Ministries of Agriculture and Environment did not detect traces of phosphorus in olive samples. However, high concentrations were found in some soils, posing a potential risk to future harvests.
According to the United Nations FAO, nearly 2,100 hectares of orchards were burned, 2.3 million livestock were killed, and agricultural losses in the south of the country and the Bekaa Valley (in eastern Lebanon) exceeded 704 million dollars between October 2023 and November 2024.
Iran & Israel Secretly Agreed Not To Attack Each Other Through Russian Backchannel
by Tyler Durden, Jan 15, 2026, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-israel-secretly-agreed-not-attack-each-other-through-russian-backchannel-wapo
There may have been some back-channel dealmaking and a ‘mutual understanding’ reached between Iran and Israel far behind the scenes as protests unfolded on Iran’s streets, and as President Trump began to make threats about striking Tehran.
At a moment Trump seems to have climbed down (at least for now) from the threatened drive to intervene militarily, The Washington Post has issued a Wednesday report saying Israel and Iran have been in indirect diplomatic contact via Russia as a mediator.
“Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first,” WaPo writes. “Iran responded through the Russian channel that it would also refrain from a preemptive attack, diplomats and regional officials with knowledge of the exchange said.”
Could this be because of the Iranian missiles that rained down on Tel Aviv back in June? If so, it seems the Islamic Republic has finally established deterrence.
The timeline of what was communicated when remains unclear. But this backchannel had already been revealed in Middle East media reports, for example in the following prior reporting:
Israel and Iran have recently exchanged secret, indirect messages through Russia in the midst of heightened regional tensions, according to a new report by Amwaj.media today. The exchanges were described as an effort to prevent further military escalation rather than to establish any form of ceasefire or diplomatic framework.
According to the report, the messages were conveyed through Russian President Vladimir Putin after Israel sought to pass along a signal that it was not interested in escalating military conflict at this stage. Iranian officials acknowledged the message but emphasized that their reply carried no commitment, no coordination, and no obligation on Iran’s part. An Iranian political source quoted in the report said bluntly that “there is no commitment, no coordination, and no ceasefire agreement.” The source emphasized that the contact should not be interpreted as a step toward broader understandings between the two countries, which remain bitter adversaries with no direct diplomatic ties.
The exchanges were reportedly limited in scope and intent. No guarantees were offered, no timelines were discussed, and no monitoring or enforcement mechanisms were established. One source described the communication as “a mutual announcement to a mutual friend on no new strikes,” meaning that the goal was simply to manage tensions at a specific moment rather than to lock in any lasting arrangement.
A senior Iranian political source confirmed that indirect communication with Israel had indeed taken place, identifying Russia, and specifically Putin, as the intermediary. The source reiterated that there was “no ceasefire agreement” and that the messages amounted only to parallel notifications of intent, rather than a shared understanding or deal.
The report says the Iranian side of the exchanges was handled not by the foreign ministry but by Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
It’s possible that this served as important background to Trump’s apparent decision to not strike Iran at this point. Israel is usually the country yelling loudest to hit Iran, but this time the Netanyahu government was somewhat muted.
By all accounts, Iran’s streets have pretty much gone quiet by now, after a crescendo of violence this week left hundreds dead, including many police and security personnel.
Genocide in Gaza, Apartheid in the Palestinian West Bank: UN Report.
Juan Cole, 01/08/2026, https://www.juancole.com/2026/01/genocide-apartheid-palestinian.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The UN Office of Human Rights, headed by Volker Türk, on Wednesday issued an extensive report on the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank in which it for the first time described Israeli policies there as Apartheid. The executive summary says, “The report warns that Israel is violating international law requiring States to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.”
Türk told the UN, “There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank. Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives – every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”
“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.” He is referring to racial discrimination in Apartheid South Africa from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.
He concluded, “Every negative trend documented in the report has not only continued but accelerated. And every day this is allowed to continue, the consequences worsen for Palestinians.”
The report ( PDF here) stresses how drastically the human rights situation for Palestinians in the West Bank has deteriorated since 2022:
* Palestinians in the West bank live under a different and harsher set of laws than do the Israeli squatters who have flooded into the territory
* Palestinians therefore have less access to resources, including land and water, than do the squatters
* The report notes that the International Court of Justice in the Hague found in 2024 that “the systemic discrimination against Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, together with the restrictions of movement imposed on Palestinians through checkpoints, as well as limited access to roads, natural resources, land and basic social facilities, amounted to a situation of racial segregation.” The ICJ noted then that the situation verged on Apartheid and would be properly so characterized if the Israelis did not take immediate ameliorating steps (they did not). The ICJ, indeed, ruled the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories it seized in 1967 to now be illegal, since it had departed so extensively from International Humanitarian Law in its rule of these people. Moreover, IHL had envisioned occupations to be short and to endure only during an active war, not to stretch into decades.
* Palestinians’ land and homes are routinely taken away from them by the Israeli authorities or are arbitrarily and lawlessly encroached on by the Israeli squatters. In Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas Governorates, some 32,000 people were recently expelled by Israeli troops from the refugee camps in which they had lived. The report adds, “Thousands of Palestinians have also been evicted from their homes across the West Bank, which may amount to unlawful transfer, a war crime.” That is, the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute forbid transferring people in militarily occupied territories out of their homes. When the Nazis occupied Poland they expelled a lot of Poles from it in hopes of replacing them with Germans, and these laws were designed prevent a repeat of such policies. The IHRA people can jump up and down all they like, but the Nazi plan for Poland and the Zionist plan for Gaza and the West Bank are very similar.
* Palestinians face “criminal prosecution in military courts during which their due process and fair trial rights are systematically violated.” This treatment is only accorded Palestinians. Israeli squatters on the West Bank who do get into trouble with the law are tried in Israeli civil courts as though they were living in Israel.
* The UN says, “The report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe the separation, segregation and subordination are intended to be permanent, to maintain oppression and domination of Palestinians. ‘Acts committed with the intention to maintain such a policy amount to a violation of Article 3 of ICERD (the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination), which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid,’ it finds.”
* Israeli troops and squatters sometimes just shoot down innocent Palestinians. They don’t treat Israelis that way, an obvious sign of discrimination. The High Commission on Human Rights, the report says,”has consistently documented patterns of unlawful killings of Palestinians, including apparent extra- judicial executions by the ISF [the Israeli military], with almost complete impunity.” Elsewhere the report notes, “ISF [Israeli Security Forces] have killed 2,321 Palestinians (1,760 men, 65 women, 496 children) in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the absence of hostilities there, and injured thousands more, in many instances causing life-long injuries and disabilities. In the same period, 205 Israelis (including 148 men, 32 women, 25 children) have been killed in the occupied West Bank,” In the old days, the Israelis maintained a ten to one ration of Palestinians killed to Israelis. The report doesn’t say so, but that ratio has been raised to 100 to one or 1000 to one in some cases.
* The Israelis have demolished the infrastructure of water for the Palestinian West Bank, and then confiscated the water. They make the Palestinians buy back their own water from an Israeli corporation.
‘Year of bloodshed’: West Bank authorities record nearly 24,000 army, settler attacks on Palestinians in 2025
Around 35,000 trees have been uprooted or destroyed by illegal settlers this year, while 14 Palestinian citizens have been killed
News Desk, JAN 6, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles-id/35236
Head of Palestine’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC), Minister Muayyad Shaaban, said in a new report that over 23,000 attacks have been carried out on Palestinians by settlers and the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank this year.
According to the CWRC report, 2025 saw Israeli troops and illegal settlers commit 23,827 attacks across the territory.
“The attacks were categorized as follows: 1,382 targeted land and trees, 16,664 attacks targeted individuals, while 5,398 attacks targeted property,” the report reads.
“The Israeli army was responsible for 18,384 attacks, while colonizers carried out 4,723 attacks, and both parties together were involved in an additional 720 attacks,” Shaaban is quoted as saying during a press conference at CWRC headquarters in Ramallah.
The minister said 2025 was “a year marked by bloodshed.”
“The occupying power did not simply expand colonies; it aimed to redefine the very concept of control. That is, domination is no longer limited to physical land, but rather, it extends to reshaping geography, symbolism, and the entire existence of the Palestinian people,” he added.
As a result of this year’s violence in the occupied West Bank, 14 Palestinian citizens have been killed.
Shaaban went on to say that 35,000 trees have been destroyed this year, and that settlers have caused 434 fires, which impacted Palestinian property and agriculture.
Meanwhile, land confiscation and settlement expansion are surging.
“Israeli occupation authorities effectively control approximately 41 percent of the West Bank, maintain a tight grip on nearly 70 percent of Area C, and control over 90 percent of the Jordan Valley through a comprehensive system of military orders and expropriation measures,” according to CWRC.
The 1993 US-sponsored Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security forces, and gave the Palestinians limited autonomy in some parts of the occupied West Bank. This was said to be in preparation for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
However, the accords did not end Israel’s military occupation and gave the Israeli government time to confiscate more Palestinian land and continue illegally expanding West Bank settlements.
The agreement resulted in the splitting of the West Bank into areas A, B, and C. Area A gave the PA authority over civil and security matters, while Area B gave it control only over civil matters. In Area C, Israel was granted full control.
Since then, illegal settlements have continued to expand, including in Areas A and B.
Since the start of 2025, Israel has been occupying multiple West Bank refugee camps and has been carrying out a systematic campaign of destruction and displacement.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been uprooted from their homes in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year, mainly in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas.
As army and settler violence surges, the government also continues to advance plans for illegally annexing the territory.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and staunch backer of the illegal settler movement, said on 30 December that Washington has given Tel Aviv “full support” to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.
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