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The 9,100 Palestinians left behind in Israeli prisons after the ‘peace’ deal

As world leaders celebrate the release of Israeli captives, over 9,000 Palestinian prisoners still face torture, hunger, and isolation behind bars. Half of them are held by Israel without charge or trial.

Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi  October 15, 2025

As the leaders of 20 countries gathered in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh to celebrate the ceasefire, mainstream media celebrated the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli captives in Gaza. After reuniting with their families, the captives described the harsh conditions in which they were held. Meanwhile, 1,968 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons, 88 of whom were released in the West Bank, 154 were deported to Egypt, and the rest were released in the Gaza Strip. Most of them were abducted by Israeli forces inside Gaza over the past two years. Of the total number of prisoners released, 250 had been serving life sentences for charges related to armed activity.

But over 9,100 Palestinians continue to be held in Israeli prisons. Some 3,544 of them are held under the Israeli system of “administrative detention,” which allows Israel to imprison Palestinians for up to six months without charge or trial. According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, none of the released prisoners in Monday’s swap were administrative detainees.

Administrative detention orders are ratified by an Israeli military court, and the six-month period of imprisonment can be renewed indefinitely based on a “secret file” that neither the detainees nor their lawyers can access. Consecutive renewals have led many Palestinians to serve up to two years under this system, never having been given due process.

Administrative detainees represent the largest category of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, says Ayah Shreiteh, the spokesperson of the Prisoners’ Club. 

Shreiteh added that around 1,000 Palestinians have been arrested and held without trial, without even an administrative detention order. Many of them have spent months behind bars.

As for those who have been sentenced based on clear charges, the majority of sentences are for belonging to political organizations and unions, participating in protests, or throwing stones. Since October 2023, however, Shreiteh points out that the most common conviction has been over “incitement,” a charge that covers anything from a social media post to delivering public speeches, and even to raising the flags of Palestinian political factions in public.

“Before October 7, the detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners had already been deteriorating,” Shreiteh noted. Then everything changed. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

After October 7, things got dramatically worse, Ansari says. Both verbal and physical violence increased against Palestinian detainees to the point that violence was used during all phases of detention, starting from the moment of arrest. “But the most noticeable change after October 7 has been the complete isolation of Palestinian prisoners, with the ban of family visitation,” she said. “This is still ongoing.” …………………………………………………………………………………………

Palestinian prisoners have been largely absent from mainstream media since before October 7, appearing only in the context of prisoner swaps last January and last week. However, the day before October 7, human rights groups reported that a total of 5,000 Palestinians were in Israeli jails — at the time, it was considered a record that had not been met in several years, including 1,300 administrative detainees. Over the past two years, that record-breaking prison population doubled.

Mass captivity as a phenomenon is foreign to Israelis, but for Palestinians, it has been normalized over decades. According to human rights reports, at least 1 million Palestinians have experienced Israeli detention since 1967. Yet after October 7, the Israeli captives became the only talking point for Western politicians and the mainstream media, while Palestinian prisoners remained invisible. 

On Monday, Donald Trump celebrated his vaunted “forever” peace after the signing of the ceasefire deal in Egypt. Now that the Israeli captives have been released, the 9,100 Palestinians languishing in Israel’s dungeons can continue to be forgotten. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-9100-palestinians-left-behind-in-israeli-prisons-after-the-peace-deal/

October 18, 2025 Posted by | civil liberties, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel Tortured And Sexually Humiliated Greta Thunberg.

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 16, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-tortured-and-sexually-humiliated?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=176291910&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

In an interview with Swedish paper Aftonbladet, Greta Thunberg has corroborated earlier eyewitness reports that she and her fellow Global Sumud Flotilla activists were subjected to monstrous abuses by Israeli officials after being abducted from their boats carrying aid for Palestinians in Gaza.

Here are some excerpts (quotes from Thunberg are italicized, quotes from Aftonbladet are in bold):

“They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me.”

“They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me.”

“They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said. And then they had learned ‘Lilla hora’ (Little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (Whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time.”

In the corner where Greta was sitting, the police placed a flag. “The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted ‘Don’t touch the flag’ and kicked me in the side. After a while, my hands were tied with cable ties, very tightly. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me while I was sitting like that.”

“They were thrown to the ground and beaten. But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me.”

Greta was then taken into a building to be searched and undressed. “The guards have no empathy or humanity, and they keep taking selfies with me. There’s a lot I don’t remember. So much is happening at once. You’re in shock. You’re in pain, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm.”

Outside, she was forced to take off her clothes again, she says. “It was mockery, rough handling, and everything was filmed. Everything they do is extremely violent.”

“It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We begged the whole time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us.”

“When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you.’ It was standard for them to say that.”

“This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.”

Thunberg told Aftonbladet that the Swedish government greatly downplayed the abuse she and her fellow Sumud Flotilla activists suffered, and wouldn’t even bring them water:

“We were together and told them about the treatment we received. About the lack of food, water, about the abuse. The torture. We showed them the physical injuries we had — bruises and scratches. We gave them all our contact details — I gave them my father’s number and the number of our contact in the organization. We were clear: everything we say now must be released to the media.”

“They didn’t do anything, they just said: ’Our job is to listen to you. We are here and you are entitled to consular support.’”

“We said over and over again: we need water. And they saw that the guards had water bottles. The embassy staff said: ’We’ll make a note of that.’ One of us, Vincent, said: ’Next time we meet you, you must bring water.’”

Then it took two days before the embassy staff showed up again.

“They didn’t bring any water, except for a small bottle of their own that was half empty. Vincent, who was in the worst shape, got to drink it. We kept asking the guards, ‘Can we have some water?’ but they just walked around with their water bottles and didn’t answer.”

“I said, ‘Are you going to leave us like this? If you leave now, they will beat us up.’ But they just kept walking.”

When Aftonbladet compares emails sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to relatives, with what the captives describe telling embassy staff, it becomes clear that the seriousness of the situation has been downplayed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the scene at the port, where Greta Thunberg was beaten for hours, as follows: “She told us about harsh treatment and that she had been sitting on a hard surface for a long time.”

On Saturday, several media outlets published testimonies that Greta had been subjected to torture.

Aftonbladet has spoken to three other members of the flotilla who largely confirm what Greta Thunberg says and who have all experienced various types of abuse and humiliation. We have also spoken to relatives. Everyone is highly critical of how the Swedish embassy staff acted.

Thunberg’s statements are not just in alignment with eyewitnesses who said these things were done to her, but with statements from the Israeli government itself.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last month that Sumud activists must be treated as terrorists in order to “create a clear deterrent” from future flotilla activism, declaring that “Anyone who chooses to collaborate with Hamas and support terrorism will meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”

“We will not allow individuals who support terrorism to live in comfort. They will face the full consequences of their actions,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.

After the flotilla activists were abducted by the IDF, Ben-Gvir filmed himself taunting them and calling them “terrorists” and said he “was proud that we treat ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters.”

Israel, needless to say, has an extensively documented record of torturing and raping individuals who’ve been given the “terrorist” label by the regime.

So what Thunberg is describing would be Israel doing what it said it was going to do in order to send a message and deter future efforts to feed starving Palestinians — perhaps singling out the most high-profile activist on the flotilla for special abuse in order to really drive the point home.

Israel is so evil it’s actually hard to wrap your mind around it.

October 18, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, Sweden | Leave a comment

The not-so-secret history of Netanyahu’s support for Hamas

From sabotaging Oslo to funneling Qatari cash into Gaza, Bibi has spent his career bolstering Hamas to help perpetuate the conflict. Even after Oct. 7, argues historian Adam Raz, he’s still advancing the same strategy.

972 Magazine, By Ghousoon Bisharat, November 11, 2024

When Israeli historian and human rights activist Adam Raz set out to write “The Road to October 7: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Production of the Endless Conflict and Israel’s Moral Degradation,” he knew he was tackling a blind spot in Israeli public discourse. The vast majority of Israelis, Raz believes, fail to grasp the full extent of Netanyahu’s involvement in bolstering Hamas before the current war, and in perpetuating an unending state of conflict.

Raz’s book, released in May of this year, sheds light on a controversial policy whereby Netanyahu’s governments for years routinely approved and encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza to prop up Hamas. While noting that the Israeli media has devoted more attention to this policy in the aftermath of October 7, Raz told +972 that this is “just a sliver of the bigger picture,” which is rooted in Netanyahu’s broader opposition to a just resolution to the conflict. “People need to understand the full scope of Netanyahu’s strategy,” he said.

According to Raz, who also works as a researcher at the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Netanyahu’s priority is not maintaining Israel’s security but rather preventing any real chance of resolving the conflict through the division of land, ending the occupation, or a two-state solution. Keeping the cash flowing to Hamas served this objective by ensuring the Palestinian national movement remained splintered between Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, thus allowing Israel to maintain its dominance over the whole of the land. Even after the devastating events of October 7, Raz warns that Netanyahu’s playbook remains unchanged.

This book isn’t a history lesson about the conflict, Raz emphasizes, but rather a damning exploration of a political alliance that continues to degrade Israel’s moral fabric. “I didn’t write this book, I yelled it on the pages,” he said. 

I spoke with Raz about the long history of Netanyahu’s symbiotic relationship with Hamas and its recently-killed leader Yahya Sinwar; why the current war represents a continuation of, not a break from, the prime minister’s strategy vis-a-vis the Palestinians as a whole; and why even after more than a year of war and the death of Sinwar, for Netanyahu little has changed. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

…………………………………….. Adam Raz : This is a book about Netanyahu. I didn’t set out to write the story of the occupation under Netanyahu, the history of Hamas, or the collision between the two national movements. It’s the story of the relationship between Netanyahu and Sinwar. I’m trying to understand the motivation of the two most important actors in this game, who have been holding their societies by the neck.  

Israel is Bibi-land. Whatever is at stake in Israel, whether it’s the Palestinians, the Iran nuclear deal, or any other foreign policy issue, it’s all in Netanyahu’s hands. In my book you can read how this came to be, and how Bibi changed Israeli politics. ………………………………………………………………………..

Netanyahu is the number one opponent of a two-state solution………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Since coming back to power, Netanyahu has resisted any attempt, be it military or diplomatic, that might bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

his central interest is never-ending war, and Hamas was a tool to maintain the conflict while Israel had the upper hand…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-hamas-october-7-adam-raz/

October 18, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

The Trumpanyahu Administration Is Already Sabotaging The Ceasefire

Caitlin Johnstone Oct 15, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-trumpanyahu-administration-is?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=176195807&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I don’t know who first coined the saying that an Israeli ceasefire means “you cease and we fire,” but it proves reliably accurate time after time.

The IDF reportedly killed nine Palestinians trying to return to their homes today under the usual justification that they were traveling in some kind of unauthorized area in ways that made the troops feel threatened, blah blah. They did this all the time during the previous “ceasefire” at the beginning of the year, using the exact same excuses.

Just as we speculated the other day might happen, Israel has announced that it is going to cut the aid it allows into Gaza in half and cut off fuel and gas shipments because Hamas hasn’t returned the bodies of all the dead Israeli hostages. Israel was fully aware when it signed the agreement that Hamas would not be able to deliver the bodies of all the hostages right away due to the rubble and chaos caused by the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza.

On October 9, CNN published an article titled “Israel assesses Hamas may not be able to return all remaining dead hostages” which reported that “the Israeli government is aware that Hamas may not know the location of, or is unable to retrieve, the remains of some of the 28 remaining deceased hostages.”

The Red Cross says that finding all the bodies of the hostages will be a “massive challenge” in all the rubble created by Israeli airstrikes in the areas where hostages were being kept.

Drop Site News’ Jeremy Scahill explains that “During Gaza negotiations, Israel understood it would take time to recover all bodies of deceased captives. A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed. Now Israel is pretending that didn’t happen so it can violate the deal and cut the agreed aid shipments in half.”

Mondoweiss reported last week that Hebrew-language Israeli media had been saying that a “secret clause” in the ceasefire agreement would allow Israel to resume its onslaught if the bodies of the dead hostages were not returned within a 72-hour window.

So it looks like this was planned from the beginning. Create obligations that Israel knew Hamas would be unable to fulfill, then use it as an excuse to resume the slaughter.

And President Trump appears to be going right along with it, posting on Truth Social that “A big burden has been lifted, but the job IS NOT DONE. THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED!”

“We were told they had 26, 24 dead hostages… and it seems as though they don’t have that, because we’re talking about a much lesser number,” Trump told the press on Tuesday, saying, “I want them back.”

Trump also told the press that Hamas is going to have to be forcibly disarmed, which amounts to an open admission that this entire “ceasefire” show is a sham.

“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said on Tuesday.

This statement matches recent comments from Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Hamas will be disarmed “the easy way” or “the hard way”.

The president and prime minister are making it clear that in order for the ceasefire negotiations to proceed to a lasting peace, Hamas is going to have to completely surrender and Israel is going to have to be handed total victory. They’re branding it as a ceasefire deal when it’s actually a total surrender deal, and Hamas has made it explicitly clear that it is not surrendering.

As Drop Site News explains, “In reality, senior Hamas, Islamic Jihad and figures from other resistance factions have repeatedly rejected disarmament throughout negotiations, including in multiple interviews with Drop Site over the past year.”

A big part of the confusion around the ceasefire in public discourse today is that there are two contradictory ideas going around about what the ceasefire is and what it means. Israel supporters think “ceasefire” means “total victory and complete surrender by Hamas,” while everyone else thinks “ceasefire” means ceasefire.

That’s why you see Israel supporters celebrating the deal while Palestine supporters are much more apprehensive. Palestine supporters understand that a ceasefire and a surrender are two different things, and see Trump and Netanyahu stating that Hamas is going to have to completely disarm if “ceasefire” negotiations are going to move toward a lasting peace. They understand that the unyielding mutually exclusive positions of the Trumpanyahu administration and of Hamas are likely to come to a head in ways that result in the reignition of the Gaza holocaust.

So for all the applause and fuss that has been made about the ceasefire, as things stand right now it doesn’t look like much has changed. From the very beginning of this genocide it has been the officially stated position of the US and Israel that the killing will not end until Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders, and that is still their position today. There’s a much-needed pause in the slaughter, sure, but the Trumpanyahu team is making it explicitly clear that it is going to ramp up again under the justification of Hamas refusing to disarm.

And that’s assuming negotiations even make it that far; Israel is already doing everything it can to sabotage the ceasefire by murdering Palestinians and greatly reducing the amount of aid it promised.

Unless something significant changes about all this fairly soon, even this feeble reduction in Israel’s Gaza atrocities cannot be expected to hold.

October 17, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Let Us Now Bury the Truth (Again)

October 13, 2025, By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News

What is going around now is another cover up, another denial of what a lot of people on both sides call “the second Nakba,” the sin atop the original sin.

Headline in the Sunday editions of The New York Times: “A New Test for Israel: Can It Repair Its Ties to Americans?”

What a question. Let us set aside our indignation and think about this.

The piece below this head is by David Halbfinger, whose trade over the years has been to appear balanced when covering the Zionist state while glossing its past, which is wall-to-wall condemnable, and faithfully apologizing for its present, which — need this be said — is also wall-to-wall condemnable.

David Halbfinger, who has just begun his second tour as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, in action:

“The war in Gaza may finally be ending, after two years of bloodshed and destruction. But among the damage that has been done is a series of devastating blows to Israel’s relationship with the citizens of its most important and most stalwart ally, the United States.

Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters, and not only on college campuses or among progressives….

The question is whether those younger Americans will be lost to Israel long- term — and what Israel’s advocates will do to try to reverse that.”

Halbfinger proceeds to quote none of “those younger Americans,” or anyone else of any age who stands forthrightly against “the Jewish state” in response to the campaign of terror, murder and starvation it has conducted against the civilian population of Gaza these past two years.

No, his sources are professors, think-tank inhabitants and, of course, Israeli Zionists, American Zionists and in two cases Israeli–American Zionists — the good old divided-loyalties crowd.

Halbfinger quotes Shibley Telhami, an Arab–Israeli scholar with safe harbors at The Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

You see what is going on here, I trust.

I have anticipated for many months — no great insight in this — that when something like the end of Israel’s terror in Gaza comes there will be no thought among its allies in the West, and certainly none among its Zionist supporters, of any kind of reckoning in the name of justice.

No, a “war” will be over, not a racist campaign of annihilation, and certainly not a genocide. The highly honorable Cost of War Project at Brown University put out a paper on Oct. 7 reckoning total casualties in Gaza (killed and injured) at 236,505, “more than 10% of the pre-war population.” These are responsibly researched facts.

We know these facts. “It doesn’t take rocket science to grasp the picture,” Norman Finkelstein said in a lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts five days before the Netanyahu–Trump “peace plan” was announced.

He said: “Everyone at this point knows the picture — unless you have a material stake in lying to yourself and lying to others.”

‘Everyone Knows the Picture’

Yes, we know the picture and the facts, and we are invited to live with these facts without any kind of investigation, truth and reconciliation project, such as post-apartheid South Africa conducted in the late 1990s, or any other effort in behalf of restorative justice.

No, the invitation is to go back to our comfort zones while a regime of racist murderers continues on its way.

The liars propose to prevail, to put this point another way.

Whatever other purpose this commentary may serve, I use it to raise my voice in protest against this… this desecration of the human cause.

When I consider the project of the liars now my mind goes back to al–Nakba — further, indeed. David Ben–Gurion and others of his time acknowledged the injustice and the violence on which the State of Israel was founded in July 1948. “We have come and we have stolen their country,” Ben–Gurion remarked.


[“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.]

There is no putting the point more truthfully. And all that has occurred since is the outcome of this, a covering up, a denial of the original sin.

And now again.

…………………………………………Along with everyone else, I do not know at writing whether the Gaza Peace Plan, as it is billed, will hold or when — the better question at this point — it will fall apart like all those that have preceded it.

But — grim knowledge — I know this: It will not end well if the events of the past two years are buried as the events of the past seven and some decades have been buried. The human spirit simply does not work that way.

It will not, indeed, end at all. https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/13/patrick-lawrence-let-us-now-bury-the-truth-again/

October 17, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Palestinians freed from Israeli prison denied reunion with families as Trump claims a ‘forever’ peace

At the end of the prisoner exchange, between 9,000 and 10,000 Palestinians will remain behind bars, including around 5,000 Palestinians who are being held without charge or trial, and without clear release dates, under Israel’s system of “administrative detention.”

Palestinians gathered in the West Bank to reunite with loved ones set to be released as part of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. But many were devastated to learn that Israel had deported them instead.

Mondoweisss, By Qassam Muaddi  October 13, 2025 

Palestinians in Gaza lived another day without bombs dropping over their heads as the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continued into Monday, which saw the release of Israeli captives from Gaza and the release of 1,718 out of 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

At around 8:00 a.m. local time, Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, handed the first group of seven Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, without any ceremonies or media exposure. The second group of 13 Israeli captives came an hour later. Meanwhile, the Israeli prison services moved hundreds of Palestinians out of its detention centers.

Palestinians in Gaza lived another day without bombs dropping over their heads as the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continued into Monday, which saw the release of Israeli captives from Gaza and the release of 1,718 out of 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

At around 8:00 a.m. local time, Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, handed the first group of seven Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, without any ceremonies or media exposure. The second group of 13 Israeli captives came an hour later. Meanwhile, the Israeli prison services moved hundreds of Palestinians out of its detention centers.

A total of 1,718 Palestinians were released into the Gaza Strip, all of whom were abducted by Israeli forces from within Gaza during the past two years. In addition, Israel released 250 Palestinians who had been serving high or life sentences in Israeli prisons, 88 of whom were released in the West Bank, while the rest were deported to Gaza and Egypt.

In the town of Beitunia, adjacent to Ramallah, dozens of Palestinians gathered in expectation of the released prisoners, who were announced to be released from Israel’s Ofer detention center just outside of the town. Israeli drones flew over the gathering, dropping leaflets that read “we are watching you everywhere. If you show any support for a terrorist group, you will expose yourself to arrest and punishment.”

At around 11:00 a.m., two Red Cross-marked buses drove through Beitunia as Palestinians waved at the released prisoners along the way, in decidedly smaller numbers than the crowds that had received released prisoners during the previous January-March ceasefire.

At the Ramallah Cultural Palace, prisoners’ families and crowds of Palestinians gathered to receive the released prisoners. In the crowds, the family of a prisoner, Murad Abu al-Rub, 45, including two of his sisters, his cousin, and his paralyzed mother, stood on a sidewalk trying with difficulty to get a glimpse of the Red Cross buses as they arrived.

“He has been in jail for 19 years with a life sentence, and the last time we visited him was before October 2023,” the cousin told Mondoweiss. “For more than two years, we haven’t seen him, and the news we have had about him through lawyers is very limited.”

“His father and one of his brothers died during his time in jail,” the cousin explained. “And his mother suffered a stroke last year that left her unable to move or speak. But we brought her because she has been very anxious to see him.”

The family left Jenin in the northern West Bank at 6 a.m. to avoid the Israeli army’s expected road closures, as it did during the previous ceasefire. “The Israeli Shabak came to our house yesterday and warned us not to show any signs of celebration, and they told us that Murad will be released here.”

After all the prisoners left the bus, the family discovered that Murad wasn’t among them. Minutes later, they received confirmation from the Red Cross that he had been deported to Egypt. 

As the cousin shared the news, the elderly mother broke into tears and random screams in her wheelchair. As her daughters helped her into the car, one of them tried to console her. “He went to Egypt to study! He’ll be back later,” she said. The mother moved her hand in an apparent refusal to hear, continuing to weep.

Meters away, the older brother of Abdallah Barham, 40, one of the prisoners set to be released, had just learned that he, too, had been deported. The brother was in Ramallah by 7 a.m. to wait for Abdallah, who had served 18 years of his life sentence in Israeli prison.

“The family and the entire village are waiting in Kufr Qadoum to celebrate his release,” he explained. “And the Shabak came yesterday and warned us not to celebrate.” 

“Our younger brother and our mother died during his period of imprisonment,” he continued. “And our father has been waiting for this day for the past 18 years. The feeling is tragic.” ………………………………………………………………………………..

At the end of the prisoner exchange, between 9,000 and 10,000 Palestinians will remain behind bars, including around 5,000 Palestinians who are being held without charge or trial, and without clear release dates, under Israel’s system of “administrative detention.”……………………………….

Donald Trump speaks before the Knesset, Sharm al-Sheikh summit

……………………………………. In his speech, Trump said it was a “historic dawn of a new Middle East” and the beginning of a “grand concord and lasting harmony for Israel.” Trump praised Netanyahu, whom he called “hard to deal with.” The U.S. President also lauded special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whom he said was “called in” to draft the plan for the end of the war, all with a wave of applause by the Knesset members. Trump also thanked the Arab and Muslim countries that participated in his plan for the end of the war, which did not receive any applause from the Knesset.

During Trump’s speech, Palestinian Knesset member Ayman Odeh and left-wing anti-Zionist Knesset member Ofer Kasif raised signs calling for the recognition of Palestine as a state, and were forcibly removed from the hall

…………………………………………………………… Israel and Hamas still have to negotiate terms for the definitive end to the war based on Trump’s plan. This includes the body meant to rule over the Strip, which Hamas and Palestinian factions insist must be an independent Palestinian body of technocrats. In contrast, Trump’s plan would include a “board of peace” headed by Trump himself that would be in charge of running Gaza. 

Another point to be negotiated is the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions. Palestinian factions, including Hamas, insist that they would lay down their arms upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, while Trump’s plan would see the resistance movement’s disarmament and makes no mention of Palestinian statehood. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/palestinians-freed-from-israeli-prison-denied-reunion-with-families-as-trump-claims-a-forever-peace/

October 17, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Israeli Soldiers Torched Food, Homes, and a Critical Sewage Treatment Plant in the Wake of Ceasefire Announcement

Soldiers called the mass arson of Gaza City their “final touches.”

Drop Site, Younis Tirawi and Yaniv Cogan, Oct 13, 2025

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that both Hamas and Israel had signed off on an agreement to stop the fighting, the Israeli military launched an arson spree, setting fire to civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of an essential sanitation plant in Gaza City. After publication, the Israel Defense Forces told Drop Site it “is aware of the incident and it is being reviewed.”

The destruction of Palestinian structures following the departure of soldiers who had used them as temporary bases has been a hallmark of Israel’s approach to Gaza for two years. In July, Israeli reporter Yuval Abraham collected testimonies from soldiers describing a myriad of arson methods. “Every Arab house we entered had olive oil […] We poured the oil on the sofas, on anything flammable in the apartment, and then we ignited [it] or threw in a smoke grenade. This was a common practice,” one of them described.

The agreement came after months of a concerted effort to render Gaza uninhabitable by destroying residences and civilian infrastructure, culminating in the ground invasion of Gaza City and the leveling of several high rises in Gaza City. In September, Israeli government minister Gila Gamliel told Channel 7 News, “We have already completely annihilated 75% of the entire [Gaza] Strip. There remains 25%, which, as you know, it too…we are now taking over [the city of] Gaza—there will be nothing left there that would really [have] the potential to be habitable.”

The scope of the arson perpetrated in Gaza City on the night of October 9th and early morning of October 10—Thursday night into Friday, just after the ceasefire was agreed to but before Israel’s cabinet approved it—was broader than at any other time Drop Site has tracked during the assault on the strip. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Torching of Gaza City’s Sewage Treatment Plant: “[One] last memory”……………………………………………………………………………………………

Mass Arson Campaign Around Sheikh Radwan Market, Gaza City……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Burning Homes Across Gaza City Israeli troops also shared photos of torched houses in other locations accompanied by captions musing about the arson. One soldier dubbed the burning of several buildings the “finishing touches.”……………………………………………………………………………………..

As the ceasefire takes hold, Gaza has already been rendered largely uninhabitable. One Israeli colonel recently bragged to the Israeli media, “We are leaving behind us only dust. There’s nothing here.” For officials like Gamliel, who have expressed satisfaction with the level of destruction in Gaza, the upshot is clear:

“Look at the hypocrisy of all European countries. They constantly go ‘starvation, starvation’ Well…? Open [your] doors! Why, when it was about Ukraine, it was fine, when it was about Syria, it was fine. When it comes to the Palestinians, they want to perpetuate this conflict structurally.

Now, just for your information: one million and seven hundred thousand inside the Gaza Strip are defined as UNRWA refugees. Meaning, once they get out of there, they are not coming back! Because as refugees, this is not the place where they actually have the right of basic belonging.” https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-idf-soldiers-set-fire-food-homes-sewage-treatment-plan-after-ceasefire-announced

October 15, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Worlds Extinguished: Hostage Returns, Central Casting and the Gaza Ceasefire

14 October 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/worlds-extinguished-hostage-returns-central-casting-and-the-gaza-ceasefire/

Depending on which source you consult, the twenty-point peace plan of President Donald Trump for securing peace in Gaza shows much exultance and extravagant omission. The exultance was initially focused on the return of the hostages. It then shifted to the broader strategic goals of the various parties. Commentary on this point, even as the living Israeli hostages convalescence after their exchange for Palestinian detainees, sidesteps the Palestinian people, those fly in the ointment irritants who never seem to exit the political scene.  

The peace plan, in effect, is being executed to eliminate Hamas and any semblance of a Palestinian militant movement in favour of an Israel-Arab-US axis of preferment and normalisation. Doing so puts a firm lid on Palestinian sovereignty and statehood in favour of sounder relations between Israel and the Arab states.

Consider, for instance, the views from the American Jewish Committee in their October 10 assessment. “President Trump’s unconventional approach created new diplomatic realities and forced Israel and key Arab states to align in new ways.” The peace plan was “the most credible framework to date for advancing Israeli-Arab peace, creating new opportunities for regional engagement, and countering Hamas’ ideology through a united alliance of Israel and Arab nations committed to peace, security, and prosperity.” Clearly, Palestinians are, if not footnotes, then invisible ink lines in such arrangements.

This attitude is also echoed in remarks made by the US Vice President, J.D. Vance. Palestinian subservience is assumed in any new proposed arrangement which prioritises Israeli security and a collective of overseeing nation states that will guard against any mischief in the Strip. “The President convinced the entire Muslim world really, both the Gulf Arab states, but as far as South-East Asia as Indonesia, to really step up and provide ground troops so that Gaza could be secured in safety.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty gave some sense of what is expected. “We are going to support and commit troops within specific parameters,” he told CBS. A UN Security Council mandate would be required, along with clear specifications for what the mission of the troops on the ground would be, “which will be peacekeeping and providing training to Palestinian police.”

Trump’s near cinematic appearance on October 13 in the compact, claustrophobic Knesset after the handover of the hostages set the scene for Israeli grandstanding, staged mawkishness and denial. Netanyahu was in typical form, accusing Israel’s friends of blood libel stupidity for recognising Palestine; in doing so, they had effectively committed acts of antisemitism, buying “into Hamas’s false propaganda.” Massacring and starving those in the Gaza Strip warranted no mention, but disarming Hamas and demilitarising the enclave did. With praise for both himself and Trump, Netanyahu spoke of jointly forging “a path to bring the remaining hostages home and end the war. End a war in a way that ensures the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarisation of Gaza, and that Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel.”

He also thanked Trump for “fully” backing the decision to make the last murderous assault into Gaza City. This “military pressure” provided momentum that eventually saw Hamas capitulate. The US President then “succeeded in doing something that no one believed was possible. You brought most of the Arab world, you did, you brought most of the world behind your proposal to free the hostages and end the war.”  

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, for his part, explicitly denied any genocide or “intentional starvation” of the Palestinians, then proceeded to overlook them in calling on “all the nations of the Islamic world” to engage Israel.

Trump’s own speech was meandering, personal and free of complex turns. He spoke about his envoy Steve Witkoff as a Henry Kissinger who did not leak, an emissary of singular genius. An interruption by Hadash lawmakers Ayman Odeh and Ofer Cassif, both demanding that Palestine be recognised, did not faze him. And then came mention of theUkraine War, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and more adulatory remarks for the US delegates who have paid homage to the US God King. They were all part of “central casting.”

Not a sliver of reference to the Palestinian cause for sovereignty made an appearance, which continues to moan under the strategic expediency of it all, the residents of Gaza doomed to indefinite invigilation at the hands of Trump’s “Board of Peace.” More to the point, he was happy to admit providing weapons at the request of “Bibi” at a moment’s notice. The US made “the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.” But the slaughter could not continue, and the Israeli PM would be remembered “far more” for accepting the peace agreement. “The timing for this is brilliant. I said, ‘Bibi you’re going to be remembered for this far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going, kill, kill, kill.’”

The Palestinians, granted brief respite from military violence, will be desperately wary. When Lapid mentioned that Trump had “saved far more than one life, and life is an entire world,” it can also be assumed that killing one life kills a world. Some 68,000 Palestinian worlds (a conservative estimate) were extinguished by the munitions and weapons of Israel and its backers. As humanitarian workers return to Gaza, they see the horrors of a lunarscape of devastation. If only Trump had considered paying a visit to that particular part of earth.

October 15, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Israeli Defense Minister Says IDF Will Destroy Gaza Tunnels Once Hamas Releases Israeli Captives

by Dave DeCamp | October 12, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/12/israeli-defense-minister-says-idf-will-destroy-gaza-tunnels-once-hamas-releases-israeli-captives/

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that the Israeli military would destroy tunnels in Gaza after the remaining Israeli captives are released by Hamas, which is expected to happen on Monday.

“Israel’s great challenge after the phase of returning the hostages will be the destruction of all of Hamas’s terror tunnels in Gaza, directly by the IDF and through the international mechanism to be established under the leadership and supervision of the United States,” Katz wrote on X.

“This is the primary significance of implementing the agreed-upon principle of demilitarizing Gaza and neutralizing Hamas of its weapons. I have instructed the IDF to prepare for carrying out the mission,” he added.

According to the outline of the Gaza ceasefire proposal released by the White House, all “military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt,” and there will be a “process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors.” But the details of how those steps will be taken, including who will be doing it, are unclear. A senior Hamas official has also said that Hamas won’t disarm unless it can hand its weapons to a Palestinian state.

So far, Israel and Hamas have just entered the first phase of the ceasefire deal, which involves the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, the IDF pulling back to an agreed-upon line, and Israel allowing more aid to enter Gaza. Details on implementing the rest of the agreement still need to be worked out in negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Katz’s comments come as many are concerned Israel will restart its genocidal war once Hamas releases the Israeli captives. Also on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military “campaign is not over,” though he could be referring to other areas where Israel is at war or potential escalations elsewhere in the region.

“And I want to say: Everywhere we fought – we won. But in the same breath, I must tell you: The campaign is not over. There are still very great security challenges ahead of us,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office. “Some of our enemies are trying to rebuild themselves to attack us again. And as we say – ‘We’re on it.’”

According to a report from Israel Hayom, the US has given Israel a guarantee that it would back Israeli military action if it determined Hamas violated the deal in a way that “poses a security threat.” The report said the understanding “constitutes a side agreement” between the US and Israel.

The US gave Israel a similar side deal for the November 2024 Lebanon ceasefire agreement, which Israel continues to violate on a near-daily basis.

October 15, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

More Than 200 Bodies Dug Out of the Gaza Rubble Since Ceasefire Went Into Effect

Gaza rescue workers say more than 9,500 people are missing

by Dave DeCamp | October 12, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/12/more-than-200-bodies-dug-out-of-the-gaza-rubble-since-ceasefire-went-into-effect/
Rescue workers in Gaza have recovered more than 200 bodies of Palestinians killed by the IDF from the rubble and from areas they were previously unable to access since the ceasefire went into effect on Friday, and Israeli troops pulled back from certain areas.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its death toll update on Sunday that at least 117 bodies were recovered over the previous 24-hour period. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry said.

On Saturday, the ministry said that at least 116 bodies were recovered over the previous 24 hours. Gaza’s Civil Defense said that around 9,500 Palestinians are reported missing, and most are presumed to be dead under the rubble.

As of Sunday, the Health Ministry’s violent death toll has reached 67,806, and the number of wounded has reached 170,066, meaning at a minimum, 237,872 Palestinians have been killed or injured in Gaza since Israel unleashed its genocidal campaign following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The figure represents more than 10% of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

Studies have shown the Health Ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount by as much as 40%, which means the real violent death toll could be around 100,000. The estimate doesn’t factor in deaths caused by the Israeli siege due to starvation, disease, the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, and other factors, figures that could take years to determine.

Aid deliveries into Gaza are expected to surge as a result of the signing of the ceasefire deal, under which at least 600 trucks are supposed to enter the Strip per day, the minimum the UN says is needed to bring relief to Palestinians who have been starving under the Israeli siege. Back in August, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) determined that famine was taking place in Gaza City and likely in northern Gaza.

The famine declaration didn’t stop Israel’s plans to launch a major offensive on Gaza City, which continued until last week. The IDF has damaged or destroyed at least 83% of the buildings in Gaza City, and more than 500,000 Palestinians have returned to the area since the ceasefire went into effect to find total devastation.

Hamas is expected to release all remaining Israeli captives on Monday in exchange for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

October 15, 2025 Posted by | Gaza | Leave a comment

Israeli Government Votes to Implement Trump Peace Plan for Gaza as Hamas Pledges to Uphold It

Juan Cole, 10/10/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/10/government-implement-implementation.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 , the Israeli government on Friday approved the ceasefire in Gaza and the hostage exchange, and agreed to begin withdrawing troops from the west of the Strip. The approval came after the arrival of President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and their meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The ceasefire was expected to go immediately into effect, with the Israeli military beginning its withdrawal from Gaza, to be followed by the exchange of hostages between Hamas and Israel over the next three days.

The extreme-right Religious Zionism and Jewish Power blocs, led by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir respectively, voted against the agreement. Ordinarily, Netanyahu would need these votes for a majority in the 120-member Knesset or Israeli parliament, where his coalition has 64 seats. In this instance, however, the other Israeli parties, mostly center-right, had wanted this sort of agreement all along, and so they supported the sitting government from its left.

Orit Strook, Minister of Settlements and National Missions, also from Religious Zionism, said she was disappointed that Netanyahu had not explained to President Trump that Gaza is an inalienable part of Israel. (It isn’t.)

Smotrich expressed “Mixed feelings on a complex morning.” He spoke of his joy about the release of the remaining hostages, even though he had earlier repeatedly said that achieving the release of the hostages was not a high priority.

Smotrich defended his earlier obstructionism on the grounds that he had opposed “partial deals” that would have prevented the occupation of Gaza and the elimination of Hamas. In fact, of course, he opposed all deals and wanted to empty Gaza of its indigenous Palestinians, or the ones still left alive after two years of intensive bombing of civilian apartment buildings and infrastructure. Smotrich had also obstructed the delivery of aid to Gaza’s civilian population. He also opposed the release of 250 Palestinian hostages taken over the years by Israel, warning that they would go on to spill Jewish blood. Large numbers of the some 10,000 Palestinians kidnapped by Israel have never been so much as charged with committing violence, much less convicted. He pledged to go on striving to “eradicate” Hamas. Some ceasefire.

Conflicting reports are issuing from high Trump administration officials about whether 200 American troops would be sent to Gaza as observers of the ceasefire, with some confirming it and others denying it.

Hamas affirmed that they were committed to a deal that would end the two-year-long conflict.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said that it has enough food aid ready to go into Gaza to last for three months. The Israeli government has attempted to ban UNRWA, formed by the United Nations to help Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes by the Israelis, from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, and has blocked most food aid since April. Gaza cannot feed itself, especially after the Israelis destroyed 80% of Gaza’s farmland. Nevertheless, UNRWA still has 12,000 workers in Gaza ready to swing into action to relieve the Israeli-imposed famine.

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment

October 14, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: Trump’s Sham Peace Plan

 October 11, 2025, By Chris Hedges ScheerPost , https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/11/chris-hedges-trumps-sham-peace-plan/

There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.

It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.

Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.

Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.

Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”

Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”

Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?

How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?

How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?

Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?

By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?

Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?

How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?

How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?

Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?

What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?

And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?

“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”

Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.

Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.

The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to at least 700,000.

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”

Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.

This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.

The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.

October 13, 2025 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Yemen’s Houthis To ‘Monitor’ Israel Compliance With Gaza Ceasefire Deal

Yemeni attacks will stop if Israel implements the deal

by Dave DeCamp | October 9, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/09/yemens-houthis-to-monitor-israel-compliance-with-gaza-ceasefire-deal/

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Ansar Allah, said on Thursday that Yemen will be “monitoring” Israel’s compliance with the Gaza ceasefire deal, warning Yemeni support for the Palestinians in Gaza would continue if the deal isn’t implemented.

“We must be at the highest levels of caution and readiness, and continue the massive popular momentum with the Palestinian people, until we determine whether the agreement will be achieved, or whether we will continue our path of support and assistance to the Palestinian people,” al-Houthi said, according to Yemen’s SABA news agency.

“We will remain vigilant, prepared, and monitor the progress of the agreement. Will it lead to an end to the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the entry of aid, food, medicine, and humanitarian needs to the Palestinian people? Will the Americans and Israelis stop their genocide against the Palestinian people and commit to a ceasefire? This is what we hope for, and it was our goal in the support operations and confronting the attack on the Palestinian people and the nation in general,” al-Houthi added.

Ansar Allah, commonly known as the Houthis, has maintained that its attacks on Israel and blockade of Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea would end if there were a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli blockade on aid entering the Palestinian territory. The Houthis halted their attacks back when a ceasefire deal was signed in January 2025.

After Israel violated the ceasefire deal in March by imposing a total blockade on Gaza, al-Houthi announced that Yemen would restart its blockade on Israeli shipping. In response to that announcement, the US began a very heavy bombing campaign targeting Yemen, known as Operation Rought Rider, which lasted from March 15 to May 6 and killed over 250 civilians.

While the Trump administration framed the bombing campaign as necessary to protect American ships, the Houthis were not attacking US vessels before it started. It ended with an agreement that the Houthis wouldn’t target US ships if the US stopped bombing Yemen, as the Trump administration gave up on trying to get Ansar Allah to stop its attacks on Israel.

October 13, 2025 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, politics international | Leave a comment

Moniz’s Proposal for a Regional Nuclear Consortium with Iran

11 October 2025

WANA (Oct 11) – As the reinstatement of international sanctions against Iran effectively signals the formal collapse of the JCPOA, Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy and a key figure in the original nuclear deal, has reintroduced the debate on Iran’s nuclear program with a bold proposal. In an article published in Foreign Policy, Moniz calls for the creation of a regional nuclear consortium involving Iran and other Middle Eastern countries—an initiative he claims could curb nuclear tensions while promoting peaceful nuclear energy across the region.

The End of the JCPOA and a New Idea Emerges

Moniz argues that the return of international sanctions highlights the final breakdown of the JCPOA, which had successfully restrained Iran’s nuclear activities until the U.S. withdrawal in 2018. He claims that Iran’s accelerated uranium enrichment to 60 percent and reduced cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have made the deal irreparable.

Yet, Moniz emphasizes that military action or sanctions alone cannot resolve the issue. The only viable path, he argues, is a new framework based on regional cooperation: a “Middle Eastern Nuclear Consortium.”

Consortium: Cooperation or Control?

Under this plan, countries in the region—including Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt—would jointly participate in the production and peaceful use of nuclear energy. According to Moniz, the nuclear fuel cycle would be distributed among multiple countries, preventing any single state from independently developing nuclear weapons.

This division of responsibilities—from uranium extraction to fuel production—would accelerate peaceful nuclear technology while raising the cost and difficulty of nuclear weapons development. Countries found v

Iran’s Special Role: Limitation or Participation?

The most contentious aspect of Moniz’s plan concerns Iran. He argues that uranium enrichment should not take place on Iranian soil, but rather in a neutral location—potentially an island in the Persian Gulf or territory in Oman—under direct IAEA supervision.iolating the consortium’s rules could be removed, and their nuclear programs dismantled.

“Iran has enriched over 400 kilograms of uranium to 60 percent, which has no reasonable civilian purpose. To prevent recurrence, enrichment must occur in an international facility outside Tehran’s direct control,” Moniz writes.

He also proposes regional nuclear fuel banks to ensure all member states, including Iran, have secure access to nuclear fuel. Meanwhile, Iran could temporarily continue limited enrichment (up to 5 percent) until the regional fuel cycle is fully operational. In exchange for halting enrichment on its territory and accepting enhanced transparency, Western countries would facilitate investment in Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program.

Silence on Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal

A notable criticism of Moniz’s proposal is the absence of any reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons. Previous Iranian proposals, such as the “Minaret Plan” by former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and ex-ambassador Mohsen Baharvand, emphasized a nuclear-weapon-free Middle East. Moniz’s plan, however, does not address Israel’s arsenal, which some analysts view as a one-sided U.S. approach……………………………………………………

Moniz stresses that implementing this plan requires tough decisions from all parties. From his perspective, Iran must dilute its 60-percent enriched uranium, return to JCPOA-level cooperation, and accept expanded inspections. In return, the U.S. and Europe would reopen pathways for investment in Iran, fostering the growth of civilian nuclear energy within the country.

However, Iranian officials have repeatedly affirmed that domestic enrichment is a red line and that Iran’s nuclear program remains entirely peaceful—a position echoed by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.

Moniz’s plan can be seen as an attempt to reimagine the JCPOA in a regional format: ostensibly promoting peaceful nuclear energy while structurally limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Analysts note that if designed on the principles of mutual respect, non-discrimination, and equal participation, such multilateral cooperation could reduce tensions and enhance nuclear technology collaboration in the Middle East.

Yet, the fundamental question remains: Will Iran, having experienced what it considers Western breaches of trust in the JCPOA, agree to transfer parts of its most sensitive nuclear activities abroad? https://wanaen.com/monizs-proposal-for-a-regional-nuclear-consortium-with-iran/

October 13, 2025 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, politics international | Leave a comment

The Israeli media is reporting on a ‘secret clause’ in the Gaza ceasefire deal that no one is talking about.

Hebrew-language Israeli media reports say there is a “secret clause” buried in the Gaza ceasefire agreement that would allow Israel to resume the war. Palestinians worry this is the pretext Netanyahu needs to get out of completing the deal.

By Qassam Muaddi  October 10, 2025  https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-israeli-media-is-reporting-on-a-secret-clause-in-the-gaza-ceasefire-deal-that-no-one-is-talking-about/

The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas could collapse due to an alleged “secret clause” in the agreement that would allow Israel to resume the war, according to reports in the Arab and Hebrew-language Israeli media. That so-called clause would reportedly be “activated” in the event that Hamas is unable to locate all the Israeli captives within the 72-hour window allotted to the Palestinian resistance group during the first part of the deal’s implementation.

On Friday, Al Jazeera’s Palestine Bureau Chief Walid al-Omary pointed out on the network’s live broadcast that the second article of the deal concerning the release of Israeli captives included a phrase in the Hebrew version about an undisclosed annex. According to al-Omary, if Hamas fails to release all Israeli captives, dead and alive, a “secret clause in appendix B” would be “activated.”

Israel’s Kan TV was the first to report on the clause, which was subsequently covered by other Israeli media outlets. According to Kan, an unnamed source who had been exposed to the content of the secret clause said that it was “jumbles of words.” Israel’s Channel 13 also reported that an Israeli court dismissed a petition to disclose the “secret contents” of the deal, citing security considerations.

Although the alleged clause implies punitive consequences on Hamas in the event of failing to meet the 72-hour deadline, Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview hours after the deal was first announced that the time needed to find, gather, and release Israeli captives would depend on “field conditions.” Hamdan added that locating the captives might take longer. U.S. President Donald Trump also admitted that finding the dead bodies of Israeli captives might take longer than anticipated.

Hamas has officially denied the existence of such a clause. A Hamas official told Al Jazeera that “the reported rumors concerning the presence of ‘secret clauses’ in the agreement to end the war on Gaza are completely untrue.”

The potential existence of such a secret clause has reinforced already-existing Palestinian concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would seek to find a way to sabotage the deal. Already in March, Israel broke the first ceasefire after the release of all civilian Israeli captives in the first phase of the deal. Last July, Hamas accepted a proposed deal following talks through Egyptian and Qatari mediators, while Netanyahu completely ignored it as mediators waited for Israel’s response.

Moreover, the lack of any additional terms within the deal for the end of the war, known as Trump’s “20-Point Plan,” has contributed to the spread of such reports in Arab media outlets. Issues relating to disarmament, Gaza’s postwar administration, and Israel’s withdrawal have all been relegated until after the prisoner exchange.

Israeli media reported late on Thursday that talks ended over the names and numbers of Palestinian prisoners and detainees set to be released as part of the deal. Israel had reportedly vetoed the names of Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, and the secretary general of the PFLP Ahmad Saadat. Another Israeli veto was placed on the names of 14 out of the 303 Palestinians serving life sentences, because they are Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. The final lists of agreed-on names haven’t yet been made public.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army began its withdrawal from Gaza City and other parts of the Strip. The Israeli army would remain in control of 53% of the strip, excluding urban areas.

Meanwhile, Palestinians have started to return to Gaza City following the entry of the ceasefire into effect on Friday. This comes after almost a month of Israel’s largest offensive yet on Gaza City, which included three army divisions and the detonation of hundreds of remotely controlled and outdated armored personnel carriers packed with explosives in civilian neighborhoods. Before the announcement of the ceasefire, on Thursday, Israel had pushed around 900,000 Palestinians out of Gaza City.

Israel’s war on Gaza, which Israel announced following Hamas’s October 7 attack, has killed over 66,000 Palestinians, a third of whom were children. The war displaced almost 2 million Palestinians and destroyed both the health and education systems. The war has been recognized as a genocide by the UN.

October 12, 2025 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

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