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Tag: Israel-Palestine conflict

  • A Biden-Netanyahu rift? ‘Distraction’, Palestinian rights advocates say

    A Biden-Netanyahu rift? ‘Distraction’, Palestinian rights advocates say

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    Washington, DC – Rock-solid. Unwavering. Unshakeable. After months of describing his commitment to Israel in fervent terms, United States President Joe Biden shifted his rhetoric this month — and issued his most firmly worded criticism of the country since the start of the war in Gaza.

    At a December 12 fundraiser, Biden warned that Israel is losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” in the Palestinian territory.

    Those two words launched hundreds of headlines. The “rifts” between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had finally “spilled into public view”, CNN wrote. The Washington Post signalled the two leaders were headed for a “collision”.

    But Palestinian rights advocates have questioned how much of a “rift” exists — or whether Biden’s words were merely a means of allaying criticism without taking substantial action.

    Biden has faced intense scrutiny for his support of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians since October 7. And the US remains one of the last countries in the world to oppose ending the war.

    The president’s statement on December 12, however, did not signal a shift in policy. Rather, his administration has reasserted that it will draw “no red lines” to restrict Israel’s actions or what it does with US military aid.

    Some advocates, therefore, argue that the reported disagreements between Biden and Netanyahu are inconsequential so long as the US continues to back Israel.

    “It doesn’t matter whether Biden and Bibi [Netanyahu] like each other or not because, at the end of the day, American money is still being transferred to fund the Israeli army. Weapons are still being sent with or without Congress’s approval,” said Laura Albast, a Palestinian American organiser in the Washington, DC, area. “Biden did not come out and call for a ceasefire.”

    Advocates denounce political ‘theatre’

    Albast said the Biden administration is engaging in occasional criticism of Israel to address growing domestic concerns about the atrocities in Gaza. She noted that Biden’s popularity in the US has plunged during the war, particularly among young people.

    A Monmouth University poll this week showed Biden’s approval rating at a record low of 34 percent. Among voters under 34, that number tumbled to 23 percent.

    “They think that average voters in the United States are not critical thinkers, so they’re putting together this theatre,” Albast said.

    Hours after Biden made his comments about Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, the US voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

    Days earlier, Washington had also vetoed a similar measure in the UN Security Council.

    Still, US officials have said on several occasions that they are raising concerns with their Israeli counterpart over civilian harm in Gaza.

    “It’s clear that the conflict will move and needs to move to a lower-intensity phase, and we expect to see and want to see a shift to more targeted operations,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Wednesday.

    But the bombing nevertheless appears to be intensifying despite Washington’s demand. More than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed on December 1 after a brief truce.

    Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American comedian and activist, said Biden is trying to avoid responsibility for the carnage in Gaza, even as his administration seeks billions of dollars in additional assistance to Israel. He called reports of a feud between Biden and Netanyahu a “distraction”.

    “This is an attempt by the Biden administration to distance themselves from the genocidal policies of Netanyahu, which they have supported from the beginning,” Zahr told Al Jazeera.

    ‘Clown show of foreign policy’

    Adam Shapiro, the director of advocacy for Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said the Biden administration was fully committed to the Israeli war in Gaza since its earliest days.

    But as the “horrific” reality of the Israeli offensive becomes more apparent, the Biden administration does not know how to disengage from it, he added.

    “It’s a ship without any kind of direction at this point. It’s like a drowning man, in a way, who’s just flailing,” Shapiro said. “That’s how I interpret all these random statements that come out from the administration. Meanwhile, the reality continues: Israel does what it wants. The weapons continue to flow.”

    Since the war broke out on October 7, some points of contention have emerged between the Israeli and US governments.

    They have, for example, articulated different visions for post-war Gaza. The US wants the Palestinian Authority to eventually govern the territory, but Israel wants Gaza to remain under its security control.

    Disagreements about the future, however, have not shaken Washington’s support for the ongoing war, the scale and intensity of which puts Palestinians at “risk of genocide“, according to UN experts.

    US officials, including Biden, have also emphasised the need for a two-state solution to the conflict, putting them again at odds with Netanyahu’s government, which opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.

    But on Tuesday, the US was one of four countries, along with Israel, to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution reasserting Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The measure was backed by 172 other nations.

    To Zahr, the vote is yet another example of how US policy remains behind Israel even when Biden’s rhetoric appears to diverge from that of Israeli leaders.

    “How can you dare to say that you want to be an honest broker, that you want to create ‘peace’ between Palestinians and Israelis when you say you believe in the right to self-determination of one party and not the right to self-determination of the other?” Zahr said. “This is a clown show of foreign policy.”

    Shapiro, meanwhile, said the Biden administration was committing “unforced errors”. Its position towards the bloodshed in Gaza undermines its credibility and the principles it claims to support on the world stage, he explained.

    “This administration is so tied up in a pretzel; it doesn’t know the beginning from the end.”

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  • ‘Fed up with war’: Yemenis fear new conflict after Houthi Red Sea attacks

    ‘Fed up with war’: Yemenis fear new conflict after Houthi Red Sea attacks

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    Sanaa, Yemen — When Israel’s war on Gaza broke out on October 7, Saleh Abdullah, a 48-year-old supermarket owner in Sanaa, joined pro-Palestine mass protests, expressing his solidarity with the besieged enclave. It never crossed his mind that the Houthi armed group that controls Yemen’s capital and large parts of the country would intervene militarily.

    On October 19, a United States warship intercepted drones and missiles fired from Yemen as they were heading to Israel. Later, the Houthi group, which has been the de facto authority in north Yemen since 2015, claimed responsibility for firing ballistic missiles at Israel, announcing to launch more.

    Abdullah celebrated. “When the Houthis declared sending missiles and drones towards Israel, the news lifted our morale and brought a sense of euphoria,” he said.

    But that sentiment was short-lived, as Abdullah began to ponder over the repercussions of the escalation when his country is awash with multiple crises, including political instability, military rivalry and an unhealthy economy, and diplomatic talks to conclusively end years of fighting have remained inconclusive.

    Now, a spate of attacks by the Houthis on ships transiting through the Red Sea — which the Yemeni group argues are aimed at pressuring Israel to end the war on Gaza that has killed almost 20,000 people — has triggered a backlash from the West.

    On Monday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a multinational maritime task force involving 10 navies aimed at securing the Red Sea from what he described as a “reckless” escalation by the Houthis.

    It is precisely the kind of response that Abdullah has been fearing. “The Yemeni attacks on Israel or American forces will invite their response, and their response will put Yemen in a state of war. This is what lots of Yemenis and I do not want to see. We are fed up with conflicts and do not want atrocities to erupt anew,” he said.

    Worry about war return

    It has been nine years since Yemen slid into a civil war, sparking a catastrophic humanitarian situation with thousands killed and millions displaced. Since last year, efforts by the United Nations and regional players have helped silence weapons in Yemen, and civilians hope that that will continue, even as talks over a long-term ceasefire remain in limbo.

    Yet in recent weeks, the war in Gaza has cast a shadow on those hopes. Multiple Houthi attacks on vessels traversing the Red Sea, a key maritime trade artery passing through a region that is the world’s biggest oil-supplier, have threatened to drag Yemen into a new war.

    On Friday, some of the world’s biggest shipping companies announced that their vessels would stop transiting through the Red Sea amid the missile attacks, a move that threatens to send oil prices up, in turn hurting the global economy. The very next day, the navies of the United Kingdom and the US intercepted 15 attack drones fired from Houthi-controlled territories. Two other ships were attacked on Sunday.

    ‘Zero impact’

    The Houthi missiles and drones have been a cause of concern for Israel over the past few weeks. However, the public in Yemen has conflicting views regarding the impact of such attacks.

    Leila Salem, a 28-year-old university student in Sanaa, said the Houthi missiles and drones cannot be enough to stop the Israeli army from continuing its war on Gaza. She told Al Jazeera, “Firing drones and missiles from Yemen towards Israel is like hitting an angry elephant with a small stick. Such attacks can have a zero impact on the Israeli army.”

    Instead, Salem worries, the consequences will be felt more by the Yemeni people, many of whom commend the Houthis for sending drones and firing missiles on Israeli and Western-linked vessels in the Red Sea.

    “The previous US administration classified the Houthis as a foreign terrorist group. The ongoing Houthi attacks on shipping lanes and the American forces in the region may pave the way for blacklisting the group,” she said.

    If the group is redesignated as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, the Houthis will survive, she said. “The group will not be weakened or eliminated overnight, and only civilians will bear the brunt.”

    Ali al-Dhahab, a Yemeni political and military analyst, said the international maritime coalition coming together in the Red Sea will not stand idly by if it detects missiles or unmanned aircraft launched from Houthi-controlled areas. “The coalition will respond to the sources of fire,” he said. Any armed clash between the Houthis and international forces would impede the peace process in Yemen, he cautioned.

    Persistent Houthi defiance

    While civilians in Yemen display worry about the fallout of the Houthi involvement in Israel’s war on Gaza, the Iran-backed group’s leadership and fighters remain defiant.

    Mohammed Nasser, a 28-year-old Houthi fighter on the front line in the city of Marib, told Al Jazeera that if their drones and missiles cannot reach Israel, they can still easily hit targets in the Red Sea, especially Israeli and US ships.

    “We are prepared for all scenarios and capable of hitting targets in the Red Sea. No country can stop us from supporting Gaza,” Nasser told Al Jazeera.

    On December 15, Houthi spokesperson Yahia Sarea said the group attacked two ships, MSC Alanya and MSC PALATIUM III in the Red Sea. He added, “The Yemeni armed forces confirm they will continue to prevent all ships heading to Israeli ports from navigating in [the Red Sea] until they bring in the food and medicine that our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip need.”

    Houthi gains

    To be sure, the Houthi intervention in the war on Gaza has some popular support too. A Sanaa-based political researcher, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera that the Houthi group had won the hearts of countless people in Yemen through its attacks in support of Gaza.

    “By firing missiles at Israel or Israeli targets in the Red Sea, the Houthi group earns popular support in Yemen, and this is a considerable gain. The public support helps them consolidate their authority, which ensued from their 2015 coup against the Yemeni government,” he said.

    However, he too acknowledged that these “gains” for the Houthis could mean losses for Yemen, which could face new “humanitarian and economic troubles”.

    And prospects of peace could suffer. “The Houthi arrogance will rise, which may obstruct an agreement on ending the civil war with their local opponents,” he said.

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  • Hamas is now recruiting in Lebanon. What will that mean for Hezbollah?

    Hamas is now recruiting in Lebanon. What will that mean for Hezbollah?

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    Beirut, Lebanon – When Hamas put out a call for recruitment in Lebanon on December 4, several mainstream Lebanese political parties and officials denounced the move, accusing the Palestinian group of violating their country’s national sovereignty, while recalling memories of the bloody civil war.

    But the recruitment for a parallel armed force might end up serving the interests of Hezbollah, according to analysts, due to the Lebanese group’s military hegemony, particularly in southern Lebanon. Hamas is believed to be recruiting in Lebanon through announcements in the country’s Palestinian refugee camps and the mosques there.

    “Hezbollah is trying to enlist the support of Sunni groups [like Hamas in Lebanon] in its fight against Israel from southern Lebanon,” Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera. But any other actors won’t be able to act independently because “Hezbollah fully controls the border situation.”

    After Hamas’s attacks in southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 civilians and military personnel, according to Israeli officials, Israel has continuously bombarded Gaza, with only a brief pause in fighting at the end of November. More than 18,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry there.

    In neighbouring Lebanon, more than 100 people have died since Hezbollah first targeted Israel with missiles on October 8. Most of the dead are Hezbollah fighters who have engaged Israel’s military in what they say are efforts to prevent their opponent’s full force from coming down on Hamas.

    The ‘Axis of Resistance’ in Lebanon

    Relations between Hamas and Hezbollah have resumed in recent years after a schism over the civil war in Syria. Members of Hamas’s leadership left their previous base in Damascus in 2012 after condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on protests.

    From 2017 onwards, some Hamas members returned to Lebanon, including Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of the Hamas Political Bureau; Khalil al-Hayya, the leader of Hamas’s Arab and Islamic relations; and Zaher Jabarin, in charge of issues concerning Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

    Last year, the Hamas leadership revealed the existence of “a joint security room” for the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – an Iranian-affiliated military coalition that includes Hamas and Hezbollah among other groups. Some analysts believe it could be based in Lebanon. And in April 2023, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh visited Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

    Analysts believe it is unlikely that Hamas would call for an expansion in Lebanon without having first consulted Hezbollah.

    Hezbollah has maintained dominance in south Lebanon for decades. But Israeli officials have recently said they can no longer accept the presence of the group, or their elite al-Radwan unit, on Israel’s northern border. That’s why Hamas’s growing presence in Lebanon could be a tactical decision that also serves Hezbollah, according to some analysts.

    “Hezbollah is searching for local allies in the post-war period because its military component will come into question as Israel wants it out of the south Litani,” Khashan said. After the 2006 July war between Hezbollah and Israel, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1701, calling for a demilitarised zone from the Litani River, Lebanon’s longest river that runs from the southern seaside city of Tyre into the Bekaa Valley, to what is known as the “Blue Line”, which

    But the expansion of Hamas in Lebanon would not only be beneficial to Hezbollah. As Hamas is under siege in Gaza, its popularity in the West Bank has grown, according to a recent opinion poll. In Lebanon, the group could be looking to play on their increased popularity and muscle out their political rivals Fatah.

    By growing their cadre in Lebanon, “Hamas can say we strengthened our political position everywhere we exist”, Drew Mikhael, an expert on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “No political actor or party doesn’t want more power.”

    A return to ‘Fatahland’

    Still, the announcement caused a stir among some communities in Lebanon.

    “We consider any armed action originating from Lebanese territory as an attack on national sovereignty,” Gebran Bassil, the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, a predominantly Christian party, said, rejecting the creation of what he called a “Hamas-land”.

    It was a reference to “Fatahland”, a throwback to a time when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat operated as a state within a state in southern Lebanon from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel and became an active member in Lebanon’s civil war in 1975.

    Other condemnations also arrived from figures like Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati; the chief of the right-wing nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Samir Geagea; a former police chief and current MP, Ashraf Rifi; and Samy Gemayel, who leads the Kataeb, a traditional Christian party that has attempted to rebrand itself as a centre-right nationalist party in recent years, among others.

    While the warning was sounded by politicians across the sectarian spectrum, the reference to a return to “Fatahland” was evoked by multiple Christian leaders in particular. Resentment against Palestinians for the role of the PLO and other factions in the civil war is still common in Lebanon, particularly among parts of the Christian community, even if many empathise with the current suffering in Gaza.

    ‘Complete Christian marginalisation’

    With the world’s eyes on Gaza, Lebanon’s Christian leaders may be using the announcement to play inter-sectarian politics and get a leg up on opponents in Lebanon, say analysts.

    “Bassil’s entire career has been an effort to ramp up rhetoric on an ethnonational discourse,” Mikhael said. “Most of the time he doesn’t speak to a national audience. It’s an internal fight with Geagea.”

    Bassil and Geagea lead the two biggest Christian parties in Lebanon. But despite their stature, both are divisive figures, deeply unpopular outside their immediate support base.

    The internal jockeying is indicative of a Christian retreat from national politics in Lebanon, according to Michael Young of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

    “There is a complete Christian marginalisation on most issues today,” Young told Al Jazeera. “When it comes to issues of national discussion, they are seemingly becoming more and more parochial. Christians don’t really pay attention to Palestinian politics and are almost mentally divorced from the Lebanese state.”

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  • Analysis: Why Israel will continue its deadly push into Gaza city centres

    Analysis: Why Israel will continue its deadly push into Gaza city centres

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    Dramatic news reports, claims and videos have emerged from both sides involved in the Gaza fighting throughout the past week.

    The week started with the Israeli army releasing several videos of Palestinians stripped to their underwear being marched through urban ruins. Israel’s PR machine disregarded the Palestinian outcry that followed. Israel staunchly asserted that the men were Hamas fighters and that their alleged mass surrenders signified that the end of the Palestinian group was close, even as many Palestinians and independent observers insisted that the men were civilians who had been treated against the laws of war by being publicly humiliated.

    For its part, Hamas stuck to its usual practice of pushing its cause through video releases – skilfully edited to enhance the desired effects – purporting to confirm its constant and numerous successes against Israeli invaders, mostly showing hits scored against armoured vehicles.

    Then came the news that stunned Israel and put a big question mark on its official line of Hamas being on the verge of collapse. First, nine soldiers were killed in a single operation in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City on Tuesday. That shock was followed by another one on Friday, with the Israeli army admitting that it killed three Israeli captives, having mistaken them for enemies – even though they held white flags.

    So what is really happening on the ground in Gaza?

    Nothing we did not predict weeks ago: The war has entered a difficult, unpredictable and bloody phase of full-scale urban warfare where gains are small and slow, and losses can be huge.

    Combat in narrow and cramped streets of old cities is known to be one of the most difficult ways to fight a war. Classic military theory calls for defended cities to be surrounded and blockaded by units just strong enough to prevent the defenders from breaking out, while the main force continues advancing and taking territory.

    But the fight in Gaza is not about conquering fields and beaches – Israel’s proclaimed goal is to destroy Hamas. To do that, the first step is to control the ground where the enemy operates: the cities.

    Many aspects of warcraft are as ancient as the human urge to fight wars: attack and conquer versus defend and remain free. But the ways of achieving those goals have changed with technology and, at certain times, the means available to soldiers favour one aspect over another.

    In the old days, cities needed strong walls to defend themselves, but in the last 100 years, weapons have advanced at a rapid rate, causing a change in tactics. Successful resistance against enemy attacks no longer depends on huge, expensive static bastions. Nowadays, small but potent man-portable weapons whose destructive power is hugely disproportionate to their size, such as anti-tank rocket launchers, grenade throwers, small mortars, assault rifles and many others, allow the defenders to turn each house and every street into a formidable defensive position.

    From the 1940s to this day, almost all attempts to conquer cities held by determined defenders have ended in failure. The few victories attackers achieved were so costly that they often ended the offensive capabilities of those armies pushing into cities.

    In their own ways, Stalingrad, Warsaw, Berlin, Dien Bien Phu, Vukovar, Sarajevo, Grozny and Fallujah – some successfully defended, others eventually succumbing to attacks – all confirmed the military wisdom that urban warfare should be avoided whenever possible.

    Israel could not avoid urban warfare in Gaza. To have a chance of destroying Hamas, it has to deny it its operating ground, the three biggest urban agglomerations in the strip: Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.

    In the first phase of its ground operation, the Israeli army advanced across open ground, through farmland and villages that do not lend themselves to mounting a major defence, only harassing attacks to slow down and dent the invaders. Hamas acted in classic guerrilla fashion, launching some hit-and-run attacks without wasting any effort to stop the Israelis then and there.

    The second phase started with Israeli forces reaching the suburbs, first of Gaza City and then, after the temporary ceasefire expired, of Khan Younis. Treading slowly and carefully in expectation of a concentrated Hamas response, the Israeli military completed the encirclement of those two urban areas.

    It would be naive to assume that Israel’s generals hoped that by isolating the two biggest built-up areas in the Gaza Strip, they would seriously impair the ability of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, to fight back.

    In reality, the encirclement of the two city centres is not a classic one where troops within the blockade cannot be reinforced nor receive any supplies. Hamas still has an unknown but probably major part of its tunnel network intact and can move in and out. They have some difficulties in doing so but Hamas fighters are not locked in.

    Aware of the menace that tunnels present but also of the grave hazard of taking the fight into them, Israel has tried several approaches. It has destroyed as many tunnel entrances as it has found, mostly in the areas under its control, but many others that remain keep the danger acute.

    After several attempts to send troops underground that ended in disaster, with troops falling casualty to Hamas booby traps, the high command abandoned that approach. It then reportedly mulled the idea of filling tunnels with seawater, claiming that the test-flooding was successful but it has not yet decided to mount a full-scale deluge operation.

    This week’s Israeli actions on the ground strongly suggest that the Israeli army leadership realises that the only way towards achieving its proclaimed goal of annihilating Hamas is by taking, holding and controlling the ground throughout the currently surrounded centres of Gaza City and Khan Younis.

    That in itself would not guarantee victory but could create conditions to squeeze Hamas fighters into tunnels, after which Israeli forces could block and destroy all entrances.

    Flushing Hamas out would probably take weeks of heavy urban warfare with many more instances of massive losses – on both sides.

    The more Israeli soldiers get killed in inner cities of Gaza, without still being able to claim the destruction of Hamas, the more the support for the continuation of the military operation would ebb. At some point, calls from Israel to stop the war could become louder than those encouraging it to continue.

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  • ‘No place for genocide’: Qatar football fans stand for Gaza against Israel

    ‘No place for genocide’: Qatar football fans stand for Gaza against Israel

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    Doha, Qatar – While football players and fans around the world are being reprimanded for displays of solidarity with Palestine, thousands gathered at the Education City Stadium in Qatar to show their support and help raise money for Palestinians facing the wrath of Israel’s war on Gaza.

    As the sun set on a windy Friday evening at the former Qatar World Cup 2022 venue on the outskirts of the capital, Doha, fans dressed in Palestinian colours and waving the Palestinian flag flocked to the venue in high spirits.

    The Stand with Palestine charity match was arranged by the Qatar Foundation. It was based on an initiative by a group of students hoping to raise money through ticket sales and create awareness about the situation in Gaza, where nearly 19,000 people, including more than 7,000 children, have been killed in the Israeli bombardment since October 7.

    Karim Abbas, one of the Palestinian students involved in organising the event, said the match was being played “for the children of Palestine”.

    “As a Palestinian myself, it’s very hard to see those videos [from Gaza] but then I imagine the people living through the oppression and I realise it’s much more difficult to endure,” a visibly emotional Abbas told Al Jazeera.

    The participating teams comprised students from two Qatar-based schools and international footballers, including former Spanish World Cup winner Javi Martinez, Morocco international Soufiane Boufal and several Qatar national team players. One team represented Qatar, the other Palestine.

    Moroccan footballer Badr Benoun signs a fan’s Palestine flag [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

    ‘We have not forgotten’

    Despite the presence of global and regional stars, fans inside the 40,000-capacity stadium remained focused on their main job for the night – waving the Palestinian flag and raising their voices for the people of Gaza.

    “We are here to tell the people of Gaza that we have not forgotten them,” Abdellah Abdul Razzaq, a Qatar-based Canadian, said ahead of the match.

    “In 2023, there’s no place for genocide.”

    Stand with Palestine event at Education City Stadium in Doha, Qatar [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]
    Abdellah Abdul Razzaq said he wants his young son to learn to stand on ‘the right side of history’ by supporting Palestine [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

    In the build-up to the match, star footballers walked on to the pitch and interacted with fans by giving autographs and posing for photos.

    As the players went back to their dressing rooms and the fans waited for the match to get under way, a familiar tune blared from the PA system and the crowd instantly jumped to its feet.

    The popular Palestinian song “Dammi Falasteeni” (my blood is Palestinian) rang around the compact stadium and fans of all ages, economic backgrounds and nationalities sang and danced along.

    Stand with Palestine event at Education City Stadium in Doha, Qatar [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]
    Fans of all ages sang and danced along to ‘Dammi Falasteeni’ [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

    For the Palestinians present in the stands, the crowd’s loud rendition of the song’s chorus brought a gush of emotions.

    “To see all these people, whether they are Palestinian or not, supporting the cause of Palestine makes me very happy,” Abdel Wahab al-Masri, a Palestinian based in Doha, told Al Jazeera.

    “If people in Gaza were able to see this support, it would give them strength and greater power to resist the occupation,” he added.

    Al-Masri and his five compatriots held up a large Palestinian flag as he explained how the people of his country find the courage to resist Israel’s occupation of their land.

    “The courage and resistance you see is something all Palestinians grow up with,” he said, referring to social videos of Palestinian children vowing to remain steadfast in the face of adversity.

    “The mental toughness to understand that it [Gaza] is their land and, once the war ends, they will have to reclaim it is part of their upbringing,” al-Masri said, as the song kept playing on loop.

    Stand with Palestine event at Education City Stadium in Doha, Qatar [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]
    Abdel Wahab al-Masri (third left) and his compatriots hold up a large Palestine flag [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

    ‘An unprecedented war’

    Emotions were running high for everyone in the crowd, and not just the Palestinians.

    For Chique Leo, from the Philippines, it was a matter of showing the “disgusting” world leaders that Palestinians are not alone.

    “It breaks my heart to see civilians dying in their hundreds every day – parents losing their daughters and sons, children losing their parents but they [world leaders] don’t care because they are busy enjoying their comfortable lifestyles,” the 55-year-old said as her voice trembled with anger.

    “This is an unprecedented war and the way the world is letting this continue and dehumanising Palestinians is unbearable.”

    Stand with Palestine event at Education City Stadium in Doha
    Players in action during the Stand with Palestine football match [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

    As kickoff approached, the number of people in the stands grew and so did the fundraising figures. According to the organisers, 20 million Qatari riyals ($5.5m) had been raised by the end of the match.

    Light-hearted, on-field action was no match for the charged crowd, which kept “Palestine!” in their chants throughout the match.

    Drum beats were followed by roars of “Falasteen”, Mexican waves turned into Palestinian waves as thousands of flags were raised in unison.

    The match ended in a 4-3 (penalty shoot-out) win for Palestine, but it was hard to tell which team represented the home crowd, as players from both sides came together to wave the red, white, black and green flag one more time.

    Stand with Palestine event at Education City Stadium in Doha
    The crowd kept up their chants for Palestine throughout the event [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

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  • Israel-Gaza: Does Islamophobia play a part in US foreign policy?

    Israel-Gaza: Does Islamophobia play a part in US foreign policy?

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    Marc Lamont Hill speaks with scholars of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

    As the war in Gaza rages on, the death toll keeps increasing and residents face starvation. Despite the heavy civilian toll, the United States keeps voicing its strong support for Israel.

    Criticism has been raised of Washington’s approach to Palestinian victims. Is there a double standard when it comes to Palestine? And why do some in the US seem to conflate solidarity with Palestinians with anti-Semitism?

    On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with Sahar Aziz, professor of law and Middle East legal studies scholar at Rutgers University; and Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy and co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace, about whether Islamophobia affects US foreign policy.

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  • Letter accuses US security agency of turning ‘blind eye’ to Gaza suffering

    Letter accuses US security agency of turning ‘blind eye’ to Gaza suffering

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    Washington, DC – More than a hundred staff members from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have signed an open letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denouncing the department’s handling of the war in Gaza.

    The letter, exclusively obtained by Al Jazeera, expresses frustration with the “palpable, glaring absence in the Department’s messaging” of “recognition, support, and mourning” for the more than 18,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7.

    “The grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the conditions in the West Bank are circumstances that the Department would generally respond to in various ways,” the letter, dated November 22, said.

    “Yet DHS leadership has seemingly turned a blind eye to the bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, ambulances, and civilians.”

    The letter’s signatories include 139 staff members from DHS and the agencies it manages, like Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

    But some staff members “elected to sign this letter anonymously” for fear of backlash, the document explained. It called for DHS to “provide a fair and balanced representation of the situation, and allow for respectful expression without the fear of professional repercussions”.

    DHS did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.

    The letter is the latest indication of fractures within the administration of President Joe Biden, who has faced internal criticism for his government’s stance on the Gaza war.

    Last month, more than 500 officials from 40 government agencies issued an anonymous letter pushing Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Another letter, signed by 1,000 employees from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), expressed a similar appeal.

    But Biden has been reluctant to criticise Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza, instead pledging his “rock solid and unwavering” support for the longtime US ally.

    In an internal message on November 2, Mayorkas echoed Biden’s stance. He denounced the “horrific terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7”, perpetrated by the Palestinian group Hamas, but made no mention of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

    “The impacts [of October 7] continue to sweep through Jewish, Arab American, Muslim and other communities everywhere,” Mayorkas wrote.

    “I am heartened knowing that our Department is on the front lines of protecting our communities from antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry and hate.”

    US President Joe Biden has expressed ‘unwavering’ support for Israel as it conducts a months-long military offensive in Gaza [Leah Millis/Reuters]

    But two DHS staff members who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity felt that department leadership should be going further to address the mounting death toll in Gaza, where civilians remain under Israeli siege.

    United Nations experts have already warned of a “grave risk of genocide” in the territory, as supplies run low and bombs continue to fall.

    “I’ve been very dedicated to the federal government,” one anonymous DHS official said. “I’ve served in different capacities. I very much believed in our mission.

    “And then, after October 7, I feel like there has just been a drastic shift in this expectation of what we’re supposed to do when there’s a humanitarian crisis and what we’re actually doing when there’s politics involved, and that has a very, very scary, chilling impact.”

    The staff’s open letter calls for DHS to take actions in Gaza “commensurate with past responses to humanitarian tragedies”, including through the creation of a humanitarian parole programme for Palestinians in the territory.

    That would allow them to temporarily enter the US “based on urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons”.

    The letter also pushed DHS to designate residents of the Palestinian territories eligible for “temporary protected status” or TPS. That would permit Palestinians already in the US to remain in the country and qualify for employment authorisation.

    Such programmes have been put in place for other conflicts, including for Ukrainians facing full-scale invasion from Russia.

    Last month, 106 members of Congress — including Senator Dick Durbin and Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Jerry Nadler — even sent a letter to Biden, urging a TPS designation for the Palestinian territories.

    Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Joe Biden stand behind wooden podiums and in front of Ukrainian and US flags in a press conference at the White House.
    Biden has been criticised for offering temporary protected status for Ukrainians but not for Palestinians in Gaza [Evan Vucci/AP Photo]

    But one of the anonymous DHS officials who spoke with Al Jazeera said that, although there has been discussion about a possible TPS designation, action seems unlikely.

    “There have been a lot of serious systemic and programmatic obstacles driven purely by politics,” she said.

    Part of the challenge is that the US does not recognise Palestine as a foreign state, putting its eligibility for TPS in doubt.

    “We don’t recognise Palestine as a state. We don’t code them with that,” the DHS official explained. “And that’s something across Customs and Border Protection, ICE and USCIS. There have just been obstacles raised at the highest levels of those agencies.”

    The official suspects she knows why. “They’re worried about their own operations in terms of removing or deporting people to Gaza and the West Bank, if they were to change these codes.”

    But that inaction has levied a steep toll on employees’ mental health, according to the DHS officials Al Jazeera spoke to.

    One described how colleagues with family in Gaza had received no support from DHS leadership as they tried to bring their relatives to safety.

    The other, a senior staff member who has spent more than a decade working for the federal government, described having nightmares of losing his own children.

    He said he wakes up “with the knowledge that we’re not actually doing all that we can to provide programmes and relief for the Palestinians”.

    “It’s definitely distressing and dispiriting to feel like, for political considerations, we’re not addressing [the conflict] in the same way that we would other previous, recent humanitarian crises, for instance, like Ukraine.”

    An aerial view of the damage and rubble after an Israeli air strike on houses in southern Gaza.
    Houses are left in ruin after an Israeli air strike in Rafah, part of the southern Gaza Strip, on December 12 [Fadi Shana/Reuters]

    The senior official voiced dismay that Biden’s immigration policies have remained similar to that of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

    Biden has faced pressure to limit the number of arrivals in the US, particularly as migration across the US-Mexico border spikes.

    “The issue is, honestly, that the Biden administration has been really tepid about moving too far in front on immigration and is focused almost entirely on the southern border and how that impacts the administration politically. That has informed a lot of the decision-making with respect to new programmes,” the official said.

    That tepidness has left many of the anonymous DHS officials feeling demoralised, questioning their sense of mission.

    “We have the ability to do anything, something, and we’re just not,” one of the officials said.

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  • WHO calls for immediate passage of humanitarian relief into Gaza

    WHO calls for immediate passage of humanitarian relief into Gaza

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    Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he hopes resolution will be starting point for further UN action on crisis.

    The World Health Organization has agreed on a resolution, the first by any United Nations agency, calling for immediate access to vital humanitarian aid and an end to the fighting in Gaza.

    The resolution – calling for the “immediate, sustained and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief, including the access of medical personnel” – was adopted by consensus at the end of a special session of the WHO’s Executive Board on Sunday.

    It also called on “all parties to fulfill their obligations under international law” and reaffirmed “that all parties to armed conflict must comply fully with the obligations applicable to them under international humanitarian law related to the protection of civilians in armed conflict and medical personnel.”

    The special meeting of the executive board was only the seventh in the WHO’s 75-year history.

    The passage of the resolution “underscores the importance of health as a universal priority, in all circumstances, and the role of healthcare and humanitarianism in building bridges to peace, even in the most difficult of situations,” the WHO said in a statement after the meeting.

    The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has struggled to respond to the deepening crisis in Gaza that erupted after the Palestinian armed group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 captive.

    In response, Israel declared war on Hamas and has subjected Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2006, to relentless attack, killing at least 18,000 people.

    The UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced and faces shortages of food, water and medicine along with a growing threat of disease.

    On Friday, a resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire put forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by 100 other countries failed to pass in the UNSC after the United States vetoed the proposal. The US is one of five permanent members of the council with a veto.

    The vote came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 on Wednesday to formally warn the 15-member council of a global threat from the two-month-long war.

    WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the UN health agency resolution could be a starting point for further action.

    “It does not resolve the crisis. But it is a platform on which to build,” he said in his closing remarks to the board.

    “Without a ceasefire, there is no peace. And without peace, there is no health. I urge all Member States, especially those with the most influence, to work with urgency to bring an end to this conflict as soon as possible.”

    Fighting resumed this month after a week-long pause in hostilities that allowed some Israeli and foreign captives to be released in exchange for a number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, as well as for the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

    With Israel now stepping up its military actions in the south of the territory of more than 2 million people, calls for an end to the fighting have intensified.

    The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday on a resolution for an immediate ceasefire, after Egypt and Mauritania invoked Resolution 377 “Uniting for Peace” in the wake of the US veto.

    Adopted by the UNGA in 1950, Resolution 377 allows the 193-member body to act where the UNSC has failed to “exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”.

    Their letter also referred to Guterres’s invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter on December 6.

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  • ‘A hand here, a head there’: Israeli warplanes kill dozens in central Gaza

    ‘A hand here, a head there’: Israeli warplanes kill dozens in central Gaza

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    Central Gaza Strip – In the town of az-Zawayda in central Gaza, neighbours have been working since Sunday morning, collecting the body parts of dozens of people that used to live in the Nisman family home.

    At about 4am local time (06:00 GMT), Israeli warplanes bombed the home, destroying it completely.

    “This is my uncles’ house,” Fadi Nisman told Al Jazeera. “My two uncles were with their families, three generations of them.”

    Only weeks ago, the extended family had fled from the Shati refugee camp in the west of Gaza City following Israeli orders to head south of the enclave and taken refuge with the Nismans.

    But in the Gaza Strip, there is no such thing as a safe place.

    Fadi described Sunday’s attack as an “atomic bomb”.

    “We are collecting body parts from the nearby lands, a hand here, a head there,” he said.

    “We haven’t managed to pull out anyone from under the rubble, just those torn bodies that were flung in the air from the force of the bomb.”

    His neighbour, Wael al-Mahanna, said the attack was worse than a powerful earthquake.

    “There was no warning from the Israelis – they didn’t call or text or tell us to evacuate,” he said, adding that the neighbourhood had civilian residents.

    “No one in the house survived. There were about 45 people inside,” he said.

    “There was a body flung on one of the posts, and his head was found further on the rooftop. No one can even begin to comprehend what happened.”

    At least 15 bodies were transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, local sources said.

    The blast damaged the surrounding homes, devastating the residential block.

    As the Israeli offensive on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continued for the 65th day, the death toll has reached close to a dizzying 18,000, nearly 8,000 of them children.

    More than 48,700 others have been wounded while a further 7,780 Palestinians remain missing, believed to be dead under the rubble of their homes.

    Fadi Nisman said people want an end to the bloodshed. “We want an end to this criminality,” he told Al Jazeera.

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  • Photos: Israel bombs Gaza areas it declared safe zones for Palestinians

    Photos: Israel bombs Gaza areas it declared safe zones for Palestinians

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    Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip has hit areas it had told Palestinians to evacuate to in the territory’s south.

    The strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, despite its wide support.

    Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council before Friday’s vote.

    Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received 133 bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, health ministry officials in Gaza said on Saturday.

    Dozens of people held funeral prayers in the hospital’s courtyard before taking the bodies for burial – a scene that has become routine over the past two months of war.

    In the southern city of Khan Younis, which has been the focus of Israel’s military operations over the past week, the Nasser Hospital received the bodies of 62 people, the ministry said.

    More than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed since the December 1 collapse of a weeklong truce, about two-thirds of them women and children.

    With the war now in its third month, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700.

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  • Gaza war unleashes anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim sentiment in the US

    Gaza war unleashes anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim sentiment in the US

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    In the United States, speaking freely about Israel’s war on Gaza often has a price.

    For expressing their opinions on the Israel-Palestine, many Muslim Americans and Arab Americans have paid a hefty price, including the loss of jobs and suspension from college.

    Universities across the US are also cracking down on student activism.

    Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has received double the usual amount of reports of bias and requests for help, according to the executive director, Nihad Awad.

    Speaking to host Steve Clemons, Awad warns that as the Israeli narrative continues “falling apart”, more attempts to dehumanise the Palestinian people will be seen.

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  • ‘Alarming’: Palestinians accuse ICC prosecutor of bias after Israel visit

    ‘Alarming’: Palestinians accuse ICC prosecutor of bias after Israel visit

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    Occupied West Bank — On December 2, Eman Nafii was one of dozens of Palestinians invited to meet Prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court in the occupied West Bank. As the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel, Nafi wanted to speak to Khan about her husband and the Israeli occupation.

    But Khan spent most of the meeting talking, before his team gave Nafi and other Palestinian victims just 10 minutes to share their stories.

    “People got angry. They told him, ‘You are coming to listen to us for 10 minutes? How are we going to tell you about our stories in 10 minutes,” Nafi told Al Jazeera.

    “One of the women (with us) was from Gaza. She lost 30 members of her family in the (ongoing war). She shouted, ‘How can we explain this in 10 minutes.’”

    While Khan ended up listening to the victims for about an hour, Palestinians fear that he is applying a double standard by solely focusing his efforts on Hamas and ignoring the grave crimes Israel is accused of having perpetrated over two months of a deadly war.

    Many were disappointed that Khan accepted an Israeli invitation to visit Israeli communities and areas that Hamas attacked on October 7, while declining an offer from Palestinians to visit the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

    During his three-day visit, Israel also did not allow Khan to enter Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 17,000 people and displaced most of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants from their homes since October 7.

    Most of those killed have been women and children, while thousands of young men are now being rounded up, many of them stripped and taken to undisclosed locations. Legal experts have warned that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza may soon amount to genocide.

    Despite the mounting evidence and ongoing atrocities, Khan has shown little interest in seriously probing Israel, according to Palestinian officials, victims and legal scholars.

    “Khan became enthusiastic to start this investigation [in the occupied territories] after October 7. That’s alarming,” said Omar Awadallah, who oversees UN human rights organisations as part of the Palestinian Authority, the political body governing the West Bank.

    “[The Palestinian Authority] gave him retroactive jurisdiction from 2014. [Khan] cannot say that he didn’t see crimes being committed [in the occupied territories] from 2014 until October 7,” Awadallah told Al Jazeera.

    A viable alternative? 

    On January 2, 2015, the state of Palestine became a signatory to the Rome Statute, giving the ICC jurisdiction to investigate atrocities such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

    The move was perceived as a victory for Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups, which were fed up with the Israeli judicial system for not punishing Israeli officials, settlers and soldiers who were committing crimes in the occupied territories such as land theft and extrajudicial killings.

    According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation that opposes illegal settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians harmed by Israeli soldiers have a less than one percent chance of obtaining justice if they file a complaint in Israel.

    While the ICC offers an alternative to Israeli courts, no arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli officials or soldiers for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the West Bank, according to a legal expert from Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights organisation that advocates for justice in Gaza.

    “We have submitted plenty of legal analysis and evidence to the office of the prosecutor even before Khan was elected,” the expert, who asked for anonymity due to a fear of reprisal from Israeli authorities, told Al Jazeera. “We believe that [Khan’s] office has enough evidence to issue warrants for Israeli political and military leaders by now.”

    After returning from his three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank, Khan released a statement that made little mention of the mounting evidence implicating Israel in committing crimes against humanity such as that of apartheid in the West Bank and war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.

    Khan merely said that his visit was not “investigative in nature” and called on Israel to respect the legal principles of “distinction, precaution and proportionality” in its ongoing bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.

    Khan had a different tone when addressing Hamas’s October 7 attacks, calling them “serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity”.

    Khan’s statement angered the Palestinian victims that he met briefly in Ramallah.

    “What made us really unhappy was what he wrote after the visit,” said Nafi. “He is not supposed to draw an equivalence between the victim and their killers. We wanted him to tell the Israelis to stop what they are doing to detainees and to [stop] what they’re doing to Gaza.”

    Al Jazeera submitted written questions to Khan’s office which raised Palestinian criticisms of his visit to the West Bank and his statement. His office responded by emailing Al Jazeera several of Khan’s previous statements, without answering any of the questions.

    Politically compromised? 

    In September 2021, Khan said that he would deprioritise crimes committed by American forces in Afghanistan and focus his probe on the atrocities that the Taliban and the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) carried out.

    Critics believe that Khan was acquiescing to political pressure from the United States – a state that is not a party to the Rome Statute – which sanctioned Khan’s predecessor for daring to open a case against American troops in Afghanistan.

    But Khan justified his decision by claiming that the court had limited resources and that the Taliban and Islamic State committed more serious crimes. Palestinians now fear that Khan could cite a similar justification to investigate Hamas, but not Israel.

    “We have yet to see that any prosecutor has taken the question of Palestine seriously, which shows that the whole system of international law has been torn into pieces,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal scholar.

    Buttu added that the ICC has effectively become a court that acts in the political interest of powerful Western states, rather than in accordance with strict legal principles.

    She cited Khan’s decision to indict Russian President Vladimir Putin on accounts of war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    “The ICC has become a very political court that managed to issue indictments against Putin,” she told Al Jazeera. “But eight weeks into what is presumably the worst man-made disaster [in Gaza] and the prosecutor has remained silent and only comes [to visit] at the request of Israel.”

    Nafi agreed and added that Khan can’t claim to be ignorant or unaware of Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians.

    “How many people does he want to see killed until he speaks up,” she told Al Jazeera. “I want him to be brave enough, to say the truth and to say it in public.”

    Additional reporting by Al Jazeera correspondent Zein Basravi.

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  • People in Arab countries march in support for Gaza

    People in Arab countries march in support for Gaza

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    Protesters took to the streets on Friday in several Arab countries in a show of support for the Palestinians against a continuing Israeli military campaign in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

    In Jordan, a huge march was staged in the centre of the capital Amman following Friday prayers.

    Some protesters chanted: “People want the liberation of Palestine,” “We die and Palestine lives,” Jordanian newspaper al-Ghad reported online.

    Thousands of people meanwhile held an anti-US protest near the US embassy in Amman, according to al-Ghad.

    Jordan, which maintains diplomatic links with Israel, has a large Palestinian community.

    In Lebanon, dozens of people staged a silent sit-in near the French embassy in Beirut, protesting the killing of civilians in Gaza and calling for a ceasefire.

    The protesters put ribbons on their mouths on which was written: “Gaza ceasefire”.

    They also displayed in front of them body bags representing dead civilians in Gaza.

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  • Playing with friends, shot dead by Israel: A Jenin boy’s final moments

    Playing with friends, shot dead by Israel: A Jenin boy’s final moments

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    Jenin, occupied West Bank — Suleiman Abu al-Waf will never forget the “thumping sound” that forever changed his life.

    The 47-year-old, a general physician in the Jenin Directorate of Health, was sitting at home with his younger son and two daughters on November 29. The Israeli army had raided the city’s refugee camp that day, ripping up streets, ordering people to leave their homes at gunpoint, and bombing a house.

    But once word spread that the army had withdrawn, Suleiman’s elder son, 15-year-old Basil, told his father he wanted to go out and play with his friends. “He insisted, so I allowed him to go out and warned him not to go far,” Suleiman recalls. Basil was playing in the al-Basateen neighbourhood, far from the refugee camp. “It is known as a very quiet area,” Suleiman says.

    So when he heard the sound, he knew something was wrong. “I picked up my phone and called Basil more than once. He did not answer,” the father says.

    He ran out of his house and saw another boy, eight-year-old Adam Samer al-Ghoul on the street, injured in his head. Another boy came running up: “Uncle, Basil is injured.” When Suleiman got to his son, he saw paramedics trying to revive him. They refused to believe he was a doctor, so they kept him away from his son.

    But Suleiman knew instantly. “From the first sight of Basil, I knew that he was a martyr. Praise be to God.”

    Basil and Adam, young boys playing in Jenin, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers during the Jenin raid, in which two adults were also killed. A video that captures the boys being shot has since gone viral. The Israeli army arrested 15 others from the refugee camp, which has been a central focus of battles between them and Palestinian resistance fighters.

    The boys were among more than 260 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7. Israeli bombing and artillery fire have also killed more than 17,000 people in Gaza in this period, including at least 7,000 children.

    Dreams destroyed

    Basil was studying at Jenin Secondary School in the 10th grade. “His mother, a pharmacist, and I dreamed that he would become a doctor and that he would study medicine — but we never pressured him to choose any stream,” Suleiman says.

    Now, those dreams have been replaced by an indescribable sorrow for the family of Basil, among at least 63 children killed in Israeli attacks in the West Bank since October 7. “The pain is very difficult,” the father says. “What happened is heavier than the mountains, a feeling that only the parents feel.”

    Basil’s uncle Hazem Abu al-Wafa, who works in a medical analysis laboratory, describes his nephew as a simple child.

    “Basil is a child who does not know anything in life except his school, his books, and playing with his friends, like the interests of any other child,” Hazem says.

    Hazem, his brother Suleiman and the rest of their family usually meet every weekend in the village of Silat al-Harithiya, where they have a home. That’s where Hazem last met his nephew — the weekend before his death.

    The family, Hazem says, values education, a consequence of how they were brought up.

    “We grew up in an environment that made us celebrate if one of our children gets a good grade,” he says.

    “Our father worked for us a lot, and he was a teacher.” Suleiman and Hazem are among nine siblings — five brothers and four sisters. “We are all university graduates.”

    Basil was also a good friend, says 14-year-old Hassan al-Masry. The two first met earlier in the year and over play and jokes, quickly became close friends. The day before Basil was shot, they were sitting with other friends. They made a fire as they chatted.

    “We were happy and laughing, and nothing could be better than this,” Hassan recalls.

    The next day, he was sitting with Basil at their usual hangout spot, when Hassan’s mother called him home for lunch.

    It was while he was eating that he heard the sound of bullets and people shouting. “ I ran outside,” he says.

    His friend, and Adam, were dead.

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  • Photos: Gaza humanitarian conditions near collapse as Israeli attacks widen

    Photos: Gaza humanitarian conditions near collapse as Israeli attacks widen

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    Israel’s widening air and ground offensive in southern Gaza has displaced tens of thousands more Palestinians and worsened the territory’s already dire humanitarian conditions, with the fighting preventing the distribution of food, water and medicine outside a sliver of southern Gaza and new military evacuation orders squeezing people into ever-smaller areas of the south.

    As the focus of the ground offensive moves down the Gaza Strip and into the second-largest city of Khan Younis, it is further shrinking the area where Palestinians can seek safety and pushing large numbers of people, many of whom have been forced to flee multiple times, towards the sealed-off border with Egypt.

    While Israeli forces ordered residents to evacuate Khan Younis, much of the city’s population remains in place, along with large numbers who were displaced from northern Gaza and are unable to leave or are wary of fleeing to the disastrously overcrowded far south.

    The United Nations says some 1.87 million people — more than 80 percent of the population of 2.3 million — have already fled their homes. Almost the entire population is now crowded into southern and central Gaza, dependent on aid.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that public order in Gaza could soon break down amid the complete collapse of the humanitarian system.

    “The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs.”

    Bushra Khalidi, a Ramallah-based legal expert and rights campaigner with international aid charity Oxfam, warned that Israel’s push to relocate Palestinians in Gaza to a small area in the south is making it impossible to deliver aid and driving up the risk of disease.

    “Squeezing people into a space that is basically as big as London’s Heathrow airport … is inhumane and makes it impossible to distribute aid to people,” Khalidi told Al Jazeera. “Gaza was already overpopulated … 1701932348 we’re talking about 1.8 million people in an airport.”

    Khalidi added that cholera and gastroenteritis are rapidly spreading due to the congested conditions.

    Israel’s offensive has killed at least 16,248 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll stands at about 1,200.

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  • The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has no place on Australian campuses

    The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has no place on Australian campuses

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    In universities across the world, the definition of anti-Semitism put forward by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has been used to silence critical commentary on Israel’s human rights violations and war crimes. In Australia, the definition has been having a chilling effect on campuses across the country.

    Amid Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza, which has killed nearly 16,000 people, including more than 6,000 children, students and staff who have organised in solidarity with the Palestinian people have faced pressure and intimidation.

    At the University of Melbourne, the highest-ranked institution of higher education in Oceania, the university’s administration has openly embraced the official Israeli narrative and refused to condemn what legal experts have called a textbook case of genocide. 

    While students and staff have tried to resist attempts at censorship and silencing, what is happening at the university is a good illustration of how the IHRA definition hurts academic freedom on campus and helps propagate colonial violence.

    The problem with the IHRA definition

    In November 2022, the Parliamentary Friends of IHRA group was created, consisting of members of the Australian parliament. One of its first tasks was to write to all Australian, universities, urging them to adopt the IHRA definition.

    Following this announcement, the peak body for Palestinians in Australia, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, asked to be included in university deliberations on the subject but its call was unheeded.

    Since then, five Australian universities have adopted the IHRA definition, while seven, including high-profile Australian National University and the University of Adelaide, have publicly rejected the call.

    The University of Melbourne was the first to publicly announce the adoption of the IHRA definition in January 2023. This was framed as the first step in its new antiracism initiative, with consultations to follow among Muslim staff and students in respect of a statement on Islamophobia.

    This approach highlighted the anti-Palestinianism at the heart of the university’s adoption of the IHRA definition as it implied that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is sectarian in nature.

    Both Palestinian and Jewish academics have argued that the adoption of the IHRA definition undermines the fight against racism and have pointed to the context in which it was carried out – to impede campus activism challenging Israeli apartheid.

    As a group of university scholars in Australia have written: “[The] IHRA definition is not only vague but also not grounded in contemporary anti-racism scholarship or practice. It treats antisemitism as if it occurs in isolation from other forms of racism and disconnects the struggle against antisemitism from the struggle against other forms of racism.”

    Particularly in Australia, a settler colony, fighting racism must begin with – and be grounded in – solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

    Kenneth Stern, author of the definition, has explained that it was never intended to be used for this purpose of limiting what can be said at universities. Using it in this way, he wrote, is deeply harmful for all.

    The IHRA is a problem not just in Australia, but across the Global North. In response to a report compiled for the #NoIHRA project, prepared by Independent Jewish Voices, Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem noted “how powerful, cynical and vicious the weaponization of the fight against antisemitism for silencing critique of Israel and Zionism has become”.

    Censorship on campus

    Even before the IHRA definition was adopted by the University of Melbourne, there were already attempts at intimidation and silencing of those who speak out against Zionism on campus.

    In May 2022, the People of Colour department at the University of Melbourne’s Student Union (UMSU) passed a motion, rigorously supported by evidence gathered by international human rights organisations, that criticised political Zionism and called for participation in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Threats of a costly lawsuit from a Liberal Party member intimidated UMSU into rescinding their motion.

    This tactic of lawfare has had a chilling effect on campuses, restricting political freedom. A Palestinian master’s student described to us the impact of such actions on his student experience: “I’ve been made to feel that my life and that of my people is less worthy and less valuable than that of Israeli and Zionist students on campus.”

    The adoption of the IHRA definition has only further encouraged the trend of curbing the freedom of expression on campus.

    For Palestinian and Muslim students and staff whose criticism of Zionism is silenced by accusations of anti-Semitism, not only is their expertise challenged but their experiences of racism are often dismissed. As one academic described to us:

    “I have lived experiences of racism and Islamophobia. I know first-hand how much these actions hurt. So, I don’t take it lightly to be accused of hate or racism…. It is unfair and traumatic that those of us who have been subjects of racism are now being silenced through accusations of racism.”

    Both Palestinian and Jewish students and staff are harmed by the IHRA definition’s mischaracterisation of their lived experiences. As a Jewish academic noted to us: “In the past I’ve had frivolous complaints from Zionist students about my lectures, and given what we know about complaints under IHRA overseas (that they are plentiful but “unreasonable”) there is a concern about the effects for all, most particularly Palestinians, with rising complaints. This is not the way to address anti-Semitism.”

    Other academics feel a similar pressure in the classroom. One in the School of Social and Political Sciences shared that “it’s always challenging teaching in the area of political violence and it’s not always comfortable for students to critically reflect on governments or nations they might identify with, but now I am worried about having to tailor my teaching so it’s less critical to avoid being targeted and smeared with charges of anti-Semitism”.

    The risks to students include the future of their education. A law student involved in a recent Gaza fundraiser that was targeted by Zionists on campus shared concerns about possible disciplinary action: “We were all apprehensive about the potential consequences organising the fundraiser would have on our enrolment at the university.”

    Speaking against Israel’s justifications for the ongoing massacre of Palestinians is now cited by precariously employed academics at the University of Melbourne as yet another reason for work-related stress and anxiety.

    The pushback against the IHRA definition

    While students and staff at the University of Melbourne and elsewhere have been facing the added pressure of the IHRA definition, they have not stayed silent on the brutal Israeli war on Gaza.

    On October 25, Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell issued a statement “concerning the Israel-Gaza war” in which he presented Israel as the injured party defending itself against an “act of terrorism committed by Hamas”. He expressed no criticism of Israel’s actions, which have been defined as amounting to genocide by legal experts.

    The statement caused outrage across campus. An open letter was drafted in response and signed by more than 2,500 staff, students and alumni.

    “We express our grave concern about how this misrepresentation of Israel’s genocidal attack against the people of Palestine will contribute to further loss of life in Gaza and harm to Palestinian students, staff and alumni of the University,” it stated.

    The open letter also invited signatories to include a statement in their university email signature that calls on the university to rescind its adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

    The public list of names in the open letter challenges the censorship instilled by the IHRA definition and aims to defend academic freedom on campus. Beyond the letter, other groups on campus also spoke up.

    The criminology discipline at the University of Melbourne, for example, unified in their stance against the vice-chancellor’s statement, collectively issued a response, tweeting:

    “We are particularly concerned by the conflation of criticism of Israel’s policies and actions with antisemitism, and the policing of solidarity with Palestine. As Criminology activists and scholars, we stand united against the criminalisation and silencing of the right to speak truth to power.”

    It is telling that the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which has increasingly been representative of low-income casual workers, joined over 100 trade unions in Australia that came out to unequivocally condemn Israel’s bloodiest assault on Gaza.

    As Palestinian trade unions call on workers internationally to escalate economic pressure by leveraging their labour power, there is an urgency for higher education workers to also go beyond verbal condemnation.

    As Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the West Bank, continues, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is emerging as a clear obstacle to critical scholarship and action in resisting and denouncing such atrocities. The use of this definition has no place on Australian campuses.

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

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  • Why These Progressives Stopped Helping Biden

    Why These Progressives Stopped Helping Biden

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    Updated at 10:54 a.m. ET on December 6, 2023

    Throughout the summer, the Progressive Change Institute, a prominent grassroots organization aligned with Democrats, teamed up with the White House to promote President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. The group helped organize events across the country, including in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, to publicize one of the president’s most popular proposals: a crackdown on unnecessary or hidden consumer charges popularly known as “junk fees.”

    The institute was encouraged by how much positive local-media coverage the events generated, taking it as a sign that a concerted campaign could lift the president’s lackluster approval ratings ahead of his reelection bid. Its leaders were eying a second round of activity this fall to amplify Biden’s record on lowering prescription-drug and child-care costs.

    Since October 7, however, those plans are on hold. Many progressives are protesting the administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which began after Hamas’s massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis and has left more than 16,000 dead, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry. On perhaps no other issue is the gap between Democratic leaders and young progressives wider than on the Israel-Palestine conflict. “It’s just a reality that the Middle East crisis is a superseding priority for many activists and takes oxygen out of the room on other issues the White House needs to break through on,” Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, told me. “We’ve let that be known.”

    Biden had hoped to extend a fragile week-long truce that the United States helped broker between Israel and Hamas, during which Hamas returned dozens of hostages it had captured on October 7 in exchange for the release of three times as many Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. But now that cease-fire has ended. And the president’s advocating unconditional aid to Israel and his embrace of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war aims have fractured the Democratic coalition that Biden will need to reassemble in order to beat Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner for 2024.

    Franklin Foer: Inside Biden’s ‘hug Bibi’ strategy

    The president had won over many of his critics on the left—the institute’s campaign arm, for example, had backed one of his more progressive rivals, Senator Elizabeth Warren, in the 2020 Democratic primary before supporting Biden—with his run of domestic legislative victories during his first two years in office, including a major climate bill last year. Now left-wing groups that worked to persuade and turn out key constituencies in 2020, especially young and nonwhite voters, are participating in demonstrations against the president’s Middle East policy rather than selling his economic message.

    “Our public communications have been transformed by this moment,” says Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, which initially endorsed Warren and then Bernie Sanders in 2020 but spent the general-election campaign mobilizing progressive voters for Biden in swing-state cities such as Phoenix, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.

    The Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy group associated with the Green New Deal, has never been a big fan of Biden. But its leaders worked with the White House over the summer as the administration developed the American Climate Corps, an initiative to train 20,000 young people for jobs in the clean-energy industry. When Biden announced the program in September, the Sunrise Movement hailed it as “a visionary new policy.” Two months later, the group joined activists holding a hunger strike outside the White House in protest of Biden’s support for Israel’s offensive. Given the president’s stance, “we cannot explain his policy to our generation, and that makes it very difficult for any of his administration’s good deeds to resonate,” Michele Weindling, the Sunrise Movement’s political director, told me.

    Young people in particular have soured on the president, a big factor in poll results showing Biden trailing Trump in a potential 2024 general election. Voters under the age of 30 backed Biden by 24 points in 2020, according to exit polls; some surveys over the past few weeks show Biden and Trump nearly tied among the same cohort.

    “Man, it is jaded right now among this generation,” Elise Joshi, the 21-year-old executive director of Gen-Z for Change, a group of social-media activists that organized under the banner of “TikTok for Biden” during the 2020 campaign, told me. Young voters’ disenchantment with the president predates October 7; they have long been more likely than older people to rate the economy poorly, and the Biden administration’s approval earlier this year of oil and natural-gas projects in Alaska and West Virginia frustrated younger climate activists. But anger toward the president erupted once Israel began shelling Gaza. “There’s been a surge since October 7,” Joshi said. “When it comes to Gaza, there’s little optimism that there’s much of a difference between the Democratic and the Republican Party.”

    Read: Is Biden toast?

    Biden, along with his party’s most powerful members of Congress, have broadly supported Israel’s war against Hamas despite their discomfort with Netanyahu’s conservative government. That stance is in accord with polls of the general public, but not with the views of more liberal voters. In protests on college campuses and elsewhere, left-wing demonstrators have denounced Israel as an apartheid state waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing—or worse—against the Palestinians. “Instead of using the immense power he has as president to save lives, he’s currently fueling a genocide,” Weindling said of Biden.

    When the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC)—the political affiliate of the Progressive Change Institute—surveyed more than 4,000 of its members in early November, just 8 percent said they supported the actions of the Netanyahu government, and more than two-thirds wanted Biden to do more “to stop the killing of civilians.” In Biden’s support for Israel, many young progressives see a Democratic president giving cover to a far-right leader whose bid to weaken Israel’s judiciary sparked enormous protests only a few months ago. “There is a serious disconnect between arguing that you are a bulwark against authoritarianism at home and then aligning with authoritarians abroad,” Mitchell told me.

    When asked for comment, the Biden campaign touted the continuing support of a wide array of “groups and allies from across our 2020 coalition” that it considers essential to reelecting the president next year and have not been reluctant to help the campaign over the past two months. In addition to the immigrant-advocacy group America’s Voice and the abortion-rights PAC Emily’s List, those groups include youth-led organizations who say that, as the election nears, opposition to Trump among Gen Z will easily outweigh concerns about Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza. “Joe Biden and Donald Trump are like night and day for young people,” Santiago Mayer, the 21-year-old founder of the Gen Z group Voters of Tomorrow, told me. “I can’t really be convinced that both of these candidates have an equal chance of winning over young people.”

    In a national Harvard University poll of 18-to-29-year-olds released yesterday, just 35 percent of respondents said they approved of Biden’s performance overall. And only 25 percent said they trusted Biden to handle the Israel-Hamas war, less than the 29 percent who said they trusted Trump on the issue. But this survey had better news for the president than other recent polls: In a hypothetical head-to-head 2024 matchup, Biden led Trump by 11 points, and that advantage grew to 24 points among those who said they will definitely vote next year.

    NextGen America, a young voter group founded by the billionaire Tom Steyer, endorsed Biden’s reelection over the summer. Its president, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, pointed out that polls show that young voters prioritize inflation, climate change, and the prevalence of gun violence over foreign policy. But she told me that the level of opposition to Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war was significant. “We encourage the administration to listen to the concerns that young people have on this issue,” Ramirez said.

    Ronald Brownstein: Is Gen Z coming for the GOP?

    Biden has shifted his rhetoric in the past couple of weeks, acknowledging the high civilian death toll in Gaza and intensifying pressure on Israel to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and agree to a pause in the fighting. Last Tuesday, he angered pro-Israel hawks with a post on X (formerly Twitter) quoting a passage from a speech he had recently delivered. In context, it was a push for a two-state solution, but devoid of that context, many read it as a push for an extension of the cease-fire in which he appeared to equate Israel’s military offensive with a campaign of terror. “To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek,” the president wrote. “We can’t do that.”

    Pro-Palestinian progressives told me they view the change in language, as well as Biden’s involvement in brokering the short-lived truce, as evidence that their activism is working. But their goal is a permanent cease-fire that will allow Palestinians to return to—and in many cases, rebuild—their homes in Gaza and resume their push for statehood.

    None of the activists I interviewed was certain about how lasting the political damage Biden has suffered among progressives will be. Elise Joshi said she had seen a rise in young people vowing on TikTok not to vote for Biden. “We’re almost certain that we’re going to have the same 2020 choices,” she said. “But whether we’re excited to vote or have people who don’t feel comfortable showing up or feeling too jaded to show up to vote is dependent on this administration.”

    The election, however, is still nearly a year away. And interest groups often warn about their voters staying home partly as a way to pressure a presidential administration to change course. Should the war end in the coming weeks or months, the issue is likely to fade from the headlines by Election Day. Groups like the PCCC and the Working Families Party aren’t threatening to withhold support for the Democratic ticket when the alternative is Trump. In previous presidential races, early polls have shown tighter-than-expected margins for Democrats among young and nonwhite voters only for those groups to come back around as the election neared. “It’s not Will the coalition show up? It’s At what rate?” Mitchell told me. “Today,” he continued, “I’m looking at a fraying coalition that needs to come together.”

    This article originally stated that the Working Families Party initially endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020. In fact, the party endorsed Elizabeth Warren before endorsing Sanders.

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    Russell Berman

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  • Israeli captives’ families angry after meeting with Netanyahu

    Israeli captives’ families angry after meeting with Netanyahu

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    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met families of captives freed from Gaza in an encounter described as tense by the Israeli media.

    Tuesday’s meeting came amid intensified fighting in the besieged Gaza Strip following the end of a seven-day pause in hostilities that enabled the return of more than 100 captives, who had been taken by the Palestinian armed group Hamas during its October 7 attack on Israel, in exchange for some 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

    Israel said on Tuesday that some 138 captives remained in the territory.

    Several of the relatives who attended the meeting left bitterly critical of the government.

    Dani Miran, whose son Omri was among those taken captive, said he was so disgusted he had walked out in the middle of the meeting.

    “I won’t go into the details of what was discussed but this entire performance was ugly, insulting, messy,” he told Israel’s Channel 13, saying the government had made a “farce” out of the issue.

    “They say, ‘We’ve done this, we’ve done that’. [Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya] Sinwar is the one who returned our people, not them. It angers me that they say that they dictated things. They hadn’t dictated a single move.”

    Israel says several women and children remain in Hamas’s hands, while families with adult male relatives in captivity have been calling for them not to be forgotten.

    “It was a very turbulent meeting, many people yelling,” said Jennifer Master, whose partner Andrey is still being held by Hamas.

    “We are all trying to make sure our loved ones get home. There are those who want the women who are left or the children who are left, and those who say we want the men,” Master told Israel’s Channel 12.

    Family members called for immediate action to secure the release of the remaining captives.

    “I asked Netanyahu if the primary objective of the war was to bring back the hostages,” Meirav Leshem Gonen, mother of 23-year-old hostage Romi Gonen, told Israeli television after the meeting.

    “He answered me directly: ‘Yes’,” she said. “I am happy with his answer, but only reality counts.”

    Leshem Gonen said she was concerned that captives were being “severely mistreated — women, young girls, and men too”.

    Speaking at a news conference afterwards, Netanyahu said he had heard stories that “broke my heart” and included thirst and hunger, as well as physical and mental abuse.

    “I heard and you also heard, about sexual assault and cases of brutal rape unlike anything,” he added.

    Israel has said it is investigating several cases of alleged sexual assault and rape committed by Hamas fighters during their October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed.

    Witnesses and medical experts have said some fighters committed rape and other attacks before killing the victims, although the extent of the sexual violence remains unknown. Hamas has denied carrying out such assaults.

    Israel began an intense bombardment of Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s attack, saying it wanted to destroy the group and free the captives. The attacks have killed more than 16,200 people in Gaza, according to Hamas, which has controlled the territory since 2006.

    Some families, meanwhile, appeared to be losing patience with Netanyahu’s government.

    “We have faith in our children, that they are strong and they will overcome this, and we want our government and the military to do what they do as fast as they can — as fast as possible — to start the negotiations,” said Idit Ohel, the mother of 21-year-old hostage Alon, during an online panel organised by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

    “Sixty days is too much,” she said, her voice rising. “I don’t want 61 days, I don’t want 65 days. I want them back now.”

    Israel withdrew its negotiators from Qatar on December 2, blaming an “impasse” after failing to make progress in talks aimed at securing a renewed pause in hostilities.

    Afterwards, Hamas said it would not release any more captives until the war in Gaza was ended.

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  • ‘Palestine will never die’

    ‘Palestine will never die’

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    “A cataclysmic event in human history” Rapper and activist Lowkey released a new track to show solidarity with Gaza.

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  • Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted two Israeli ships in Red Sea: Report

    Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted two Israeli ships in Red Sea: Report

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    Pentagon meanwhile says a US warship and multiple commercial ships also came under attack, potentially marking a major escalation.

    Yemen’s Houthi movement says it has targeted two Israeli ships with an armed drone and a naval missile, reports a spokesperson for the group’s military.

    The spokesperson said the two ships, Unity Explorer and Number Nine, were targeted after they rejected warnings from the group’s navy, the Reuters news agency reported on Sunday.

    British maritime security company Ambrey said a bulk carrier ship had been hit by at least two drones while sailing in the Red Sea. Another container ship reportedly suffered damage from a drone attack about 101km (63 miles) northwest of the northern Yemeni port of Hodeida, it added.

    The Pentagon also said a US warship and multiple commercial ships came under attack in the Red Sea, potentially marking a major escalation in a series of maritime attacks since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

    “We are aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available,” the Pentagon said.

    The Carney is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The Pentagon did not identify where it believed the fire came from.

    The Houthi rebels have been launching drones and missiles targeting Israel as it bombs Gaza.

    A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, told the Associated Press the attack began at about 10am in Sanaa, Yemen (07:00 GMT), and went on for about five hours.

    Last month, the Houthis seized a vehicle transport ship also linked to Israel in the Red Sea off Yemen. The rebels still hold the vessel near the port city of Hodeida.

    Missiles also landed near another US warship last week after it assisted a vessel linked to Israel that had briefly been seized by gunmen.

    However, the Houthis had not directly targeted the Americans for some time, further raising the stakes in the growing maritime conflict.

    In 2016, the US launched Tomahawk cruise missiles that destroyed three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory to retaliate for missiles being fired at US Navy ships, including the USS Mason, at the time.

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