The United Nations committee on torture says there is evidence that Israel is operating a “de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture”.
The committee regularly reviews the records of all countries which have signed the convention against torture, taking testimony from their governments, and from human rights groups.
During Israel’s review both Israeli and Palestinian rights groups gave harrowing details about conditions in Israeli detention centres. It is alleged that thousands of Palestinians have been detained by Israel since the Hamas attacks of October 7th 2023.
Under Israel’s laws on administrative detention and on Unlawful Combatants – suspects who cannot be classed as prisoner of war – they can be held for long periods without access to a lawyer or family members.
Many Palestinian families say they have waited months to even find out that a loved has been detained, amounting, the UN committee said, to “enforced disappearance”.
The committee was particularly critical of Israel’s reported use of the Unlawful Combatants law to detain whole groups of Palestinians, including children, pregnant women, and the elderly.
But it is the reported conditions in detention which make the grimmest reading in the committee’s conclusions, published today.
Palestinians, the evidence suggests, are regularly deprived of food and water, and subjected to severe beatings, attacks by dogs, electrocution, water boarding, and sexual violence. Some are allegedly permanently shackled, denied access to a toilet, and forced to wear diapers.
The committee concluded that such treatment “amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity”. It said evidence of a “de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture” by Israel was one of the acts which constitute the crime of genocide under international law.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations that it is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
One committee member, Peter Vedel Kessing of Denmark, said he and his colleagues were “deeply appalled” by what they heard. Committee members also said they were very concerned at the lack of investigations or prosecutions into allegations of torture. They called on Israel to launch independent investigations, and to ensure those responsible, including senior military officers, are held accountable.
Israel, which has long accused the UN of bias against it, did not comment publicly today on the committee’s findings, but during the committee hearings its ambassador, Daniel Meron, described the allegations of torture as “disinformation”.
He said that Israel was “committed to upholding its obligations in line with our moral values and principles, even in the face of the challenges posed by a terrorist organisation”.
In its conclusions, the UN committee took care to unequivocally condemn the Hamas attack of October 2023, and acknowledged the security challenges Israel faces.
But it also warned that violations of international law by one side did not justify the other side doing the same. Under the convention, to which Israel is a party, the prohibition on torture is absolute: it is not allowed under any circumstances.
Israel’s domestic law is less clear however, suggesting that the convention only applies to Israeli territory, and not to the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank – an interpretation that many international lawyers dispute.
And UN aid agencies say conditions for people in the Gaza strip remain dire, despite the ceasefire. Thousands of families are facing the winter cold and rain in tents, they warn, not enough aid supplies are getting in, and Israeli air strikes against what Israel says are Hamas targets continue.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem shared a video on Thursday that it says shows Israeli soldiers executing two Palestinian men who had surrendered during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The video, which B’Tselem credits to Palestine TV and which CBS News has not independently verified, appears to show Israeli soldiers surrounding a garage-style door on a building as two men emerge with their hands in the air. The men can be seen lifting their shirts and kneeling on the ground as the soldiers approach.
One of the soldiers kicks one of the men before both men start moving back into the building through the large open door, seemingly at the orders of the soldiers. Gunshots are then heard, and one of the men still visible in the doorway can be seen slumping to the floor.
B’Tselem identified the two men as Yusef ‘Asa’sah, 39, and al-Muntaser bel-lah ‘Abdallah, 26, both of whom the group said were wanted by the Israel Defense Forces.
The IDF says a Nov. 27, 2025 incident in which two Palestinian men were killed during an operation in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, is being investigated.
AP
The IDF acknowledged an operation to apprehend wanted individuals in Jenin on Thursday, saying the men had “carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces.”
“The forces entered the area, enclosed the structure in which the suspects were located, and initiated a surrender procedure that lasted several hours. Following the use of engineering tools on the structure, the two suspects exited. Following their exit, fire was directed toward the suspects,” the IDF said in a statement shared with CBS News. “The incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies.”
Israeli security forces have been accused on many occasions since the war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack of using excessive, often lethal force against Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the national police, praised the Israeli forces after the release of the video showing the Thursday incident, saying they acted “exactly as they are expected to — terrorists must die!”
The executive director of B’Tselem, Yuli Novak, said the killings were the result of “an accelerated process of dehumanization of Palestinians and the complete abandonment of their lives by the Israeli regime.”
Israeli soldiers are seen during an army raid in the West Bank town of Tubas, Nov. 26, 2025.
Majdi Mohammed/AP
In the West Bank’s capital city Ramallah, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ office issued a statement accusing Israel of executing the two men “in cold blood,” blasting the shooting as “an outright extrajudicial killing in blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
The shooting came amid a larger operation in the northeast of the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel’s military for decades. The operation has seen more than 100 people detained since Tuesday in the town of Tubas alone, according to Abdullah al-Zaghari, a spokesman for the advocacy group Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
The IDF has called the ongoing operation a response to “attempts to establish terrorist strongholds and construction of terror infrastructures in the area.”
On Nov. 19, Palestinian attackers stabbed an Israeli to death and wounded three more at a West Bank intersection before being shot by security forces.
Violence has flared in the West Bank, the much larger of the two Palestinian territories, since the war in Gaza started, and Israeli raids have continued there despite a ceasefire in Gaza.
According to B’Tselem, Israeli security forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023.
JENIN, West Bank — After 15 months in an Israeli jail, Mustafa Sheta drove home with his brothers to Jenin. A lot changed while he was in prison, they said.
The fighters that once had daily run-and-gun battles with Israeli soldiers? Gone. The bustling population of the refugee camp that gave Jenin its reputation as the martyrs’ capital? Gone. The theater Sheta ran in the camp, which he nurtured into an internationally known lodestar of Palestinian cultural resistance? Gone.
It appeared that Jenin, known as the city that never surrendered, had surrendered.
“I was shocked. The concept of resilience in Jenin, it’s really important to people. Where are the fighters, the Palestinian Authority, grassroots organization, the local leaders?” Sheta said.
“It felt like we lost the war, like we are losing this battle.”
A view in May of Palestinian houses destroyed by the Israeli army in Nour Shams, one of three refugee camps in the northern West Bank targeted by Israel’s military.
(Wahaj Bani Moufleh / AFP / Getty)
Jenin has become the quintessential model of how Israel — in a long-running campaign dubbed Operation Iron Wall — has largely subdued the northern West Bank.
Over more than 300 days, Israel has deployed soldiers, tanks, helicopter gunships and even airstrikes in Jenin and other cities, leaving a trail of destruction that has triggered what aid groups call the most severe bout of Palestinian displacement in the West Bank — more than 40,000 people initially, now down to about 32,000 — since Israel occupied the region in 1967. In a report released Nov. 20, Human Rights Watch alleged Israeli forces’ actions amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Coming under particular Israeli ire are the refugee camps in the area, set up as tent encampments for Palestinians displaced by Israel’s creation in 1948 but which hardened over the decades into slum neighborhoods Israel considers nodes of militancy.
Three of them — Jenin, Tulkarm and Nour Shams camps — have been depopulated and all but occupied by the Israeli military for roughly nine months, with soldiers systemically demolishing homes.
Of those, the Jenin camp, which holds legendary status among Palestinians for a 10-day battle between militants and Israeli forces in 2002, has fared the worst, incurring destruction many people here compare to Gaza.
For Palestinians who saw the camp and surrounding city of Jenin as a symbol for resistance against occupation, it has come to exemplify a sense of despair, and weariness with a fight that has never seemed so fruitless in bringing about a Palestinian state.
Sheta, the theater general manager, had staged works with political themes until he was detained — without charge, he says — from December 2023 to March this year. The Freedom Theater became famous staging adaptations of works such as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani’s “Men in the Sun,” a tragic novel about three men fleeing refugee camps.
Though the theater has regrouped elsewhere, it’s not the same. “We consider the theater arrested by the Israel army, because we can’t be in the camp,” he said. “Our soul is there.”
Using satellite data from October, the United Nations estimates that more than half of the camp’s buildings — almost 700 structures — are destroyed or damaged, with entire residential blocks razed or blown up. Several streets have been ripped apart or blocked by the 29 berms erected by Israeli forces; many other streets were widened with bulldozers to create corridors aimed at facilitating future military operations.
A Palestinian woman walks past a wall pockmarked with bullet holes in the Jenin camp in February. The camp has been depopulated in the months since.
(John Wessels / AFP / Getty Images)
The Israeli military says its operation in the camps is meant to dismantle militant infrastructure, including explosives factories, weapons caches and tunnels. It also aims to root out groups such as the Jenin Battalion, a loose alliance of fighters from different factions, including Fatah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The Jenin Battalion primarily fought Israeli forces but also clashed with the Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank and collaborates with Israel on security matters; many Palestinians view the authority as corrupt and impotent.
But whatever resistance existed in the camp was crushed shortly after the operation launched in January, residents and Palestinian officials say, leaving Israel’s continued occupation a mystery for the roughly 14,000 people who were expelled and who have no idea when, or if, they’ll be permitted to return.
“There’s no Jenin Battalion anymore. Not a single one is alive. They picked them off one by one,” said Shadi Dabaya, 54, who was sitting among a group of men by the main entrance of the Jenin camp. They fell silent as an Israeli armored vehicle rumbled past, its antenna swinging above the berm blocking the street.
Israeli soldiers walk behind a tank in the Jenin camp for Palestinian refugees in February. In the months since, the Israeli military has cut off entry to the camp.
(John Wessels / AFP / Getty Images)
“We just hear them shooting all the time,” Dabaya said, nodding toward the Israelis. “They’ve turned the camp into a training ground.”
No residents have been allowed to visit, Dabaya added. In September, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two 14-year-old boys trying to enter the camp to retrieve some of their belongings. The Israeli military told the media that the boys had approached soldiers — “posed a threat to them” — and did not obey commands to stay away; it said the shooting was under review.
“With all the destruction, even if the Israelis withdrew from the camp tonight, we would need months to be able to live there — all the infrastructure is destroyed,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, who heads the camp’s Popular Services Committee.
For now, he said, families are crowded into a block of 20 buildings with one-room student dormitories roughly six miles away from the camp. But months after they moved there, the Palestinian Authority — from which Israel has withheld tax revenue, along with taking other measures that strangled its finances — is unable to pay the $63,000 monthly rent.
“Those who accepted these awful conditions — crammed with their families in a tiny room meant for one student — even they will find themselves on the street,” Al-Sabbagh said.
The worst part, he added, was having no idea whether his home was still standing.
“If we knew what the Israelis are doing, we could at least figure out what to do ourselves.”
The operation in Jenin has spread its footprint well beyond the camp. Israeli soldiers who once traveled the surrounding city streets in armored vehicles for fear of attacks now conduct near-daily patrols unhindered, raiding shops and homes at will, residents charged.
Areas adjacent to the camp have been emptied, too. So far, said one Palestinian Authority official who refused to be named for safety reasons, 1,500 residents from those areas have been forced to leave.
“These people have nothing to do with the camp, but they’ve been forced out,” he said.
One of the affected neighborhoods is Jabriyat, a wealthy area overlooking the camp that has the feel of a ghost town, where villas bear the dusty patina of abandonment.
“All of us living around the camp are paying the price,” said Hiba Jarrar, one of the last remaining residents on her street in Jabriyat. From her balcony, she pointed to a building Israeli soldiers recently commandeered.
“There’s no resistance, zero. Not a single bullet is being fired by Palestinians. A soldier can raid any home on his own because he feels safe,” she said, adding that when she heard shooting in the past, she assumed Palestinians and Israelis were fighting; now she knows it comes from only the Israeli soldiers.
“You know what’s sad?” she said. “If anyone fought the Israelis now, people here would tell them to stop. They just want to live. They’re desperate.”
A Palestinian man carries a child down a road destroyed by Israeli forces during a large-scale military operation in east Jenin city, which lies near the Jenin refugee camp.
(John Wessels / AFP / Getty Images)
Palestinian officials say despite repeated requests, Israeli authorities have given no indication when they will leave the camp, and all attempts at facilitating visits there have been rejected.
“What’s happening in the camp is not a necessary security prerogative. There’s nothing requiring the Israelis to do what they’re doing,” said Palestinian Authority Security Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, adding that his forces could handle security and that Israel was undermining their authority with its actions.
Rajab echoed the thoughts of residents, analysts and aid workers who see in Israel’s assault a larger plan to recast the camps as ordinary city neighborhoods, not refugee havens. Such rebranding would essentially erase the notion of Palestinians as refugees.
“It’s targeting a community by changing the topography on the ground,” said Roland Friedrich, director of affairs in the West Bank for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. He added that Israeli officials in local media have said that once Operation Iron Wall is complete, there will be “no more geographic expression of the refugee issue.”
Another measure in the same vein, according to a Palestinian Authority official who requested anonymity for safety reasons, is Israel’s refusal to allow UNRWA back in the camp.
Among those hoping to return someday is Sheta, who after his release from custody went to the berm at the camp’s entrance — the closest he could get to his theater, which was founded in 2006 by a former Palestinian fighter from Jenin named Zakaria Zubeidi, along with a leftist Israeli actor and a Swedish activist.
His imprisonment, he said, was a time of routine beatings and humiliations, with soldiers strip-searching detainees, recording them with their phones and mocking them. The Israelis viewed Palestinians as “not even human. Or animals. Less than nothing,” he said.
He has since “returned to use the same tools” he had used before his arrest to resist Israel’s occupation, but he acknowledged people in Jenin had changed. “Their priorities are different. Some have lost trust in the Palestinian cause,” he said.
Some in the community thought he was “crazy” for bothering with nonviolent methods. But “if you lose your cultural front, you lose your identity, your heritage, your roots with this land,” he said. Besides, he added with a tired smile, if his methods weren’t effective, why did the Israelis arrest him?
“That at least proves to me my work annoys them, no?”
South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating who was behind a chartered plane that landed in Johannesburg with more than 150 Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza who did not have proper travel documents and were held onboard on the tarmac for around 12 hours as a result, the country’s president said Friday.The plane landed Thursday morning at O.R. Tambo International Airport, but passengers were not allowed to disembark until late that night after immigration interviews with the Palestinians found they could not say where or how long they were staying in South Africa, South Africa’s border agency said.It said the Palestinians also did not have exit stamps or slips that would normally be issued by Israeli authorities to people leaving Gaza.The actions of South African authorities in initially refusing to allow the passengers off the plane provoked fierce criticism from non-governmental organizations, who said the 153 Palestinians — who included families with children and one woman who is nine months pregnant — were kept in dire conditions on the plane, which was extremely hot and had no food or water.South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said there was an investigation to uncover how the Palestinians came to South Africa via a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya.“These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” Ramaphosa said.Palestinians being ‘exploited’The Palestinian Embassy in South Africa said in a statement the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel in an irregular and irresponsible manner. This entity later attempted to disown any responsibility once complications arose.”It didn’t name who chartered the flight, but an Israeli military official, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential information, said an organization called Al-Majd arranged the transport of about 150 Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa.The official said that Israel escorted buses organized by Al-Majd that brought Palestinians from a meeting point in the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Then buses from Al-Majd picked the Palestinians up and brought them to Ramon airport in Israel, where they were flown out of the country.South African authorities said 23 of the Palestinians had traveled onward to other countries, without naming those countries, but 130 remained and were allowed in after intervention from South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs and an offer by an NGO called Gift of the Givers to accommodate them.“Even though they do not have the necessary documents and papers, these are people from a strife-torn, a war-torn country, and out of compassion, out of empathy, we must receive them and be able to deal with the situation that they are facing,” Ramaphosa said.Shadowy operationThe secretive nature of the flight raised fears among rights groups that it marked an attempt by the Israeli government to push Palestinians from Gaza.Israel’s foreign ministry referred questions to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli authority responsible for implementing civilian policies in the Palestinian territories. It said the Palestinians on the charter plane left the Gaza Strip after it received approval from a third country to receive them as part of an Israeli government policy allowing Gaza residents to leave. It didn’t name the third country.Around 40,000 people have left Gaza since the start of the war under the policy.Israel’s government had embraced a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump to empty Gaza permanently of its more than 2 million Palestinians — a plan rights groups said would amount to ethnic cleansing. At the time, Trump said they would not be allowed to return.Trump has since backed away from this plan and brokered a ceasefire between Israel and the militant group Hamas that allows Palestinians to remain in Gaza.South African leader Ramaphosa said that it appeared the Palestinians who arrived in Johannesburg were being “flushed out” of Gaza, without elaborating. The comment followed allegations by two South African NGO representatives who claimed that Al-Majd was affiliated with Israel and working to remove Palestinians from Gaza.They offered no evidence for the claims and COGAT didn’t respond to a request for comment on those allegations.Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, one of those to allege involvement by what he called “Israel’s front organizations,” said this was the second plane to arrive in South Africa in mysterious circumstances after one that landed with more than 170 Palestinians onboard on Oct. 28. The arrival of that flight was not announced by authorities.Sooliman said the passengers on the latest plane did not initially know where they were going and were given no food for the two days it took to travel to Johannesburg.“They were given nothing on the plane itself and this must be challenged and investigated,” Sooliman said.South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and a critic of Israel and has led the international pro-Palestinian movement by accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a highly contentious case at the United Nations’ top court. Israel denies committing genocide and has denounced South Africa as the “legal arm” of Hamas.The people that ended up in South Africa underlined the desperation of Palestinians following a two-year war that has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and reduced the territory to rubble. The ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but it says more than half of those killed were women and children. A fragile ceasefire is in place.Jerusalem-based organizationAn organization called Al-Majd Europe has previously been linked to facilitating travel for Palestinians out of Gaza. It describes itself on its website as a humanitarian organization founded in 2010 in Germany and based in Jerusalem that provides aid and rescue efforts to Muslim communities in conflict zones.The website does not list office phone numbers or its exact address. It states that Al-Majd Europe works with a variety of organizations including 15 international agencies, but no organizations are listed and a “will be announced soon” message was displayed in that section on Friday.Another message that appeared Friday on the website said people were impersonating it to request money or cryptocurrency “under the pretext of facilitating travel or humanitarian aid.” Al-Majd Europe didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to an email address given on its site. Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa, and Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome contributed to this report.
South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating who was behind a chartered plane that landed in Johannesburg with more than 150 Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza who did not have proper travel documents and were held onboard on the tarmac for around 12 hours as a result, the country’s president said Friday.
The plane landed Thursday morning at O.R. Tambo International Airport, but passengers were not allowed to disembark until late that night after immigration interviews with the Palestinians found they could not say where or how long they were staying in South Africa, South Africa’s border agency said.
It said the Palestinians also did not have exit stamps or slips that would normally be issued by Israeli authorities to people leaving Gaza.
The actions of South African authorities in initially refusing to allow the passengers off the plane provoked fierce criticism from non-governmental organizations, who said the 153 Palestinians — who included families with children and one woman who is nine months pregnant — were kept in dire conditions on the plane, which was extremely hot and had no food or water.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said there was an investigation to uncover how the Palestinians came to South Africa via a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya.
“These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” Ramaphosa said.
Palestinians being ‘exploited’
The Palestinian Embassy in South Africa said in a statement the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel in an irregular and irresponsible manner. This entity later attempted to disown any responsibility once complications arose.”
It didn’t name who chartered the flight, but an Israeli military official, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential information, said an organization called Al-Majd arranged the transport of about 150 Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa.
The official said that Israel escorted buses organized by Al-Majd that brought Palestinians from a meeting point in the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Then buses from Al-Majd picked the Palestinians up and brought them to Ramon airport in Israel, where they were flown out of the country.
South African authorities said 23 of the Palestinians had traveled onward to other countries, without naming those countries, but 130 remained and were allowed in after intervention from South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs and an offer by an NGO called Gift of the Givers to accommodate them.
“Even though they do not have the necessary documents and papers, these are people from a strife-torn, a war-torn country, and out of compassion, out of empathy, we must receive them and be able to deal with the situation that they are facing,” Ramaphosa said.
Shadowy operation
The secretive nature of the flight raised fears among rights groups that it marked an attempt by the Israeli government to push Palestinians from Gaza.
Israel’s foreign ministry referred questions to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli authority responsible for implementing civilian policies in the Palestinian territories. It said the Palestinians on the charter plane left the Gaza Strip after it received approval from a third country to receive them as part of an Israeli government policy allowing Gaza residents to leave. It didn’t name the third country.
Around 40,000 people have left Gaza since the start of the war under the policy.
Israel’s government had embraced a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump to empty Gaza permanently of its more than 2 million Palestinians — a plan rights groups said would amount to ethnic cleansing. At the time, Trump said they would not be allowed to return.
Trump has since backed away from this plan and brokered a ceasefire between Israel and the militant group Hamas that allows Palestinians to remain in Gaza.
South African leader Ramaphosa said that it appeared the Palestinians who arrived in Johannesburg were being “flushed out” of Gaza, without elaborating. The comment followed allegations by two South African NGO representatives who claimed that Al-Majd was affiliated with Israel and working to remove Palestinians from Gaza.
They offered no evidence for the claims and COGAT didn’t respond to a request for comment on those allegations.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, one of those to allege involvement by what he called “Israel’s front organizations,” said this was the second plane to arrive in South Africa in mysterious circumstances after one that landed with more than 170 Palestinians onboard on Oct. 28. The arrival of that flight was not announced by authorities.
Sooliman said the passengers on the latest plane did not initially know where they were going and were given no food for the two days it took to travel to Johannesburg.
“They were given nothing on the plane itself and this must be challenged and investigated,” Sooliman said.
South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and a critic of Israel and has led the international pro-Palestinian movement by accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a highly contentious case at the United Nations’ top court. Israel denies committing genocide and has denounced South Africa as the “legal arm” of Hamas.
The people that ended up in South Africa underlined the desperation of Palestinians following a two-year war that has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and reduced the territory to rubble. The ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but it says more than half of those killed were women and children. A fragile ceasefire is in place.
Jerusalem-based organization
An organization called Al-Majd Europe has previously been linked to facilitating travel for Palestinians out of Gaza. It describes itself on its website as a humanitarian organization founded in 2010 in Germany and based in Jerusalem that provides aid and rescue efforts to Muslim communities in conflict zones.
The website does not list office phone numbers or its exact address. It states that Al-Majd Europe works with a variety of organizations including 15 international agencies, but no organizations are listed and a “will be announced soon” message was displayed in that section on Friday.
Another message that appeared Friday on the website said people were impersonating it to request money or cryptocurrency “under the pretext of facilitating travel or humanitarian aid.” Al-Majd Europe didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to an email address given on its site.
Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa, and Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome contributed to this report.
South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating who was behind a chartered plane that landed in Johannesburg with more than 150 Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza who did not have proper travel documents and were held onboard on the tarmac for around 12 hours as a result, the country’s president said Friday.The plane landed Thursday morning at O.R. Tambo International Airport, but passengers were not allowed to disembark until late that night after immigration interviews with the Palestinians found they could not say where or how long they were staying in South Africa, South Africa’s border agency said.It said the Palestinians also did not have exit stamps or slips that would normally be issued by Israeli authorities to people leaving Gaza.The actions of South African authorities in initially refusing to allow the passengers off the plane provoked fierce criticism from non-governmental organizations, who said the 153 Palestinians — who included families with children and one woman who is nine months pregnant — were kept in dire conditions on the plane, which was extremely hot and had no food or water.South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said there was an investigation to uncover how the Palestinians came to South Africa via a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya.“These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” Ramaphosa said.Palestinians being ‘exploited’The Palestinian Embassy in South Africa said in a statement the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel in an irregular and irresponsible manner. This entity later attempted to disown any responsibility once complications arose.”It didn’t name who chartered the flight, but an Israeli military official, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential information, said an organization called Al-Majd arranged the transport of about 150 Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa.The official said that Israel escorted buses organized by Al-Majd that brought Palestinians from a meeting point in the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Then buses from Al-Majd picked the Palestinians up and brought them to Ramon airport in Israel, where they were flown out of the country.South African authorities said 23 of the Palestinians had traveled onward to other countries, without naming those countries, but 130 remained and were allowed in after intervention from South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs and an offer by an NGO called Gift of the Givers to accommodate them.“Even though they do not have the necessary documents and papers, these are people from a strife-torn, a war-torn country, and out of compassion, out of empathy, we must receive them and be able to deal with the situation that they are facing,” Ramaphosa said.Shadowy operationThe secretive nature of the flight raised fears among rights groups that it marked an attempt by the Israeli government to push Palestinians from Gaza.Israel’s foreign ministry referred questions to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli authority responsible for implementing civilian policies in the Palestinian territories. It said the Palestinians on the charter plane left the Gaza Strip after it received approval from a third country to receive them as part of an Israeli government policy allowing Gaza residents to leave. It didn’t name the third country.Around 40,000 people have left Gaza since the start of the war under the policy.Israel’s government had embraced a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump to empty Gaza permanently of its more than 2 million Palestinians — a plan rights groups said would amount to ethnic cleansing. At the time, Trump said they would not be allowed to return.Trump has since backed away from this plan and brokered a ceasefire between Israel and the militant group Hamas that allows Palestinians to remain in Gaza.South African leader Ramaphosa said that it appeared the Palestinians who arrived in Johannesburg were being “flushed out” of Gaza, without elaborating. The comment followed allegations by two South African NGO representatives who claimed that Al-Majd was affiliated with Israel and working to remove Palestinians from Gaza.They offered no evidence for the claims and COGAT didn’t respond to a request for comment on those allegations.Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, one of those to allege involvement by what he called “Israel’s front organizations,” said this was the second plane to arrive in South Africa in mysterious circumstances after one that landed with more than 170 Palestinians onboard on Oct. 28. The arrival of that flight was not announced by authorities.Sooliman said the passengers on the latest plane did not initially know where they were going and were given no food for the two days it took to travel to Johannesburg.“They were given nothing on the plane itself and this must be challenged and investigated,” Sooliman said.South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and a critic of Israel and has led the international pro-Palestinian movement by accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a highly contentious case at the United Nations’ top court. Israel denies committing genocide and has denounced South Africa as the “legal arm” of Hamas.The people that ended up in South Africa underlined the desperation of Palestinians following a two-year war that has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and reduced the territory to rubble. The ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but it says more than half of those killed were women and children. A fragile ceasefire is in place.Jerusalem-based organizationAn organization called Al-Majd Europe has previously been linked to facilitating travel for Palestinians out of Gaza. It describes itself on its website as a humanitarian organization founded in 2010 in Germany and based in Jerusalem that provides aid and rescue efforts to Muslim communities in conflict zones.The website does not list office phone numbers or its exact address. It states that Al-Majd Europe works with a variety of organizations including 15 international agencies, but no organizations are listed and a “will be announced soon” message was displayed in that section on Friday.Another message that appeared Friday on the website said people were impersonating it to request money or cryptocurrency “under the pretext of facilitating travel or humanitarian aid.” Al-Majd Europe didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to an email address given on its site. Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa, and Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome contributed to this report.
South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating who was behind a chartered plane that landed in Johannesburg with more than 150 Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza who did not have proper travel documents and were held onboard on the tarmac for around 12 hours as a result, the country’s president said Friday.
The plane landed Thursday morning at O.R. Tambo International Airport, but passengers were not allowed to disembark until late that night after immigration interviews with the Palestinians found they could not say where or how long they were staying in South Africa, South Africa’s border agency said.
It said the Palestinians also did not have exit stamps or slips that would normally be issued by Israeli authorities to people leaving Gaza.
The actions of South African authorities in initially refusing to allow the passengers off the plane provoked fierce criticism from non-governmental organizations, who said the 153 Palestinians — who included families with children and one woman who is nine months pregnant — were kept in dire conditions on the plane, which was extremely hot and had no food or water.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said there was an investigation to uncover how the Palestinians came to South Africa via a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya.
“These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” Ramaphosa said.
Palestinians being ‘exploited’
The Palestinian Embassy in South Africa said in a statement the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel in an irregular and irresponsible manner. This entity later attempted to disown any responsibility once complications arose.”
It didn’t name who chartered the flight, but an Israeli military official, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential information, said an organization called Al-Majd arranged the transport of about 150 Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa.
The official said that Israel escorted buses organized by Al-Majd that brought Palestinians from a meeting point in the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Then buses from Al-Majd picked the Palestinians up and brought them to Ramon airport in Israel, where they were flown out of the country.
South African authorities said 23 of the Palestinians had traveled onward to other countries, without naming those countries, but 130 remained and were allowed in after intervention from South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs and an offer by an NGO called Gift of the Givers to accommodate them.
“Even though they do not have the necessary documents and papers, these are people from a strife-torn, a war-torn country, and out of compassion, out of empathy, we must receive them and be able to deal with the situation that they are facing,” Ramaphosa said.
Shadowy operation
The secretive nature of the flight raised fears among rights groups that it marked an attempt by the Israeli government to push Palestinians from Gaza.
Israel’s foreign ministry referred questions to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli authority responsible for implementing civilian policies in the Palestinian territories. It said the Palestinians on the charter plane left the Gaza Strip after it received approval from a third country to receive them as part of an Israeli government policy allowing Gaza residents to leave. It didn’t name the third country.
Around 40,000 people have left Gaza since the start of the war under the policy.
Israel’s government had embraced a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump to empty Gaza permanently of its more than 2 million Palestinians — a plan rights groups said would amount to ethnic cleansing. At the time, Trump said they would not be allowed to return.
Trump has since backed away from this plan and brokered a ceasefire between Israel and the militant group Hamas that allows Palestinians to remain in Gaza.
South African leader Ramaphosa said that it appeared the Palestinians who arrived in Johannesburg were being “flushed out” of Gaza, without elaborating. The comment followed allegations by two South African NGO representatives who claimed that Al-Majd was affiliated with Israel and working to remove Palestinians from Gaza.
They offered no evidence for the claims and COGAT didn’t respond to a request for comment on those allegations.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, one of those to allege involvement by what he called “Israel’s front organizations,” said this was the second plane to arrive in South Africa in mysterious circumstances after one that landed with more than 170 Palestinians onboard on Oct. 28. The arrival of that flight was not announced by authorities.
Sooliman said the passengers on the latest plane did not initially know where they were going and were given no food for the two days it took to travel to Johannesburg.
“They were given nothing on the plane itself and this must be challenged and investigated,” Sooliman said.
South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and a critic of Israel and has led the international pro-Palestinian movement by accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a highly contentious case at the United Nations’ top court. Israel denies committing genocide and has denounced South Africa as the “legal arm” of Hamas.
The people that ended up in South Africa underlined the desperation of Palestinians following a two-year war that has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and reduced the territory to rubble. The ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but it says more than half of those killed were women and children. A fragile ceasefire is in place.
Jerusalem-based organization
An organization called Al-Majd Europe has previously been linked to facilitating travel for Palestinians out of Gaza. It describes itself on its website as a humanitarian organization founded in 2010 in Germany and based in Jerusalem that provides aid and rescue efforts to Muslim communities in conflict zones.
The website does not list office phone numbers or its exact address. It states that Al-Majd Europe works with a variety of organizations including 15 international agencies, but no organizations are listed and a “will be announced soon” message was displayed in that section on Friday.
Another message that appeared Friday on the website said people were impersonating it to request money or cryptocurrency “under the pretext of facilitating travel or humanitarian aid.” Al-Majd Europe didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to an email address given on its site.
Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa, and Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome contributed to this report.
South Africa has allowed more than 150 Palestinian airline passengers to disembark, after they were kept on a plane for almost 12 hours by the country’s border police, authorities said.
South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs authorised the passengers to get off the plane on Thursday night after a local humanitarian organisation guaranteed to provide the passengers with accommodation during their stay in South Africa if needed.
“Given that Palestinians are eligible for 90-day visa-exempt travel to South Africa, they have been processed as per normal and will be required to adhere to all conditions of entry,” South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) said in a statement late on Thursday.
The chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians landed shortly after 8am (06:00 GMT) on Thursday morning at OR Tambo International Airport, which serves the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
According to the BMA, the Palestinian passengers were not allowed to disembark from the aircraft after it was discovered they “did not have the customary departure stamps in their passports”. The passengers also did not indicate how long they intended to stay in South Africa or the address of their accommodation, the BMA said.
“Following their failure to pass the immigration test and given that none of the travellers expressed an intention to apply for asylum, they were initially denied entry,” it added.
News that the Palestinians were forced to wait on the tarmac at the airport for hours reportedly caused outrage among the public in South Africa, which is a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and has led the charge at the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israel for perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
The order to finally allow the Palestinian passengers to leave the plane came after the country’s Home Affairs Ministry received a commitment from a humanitarian aid organisation – Gift of the Givers – to accommodate the visitors during their stay.
A total of 130 Palestinians subsequently entered the country, while 23 transferred from South Africa to other destinations, from the airport, according to the BMA.
The AFP news agency said the plane was a charter flight operated by South African airline Global Airways and had travelled from Kenya.
Founder of Gift of the Givers, Imtiaz Sooliman, told public broadcaster SABC that he did not know who had chartered the aircraft and that a first plane carrying 176 Palestinians had landed in Johannesburg on October 28, with some of the passengers departing for other countries.
“The families of this first group told us yesterday their family members are coming on a second plane, and nobody knew about that plane,” Sooliman said.
“Those people are really distraught coming from two years of genocide,” Sooliman said of the passengers.
Based on “feedback” from those who have arrived already in South Africa, Sooliman said Israel appears to be “removing people from Gaza … and sending them on chartered planes” without stamping their passports.
“Israel deliberately did not stamp the passports of these poor people to exacerbate their suffering in a foreign country,” he added in a post on social media.
Other humanitarian groups are also now offering to provide support for the Palestinian visitors, he added.
Nigel Branken, a South African social worker who assisted those held on the plane, said the passengers from Gaza had told him of being ordered by Israeli authorities to leave all their belongings behind before boarding an unmarked plane at an Israeli air force base.
“Very clearly all the marks of Israel involved in this operation to take people…to displace them,” Branken told Al Jazeera.
TAYBEH, West Bank — “Come visit Taybeh,” begins the brochure touting the touristic attractions here, the last entirely Palestinian Christian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Though it counts Jesus among its many visitors over the years, said Khaldoon Hanna, Taybeh’s avuncular deputy mayor, these days “no one is coming.”
He sighed as he looked around the restaurant he owns on the village’s Main Street. It felt abandoned, with little trace of activity in the kitchen and a layer of dust coating most tables. Only one faucet worked in the bathroom, but it didn’t feel worth it to repair the rest.
“In the last two years, I haven’t had more than 20 tourists come in here,” Hanna said.
How could they, Hanna said, when you have to negotiate a growing gantlet of Israeli roadblocks just to get here? Or face off emboldened settlers who make increasing forays into the village to burn cars or destroy property? In July, they even tried to set fire to the ruins of the Church of St. George, a 4th century Byzantine structure on Taybeh’s hilltop, Hanna and religious leaders said; the Israeli government says it’s unclear what started the blaze.
“There’s a vicious attack on us at this point, and we as Christians, we can do nothing,” Hanna said. “If we don’t get support, be it social, political, economic, we’ll be extinct soon.”
A man walks up the main road in Taybeh, a West Bank village of 1,200 residents that is proud of its heritage.
(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)
Life as a Palestinian near the settlements has long been difficult in this bucolic portion of the West Bank, where the olive groves covering the hills are the sites of regular confrontations between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers. The confrontations have become increasingly lethal, with more than 1,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and armed settlers since the Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations.
But although the war in Gaza is abating, extremist settler groups such as the so-called Hilltop Youth have doubled down on their unprecedented — and increasingly effective — campaign of harassment and land-grabbing that has hit all Palestinians, regardless of religion or political affiliation.
This year, the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, tallied more than 1,000 attacks in the West Bank through August, putting it on track to be the most violent on record.
And the scope of the intimidation campaign is increasing: The olive harvest in October saw 126 attacks on Palestinians and their property in 70 West Bank towns and villages; it was almost three times the number of attacks and double the communities targeted during 2023’s harvest. More than 4,000 olive trees and saplings were vandalized, the highest number in six years, OCHA says.
Almost half of those attacks have been in Ramallah governorate, which encompasses Taybeh and a slew of communities contending with intensifying violence from settlement outposts — that is, encampments set up by settlers in rural parts of the West Bank that are illegal under Israeli law but often protected by the authorities.
Worshipers walk on the grounds of Christ the Redeemer Latin Church in Taybeh.
(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)
Taybeh, which means “delicious” in Arabic and which relies on tourism along with olive and other harvests, has been particularly affected, if only because of sheer demographics: Christians account for roughly 1% to 2% of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, down from about 10% when Israel was founded in 1948.
Even within that tiny minority, Taybeh’s 1,200 residents are fiercely proud of their community and see it as unique. Tourists have long come here, whether to day-trip through hiking trails where prophets once trod or visit the village’s different churches. In years past, it was the site of an Oktoberfest celebration that would draw 16,000 people.
Just as Christians in other parts of the Middle East have left because of war and instability, the constant lack of security, not to mention the economic strangulation that has accompanied it, have pushed 10 families to emigrate from the village in the last two years. It may sound like a small number, but it is a loss the village can ill afford, said Father Jack-Nobel Abed of Taybeh’s Greek Melkite Catholic Church.
Abed, who sports an impressive beard and a baritone voice, passionately advocates for Christians to stay in the Holy Land. When U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — an ardent supporter of the settler movement — visited Taybeh after the torching near the church, Abed asked him to not issue U.S. immigrant visas to Christians from the area.
“I told him, ‘We have something to do in this land. This is our land, and our roots are deep enough to reach hell,’” Abed said. But he said he also understood if people leave for a time and return later.
“If the circumstances and the situation is forcing someone [to leave] because they’re afraid their kids will be killed, imprisoned, or to have no proper future, then you can’t hold a stick and stop them from what they need to do,” Abed said.
He has little patience for Christian Zionists such as Huckabee, who he said claim to care for Christians in the region while turning a blind eye to the persecution driving them away.
“Who are you to speak in my name as a Christian? How would you have learned of Christianity if it weren’t for someone like me in this land?” Abed asked.
Khaldoon Hanna, in the restaurant he owns in Taybeh, says few tourists visit the village anymore because of violence committed by Israeli settlers and increased security measures imposed by Israel in the West Bank.
(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)
The Israeli military says it works to prevent settler attacks, and Palestinians must coordinate with Israeli authorities in advance to visit their lands if they’re near settlements or outposts. But even when Palestinians do that, settlers often come out to block them anyway, and they’ve commandeered areas that never required coordination in the past.
When Palestinians fight back, the army prosecutes them under military law, while settlers, if they’re prosecuted at all, are subject to civil law. A report last year from the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said more than 93% of investigations of settlers between 2005 and 2023 closed without an indictment. Only 3% led to a conviction.
A butcher shop sits empty in Taybeh, a village in the central West Bank about 20 miles east of Jerusalem.
(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)
In any case, Hanna and others say, the line between settlers and army has been blurred since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“It’s all the same,” Hanna said. “The entire aim is to make me forget anything called Palestine — to reach a point of desperation where I have nothing here. I have no future here.”
On that point, Hanna and hard-line settlers agree.
“Look at how much territory we’ve conquered in the last two years, in how many places the wheel has turned and despair has seeped into the enemy,” wrote settler leader Elisha Yered on X in a post exhorting Jews to deny Palestinians employment opportunities.
Madees Khoury, general manager of the Taybeh Brewing Co., at the family-run brewery in Taybeh.
(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)
But some Palestinians refuse to give up. Madees Khoury, the general manager of Taybeh Brewing Co., is one of those who choose to stay in town, though she knows at least one family gearing up to emigrate in the coming weeks.
“Khalas, you can’t blame them,” she said, using the Arabic word for “enough.” “It’s sad. These are the good people, the ones you want to stay, to build, to educate their kids, to resist.”
That was the ethos driving her family, which opened the microbrewery in the optimistic days after the 1993 Oslo Accords, when peace and a Palestinian state seemed within reach. Instead of starting a brewery in Boston, Khoury’s father, Nadeem Khoury, and his brother gave up their business in Brookline, Mass., and moved back with their kids to Taybeh.
Khoury started hanging out in the brewery when she was 7, folding cartons “and generally staying in other people’s way.” She remembers her childhood during the second intifada, or uprising, when she couldn’t attend birthday parties because of Israeli checkpoint closures, and driving through mountain passes permeated by the smell of tear gas.
“It’s not normal. But I’m a stronger Palestinian for having gone through it. I’m not afraid of a settler in the checkpoint with an M-16; he’s more terrified of me,” she said. She added that pressure from the U.S. is the only way to reduce the wave of violence engulfing her village.
“If Americans want peace, if they really care about the Christians in Palestine, they wouldn’t allow settlers to stay on Taybeh land and causing problems.”
Iconography is displayed inside the ruins of the 4th century Church of St. George in Taybeh.
(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)
Although Israel portrays itself as a model of religious freedom, there has been a rise in anti-Christian behavior in recent years. A 2024 report by the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue counted 111 reported cases of attacks against Christians in Israel and the West Bank, including 46 physical assaults, 35 attacks against church properties and 13 cases of harassment.
“We think that as Christians, nothing will happen to us. But this is empty talk. As long as you’re Palestinian, they’ll attack you,” Khoury said.
After earning a college degree in Boston, she came back in 2007 and has been working at the brewery since. She acknowledges that the last two years have been the most difficult yet, with business down 70% and Israeli security procedures turning a 90-minute drive to the port of Haifa into a three-day odyssey. Still, the company used the lull to build a new brewery — an expression of faith despite the almost daily settler attacks.
“My brother jokes around and says we’re building this for the settlers to take,” she said, walking through the new brewery wing.
She paused for a moment, her face turning serious.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’re building. We’re growing. We’re investing. And we’re staying,” she said.
London — Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City’s mayoral race has ignited passions for and against him, from pride in his birthplace of Uganda and applause from his counterpart in London to anger from Israel’s top diplomat in the U.S.
Mamdani is a self-described democratic socialist who will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, and his victory left some people in Africa beaming with pride for a hometown son. Mamdani was born in the East African nation of Uganda 34 years ago, then lived in South Africa for two years before moving with his family to New York as a child.
“What a moment! It was beautiful! I am excited!” cheered Joseph Beyanga, CEO of Uganda’s National Association of Broadcasters, pumping his hands in the air as he spoke with CBS News.
New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani celebrates during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York, Nov. 4, 2025.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty
Beyanga said he was Mamdani’s mentor when the now-mayor-elect interned at one of Uganda’s top newspapers, the Daily Monitor, during a vacation when he was in high school.
“Whatever he wanted to do, there was no middle point. Always he wanted the top,” recalled Beyanga. “Then I realized he was not just interested in current affairs. He was interested in how the current affairs affect the people. If you’re talking about big money, the budget and all that, how does this affect the last person … he was interested in how it affects the people.”
“When it was time to interact with people, he talked to people looking straight in the eye,” he said.
Beyanga added that even 17 years after he met Mamdani, he still sees the same person in the New York City politician.
“Nothing has changed. His heart is with the people, and I don’t think that will change,” he said. “I’ve seen other outlets calling him populist and opponents giving him all sorts of names. I see a man after the heart of serving people, serving the down-trodden people in society. And hey, that doesn’t come far away from who he is. He is a Ugandan boy, and the Ugandan boy cares for the people.”
Beyanga compared excitement in Uganda now to the exuberance among many Kenyans and Indonesians when former President Barack Obama was first elected.
“The Ugandans are having their Mamdani moment,” Beyanga told CBS News, “and yes, we say if he did it, yes we can!”
In the United Kingdom, London Mayor Sadiq Khan — who became the British capital’s first Muslim leader when he was first elected in 2016 — voiced solidarity with his new counterpart. Khan is currently serving his third consecutive term.
“New Yorkers faced a clear choice — between hope and fear — and just like we’ve seen in London — hope won,” Khan said in a social media post. “Huge congratulations to Zohran Mamdani on his historic campaign.”
Following Mamdani’s election win, Time magazine published an article by Khan, who called it “extraordinary” that two of the world’s most influential cities will be led by people of the same faith.
“But — in two of the most diverse cities on Earth — it’s a bit beside the point,” Khan said. “We did not win because of our faith. We won because we addressed voters’ concerns, rather than playing on them.”
“Mayor Mamdani and I might not agree on everything. Many of the challenges our cities face are similar, but they are not identical. Put policy differences aside, though, and it’s clear that we are united by something far more fundamental: our belief in the power of politics to change people’s lives for the better.”
Mamdani, a longtime supporter of Palestinian rights, has been accused of antisemitism and being pro-Hamas, which he denies.
He has also been called out for refusing to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” Intifada is an Arabic word that means uprising, but which is widely viewed as a slogan inciting violence against Israel. However, during his campaign he said he would “discourage” others from using the phrase and that it “is not language that I use.”
“Mamdani’s inflammatory remarks will not deter us,” Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Dannon said in a social media post on Wednesday. “The Jewish community in New York and across the United States deserves safety and respect. We will continue to strengthen our ties with Jewish community leaders to ensure their security and well-being.”
CBS News’ team in Israel said domestic media reports and editorials covering Mamdani’s win were largely split along ideological lines. Left-wing commentary generally called for Mamdani to be given a chance, while more right-wing outlets leaned the other way.
On Wednesday morning, the Times of Israel‘s front-page headline read: “Far-left, anti-Israel candidate Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race.”
The Jerusalem Post‘s top featured editorial said: “Mamdani winning in NY means antisemitism can win elections, would impact Jews globally.”
Earlier this month, Israel and Hamas announced a ceasefire to the two-year war in Gaza. The agreement was brokered in part by the United States, but American officials are concerned, according to the New York Times, that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may be trying to end it. And indeed, since the ceasefire began, nearly a hundred Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers have been killed. (Per the first stage of the deal, Israel remains in control of approximately fifty-three per cent of Gaza.)
I recently spoke by phone with Michael Milshtein, the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University. Milshtein served as senior adviser to the commander of COGAT, which supervises civilian policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and as the head of the Department for Palestinian Affairs in the I.D.F.’s military-intelligence wing. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what Netanyahu wants for Gaza, Hamas’s strategic aim to take over the Palestinian national movement, and why a lasting ceasefire in Gaza will be so difficult.
If this ceasefire is going to work, what would it look like over the next few months? What is the best-case scenario?
Most or maybe all of the scenarios are going to be bad, so we’re not speaking about the best case, but the least worst case. And that would be the beginning of a new regime, the establishment of a new Palestinian regime in Gaza, which does not include Hamas. There would be a symbolic deployment of international forces, and a kind of coördination system between Israel, the United States, and other international forces about any violations of the ceasefire. And then Israel would be able to act immediately against any challenge or threat that is being developed in Gaza, and get warnings about a plan to launch rockets or to smuggle weapons or things like that. That would be the best case.
At the same time, I must say in a very frank manner, this best case would also mean that Israel would not control most of the territory in Gaza, with the exception maybe of several areas near the border. This is the only part that would be kept by Israel. And, in this scenario, Hamas would commit to hold only defensive weapons, such as rifles and grenades and pistols. They would not be able to have offensive weapons, mainly rockets.
So there would be some sort of disarmament of Hamas, and Israel wouldn’t launch strikes, and an international force would help secure Gaza, which is what the ceasefire agreement lays out. I assume that when you said that you wanted to be “very frank” you meant that a solution like this could also prevent Israeli expansionist fantasies in Gaza, correct?
Yes. There are still many people here in Israel who say that our goal is not only to defeat Hamas but actually to make Palestinians vanish from Gaza or maybe even to deport them. And this fantasy will not happen. And, more than that, I assess that Hamas cannot be convinced to give up its weapons totally. But I think that if Hamas does not have the same power that it had two years ago, and it will not be able to commit once again October 7th, and it will be limited always by Israel and by the international forces, I think that this is not a bad situation for Israel.
You’re saying that there’s no great solution here, but you’ve laid out what you think might be the best one or the least bad one.
That’s right.
But does either side want that? How do you understand at this point what both Hamas and the Netanyahu government want? Let’s start with Netanyahu.
I think that he doesn’t want the current ceasefire. He was forced to accept it, because it was imposed on him. And, of course, there is a very broad gap between his demands for a ceasefire and what actually happened. For example, he demanded that there would be a very clear commitment by Hamas for full disarmament. And, of course, we do not see that right now. I’m quite sure that Netanyahu’s government will not be glad with the scenario that I described above. I think that maybe another government in Israel, when there are elections, will be more satisfied with such a scenario. And I think that other players, such as Turkey and Qatar, will be very satisfied with such a scenario, because they will be able to preserve Hamas as a player in Gaza. But, at the same time, they can say that there is a kind of a change, even if it’s a cosmetic change.
And, regarding the United States, I’m quite sure that there will not be any way to implement all the goals they have laid out, for example, to get the total disarmament of Hamas or to convince Hamas to accept all the international forces that Vice-President J. D. Vance spoke about on his recent trip to Israel. He spoke about forces from Indonesia and the Gulf that could deploy in Gaza. But a large international force is something that I think Hamas does have some reservations about.
Netanyahu resisted a ceasefire for a long time. You said the ceasefire was forced on him. But what does he want? When we talked several months ago, you thought that Netanyahu was flirting with the expansionist views about resettling Gaza expressed by his right-wing ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. What do you think that he actually wants now?
What he really wants is to be able to announce that Hamas was defeated, even if it means to occupy most or maybe all of Gaza, and even to stay there. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are eager to occupy Gaza, of course, and even to encourage the Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza. Regarding Netanyahu, I think he understands that he cannot really convince a lot of people in Israel today that he defeated Hamas. And I think he’s very embarrassed of the fact that Hamas still exists, that Hamas is still the dominant player in Gaza. If he could choose, he would prefer to continue the war. It seems that President Trump was the one who decided to end the war.
What I find so strange about it from Netanyahu’s perspective is the following: you’re saying that he doesn’t want Hamas to remain in charge of Gaza.
That’s right.
But my understanding is that he also doesn’t want the Palestinian Authority [P.A.] coming into Gaza, and he certainly doesn’t want conditions in Gaza making it so a Palestinian state is more likely.
EZARIYA, West Bank — Hanging by the desk of the mayor of Bethany — Ezariya, in Arabic — is a blown-up aerial photo from 1938 showing this Palestinian town on Jerusalem’s edge how it once was:
Before the Israeli separation wall severed its access to Jerusalem to the west, before the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim settlement took root nearby, and before a new wall that will soon block it from the east and effectively rend the occupied West Bank in two.
Mayor Khalil Abu Al-Rish stared at the photo one recent morning, a cigarette in one hand and a glum look on his face, then pointed with his other hand out his office window at Ezariya’s bustling main thoroughfare, the primary artery connecting north West Bank cities like Ramallah to Bethlehem and Hebron in the south.
“There are 55,000 living in this town. This road alone has 60 cars passing through it every minute, according to our research. The [Israeli] plan now is to shut it down,” he said.
“Do that, and there’s no Palestinian state.”
“The plan” Abu Al-Rish was referring to is East One or E1, the long-deferred Israeli project that aims to build 3,400 new settlement homes over a 3,000-acre area in the mountains stretching out from East Jerusalem to Maale Adumim.
A billboard announcing new Israeli settlement housing units availability in the West Bank as Israel presses ahead with its expansion plans for the E1 area.
It’s another in a series of moves Israel has taken over the last two years to further the possible annexation of the West Bank, which Palestinians consider a part of their future state and which Israel snatched from Jordan in 1967; its occupation is considered illegal by international law. President Trump said annexation is a red line he will not allow Israel to cross, but he also has not discouraged Israel from expanding settlements in the region.
E1 would cut any Palestinian link to East Jerusalem — where Palestinians hope to make their capital — and torpedo any chance of a contiguous Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Bedouin community of Jabal Al-Baba, or Pope Hill, is under threat of forced displacement by Israeli settlement expansion plans for the E1 area. Seen in the background is the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
This week, ultranationalist ministers in the Israeli parliament gave preliminary approval to a bill granting Israel authority to annex the West Bank — a largely symbolic move that appears to have been an attempt to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has long called for the annexation of the West Bank, but has demurred from doing so for fear of angering Israel’s main patron in the U.S.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance kneels over the Unction Stone, believed to be the place where Christ’s body was laid down after being removed from the crucifix and prepared for burial, as he tours the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem on Thursday.
(Nathan Howard, Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Vice President JD Vance, who visited Israel this week, on Thursday said of the vote that if it is “political stunt, then it is a very stupid political stunt.”
“I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”
But Israel has taken plenty of steps aimed at making annexation a de facto scenario that may soon turn irreversible. It has restricted movement by erecting 288 gates on entrances and exits of Palestinians towns and villages, adding to what the U.N. says are 849 “movement obstacles,” even as settlements have increased in number and size, further penning Palestinians into islands of territory they have little chance of leaving.
One such gate, a yellow metal barrier on the road that Israeli soldiers lock and then leave, appeared this month at Ezariya’s eastern entrance, said Abu Al-Rish.
“We watched them install it one night. It’s not like they talk to us or ask us for permission,” he said, a wan smile on his face.
Businesses and homes near the gate were issued demolition orders to make way for a separation barrier, the Israeli-built barricade composed of 26-foot-high cement walls resembling rows of piano keys slicing through so many parts of the West Bank.
One of the affected owners, 50-year-old Omar Abu Saho, who runs a toy store, said he received a legal notification Oct. 4. The deadline for leaving the area had passed, he said, but no one has come to enforce it for now. But the order certainly hasn’t helped business.
“Look around you, the place is empty. And I’m not getting more inventory. If I sell anything, that’s it,” he said.
A Palestinian carries eggs at the entrance to the West Bank town Ezariya, where Israel has placed a security gate.
Abu Saho had already been forced to move here with his two sons and five daughters from the West Bank city of Jenin. Though Jenin is about 100 miles from the Gaza Strip, when Israel launched its campaign on the enclave after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the city was nevertheless the focus of sustained Israeli military operations, forcing many merchants like Abu Saho to close up shop.
“We couldn’t continue there, so I came here. Now it seems I’ll have to move again. You follow your business,” he said. “The Israelis destroyed me for three or four times. But every time I continue. And besides, I like to work. If I despair, I won’t live.”
Omar Hassan Abu Ghali, 51, who co-owns a car wash on Ezariya’s main road with his family, was less sanguine. The night he saw the gate installed, he said, felt like his “life was ending.”
“You put a wall here, this area goes bye-bye. There’s nothing any more,” he said, staring at cars making their way through the gate, which at that moment was open.
“The Israelis want to shut down my livelihood, for me and my kids. What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Where am I supposed to go?”
Tourism to the area has all but withered away, said Hussein Hamad, the caretaker of the archaeological pilgrimage site in Ezariya thought to be the site of Lazarus’ tomb.
Palestinians gather in a marketplace for used goods in the West Bank town of Ezariya.
“October is supposed to our best month. I’d get 20 to 25 groups a week. How many do you see around you now?” he said, waving his hand around the seemingly abandoned area. A nearby shop owner looked expectantly at two people visiting the tomb, but turned back and locked up the shop when she discovered they were reporters, then walked away.
As part of the E1 project, Israel intends to build a Palestinian-only bypass — euphemistically called the “Fabric of Life Road” or “Sovereignty Road” — through parts of Ezariya that it says would solve the problem of movement between parts of the West Bank, without allowing Palestinian traffic near Maale Adumim.
But critics, including Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that promotes a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dismissed the bypass in a statement when the project was first approved in March as an “apartheid road” that “serves no purpose in improving Palestinian transportation.”
“Instead, it is solely aimed at facilitating the annexation of a vast area,” Peace Now said. The group noted the irony that the road wouldn’t be funded by Israeli taxpayers, but would use customs revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority but which it frequently withholds.
The Palestinian Bedouin community, foreground, of Jabal Al-Baba, or Pope Hill.
The bypass road would also chomp off more of Ezariya’s territory, a significant portion of which has already been expropriated by Israel, said Abu Al-Rish. That would prevent the town from the expansion it desperately needs to house the growing population. He added that if the roadworks go ahead, Ezariya’s role as a top Palestinian commercial hub would end.
“We have more than 1,000 businesses here. What you see in front of you is the longest commercial street in all the West Bank,” he said.
“It’s just inconceivable to me that this will go away.”
It’s not the first time Israel has tried to bring E1 into being. First proposed in 1994 under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (a year after he signed the Oslo Accords that were to bring about a Palestinian state), E1 stalled before concerted international opposition, including from traditional allies of Israel, which feared the project’s impact on the West Bank.
As recently as two years ago, Abu Al-Rish said, U.S. officials would reassure him the plan wasn’t going through. Even now, European nations have remained against E1 and condemned the Israeli government when it approved the plan in August. The Trump administration took a different tack.
“We will not tell Israel what to do. We will not interfere,” said U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an avid supporter of Israel and settlements, in an interview with Galatz radio in August.
Israel has so far constructed approximately 160 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, housing some 700,000 Jews alongside 3.3 million Palestinians.
Israel argues E1 is a necessity to link Maale Adumim to Jerusalem both for the purposes of urban planning and security. But for their part, Israeli politicians are clear on E1’s effect.
Children from the Palestinian Bedouin community of Jabal Al-Baba gather in a circle with their teacher.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not by slogans but by deeds,” said Bezalel Smotrich, the ultranationalist finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, after the August approval. He framed the decision as a response to a raft of countries recognizing the state of Palestine.
“Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea,” he said.
Ever since the E1 project was on the books, Atallah Mazaraa, a Bedouin who lives near Ezariya in an area called Pope Hill — or Jabal Al-Baba, so named because it was gifted to the pope when the area was under Jordanian control — has kept up a grinding legal fight to keep his community in place.
Sitting in a pre-fabricated hut that doubles as an office from where he runs his legal campaign, Mazaraa reminisced about the time when his flock of sheep and goats could roam and graze where Maale Adumim now stands. Then the spring from where they drank was commandeered for the settlement’s use, even as the thousands of square miles open to his livestock shrank with every passing year.
“Every day they try to take more and more. You just don’t have stability,” he said.
For Mazaraa, international recognition means nothing.
“We Palestinians know if you go from Nablus to Jericho, there’s no state. What, I want a passport, a piece of paper that says I have a state, when every 200 yards there’s a checkpoint?” he said.
“All we want the Israelis to do is leave us alone,” he said. “But they’ve taken away so much of the West Bank.”
I was particularly shocked by one detail. During one interrogation, Khaled was accused of being a member of Islamic Jihad, which he again denied. “I’m only a farmer,” he replied. Khaled’s greatest fear was that his wife and children, one of whom had been waiting for a surgery, would be killed in an air strike. He told me that an Israeli intelligence officer showed Khaled a photo of them. “It was a photo from our family insurance card,” Khaled told me. He had no idea how the officer had gotten it. “Detention was a hardship in itself, but the threat to my family was a torment of another kind—just as heavy, if not worse,” he said.
After four days, the questioning stopped, and Khaled understood that his file was being closed. He was not released, however. He spent about a month in a different section of Sde Teiman. Eventually, he was moved to Al-Naqab (Negev) prison, where detainees slept in tents. “Soldiers would storm our tents and fire rubber bullets at our legs and knees,” he said. “Those who were injured were left to bleed.” He said that some of their wounds became infested with maggots.
Khaled learned of the ceasefire deal from some guards. On October 10th, the guards at Al-Naqab ordered him and several others to line up. Khaled assumed he was being moved to yet another prison, until he was taken to a place called Ward A. “That’s the ward for those scheduled for release,” Khaled said. “We all started to feel hopeful.” Two hours later, they were handcuffed and taken for fingerprinting, and their hope grew stronger.
Then the guards came and took away their blankets and mattresses. “We spent the next three nights sleeping on the cold floor,” Khaled said. They were given less food than before. “Fear crept back in,” he told me. “Still, we thought maybe they were lashing out because we were being set free.” He said that an intelligence officer eventually signalled that he was getting out, telling him, “If you do anything wrong, there won’t be any warnings. We’ll send a missile your way. Got it?”
After Khaled was finally released, he walked eight miles through devastated neighborhoods, from southern Gaza to a small town near Deir al-Balah. He was exhausted, but the closer he got to his wife and children the more excited he felt. At last, he reached a group of tents where his extended family was living. His young daughter was the first to spot him, and he lifted her into the air with joy. Then his other relatives rushed in, wrapping him in hugs.
He entered his immediate family’s tent, where his wife embraced him. He was afraid to ask where his three-year-old son was.
It turned out that the boy was only sleeping, lying on a thin blanket on the ground. Khaled knelt, called his son’s name, and leaned in for a kiss. His son stirred, half asleep, and blinked up at Khaled’s unfamiliar face. In the moments before he drifted off again, he did not seem to recognize his father.
When The New Yorker asked the Israeli military, or I.D.F., about the conditions that Khaled described, a spokesperson called them “baseless allegations.” The Israeli Prison Service, which operates Ofer and Al-Naqab prisons, has told the Washington Post that it maintains proper living conditions. But experiences similar to what Khaled shared—including extended kneeling, beatings, attacks by military dogs, and a lack of medical care—have been reported by human-rights groups, the United Nations, and news organizations. In June, 2024, the Timesreported on Gazans who said they were strip-searched, blindfolded, and handcuffed and then taken to Sde Teiman, where they were held in a deafening “disco room” and subjected to physical abuse. “Any abuse of detainees, whether during their detention or during interrogation, violates the law and the directives of the I.D.F. and as such is strictly prohibited,” the I.D.F. said in a statement to the Times. Asked about air strikes that killed civilians, the I.D.F. told The New Yorker, “Throughout the war, the IDF has been operating in accordance with international law to protect the security of the State of Israel and its citizens against Hamas attacks aimed at civilians, by striking military targets.”
Last week, on Facebook, a friend from my home town of Beit Lahia posted a video of our old neighborhood. It shattered me. Not a single house remained standing. The dentist’s clinic on our street, a local clothing store, a feed mill where my father used to buy grain for our birds and rabbits, even a palm tree we used as a landmark—all of it had been levelled.
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians who lack shelter or a home to return to after Israel destroyed their residences across Gaza are pitching tents in graveyards as a last resort, as the humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave remains acute despite a fragile ceasefire deal.
“This graveyard wasn’t meant for the living,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said, reporting from the southern city of Khan Younis. “But today, it’s home to dozens of families who have nowhere else to go.”
Khoudary said Palestinians were camping at the site “not because they want to, but because it’s the last free space available.”
“Graveyards have become shelters not out of choice, but out of desperation,” she added.
Rami Musleh, a father of 12 who was displaced from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoon could not find any viable option other than the graveyard.
“For parents, the emotional toll is heavy. The psychological trauma of war is made worse by having to raise children among tombstones,” Musleh told Al Jazeera.
With no safe shelter left and no land to return to, many families in Gaza are now pitching tents inside graveyards [Screen grab/Al Jazeera]
Another resident, Sabah Muhammed, said the cemeteries have now lost all their sacredness.
“Graveyards, once sacred spaces for the dead, are now silent witnesses to a living crisis. No water, no electricity, and no privacy … only the bare minimum to survive,” she told Al Jazeera.
“In Gaza, even the land for the dead is now the only refuge for the living.”
According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people – or about 90 per cent of the population – across the Gaza Strip have been displaced during the war. Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more.
Palestinians in southern Gaza are squeezed into overcrowded shelters as Israel issued forced orders for residents of northern Gaza and Gaza City to evacuate and then bombarded many as they fled south.
The price of renting even a square meter of land to pitch a tent is prohibitive for many displaced Palestinians, who lack a stable income and are dependent on scarce humanitarian assistance.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinians, said 61 million tons of debris now cover Gaza and entire neighbourhoods have been erased. It said families were searching the ruins for shelter and water.
While a fragile ceasefire has been in effect since October 10, Israel is continuing to heavily restrict humanitarian aid into Gaza. The International Court of Justice on Wednesday ruled Israel must allow aid into Gaza, stating it cannot use starvation “as a method of warfare”.
Aid is mainly being channelled into the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, while none of the crossings in the north have been opened.
Vice President JD Vance, as well as President Trump’s negotiating team — his son-in-law Jared Kushner and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff — were all in Israel on Tuesday, trying to shore up the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. Before he left for Israel, Vance said bumps in the road to peace were expected.
“There are gonna be fits and starts,” Vance told reporters. “Hamas is gonna fire on Israel, Israel’s gonna have to respond, of course.”
Hamas has denied responsibility for an alleged RPG attack that killed two Israeli soldiers over the weekend. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that it was a Hamas attack, and that the Israeli military responded to the alleged ceasefire violation by dropping almost 169 tons of bombs in Gaza.
“One of our hands holds a weapon, the other hand is stretched out for peace,” Netanyahu told lawmakers on Monday. “You make peace with the strong, not the weak. Today Israel is stronger than ever before.”
The Israeli strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory.
President Trump warned Hamas on Monday against breaching the deal that took months to negotiate.
“They’re gonna behave, they’re gonna be nice,” he said. “And if they’re not, we’re gonna go and eradicate them if we have to.”
Kushner and Witkoff met Monday with Netanyahu, and the Israeli leader’s office said Vance would also meet him this week. The vice president and second lady Usha Vance were greeted upon their arrival Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Israel’s Minister of Justice Yariv Levin.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrives at Ben Gurion airport, Oct. 21, 2025, in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Nathan Howard/Pool/Getty
Vance was scheduled to have a working lunch with Witkoff and Kushner on Tuesday before his meeting with Netanyahu.
The peace process has taken incremental steps forward despite the weekend violence, with Israel returning the remains of 15 Palestinians to Gaza on Tuesday following the handover by Hamas on Monday evening of the body of another deceased hostage. As part of the peace deal, a total of 165 Palestinians’ bodies have now been returned to Gaza, many of them former detainees, while all 20 living Israeli hostages have been released by Hamas, along with the remains of 13 deceased captives.
But despite those steps, the long-term viability of Mr. Trump’s peace plan, which he’s said will end nearly eight decades of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, remains less certain.
Ex-Israeli official casts doubt on prospects for Trump’s peace plan
Some Israelis remain skeptical that the Israeli prime minister is genuinely interested in a lasting peace. Among them is fierce Netanyahu critic Alon Pinkas, who served as an advisor to four Israeli foreign ministers.
He told CBS News that Netanyahu signed the peace deal brokered by Mr. Trump, but never really backed its core purpose, or Mr. Trump’s stated goal of securing an enduring peace in the heart of the Middle East.
“This was an agreement he was bullied into,” Pinkas said. “This is an agreement he signed under duress, and now he is developing a new scheme to manipulate Trump.”
Pinkas credited Mr. Trump for doing “something that his predecessors were disinclined or hesitant to do, and that is exert real pressure” on Israel’s leader.
“It worked, but it only worked for the first phase,” Pinkas said, referring to the living Israeli hostages being released and the ceasefire coming into effect.
He said after the weekend’s violence that the deal had been “ostensibly restored, but when Netanyahu says, ‘I’m restoring the ceasefire,’ it’s only because there’s a visit here of the vice president, JD Vance, and because the U.S. sent its envoy.”
Pinkas said he was certain Israeli forces would resume operations in Gaza within days, noting they remained deployed in about half of the Palestinian territory.
Israeli soldiers stand next to vehicles near the Israel-Gaza border, in southern Israel, Oct. 19, 2025.
Amir Cohen/REUTERS
“The hostages are no longer in danger because they were freed, and Hamas was not decisively destroyed, as Mr. Netanyahu promised and boasted and bragged for two years, so I see a serious incentive for Mr. Netanyahu to resume” an offensive against Hamas, Pinkas told CBS News. “Maybe not on a huge scale, given the agreement, but I do see … a local skirmish that becomes a wider flare-up, that then deteriorates or escalates into a full Israeli military operation.”
Hamas’ top negotiator said Tuesday that the group remained committed to the ceasefire agreement. But President Trump’s peace plan calls for the demilitarization of Gaza, and many analysts, including Pinkas, have doubts that Hamas will willingly hand over all its weapons.
“That’s probably the biggest flaw in the agreement,” said Pinkas. “The agreement in and of itself is a good agreement, but in order for an agreement like that to work, it requires good faith, good will, and trust. None of these ingredients exist. In fact, both sides have a vested interest in not progressing beyond the ceasefire.”
“Hamas wants to lure Israel inside [Gaza] into a de-facto occupation, and mount an insurgency and show to the Palestinians that they are the real resistance. And Netanyahu wants to go in because he knows that if everything stops now and there is progress into the next phases, that almost inevitably means that he will be deemed as the guy who failed to defeat Hamas.”
Pinkas said that while the past two years of war have left Hamas defeated militarily and degraded, “Hamas is not done. Hamas are there, and you see those pictures every day. You show them on CBS — Hamas gangs walking around in battle fatigues, armed. That’s not going to cut it politically for Mr. Netanyahu.”
An armed Hamas militant stands guard as a Red Cross vehicle arrives to receive the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, in Gaza City, Oct. 14, 2025.
Dawoud Abu Alkas/REUTERS
Speaking in a recent interview with CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil, Netanyahu said his government had agreed “to give peace a chance,” but he noted that the conditions of Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan “are very clear — it’s not only that we get the hostages out without getting our military out, but that we would subsequently have both demilitarization and disarmament. They’re not the same thing. First Hamas has to give up its arms. And second, you want to make sure that there are no weapons factories inside Gaza. There’s no smuggling of weapons into Gaza.”
“We also agreed: Okay, let’s get the first part done. Now let’s give a chance to do the second part peacefully, which is my hope,” the Israeli leader told CBS News.
The fragile peace deal President Trump spearheaded between Israel and Hamas in Gaza appeared on Monday to have survived serious threats over the weekend. The top U.S. officials who helped negotiate the ceasefire and hostage release agreement — senior envoy Steve Witkoff and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — were back in Israel on Monday to help ensure it does not unravel.
Israel struck multiple targets inside Gaza after a deadly attack on Israeli soldiers. Hamas has rejected Israel’s claim that it was involved in that attack.
On Monday, the skies over Gaza were quiet again in the wake of the gravest threat since the ceasefire there came into effect on Oct. 10. Hamas and Israel accused each other of violating the terms of Mr. Trump’s peace plan over the weekend, but both sides recommitted to the process on Monday.
For a couple tense days, however, war was back in Gaza. Local health officials in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory said 45 people were killed in Israeli strikes. The Israel Defense Forces said, meanwhile, that two soldiers were killed when Hamas operatives opened fire with an RPG.
Israeli soldiers stand next to vehicles near the Israel-Gaza border, in southern Israel, Oct. 19, 2025.
Amir Cohen/REUTERS
As mediators raced to get the peace process back on track, President Trump said the situation would be “handled toughly, but properly,” and added that in his view, the ceasefire remained in effect.
Over the weekend, Palestinian families had come out to enjoy a quiet moment at a seaside café in Gaza, when cameras captured the moment that an Israeli strike shattered the peace.
Many feared the blood-soaked scenes left in the wake of the explosions were a sign that two years of relentless violence had resumed after just a week.
“We were drinking tea,” said Salih Salman, “when suddenly people were bombed.”
Smoke billows following an Israeli strike that targeted a building in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip, Oct. 19, 2025.
EYAD BABA/AFP/Getty
Once again Gaza’s crippled hospitals filled up with dozens of injured in the wake of 1multiple Israeli strikes.
The IDF said it was targeting Hamas forces responsible for ceasefire violations, and it provided video purportedly showing armed Hamas fighters moving toward Israeli troops.
A media center in central Gaza was among the locations bombed, with the strike killing a cameraman and an engineer, and wounding three other people.
“We are all journalists here,” protested Ajeb Mohamed at the scene. “No-one else can even enter here.”
More than 220 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the war started, according to the international advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
Amid the renewed fighting and accusations over the weekend, an Israeli official said all humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza would be suspended. On Monday, however, COGAT, the Israeli government agency that handles affairs in the Palestinian territories, told CBS News that the Kerem Shalom border crossing was open for aid to transit.
The United Nations and a number of humanitarian aid agencies have called repeatedly since the ceasefire came into effect for Israel to open all of the border crossings into Gaza to allow far more food, water, medicine, building materials and other essential items in.
The ingress of aid — which under the U.S. peace plan should be maximized under the ceasefire — is likely to be among the key issues as Witkoff and Kushner meet with Israeli officials this week to ensure the process stays on track. Vice President JD Vance is also due in Israel this week, and set to meet with Netanyahu.
Netanyahu met Monday with Witkoff and Kushner to discuss “developments and updates in the region,” Shosh Bedrosian, a spokeswoman for Netanyahu’s office said Monday.
She added that Vance and his wife were also expected in the country “for a few days and will be meeting with the prime minister,” but neither she nor the White House have confirmed the Vances’ arrival date.
Witkoff and Kushner were entrusted by Mr. Trump to broker the peace deal, and in an exclusive interview with 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, they said an apology phone call from Netanyahu to Qatar’s leader, about unprecedented airstrikes on the U.S. ally’s capital, Doha, and a moment of personal connection between Witkoff and Hamas’ top negotiator marked two key turning points that led to the ceasefire.
The fragile ceasefire in Gaza faced its first major test Sunday as an Israeli security official said the transfer of aid into the territory is halted “until further notice” after a Hamas ceasefire violation, and Israeli forces launched a wave of strikes.The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement on the halt in aid, which is occurring a little over a week since the start of the U.S.-proposed ceasefire aimed at ending two years of war.Israel’s military earlier Sunday said its troops came under fire from Hamas militants in southern Gaza. Health officials said at least 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza.Israel’s military said it had struck dozens of what it called Hamas targets.A senior Egyptian official involved in the ceasefire negotiations said “round-the-clock” contacts were underway to de-escalate the situation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the military to take “strong action” against any ceasefire violations but didn’t threaten to return to war.Israel’s military said militants fired at troops in areas of Rafah city that are Israeli-controlled according to the agreed-upon ceasefire lines. No injuries were reported. The military said Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery.Hamas, which continued to accuse Israel of multiple ceasefire violations, said communication with its remaining units in Rafah had been cut off for months and “we are not responsible for any incidents occurring in those areas.”Shortly before sunset, Israel’s military said it had begun a series of airstrikes in southern Gaza against what it called Hamas targets. It also said its forces struck “terrorists” approaching troops in Beit Lahiya in the north.Strikes in GazaAn Israeli airstrike killed at least six Palestinians in central Gaza, health officials said. The strike hit a makeshift coffeehouse on the coastal side of the town of Zawaida, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government.Another Israeli strike killed at least two people close to the Al-Ahly soccer club in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the ministry said. The strike hit a tent and wounded eight others, said Awda hospital, which received the casualties.A third strike hit a tent in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis in the south, killing at least one person, according to Nasser hospital.An Israeli military official told journalists there had been three incidents Sunday, two in southern Gaza and one in the north, and noted that the update was partial for now.More bodies of hostages identifiedIsrael identified the remains of two hostages released by Hamas overnight.Netanyahu’s office said the bodies belonged to Ronen Engel, a father of three from Kibbutz Nir Oz, and Sonthaya Oakkharasri, a Thai agricultural worker from Kibbutz Be’eri.Both were believed to have been killed during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Engel’s wife, Karina, and two of his three children were kidnapped and released in a ceasefire in November 2023.Hamas in the past week has handed over the remains of 12 hostages.Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said that it had found the body of a hostage and would return it on Sunday “if circumstances in the field” allowed. It warned that any escalation by Israel would hamper search efforts.Israel on Saturday said the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt would stay closed “until further notice” and its reopening would depend on how Hamas fulfills its ceasefire role of returning the remains of all 28 deceased hostages.Hamas says the devastation and Israeli military control of certain areas of Gaza have slowed the handover. Israel believes Hamas has access to more bodies than it has returned.Israel has released 150 bodies of Palestinians back to Gaza, including 15 on Sunday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel has neither identified the bodies nor said how they died. The ministry has posted photos of bodies on its website to help families attempting to locate loved ones. The bodies were decomposed and blackened. and some were missing limbs and teeth.Only 25 bodies have been identified, the Health Ministry said.After Israel and Hamas exchanged 20 living hostages for more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, the handover of remains is a major issue in the first stage of the ceasefire. A major scale-up of humanitarian aid, including the opening of the Rafah crossing, for people entering or leaving Gaza, is the other central issue.Ceasefire’s second phaseHamas said talks with mediators to start the ceasefire’s second phase have begun.The next stages of the ceasefire are expected to focus on disarming Hamas, Israeli withdrawal from additional areas it controls in Gaza, and future governance of the devastated territory.Hazem Kassem, a Hamas spokesman, said late Saturday that the second phase of negotiations “requires national consensus.” He said Hamas has begun discussions to “solidify its positions,” without giving details.According to the U.S. plan, the negotiations will include disarming Hamas and the establishment of an internationally backed authority to run Gaza.Kassem reiterated that the group won’t be part of the ruling authority in a postwar Gaza. He called for the prompt establishment of a body of Palestinian technocrats to run day-to-day affairs.For now, “government agencies in Gaza continue to perform their duties, as the vacuum is very dangerous, and this will continue until an administrative committee is formed and agreed upon by all Palestinian factions,” he said.Rafah border crossingThe Rafah crossing was the only one not controlled by Israel before the war. It has been closed since May 2024, when Israel took control of the Gaza side. A fully reopened crossing would make it easier for Palestinians to seek medical treatment, travel or visit family in Egypt, home to tens of thousands of Palestinians.On Sunday, the Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry in Ramallah announced procedures for Palestinians wishing to leave or enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing. For those who want to leave Gaza, Palestinian Embassy staff from Cairo will be at the crossing to issue temporary travel documents that allow entry into Egypt. Palestinians who wish to enter Gaza will need to apply at the embassy.The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross.Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in the attack that sparked the war.___Samy Magdy reported from Cairo.
TEL AVIV, Israel —
The fragile ceasefire in Gaza faced its first major test Sunday as an Israeli security official said the transfer of aid into the territory is halted “until further notice” after a Hamas ceasefire violation, and Israeli forces launched a wave of strikes.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement on the halt in aid, which is occurring a little over a week since the start of the U.S.-proposed ceasefire aimed at ending two years of war.
Israel’s military earlier Sunday said its troops came under fire from Hamas militants in southern Gaza. Health officials said at least 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza.
Israel’s military said it had struck dozens of what it called Hamas targets.
A senior Egyptian official involved in the ceasefire negotiations said “round-the-clock” contacts were underway to de-escalate the situation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the military to take “strong action” against any ceasefire violations but didn’t threaten to return to war.
Israel’s military said militants fired at troops in areas of Rafah city that are Israeli-controlled according to the agreed-upon ceasefire lines. No injuries were reported. The military said Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery.
Hamas, which continued to accuse Israel of multiple ceasefire violations, said communication with its remaining units in Rafah had been cut off for months and “we are not responsible for any incidents occurring in those areas.”
Shortly before sunset, Israel’s military said it had begun a series of airstrikes in southern Gaza against what it called Hamas targets. It also said its forces struck “terrorists” approaching troops in Beit Lahiya in the north.
Strikes in Gaza
An Israeli airstrike killed at least six Palestinians in central Gaza, health officials said. The strike hit a makeshift coffeehouse on the coastal side of the town of Zawaida, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government.
Another Israeli strike killed at least two people close to the Al-Ahly soccer club in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the ministry said. The strike hit a tent and wounded eight others, said Awda hospital, which received the casualties.
A third strike hit a tent in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis in the south, killing at least one person, according to Nasser hospital.
An Israeli military official told journalists there had been three incidents Sunday, two in southern Gaza and one in the north, and noted that the update was partial for now.
More bodies of hostages identified
Israel identified the remains of two hostages released by Hamas overnight.
Netanyahu’s office said the bodies belonged to Ronen Engel, a father of three from Kibbutz Nir Oz, and Sonthaya Oakkharasri, a Thai agricultural worker from Kibbutz Be’eri.
Both were believed to have been killed during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Engel’s wife, Karina, and two of his three children were kidnapped and released in a ceasefire in November 2023.
Hamas in the past week has handed over the remains of 12 hostages.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said that it had found the body of a hostage and would return it on Sunday “if circumstances in the field” allowed. It warned that any escalation by Israel would hamper search efforts.
Israel on Saturday said the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt would stay closed “until further notice” and its reopening would depend on how Hamas fulfills its ceasefire role of returning the remains of all 28 deceased hostages.
Hamas says the devastation and Israeli military control of certain areas of Gaza have slowed the handover. Israel believes Hamas has access to more bodies than it has returned.
Israel has released 150 bodies of Palestinians back to Gaza, including 15 on Sunday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel has neither identified the bodies nor said how they died. The ministry has posted photos of bodies on its website to help families attempting to locate loved ones. The bodies were decomposed and blackened. and some were missing limbs and teeth.
Only 25 bodies have been identified, the Health Ministry said.
After Israel and Hamas exchanged 20 living hostages for more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, the handover of remains is a major issue in the first stage of the ceasefire. A major scale-up of humanitarian aid, including the opening of the Rafah crossing, for people entering or leaving Gaza, is the other central issue.
Ceasefire’s second phase
Hamas said talks with mediators to start the ceasefire’s second phase have begun.
The next stages of the ceasefire are expected to focus on disarming Hamas, Israeli withdrawal from additional areas it controls in Gaza, and future governance of the devastated territory.
Hazem Kassem, a Hamas spokesman, said late Saturday that the second phase of negotiations “requires national consensus.” He said Hamas has begun discussions to “solidify its positions,” without giving details.
According to the U.S. plan, the negotiations will include disarming Hamas and the establishment of an internationally backed authority to run Gaza.
Kassem reiterated that the group won’t be part of the ruling authority in a postwar Gaza. He called for the prompt establishment of a body of Palestinian technocrats to run day-to-day affairs.
For now, “government agencies in Gaza continue to perform their duties, as the vacuum is very dangerous, and this will continue until an administrative committee is formed and agreed upon by all Palestinian factions,” he said.
Rafah border crossing
The Rafah crossing was the only one not controlled by Israel before the war. It has been closed since May 2024, when Israel took control of the Gaza side. A fully reopened crossing would make it easier for Palestinians to seek medical treatment, travel or visit family in Egypt, home to tens of thousands of Palestinians.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry in Ramallah announced procedures for Palestinians wishing to leave or enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing. For those who want to leave Gaza, Palestinian Embassy staff from Cairo will be at the crossing to issue temporary travel documents that allow entry into Egypt. Palestinians who wish to enter Gaza will need to apply at the embassy.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.
Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross.
Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in the attack that sparked the war.
JERUSALEM — Israel launched airstrikes Sunday in Gaza after what it said was a Hamas attack on its forces, adding to the two-year-old war’s death toll and rattling a delicate U.S.-brokered ceasefire that had brought a measure of relief to the beleaguered enclave.
The day descended into finger-pointing as each side accused the other of violating the pact that President Trump, just six days earlier, had said would usher in “a golden age” of peace for the Middle East.
The ceasefire compelled Israel to end its months-long blockade of the enclave, but Israel said Sunday that it once again halted aid flows, potentially plunging Gaza once more into famine even as aid groups were clamoring for additional supplies to be trucked in.
Sunday’s strikes constituted the strongest challenge yet to an uneasy truce that came into place Oct. 10 after intense diplomacy — and no little pressure on the belligerents — from Trump and a raft of Arabic and Islamic nations to stop fighting and bring an end to a war that has killed tens of thousands and all but flattened much of Gaza.
War!
— Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister
Live broadcasts Sunday showed blooms of smoke rising across the Gaza Strip, as Israeli warplanes hit multiple areas in Rafah, Khan Yunis and Deir al Balah, killing at least 15 people, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said one one soldier and one officer were killed.
In a statement, the Israeli military accused the militant group Hamas of firing an anti-tank missile at troops in southern Gaza, calling the attack “a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.” The military added that it responded “to eliminate the threat and dismantle tunnel shafts and military structures used for terrorist activity.”
Later, reports of dozens of attacks by Hamas came in from local media.
A wounded Palestinian child is brought to Nasser Hospital after an Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Oct. 19, 2025.
(Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press)
“Hamas will pay a heavy price for every shot and every breach of the ceasefire,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “If the message is not understood, our response will become increasingly severe.”
The Israel Defense Forces said targets included “weapons storage facilities, infrastructure used for terrorist activity, firing posts, terrorist cells, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites. The IDF also struck and dismantled [nearly 4 miles] of underground terrorist infrastructure, using over 120 munitions.”
Flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes
— Izzat al-Risheq, senior Hamas official, on Israeli strikes
Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, denied any connection to the violence in Rafah, saying that it was “unaware of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area” and that it hadn’t had contact with any of its fighters since March, when Israel broke an earlier ceasefire.
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq insisted that it was Israel — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — that was continuing to violate the agreement and fabricating “flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes.”
“Netanyahu’s attempts to evade and disavow his commitments come under pressure from his extremist terrorist coalition, in an attempt to evade his responsibilities to the mediators and guarantors,” Al-Risheq wrote on his Telegram messaging app channel.
Hamas says Israel has violated the ceasefire 47 times, killing 38 Palestinians and injuring 143 since the truce began Oct. 10.
Israeli twins Gali and Ziv Berman, who were recently released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, are welcomed home as they return from the hospital to Beit Guvrin, Israel, on Oct. 19, 2025.
(Ariel Schalit / Associated Press)
In the days since, Hamas has handed over 20 living hostages kidnapped in its operation on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war; in exchange, Israel released more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas also returned the bodies of 12 other hostages who died in captivity, and said it was still searching for the remains of 16 others.
The Qassam Brigades said in a later statement Sunday that it had recovered another body and that it would deliver it to Israel that day “if field conditions permit.” It added that any escalation “will hinder the search, excavation, and recovery of the bodies.”
Israel still controls just over half of Gaza’s territory.
The violence Sunday sparked calls from Israeli leaders across the political spectrum for a return to the fight against Hamas. A Netanyahu rival — Israeli politician Benny Gantz — said that “all options must be on the table.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist minister in Netanyahu’s government who was against any truce with Hamas, said fighting should resume “with maximum force.” His right-wing ally, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted a single word: “War!”
Details on what had prompted the Israeli onslaught remained scant. The Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported the incident began at 10 a.m., when Hamas fighters emerged from a tunnel and fired an anti-tank missile at an engineering vehicle. That was followed by sniper fire at another vehicle.
But one Palestinian channel on Telegram seen as close to Hamas said the target was a Palestinian militia that had worked throughout the war with Israel.
The head of that militia, Yasser Abu Shabab, did not respond to questions sent to the militia’s email address.
Relatives grieve as the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire are brought to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza, Oct. 19, 2025.
(Abdel Kareem Hana / Associated Press)
The violence comes a day after the State Department said in a rare weekend statement that there were “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.”
The State Department warned that “should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire.”
In response, Hamas dismissed what it called “U.S. allegations” as “false” and said that they “fully align with the misleading Israeli propaganda.” It accused Israel of supporting “criminal gangs” that it said were assaulting Palestinian civilians.
“Criminal gangs” was an apparent reference to militias competing with Hamas for control of Gaza. Last week, video emerged of what was said to be Hamas operatives executing accused collaborators in Gaza.
Last week, Trump noted the internal conflicts in Gaza when he repeated his demand that Hamas abide by a key part of the 20-point peace pact: that it disarm. If not, Trump warned Hamas, “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”
The war began after Hamas-led militants blitzed into southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people, two-thirds of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and kidnapped about 250 others.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which says the majority are women and children and which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
“I rode away on a camel with my grandmother, along a sandy road, and I started to cry.” Ayish Younis is describing the worst moment of his life – he still regards it as such, even though it was 77 years ago, and he’s lived through many horrors since.
It was 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war was raging, and Ayish was 12. He and his whole extended family were fleeing their homes in the village of Barbara – famed for its grapes, wheat, corn and barley – in what had been British-ruled Palestine.
“We were scared for our lives,” Ayish says. “On our own, we had no means to fight the Jews, so we all started to leave.”
The camel took Ayish and his grandmother seven miles south from Barbara, to an area held by Egypt that would become known as the Gaza Strip. It was just 25 miles long and a few miles wide, and had just become occupied by Egyptian forces.
In all an estimated 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and became refugees as a result of the war of 1948-49; around 200,000 are believed to have crowded into that tiny coastal corridor.
“We had bits of wood which we propped against the walls of a building to make a shelter,” Ayish says.
Later, they moved into one of the huge tented camps established by the United Nations.
Today, aged 89, Ayish is again living in a tent in Al-Mawasi near Khan Younis.
In May last year, seven months into the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, Ayish was forced to leave his home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah after an evacuation order from the Israeli military.
The four-storey house, divided into several apartments, that he had shared with his children and their families, was destroyed by what he believes may have been Israeli tank-fire.
Now, home is a small white canvas tent just a few metres across.
[BBC]
Ayish’s family home was destroyed during the conflict (pictured above). He is once is again living in a tent (pictured) – now in the Al-Mawasi near Khan Yunis [BBC]
Other members of the family are in neighbouring tents. They have all had to cook on an open fire. With no access to running water they wash using canned water, which is scarce and as a result expensive.
“We returned to what we started with, we returned back to tents, and we still don’t know how long we will be here,” he says, sitting in a plastic chair on the bare sand outside his tent, with clothes drying on a washing line nearby.
A walking frame is propped beside him, as he moves with difficulty. But he still speaks in the crystal-clear, melodious Arabic of one who studied literature, and recited the Quran daily as the imam of a local mosque.
“After we left Barbara and lived in a tent, we eventually succeeded in building a house. But now, the situation is more than a catastrophe. I don’t know what the future holds, and whether we will ever be able to rebuild our house again.”
“And in the end I just want to go back to Barbara, with my whole extended family, and again taste the fruit that I remember from there.”
Ayish’s greatest desire is to return to the village, now in Israel, which he last saw when he was 12 – even though it no longer exists [BBC]
On 9 October, Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal. The remaining living 20 Hamas-held hostages were returned to Israel and Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners.
Yet despite widespread rejoicing over the ceasefire, Ayish is not optimistic about the long-term prospects for Gaza.
“I hope the peace will spread and it will be calm,” he says. “But I believe the Israelis will do whatever they like.”
Under the agreement for the first stage of the ceasefire, Israel will retain control of more than half the Gaza Strip, including Rafah.
One question Ayish, his family and all Gazans are pondering is whether their homeland will ever be successfully rebuilt.
My 18 children and 79 grandchildren
Back in 1948, the Egyptian army had been one of five Arab armies that had invaded the British-controlled territory of Mandate Palestine the day after the establishment of a Jewish state, Israel. But they soon withdrew, defeated, from Barbara, prompting Ayish’s decision to flee.
Ayish became a teacher when he was 19, and gained a literature degree in Cairo under a scholarship programme.
The best moment of his life, he says, was when he married his wife Khadija. Together they had 18 children. That, according to a newspaper article that once featured him, is a record – the largest number of children from the same mother and father of any Palestinian family.
Today, he has 79 grandchildren, two of them born in the last few months.
The family would move from their first tent to a simple three-room cement house with an asbestos roof in the refugee camp, which they later extended to nine rooms – thanks partly to wages earned in Israel.
When the border between Israel and Gaza opened, and Ayish’s eldest son Ahmed was one of many Palestinians who took advantage of that, working in an Israeli restaurant during his holidays, while studying medicine in Egypt.
“During that time, in Israel, people were paid very well. And this is the period of time where the Palestinians made most of their money,” he says.
All but one of Ayish’s children gained university degrees. They became engineers, nurses, teachers. Several moved abroad. Five are in Gulf countries and Ahmed, a specialist in spinal cord injuries, now lives in London. Many other Gazan families are similarly scattered.
Ayish’s son Ahmed Younis is a specialist in spinal cord injuries and now lives in London [BBC]
The Younis family, like many Gazans, wanted nothing to do with politics. Ayish became an imam at a Rafah mosque – and a local headman (or mukhtar) responsible for settling disputes, just as his uncle had been years earlier in the village of Barbara.
He was not appointed by the government – but he says that both Hamas and the Fatah political movement, the dominant party in the Palestinian authority, respected him.
That didn’t save the family from tragedy, though, during the street battles of 2007, when Fatah and Hamas fought for control of the Strip. Ayish’s daughter Fadwa was killed in cross-fire as she sat in a car.
The rest of the family survived through wars between Hamas and Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014 – as well as the devastating war triggered by the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Then came that evacuation order by the Israeli military who said they were carrying out operations against Hamas in the area, forcing them to leave their Rafah home and over a year spent living in makeshift tents.
Ayish’s life has come full circle since 1948. But his greatest desire is to go even further back in time, to return to the village, now in Israel, which he last saw when he was 12 – even though it no longer exists.
Apart from clothes, cooking pots and a few other essentials, the only possessions he has with him in his tent are the precious title deeds to his ancestral land in Barbara.
‘I don’t believe Gaza has any future’
Thoughts are now turning to the reconstruction of Gaza.
But Ayish believes the extent of the destruction – of infrastructure, schools and health services – is so great that it cannot be fully repaired, even with the help of the international community.
“I don’t believe Gaza has any future,” he says.
He believes that his grandchildren could play a role in the reconstruction of Gaza if the ceasefire is fully implemented, but he does not believe they will be able to find jobs in the territory as good as those they have or could get abroad.
His son Haritha, a graduate in Arabic language who has four daughters and a son, is also living in a tent. “An entire generation has been destroyed by this war.
“We are unable to comprehend it,” he says.
“We used to hear from our fathers and grandfathers about the 1948 war and how difficult the displacement was, but there is no comparison between 1948 and what happened in this war.
“We hope that our children will have a role in rebuilding, but as Palestinians, do we have the capacity on our own to rebuild the schools? Will donor countries play a role in that?”
“My daughter has gone through two years of war without schooling, and for two years before that schools were closed because of Covid,” he continues. “I used to work in a clothing store, but it was destroyed.
“We don’t know how things will unfold or how we will have a source of income. There are so many questions we have no answers for. We simply don’t know what the future holds.”
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Another of Ayish’s sons, Nizar, a trained nurse, who lives in a tent nearby, agrees. He believes Gaza’s problems are so great that the youngest generation of the family will not be able to play much role, despite their high level of education.
“The situation is unbearable,” he says. “We hope that life will return to how it was before the war. But the destruction is massive – total destruction of buildings and infrastructure, psychological devastation within the community, and the destruction of universities.”
The 1948 Palestinian exodus: ‘We used to hear from our fathers and grandfathers about the 1948 war and how difficult the displacement was, but there is no comparison between [that] and this war’ [Getty Images]
Ayish’s eldest son Ahmed, in London, meanwhile reflects on how it took the family more than 30 years to build their former home into what it eventually became – as money was saved over the years it was expanded, he explains.
“Do I have another 30 years to work and try to help and support my family? This is really the situation all the time – every 10 to 15 years, people lose everything and they come back to square one.”
And yet he still dreams of living in Rafah again when he retires. “My brothers in the Gulf bought land in Rafah to come back and settle as well. My son, and my nephews and nieces – they want to go back.”
With a pause, he adds: “By nature, I’m very optimistic, because I know how determined our Gaza people are. Trust me, they will go back and start to rebuild their lives again.
“The hope is always in the new generation to rebuild.”
Top picture credit: AFP via Getty Images
[BBC]
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A few weeks ago, Soliman Zyad, a young health-care worker in northern Gaza, told me that his family was near starvation. On some days, he and his uncle AbdulKareem walked in search of food from 3 A.M. until the afternoon. “We swore we would not return home without finding flour,” Zyad told me. “People were ready to risk their lives for a single sack.” Almost forty per cent of the population was going days at a time without eating, according to the World Health Organization. Sometimes AbdulKareem would vomit from hunger and fatigue. His wife, pregnant with twins, was severely anemic.
The latest food shortage in Gaza began in March, when Israel ended a ceasefire and imposed a blockade on all aid that lasted eleven weeks. After that, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was backed by Israel and the U.S., began distributing limited amounts of aid; around three thousand Palestinians were killed while seeking food. This month, a United Nations study published in The Lancetreported that more than fifty-four thousand children are malnourished in Gaza. “Every family, by now, has been affected,” John Kahler, a pediatrician and a co-founder of MedGlobal, a humanitarian organization that operates in Gaza, told me. About one in five babies was born premature or underweight. MedGlobal cared for one infant, Rafeef, who weighed just four pounds at birth. Her mother was too malnourished to breast-feed; the baby cried constantly, began losing weight, and developed ulcers and infections. On August 18th, she died.
“We live day by day,” Eyad Amawi, a father of four who works as an aid coördinator in Gaza, told me in September. “We have just enough to survive, but not enough to carry out our normal activities.” On the black market, the price of a kilogram of flour—about ten cents before October 7, 2023—had risen to thirty-five dollars, when it could be found at all. Amawi often saw malnourished children who lacked the strength to play. He worried that months of famine had already inflicted irreversible damage. “We are losing the next generation,” he said. “They will suffer for all their lives from this.”
Now that a ceasefire is in place, aid is trickling in. Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, six hundred trucks a day are meant to enter Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East reports that it has stockpiled three months of food for everyone in the territory. There is reason to hope that, for all the lasting destruction in Gaza, the immediate crisis of hunger will come to an end. “As this famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed,” the Famine Review Committee, an international body that monitors food insecurity worldwide, wrote in August.
Yet numerous experts warned that not all consequences of famine can be undone. “People don’t realize that one doesn’t just recover from starvation,” Dana Simmons, a historian and the author of “On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America, from Starvation to Ozempic,” said. For the severely malnourished, simply starting to eat normal meals again can cause sickness—even death. And survivors of starvation are at risk of chronic diseases and mental-health conditions for decades after they regain access to food. “You’ve stunted a generation,” Nathaniel Raymond, the director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale, told me. Ruth Gibson, a scholar at Stanford’s Center for Innovation in Global Health, spoke in even starker terms. “Can this be reversed?” she said. “The answer is, it can’t be.”
Much of what we know about the toll of starvation comes from the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Nazis forcibly resettled about half a million Jews starting in 1940. German authorities in occupied Poland restricted provisions to “less than the minimum to preserve life”; a ration card from October, 1941, allotted most Jews roughly three hundred daily calories. Deaths eventually climbed to five hundred per day. Under these horrific conditions, twenty-eight Jewish doctors who had been sent to the Ghetto, led by a dermatologist named Izrael Milejkowski, recruited seventy adults and forty children for research into what they called pure starvation, meaning that those afflicted had no additional infections or diseases. As the physician Leonard Tushnet wrote, in 1966, the researchers—who were themselves going hungry—conducted “an exhaustive and precise study of the effects of starvation.” The study continued until deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp, where many of the researchers would ultimately perish, began, in 1942. They hurriedly compiled their charts and graphs into a manuscript, which was then buried in a steel jar. It was recovered after the war and published, in Polish, in 1946.
In the forties, exactly how the body dealt with starvation remained a mystery. The doctors used equipment that had been smuggled into the Ghetto to measure capillary circulation, examine bone marrow under microscopes, and record electrocardiograms. The quality of their scientific work was “amazing,” Merry Fitzpatrick, a scholar of malnutrition and famine at Tufts University, told me. They wrote that muscle melted away, skin acquired the texture of cigarette paper, and swelling often afflicted the legs, scrotum, labia, heart, and lungs. In a cemetery shed, the doctors performed more than three thousand autopsies, which revealed that starvation softened the bones and atrophied vital organs. Starving children stopped playing and appeared sluggish or apathetic; cognitive development seemed to halt or even regress. Some looked like “skin-covered skeletons.”
A nurse attends to two starving children at a hospital in the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1942.Photograph from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum / Maladie de Famine / American Joint Distribution Committee
One of the study’s most important findings was that the body has sophisticated ways of saving energy and sparing critical tissues and functions. Reserves of glucose in the blood, liver, and muscle quickly run low. Then the body shifts to burning fat in three different ways. Some of the fat molecules can be used to create glucose; some can be used to create ketones, an alternative energy source for certain tissues, including the brain; and some can be directly broken down inside the mitochondria to create adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, the primary energy source for our cells.
Earlier this week, Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire that included the release of the twenty living hostages who remained in Gaza and some two thousand Palestinians who are held in Israeli jails. The success of the exchange has raised hopes that the devastating war may really be coming to an end. President Donald Trump, who took credit for the deal after pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it, now wants both sides to implement his twenty-point peace plan, which would require Hamas to disarm and Israel to leave Gaza. (Israeli officials told the New York Times that they are now considering punitive measures after Hamas said late on Wednesday that the remains of more than a dozen Israeli hostages—who are also supposed to be returned to Israel—were unable to be located. Separately, Israeli forces that still operate in Gaza have continued to kill Palestinians since the ceasefire began.)
I recently spoke by phone with Nathan Thrall, a former director of the International Crisis Group’s Arab-Israeli Conflict project. Thrall, who lives in Jerusalem, is also the author of the book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.” I wanted to talk to Thrall about what the Palestinian national struggle might look like going forward. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed his fears about what lessons Israel may have taken from the war, why America is so unwilling to use its leverage to help resolve a conflict it has exacerbated, and whether Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, was a strategic as well as moral catastrophe.
In terms of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what has changed most in terms of the way you thought about it on October 6, 2023, versus today?
The largest change that has happened in the past two years is that the possibility of large-scale ethnic cleansing has become very real. Of course, we’ve already seen large-scale ethnic cleansing within Gaza. But what I have seen over the past two years is an Israeli society that is powerful, that faces very few obstacles, and that has the ability, and, in the right circumstances, the willingness, to expel huge numbers of Palestinians and, in the view of many Israelis, resolve the Palestinian issue once and for all.
I’m talking about all of the territory under Israel’s control, so, historic Palestine. Seventy-eight per cent of historic Palestine is within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. This doesn’t include the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which make up the remaining twenty-two per cent. But the West Bank is occupied by Israel, and, prior to October 7th, if you totalled the entirety of the territory actually under the control of Palestinians—meaning where the Palestinian Authority has control in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza—that together made up about ten per cent of historic Palestine. And, of course, Israel still made raids into those areas at will. So we are talking about Israel administering directly around ninety per cent of historic Palestine.
There’s a distinction between ethnic cleansing within the occupied territories—what we’ve seen both in the West Bank and on a much larger scale in Gaza over the past two years—and what might come next, which is the possible expulsion of large numbers of Palestinians to areas outside of historic Palestine. The Arab states’ fear of precisely this outcome, and the destabilizing effects it might have on their own regimes, was one of the reasons that they unified around a deeply problematic Trump plan for Gaza, even though that plan offers no assurance that Israel will fully withdraw from the territory or cease attacks on Palestinians within it.
So, in your mind, October 7th and the ensuing war changed the idea of what’s possible for Israelis, because despite some pushback from the international community, and lots of stories that indicate that Israel’s reputation is the lowest it’s ever been, the actual lesson is that they can do what they want?
Yes. And what has really changed is that ethnic cleansing has become a part of the mainstream public discourse. It is something that I had previously thought was not unimaginable but very unlikely outside of some major regional war. Now it is discussed. People are polled on it. One poll found that eighty-two per cent of Israeli Jews favored expelling Gazans. You can quibble with one poll or another, but you have clear Israeli Jewish majorities in favor of pushing Palestinians outside of Gaza. At some level, many Israelis feel that their basic predicament, the predicament of Zionism, is unresolved so long as there are millions of Palestinians living in the territory under their control.
When you say this has become part of mainstream discourse, what are you referring to?
I’m talking about leading figures in the media, ministers in the government, and members of the Knesset discussing expulsion. I’m talking about Israelis from the center left putting forward plans for what they call voluntary “transfer” from Gaza. Ram Ben-Barak, a Knesset member from a centrist party, was the co-author of one of these plans. This is not a fringe notion anymore. And this comes from the fact that Israelis are unwilling to give Palestinians a state, or equal rights. What is left is either the continuation of apartheid or ethnic cleansing—and ethnic cleansing is appealing because it feels like a solution. Whereas apartheid feels like it may be sustainable, but is a nonsolution. It feels like the issue is not resolved.
O.K., but why hasn’t the international condemnation and Israel’s falling popularity registered with Israelis and convinced them that they should change course? Why do you think they have drawn the opposite lesson?
There is a huge difference between a change in public opinion and policy changes that actually affect Israelis. And we have really not seen the latter. During a genocide, the Israeli arms industry was booming. They were making record profits. And we have at a bare minimum almost seventy thousand dead in Gaza. It took that to even get the first bills for banning settlement products introduced in some countries in Europe. But you still cannot get an E.U.-wide ban on settlement products. It’s a non-starter. So Israelis don’t feel any real consequences.
I agree with everyone on the left who believes this shift in global public opinion is important, but what it means is so often overstated. The U.S. is arming Israel, and the Europeans are Israel’s No. 1 trading partner. It’s embarrassing to see how many people are calling this deal a peace deal—not just Trump but Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany. The Europeans will likely reverse even their modest steps. The Eurovision Song Contest was going to hold a vote, in November, on not having Israel compete next year, and that vote has now been postponed. You see headline after headline about how Europe is preparing to reëmbrace Israel.
Whatever fragile political system existed in Gaza has collapsed, along with the institutions that once gave public life its structure. Hamas, weakened militarily and decapitated by the assassinations of its leaders, faces isolation abroad and a diminished mandate at home. The Palestinian Authority, long discredited in the West Bank, has been absent in Gaza. Leftist factions survive as symbols rather than as real organizations. Independent political figures are scattered or silenced. After two years of war, Gaza has no functioning political body with the authority or legitimacy to shape what comes next.
President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan is being sold as the answer. Announced by Trump at the White House in late September, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, the twenty-point framework promises to end the war, restart aid, and stand up a transitional authority to run Gaza. It creates a “temporary International Stabilization Force,” an apolitical technocratic Palestinian committee under a new international “Board of Peace,” chaired by Trump himself. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would help oversee the transition. The body will aim to manage Gaza’s redevelopment through modern, “efficient” governance, to attract foreign investment. The plan’s clauses include an exchange of hostages for prisoners and detainees, amnesty for Hamas members who disarm, safe passage for the members who choose to leave, a surge of humanitarian deliveries, and a multi-stage withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces tied to “security benchmarks”—including Hamas’s demilitarization and border-control arrangements, all verified by independent observers. The document also notes that civilians will be allowed to leave but “no one will be forced out” of Gaza, a shift from Netanyahu’s earlier talk of “voluntary” emigration and Trump’s “Riviera” proposal “to rebuild and energize Gaza.”
Strip away the framing, and the design is clear. Gaza is to be managed from the outside, without a locally elected government. The P.A. is told to make reforms—anti-corruption and fiscal-transparency measures, increased judicial independence, a path to elections—before it can even be considered for a role in Gaza’s governance. Hamas is removed from political life by decree. Core questions—borders, sovereignty, refugees—are deferred. In this architecture, Gaza becomes a security-first regime, where aid, reconstruction, and “transition” are subordinated to Israeli security metrics under the oversight of the U.S. and its partners. Palestinians are offered administration without authority. The occupation is dressed in managerial language. The danger is that this “temporary” system becomes permanent, sustained by donors, monitors, and memoranda.
As of this writing, the first phase of the deal has moved ahead. Hamas has released the remaining living hostages, and Israel freed some two thousand Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Aid convoys are scaling up, and Israel said that it has partially withdrawn troops from parts of Gaza. What remains unclear are the enforcement mechanisms and the timelines. Who commands the proposed “stabilization force,” and under what rules of engagement will it operate? Where will I.D.F. units be positioned during the transition? What binding guarantees—if any—protect Palestinians against an open-ended military return? Negotiators say that these questions are still being debated, paragraph by paragraph. A parallel diplomatic track is also opening. On Monday, Trump co-chaired the Sharm El-Sheikh summit, a meeting in Egypt focussed on postwar governance, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the P.A., was in attendance. Benjamin Netanyahu was not. The meeting was aimed at rallying broader backing for the plan and locking down its operational details.
Hamas had little room to maneuver in the latest round of talks. Many Arab governments endorsed Trump’s Gaza plan before the organization had even received a formal copy of it, boxing the group into a defensive posture. Netanyahu, meanwhile, used the moment to reaffirm his rejection of a Palestinian state.
Still, ending the war always required that Hamas agree to a deal—perhaps an ugly one, certainly an imperfect one, but one that would bring a stop to the killing. There were earlier windows during the war when a deal might have opened space for hard bargaining that could have won real gains for Gazans. Instead, Gazan leadership fell into refusals and delays without any coherent strategy. Each rejection narrowed the horizon until what Gazans face now is a comprehensive package imposed from the outside. This is the price of political failure. Leaders treated negotiations as a stage for factional gain rather than as a matter of national survival. Now the choices are brutally tight: partial occupation under terms the people can still contest, or a broader occupation that comes with more widespread displacement. Palestinian negotiators owed the people some kind of plan. It was necessary to get aid flowing and to spare lives. Anyone who gambled with that blood for the sake of symbolic triumph would have been accountable for the cost.
The plan now opens a narrow opportunity—if Palestinians can turn its vague text into leverage. On paper, it pledges an I.D.F. withdrawal and sketches a “credible pathway” to self-determination and, eventually, statehood. Much of the machinery is still unspecified, but that uncertainty can be converted into demands: a public U.S. commitment on statehood, a dated and enforceable timetable for full withdrawal, a U.N. Security Council resolution that hardens the guarantees with penalties for violations, and third-party monitoring. Whatever form the final deal takes, it will serve as a hinge into a new political order in Gaza. Now that the bombardment has stopped, it has left a political vacuum in the territory. The question is, what will rush to fill it?
There has never been a genuine internal reckoning with Palestinian political failures. The Oslo Accords—brokered by the U.S. and signed in the mid-nineties, after secret negotiations—were framed as the last great compromise. In practice, they created the Palestinian Authority as an interim administrator of Palestine, and postponed the conflict’s major questions to a later date that has yet to arrive. Palestinians were shifted from leading a liberation project to managing enclaves, while Israel retained control over their land, movement, and the map itself. Before Oslo, the first intifada had generated momentum for international recognition of Palestinian statehood. Oslo dismantled that momentum. It was meant to be a bridge to peace, but it became the final blow. It provided no way to implement U.N. Resolution 194 on the right of return for exiled or displaced Palestinians, and produced no method of insuring equality for some two million Palestinians inside Israel, whose struggle was written off as an internal matter. Every inch of Palestinian land remains under Israeli military control in one form or another. The labels changed, but the structure did not.
Hamas won elections in Gaza in 2006. What followed were boycotts and sanctions from the international community; a power struggle with Fatah, the party that controls the P.A., that exploded into a street war in 2007; and, ultimately, a geographic divorce. Hamas was left governing Gaza, and the P.A. was confined to the West Bank. Israel then tightened a land-sea-air blockade of the territory, which made normal governance impossible and turned every budget line into a permit request. Hamas never allowed further elections. Over successive wars and siege years, Hamas’s authority hardened until it ran a kind of bunker state: an exiled political bureau abroad, a Gazan command increasingly dominated by the organization’s military wing, and a public living under limited movement, rationed goods, and permanent emergency.
