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No refuge for Palestinians caught between Israeli military and Jewish mobs

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A masked Jewish extremist swings a slingshot while hurling stones at Palestinians who had gathered for the annual olive harvest season, during an attack by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian village of Beita, south of Nablus in the West Bank, on October 10, 2025. FILE PHOTO: AFP

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian villages have become open fields for illegal Jewish settlers operating under the protection of the Israeli army. In recent weeks, organised Jewish mobs, some armed with rifles and sticks, others carrying torches, have unleashed violence across occupied Palestinian towns and villages. It is not only that Israeli soldiers stand providing cover for the illegal Jewish mobs, but the army also blocks Palestinian farmers from accessing their farms for the annual olive harvest.

The Jewish mob's thuggery follows a clear pattern where settlers attack homes, burn olive groves, beat villagers and drive out farmers from their land. Multiple international eyewitness accounts and videos showed Jewish settlers descending from Jewish-only colonies, escorted by soldiers firing tear-gas or live ammunition at Palestinians defending their farms. Meanwhile, Western media copies Israeli military euphemising these attacks as "flash points" or "friction."

Since October, the olive harvest season in Palestine, Palestinian farmers have been attacked at least 259 times by illegal Jewish settlers. When Palestinian civilians attempt to defend their villages, they face violenceโ€”nearly 1000 died at the hands of Jewish settler mobs in the West Bank since 2023, including four American Palestinian citizens. Often, no charges were filed against the Jewish murderers. The violence has become so normalised that government ministers openly praise the mobs as defenders of "the Land of Israel." Jewish settlers now act as shock-troops in a slow-motion official annexation strategy, blurring the line between state and vigilante.

Under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers, Jewish mobs attack journalists filming the olive harvest. Refusing to intervene, the Israeli army fired steel-plated rubber bullets and tear gas at the Palestinian farmers and international activists, dispersing the olive pickers and empowering the Jewish mobs to cut and burn olive trees. In another arsonist attack, Jewish settlers on November 13 torched a mosque, sprayed the walls with racist graffiti, and set cars ablaze.

It is an open partnership between the Israeli army and Jewish settlers under an apartheid occupation. A dual legal system where illegal Israeli Jewish settlers are governed by civilian courts, while Palestinians have little rights in military courts. The distinction is not administrative; it is what Jewish apartheid in Palestine looks like.

According to Israeli and Palestinian human-rights groups, Jewish impunity is systemic: 97 percent of complaints filed against Jewish vigilantes resulted in acquittals or closed without investigation. In contrast, in Israeli military courts, 96 percent of the cases against Palestinians lead to convictions.

Beyond direct mob violence, a parallel system of control is tightening the noose on Palestinian daily life. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, there are 877 checkpoints and roadblocks restricting the movement of 3.3 million Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Checkpoints are for the non-Jewish only natives, while the illegal Jewish settlers enjoy free movement on Israeli-only roads. These barriers are not for "security," they operate as economic choke-points in a regime of systematic separation.

The economic and social cost for non-Jews is enormous. Trucks carrying perishable goods rot at checkpoints; workers lose entire shifts; ambulances sit in line. As one Palestinian described the ordeal simply: "time is being stolen from us." The military checkpoints serve as a visible thread in a larger web of structural Jewish apartheid.

Caught between armed Jewish mobs and military rule, Palestinians find no refuge in their own leadership. The Palestinian Authority (PA), remains largely paralysed or unable to defend them. While the PA maintains security cooperation with the occupier and silences dissent in the streets of Ramallah or Jenin, settlers torch olive groves a few miles away.

Internationally, Israel continues to face little consequence. The United States provides billions in aid while shielding it from accountability at the United Nations. The EU issues perfunctory statements of "concern," while maintaining preferential trade with Israel and continues to do business with the very settlements they describe as illegal under international law. By importing goods produced in illegal Jewish-only colonies, the EU, UK, and US are directly enabling Israel's racist mob culture.

These illegal colonies are bankrolled by an extensive network of Israel-first Zionist Americans, among them the Kushner family, and non-profit platforms, including several synagogues that openly host fundraising drives to finance the construction of Jewish-only homes on stolen Palestinian land.

This fusion of settler ideology and state power represents the logical endpoint of Israel's occupation. The army's policies ensure that every act of settler terror becomes yet another instrument in its overarching strategy. The apartheid wall, checkpoints, and military zones suffocate Palestinian life, while Jewish mobs terrorise their towns and villages.

To that end, the Jewish mob violence is not an aberration, but rather an inevitable outcome of a system built on Jewish supremacy and dispossession. As long as Western governments and media continue to ignore this silent Israeli war in the West Bank, as they did prior to October 7, 2023, in Gaza, Israel will persist in quietly sanctioning, arming and shielding the Jewish mobs.

Unlike in Gaza, there is no organised armed resistance to defend Palestinians in the West Bank, no declared war zone, no pretext to hide behind. What Israel is doing exposes its cruelty in its rawest form. It is carried out in broad daylight against a defenceless people whose only crime is existing on their own land, refusing despair, where their mere survival has become an act of resistance. It is a 77-year-long, unprovoked, racist campaign of state-sanctioned Jewish-mob terror.

This is an abridged version of an article first published on Middle East Monitor on November 17, 2025.

Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Palestine/Arab world issues for various national and international publications.​
 
newagebd.net/post/middle-east/282853/israeli-army-kills-5-in-south-gaza

Israeli army kills 5 in south Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 22 November, 2025, 01:13

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Masked gunmen from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement search for bodies in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on Friday. | AFP photo

The Israeli army said it killed five Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday in an area under its control.

The incident came after two consecutive days of deadly air strikes in the territory, and took place on the Israeli-held side of the so-called Yellow Line, the demarcation behind which the military has withdrawn as part of a fragile US-brokered ceasefire.

โ€˜A short while ago, IDF army troops identified five members who emerged from underground terrorist infrastructure in eastern Rafah, east of the yellow line,โ€™ the military said in a statement.

โ€˜The terrorists approached IDF troops deployed in southern Gaza, posing an immediate threat to them. Subsequently, the IAF air force eliminated the terrorists,โ€™ it added.

A Gaza hospital also said that one person was killed by Israeli fire in another incident near Khan Yunis, in an area outside Israeli army control.

On Wednesday, Gaza saw one of its deadliest days since the truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on October 10.

Twenty-seven people were killed in strikes across the territory, according to Gazaโ€™s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority.

The agency said five more people were killed on Thursday.

Israel has carried out repeated strikes against what it says are Hamas targets during the ceasefire, and there have also been multiple deadly incidents of its forces firing on people approaching or crossing the Yellow Line.

According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, 312 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the truce took hold.

The UN Security Council voted Monday in favour of a US-drafted resolution endorsing US president Donald Trumpโ€™s Gaza peace plan, though Hamas rejected the resolution as failing to meet Palestiniansโ€™ โ€˜political and humanitarian demandsโ€™.

The war was sparked by Hamasโ€™s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.

Israelโ€™s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 69,546 people, according to figures from the health ministry that the UN considers reliable.​
 

Gaza tragedy and a mockery of a ceasefire

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Palestinians inspect the site of Wednesday's Israeli strike on a tent in Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 20, 2025. PHOTO: REUTERS

Day after day, it becomes clear that the announcement of the Sharm El-Sheikh summit in October 2025 "to stop the war" was not intended to save civilians in Gaza Strip, but was instead a new episode in a series of political games played at the expense of the Palestinians' humanitarian tragedy. The Trump administration did not seek to save the people of Gaza from genocide; it wanted to ensure that Israel was saved from international isolation and to rebuild its regional and global image after its racist crimes were exposed. The announcement of a "ceasefire" was more like a political cover to shield the Tel Aviv government than a genuine attempt to protect civilians in Gaza. Since the announcement, neither the raids nor the killing of innocents have stopped. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has recorded the deaths of at least 312 people, most of them children, in addition to thousands wounded, while the entire strip remains under direct fire.

Thousands of wounded people are still prevented from travelling for treatment outside Gaza. Partially functioning hospitals can barely cope with the huge and growing numbers of critical cases, including life-altering injuries and the deaths of patients who have been denied even the most basic medicines. About 25 percent of the injured now face permanent disabilities due to a lack of medical equipment and the inability to treat complex injuries.

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While international media attention is focused on a limited number of recovered Israeli bodies, the fate of the Palestinians is being ignored. Some Palestinian bodies have been returned bearing signs of torture; others have been robbed; and the bodies of many who have been missing for decades are still held in secret graves or occupation refrigerators. At the same time, reports of torture prisons continue to emerge, going beyond even the horrors already exposed in Sde Teiman prison, where systematic violations have been committed against Palestinian detainees, including rape.

With the onset of winter, the suffering of the people is worsening. Camps for displaced families have been flooded with rainwater, and tents have become inundated and largely uninhabitable. The severe cold, combined with these dire conditions, has claimed the lives of children, the sick, and the elderly. Thousands of families now live without any form of protection, amid the continuation of the siege and the frequent obstruction of humanitarian aid.

Despite the tight siege, media and diplomatic reports have revealed systematic displacement through the so-called Ramon Airport, facilitated by fake and intelligence-linked companies. Dozens of Palestinians have suddenly arrived in South Africa, and there are reports of other shadowy agencies connected to Estonia flying Palestinians out. These "mystery flights" indicate Israel's intention to continue silent ethnic cleansing, which explains its insistence on maintaining the siege and denying Gaza even the most basic elements of life.

In this context, I have issued several statements to various Bangladeshi media outlets about the seriousness of this displacement through Ramon Airport, warning against exploiting the close relations and fraternal sympathy that bind the people of Bangladesh to Palestine. The most recent of these warnings came during my press conference regarding female students from Gaza, held on August 14, 2025.

In the West Bank, settler terrorism against the people in Palestinian villages and towns continues. Settlers, backed by the official support of the Israeli government and army, carry out frequent attacks on civilians, burn homes, and gradually displace residents, while Israeli security services cooperate with them, entrenching a policy of slow demographic cleansing.

Washington has pushed a draft resolution through the United Nations Security Council, calling it a "Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict," but in reality it only aims to satisfy Israel by deploying international forces to complete what the occupation has failed to achieve. It is not designed to protect civilians from continuous crimes. The resolution also entrenches the division of Gaza into a besieged and destroyed west and east, where reconstruction is conditional and politically manipulated. Moreover, it further cements the separation of Gaza from the West Bank and Jerusalem, undermining the Palestinian national entity, deepening political division, and further fragmenting Palestinian representation.

Here we must emphasise the essential role played by Saudi Arabia and France as sponsors of the conference on implementing the two-state solution, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in September 2025 and supported by the majority of the world's countriesโ€”with the exception of the United States and Israel. What offers Palestinians a degree of reassurance is the Kingdom's firm stance on the two-state solution. During a joint press conference with President Trump two days ago, the Saudi crown prince reaffirmed his country's firm stance on the matter. Though hope is an existential necessity for the present and the future, caution is also essential until Palestine and its people achieve real freedom and independence.

Yousef SY Ramadan is the ambassador of Palestine to Bangladesh.​
 

Dissecting the UNSC plan for Gaza and its inevitable dead end

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The resolution normalises Israeli occupation 'that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.' An open-ended clause grants Israel a permanent military footprint in and around Gaza and the power to define and determine any so-called 'resurgent threat.' FILE PHOTO: AFP

US policy documents on the Middle East do not reach the daylight before Israel is given the chance to filter and gut them. The latest UN Security Council (UNSC) 2803, Comprehensive Plan, is no exception. The resolution perpetuates the same failed logic that has governed international diplomacy for decadesโ€”one in which Palestinian rights are conditioned, but Israeli obligations are delayed with no mechanism, timelines, or accountability for violating agreements.

Following two years of using food as a weapon of war and genocide, the UNSC adopted the US-sponsored resolution, not to condemn but to reward the perpetrator. The UNSC Comprehensive Plan for Gaza is anything but comprehensive. It is narrow, short on details, rich in contradictions, and utterly lacking any overarching purpose.

Take the second paragraph of the resolution, for instance. The resolution "welcomes the establishment of the Board of Peace (BoP)" as a transitional international administration that will manage Gaza's redevelopment "until such time as the Palestinian Authority has satisfactorily completed its reform program."

In other words, the recognition of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people is contingent, sequenced, and time-bound: reform first, demonstrate worthiness, satisfy outside evaluators, and thenโ€”maybeโ€”they can "securely and effectively take back control" of their land. Meanwhile, Israel's commitments are, at best, deliberately vague, crafted with ambiguities allowing varying interpretations, much like UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338, written purposefully in a nebulous language that enabled Israel to evade compliance for decades.

There is not one single concrete or enforceable requirement placed on Israel: to halt its extrajudicial assassinations, military attacks, complete withdrawal, or stop the expansion of Jewish-only colonies established on the same land reserved for the supposed Palestinian "self-determination."

The resolution weakens item 7 of "Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan", which had called for "full aid be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip." The new Comprehensive Plan replaced "immediately" with an emphasis on "the importance of the full resumption of humanitarian aid." Israel's inexplicit obligations are further watered down to mere "consultation" and "cooperation," giving the occupying power wide latitude to dictate interpretations and evade any real accountability.

The distortion becomes even more evident in paragraphs three through eight. These sections deepen the asymmetry: Israel, whose leaders are indicted war criminals, is elevated to a co-supervisor with veto power over every stage of Gaza's future. In effect, this resolution upends international law by granting war criminals the final word on Gaza's fate.

Paragraph three, which addresses humanitarian aid, orders stringent monitoring of aid distribution inside Gaza. At the same time, there is no unequivocal demand on Israel to open all crossings or stop hindering humanitarian aid delivery fully. The limited aid must be policed in Gaza, but the state that used food as a weapon and starved the population is not required to do anything differently.

In paragraph four, a foreign-controlled "operational entities" strip Palestinians of their political agency by placing them under a technocratic committee selected from abroad and subordinate to the misnomer BoP. Yet, there is nothing in the resolution about the freedom of ingress and egress, no mention of opening the seaport or rebuilding the airport. Furthermore, there are no tangible punitive measures if and when Israel fails to adhere to the UNSC Resolution.

The funding structures in paragraphs 5โ€“6 absolve Israel of responsibility. Gaza's reconstruction is handed to donors and the World Bank, financed through voluntary contributions. Israel, the power that destroyed Gaza is not asked to contribute a dollar, let alone pay reparations or assume legal responsibility for murdering and injuring 241,000 Palestinians, destroying all the universities, 97 percent of schools, 94 percent of the hospitals and 92 percent of the residential homes.

The heart of the resolution's inequity is found in paragraph seven, which authorises a foreign military force (ISF) tasked with enforcing Palestinian demilitarisation. The Palestinian Resistance must disarm, surrender weapons, accept foreign security supervision, and undergo vetting. Israel's withdrawal, however, takes place only "when conditions allow" and is to be negotiated between its army and ISF, guarantors, and the US. Palestinians are entirely excluded from determining the terms of the Israeli withdrawal from their own land.

Even more alarming, the resolution normalises Israeli occupation "that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat." The open-ended clause grants Israel a permanent military footprint in and around Gaza while also granting it the power to define and determine any so-called "resurgent threat."

Finally, paragraph eight mandates that any extension of international presence in Gaza must be done "in full cooperation and coordination with Egypt and Israel." Once again, Palestinians are excluded from determining their own future. It is all left for Israel since its consent is conditional on the "full cooperation."

Taken together, these provisions expose the true nature of the so-called Comprehensive Plan: a political instrument designed to entrench, not end, the structural inequality of occupation. And less than 72 hours following the UNSC Resolution, Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, two Jewish racist ministers who openly called for the ethnic cleansing and for building Jewish-only colonies in Gaza, to be in charge of, or more likely to undermine, the second phase of Trump's 20-point plan.

In short, the UNSC Comprehensive Plan whitewashes Israel's genocide and ties the future of Palestinian self-determination to a checklist that Israel is neither bound to accept nor prevented from obstructing. A plan that will lead to exactly where previous UN Resolutions, mainly 194, 242, and 338, had gone, to an inevitable dead-end.

Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Palestine/Arab world issues for various national and international publications.​
 

Gaza death toll tops 70,000, health ministry says

REUTERS
Published :
Nov 29, 2025 23:27
Updated :
Nov 29, 2025 23:27

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A Palestinian woman carries a prayer mat at the site of an overnight Israeli strike on a tent, in Gaza City, Sept 8, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

The number of people confirmed killed in Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has passed the 70,000 mark, the enclave's health ministry said on Saturday.

A total of 301 people have been added to the toll since Thursday, taking it to 70,100, the ministry added. Two died in recent Israeli strikes, the rest were identified from remains buried for some time in the rubble, according to the statement.

There was no immediate comment from Israel's military, which has denied targeting civilians since the conflict started more than two years ago.

Israeli officials have questioned the accuracy of the figures from Gaza, accusing its Hamas rulers of exaggerating the data, charges the militant group denies.

Israel's bombardment of Gaza - triggered by the deadly Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel - has left much of the strip in ruins, making it difficult to gather accurate information on casualties.

In the first months of the war, officials counted bodies that arrived in hospitals, and registered names and identity numbers.

In the later stages, Gaza health authorities said they held off including thousands of reported deaths in the official tally until forensic, medical and legal checks can be made.

Since a fragile ceasefire took hold on Oct 10, the reported death toll has kept climbing steadily as authorities there take advantage of the relative calm to search for bodies in the wreckage.

Pre-war Gaza had robust population statistics and better health information systems than in most Middle East countries, public health experts told Reuters.

The UN often cites the health ministry's death figures and says they are credible.​
 

US-Israeli scheme to partition Gaza and break Palestinian will

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CounterPunch/Dylan Shaw

UNITED Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 is destined to fail. That failure will come at a price: more Palestinian deaths, extensive destruction, and the expansion of Israeli violence to the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The resolution, passed on November 14, 2025, was a consolation prize to Israel after failing to achieve its ultimate objective from the two-year Gaza genocide: the ethnic cleansing of the population and the complete takeover of the Gaza Strip.

Gaza shattered a core Israeli doctrine: the absolute certainty of its military supremacy to subdue the Palestinian people using far superior US and Western-supplied technology. Though the occupation was never expected to be easy โ€” as Israelโ€™s history of violence in the Strip attests โ€” the complete takeover was, in the mind of the Israeli leadership, a certainty. In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated with total confidence that Israel aimed to โ€˜take control of all of Gaza.โ€™ That proved to be wishful thinking.

How Israel has failed to subdue an impoverished and besieged population of 2 million people, subjected to a blockade, a famine, and one of the worldโ€™s most horrific genocides, is a question for future historians. The immediate consequence, however, is political: Israel and its Western backers, especially the US, understand that an utter Israeli failure in Gaza would be interpreted by Israelโ€™s victims as a pivotal sign of the times.

In fact, the notion of Israelโ€™s implosion and the end of the Zionist project has moved from the margins of intellectual conversation into the centre. These ideas are bolstered by the Israelis themselves and are a recurring topic in Israeli media. Such a headline in Haaretz on November 15 is hardly shocking: โ€˜At a Secret Harvard Site, a Massive Archive of Israeliana Is Preserved โ€“ in Case Israel Ceases to Existโ€™.

Thus, US President Donald Trumpโ€™s so-called โ€˜Comprehensive Stabilization Plan for Gaza,โ€™ signed in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 30, 2025, was the official start of the American scheme to save Israel from its own blunders. That supposed โ€˜ceasefireโ€™ was meant to give Israel the chance to manoeuvre. Instead of occupying all of Gaza and pushing Palestinians out, Israel would now use social and political engineering to achieve the same goal.

The first phase of the plan, which placed most of Gaza under Israeli military control in anticipation of a gradual withdrawal, is already proving to be a sham. As of the time of writing this article, Israel, according to the Gaza government media office, has violated the agreement nearly 400 times, killing over 300 Palestinians. Israel continues to systematically demolish Palestinian areas and has increasingly begun operating west of the Yellow Line, which separates Gaza into two regions.

Worse still, according to Gaza authorities, Israel has been expanding its share of Gaza, estimated at approximately 58 per cent, westward. The โ€˜ceasefireโ€™ has effectively enforced a new mechanism that allows Israel to carry out a one-sided war โ€” with further territorial expansion, destruction, assassination, and occasional massacres โ€” while Palestinians expect nothing but the mere slowing down of the Israeli death machine. This is not sustainable, especially since Israel has also violated the most basic principle of the imaginary ceasefire: allowing vital aid to enter Gaza.

UNSC 2803 endorses the โ€˜Comprehensive Stabilization Plan for Gazaโ€™ without placing any legally binding expectations on Israel. It establishes a Transitional Administration and Oversight Council (TAOC), which entirely excludes Palestinians, including the Western-supported Palestinian Authority.

The executive branch of this TAOC would be the International Stabilization Force (ISF), whose sole job is to โ€˜stabilize the security environment in Gazaโ€™ on behalf of Israel, notably by disarming Palestinian groups. The ISF, according to the resolution, operates โ€˜in close consultation and cooperation,โ€™ meaning the force is tasked with achieving Israelโ€™s military objectives, thereby allowing Israel to determine the timing and nature of its supposed gradual withdrawal.

Since Palestinians refuse to disarm โ€“ as unconditional disarmament without meaningful international guarantees would surely lead to the full return of the Israeli genocide โ€“ Israel will certainly refuse to leave Gaza. Netanyahu made that clear on November 16, when he stated that โ€˜Israel would not withdrawโ€™ without disarming Hamas, โ€˜either the easy way or the hard wayโ€™.

The partition of Gaza is a US-led attempt to change the nature of the challenge for Tel Aviv, but ultimately aims at achieving the same original objectives. The resolution has served Israelโ€™s interests fully, hence Netanyahuโ€™s enthusiasm, yet Israel is still refusing to respect it, making it clear there will be no phase two of Trumpโ€™s original plan.

The entire political scheme, however, is doomed to fail. Though Palestinian suffering will certainly worsen in the coming months, the US-Israeli gambit is fundamentally flawed: it is built on trickery and coercion, resting on the false assumption that Palestinians, fearing genocide, will accept any plan imposed on them. This premise ignores history. Palestinians have consistently defeated such sophisticated mechanisms designed to break them, meaning this new arrangement is equally unsustainable.

Ultimately, the failure of UNSC Resolution 2803 confirms one enduring truth: the Israeli war on Gaza has not stopped. It has simply changed form. It is crucial that people around the world understand this next phase for what it is: a diplomatic manoeuvre designed to facilitate the ongoing Israeli plan to control the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse its population.

CounterPunch.org, December 2. Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle.​
 

Netanyahu's coalition skips parliamentary vote backing Trump's Gaza plan

REUTERS
Published :
Dec 03, 2025 21:02
Updated :
Dec 03, 2025 21:02

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference at the Prime Ministerโ€™s office in Jerusalem, August 10, 2025. Photo : ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS/Files

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition skipped a parliamentary vote on Wednesday endorsing US President Donald Trump's plan to end the two-year war in Gaza.

The vote, proposed by opposition leader Yair Lapid, was largely symbolic as Netanyahu had already publicly backed the plan after Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas in October.

Less than a third of the parliament's 120 lawmakers participated in it with 39 in favour and none against.

Lapid, a former prime minister, posted on X: "Israel now officially endorses and adopts President Trump's plan" alongside an image of himself with the president.

The non-binding vote potentially risked embarrassing Netanyahu if some of his coalition partners who have criticised Trump's plan had voted against it. The plan alludes to Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu's government opposes.

A lawmaker from Netanyahu's Likud party who did not take part in the vote repeatedly interjected during the proceedings. Another member of Likud was also present but did not vote.

Trump received a standing ovation when he addressed the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in October, days after the ceasefire took effect. Two weeks after the address, a preliminary parliamentary vote passed, with 25 in favour and 24 against calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank after Trump had said Israel would not annex the territory.

US Vice President JD Vance, who was visiting Israel at the time, called the vote stupid and said he took it as an insult.​
 

5 killed in Israel strike: Gaza civil defence
AFP Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
Published: 04 Dec 2025, 10: 32

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People look for salvageable items in the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli strike in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on 15 May, 2025. Fighting has raged in Gaza, where civil defence officials told AFP 80 people were killed by Israeli bombardment on 14 May, including 59 in the north. AFP

Gazaโ€™s civil defence agency told AFP on Wednesday that an Israeli strike on the Palestinian territory killed five people including two children.

The Israeli military said it had struck a โ€œHamas terroristโ€ in southern Gaza in response to a clash with Palestinian militants in the area that wounded five soldiers.

โ€œFive citizens, including two children, killed and others injured, some seriously, as a result of an Israeli missile strikeโ€ in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

The agency said the strike hit near the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in Khan Yunis and โ€œtargetedโ€ a shelter camp.

The hospital also reported that five people, including two children aged eight and 10, were killed and another 32 were wounded.

A fragile US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect on October 10 has largely halted the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, but both sides have accused each other of violating its terms.

The Israeli military said earlier on Wednesday that during an operation in the area of eastern Rafah, soldiers encountered several militants โ€œwho emerged from an underground terrorist infrastructureโ€.

โ€œDuring the encounter, an (Israeli) combat soldier was severely injured, two additional combat soldiers and a non-commissioned officer were moderately injured,โ€ the military said in a statement.

It added that the soldiers were evacuated to hospital for treatment, and their families had been notified.

The second Israeli army statement announcing the air strike did not provide details about the fifth injured soldier.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his โ€œwishes for a speedy recovery to our heroic soldiersโ€, accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement.

A security source in Gaza told AFP that at around 4pm local time (1400 GMT), โ€œvery heavy artillery shelling took place from occupation vehicles east of Rafah city, along with heavy gunfire from warplanesโ€.

The source added that an Israeli helicopter had also landed in the area.

The military said on Sunday that it had killed more than 40 militants over the past week in operations targeting tunnels near Rafah, where dozens of Hamas fighters are holed up beneath areas controlled by the Israeli military.

Multiple sources told AFP last week that negotiations were underway regarding the fate of the fighters still in south Gazaโ€™s tunnel network.

On Thursday, a prominent Hamas member in Gaza told AFP that the group estimated their number to be between 60 and 80.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamasโ€™s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.

Israelโ€™s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,117 people, according to figures from the territoryโ€™s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

The ministry says since the ceasefire came into effect, 360 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. Israelโ€™s military has reported three soldiers killed during the same period.​
 

Gaza talks at critical moment, ceasefire not complete, Qatar's prime minister says

REUTERS

Published :
Dec 06, 2025 19:26
Updated :
Dec 06, 2025 19:26

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Palestinian women walk among piles of rubble and damaged buildings, in Gaza City, November 24, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Negotiations on consolidating the US-backed truce in the war in Gaza are at a "critical" moment, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Saturday.

Mediators are working to force the next phase of the ceasefire forward, al-Thani, whose country has been a key mediator in the war, said during a panel discussion at the Doha Forum conference in Qatar.

Violence has subsided but not stopped since the Gaza truce took effect on October 10.

"We are at a critical moment. It's not yet there. So what we have just done is a pause," al-Thani said.

"We cannot consider it yet a ceasefire. A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces - (until) there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out - which is not the case today."

Talks on achieving the next stages of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the two-year war in the Palestinian enclave have been continuing.

The plan calls for an interim technocratic Palestinian government in Gaza, overseen by an international "board of peace" and backed by an international security force. Agreeing on the makeup and mandate of that force has been particularly challenging.

On Thursday, an Israeli delegation held talks in Cairo with mediators on the return of the last hostage held in Gaza, which would complete an initial part of Trump's plan.

Since the truce started, Hamas has returned all 20 living hostages and 27 bodies in exchange for around 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners.

Although fighting has diminished, Israel has continued to attack Gaza and demolish what it says is Hamas infrastructure. Hamas and Israel have traded blame for violations.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said that its forces, deployed behind the so-called yellow line of withdrawal agreed in the ceasefire, had opened fire on Palestinian militants who had crossed the line, killing three.

There were no immediate details from Gaza health authorities on the incident or the identities of those killed.​
 

Qatar, Egypt call for next steps in Gaza truce
Agence France-Presse . Doha, Qatar 07 December, 2025, 00:26

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A Palestinian girl carries a bag of bread as others, many of whom are part of displaced families, gather in the yard of the UNRWA Deir al-Balah Joint School, west of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza on Saturday. | AFP photo

Qatar and Egypt, guarantors of the Gaza ceasefire, on Saturday called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the deployment of an international stabilisation force as the necessary next steps in fully implementing the fragile agreement.

The measures were spelt out in the US- and UN-backed peace plan that has largely halted the fighting in the Palestinian territory, though the warring parties have yet to agree on how to move forward from the dealโ€™s first phase.

Its initial steps saw Israeli troops pull back behind a so-called โ€˜yellow lineโ€™ within Gazaโ€™s borders, while Palestinian militant group Hamas released the living hostages it still held and handed over the remains of all but one of the deceased.

โ€˜Now we are at the critical moment... A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces, [and] there is stability back in Gaza,โ€™ Qatari PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Doha Forum, an annual diplomatic conference.

Qatar, alongside Egypt and the United States, helped secure the long-elusive truce in Gaza, which came into effect on October 10 and has mostly halted two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Under a second phase of the deal, which has yet to begin, Israel is to withdraw from its positions in the territory, an interim authority is to take over governance, and an international stabilisation force is to be deployed.

โ€˜We need to deploy this force as soon as possible on the ground because one party, which is Israel, is every day violating the ceasefire,โ€™ said Egyptโ€™s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty, also speaking at the Doha Forum.

Arab and Muslim nations, however, have been hesitant to participate in the new force, which could end up fighting Palestinian militants.

Turkeyโ€™s foreign minister Hakan Fidan told the forum that talks on the force were ongoing, with critical questions remaining as to its command structure and which countries would contribute.

But its first goal, Fidan said, โ€˜should be to separate Palestinians from the Israelisโ€™.

โ€˜This should be our main objective. Then we can address the other remaining issues,โ€™ he added.

Abdelatty seconded the idea, calling for the force to be deployed along โ€˜the yellow line in order to verify and to monitorโ€™ the truce.

There have been multiple deadly incidents of Israeli forces firing on Palestinians in the vicinity of the yellow line since the ceasefire went into effect.

Hamas is supposed to disarm under the 20-point plan first outlined by US President Donald Trump, with members who decommission their weapons allowed to leave Gaza. The militant group has repeatedly rejected the proposition.

Turkey, which is also a guarantor of the truce, has indicated it wants to take part in the stabilisation force, but its efforts are viewed unfavourably in Israel, which considers Ankara too close to Hamas.

Fidan later said at the Doha Forum that the disarmament of Hamas should not be the main priority in Gaza.

โ€˜That cannot be the first thing to do in the process, the disarming. We need to put things in [their] proper order, we have to be realistic,โ€™ he said.

He also urged the US to intervene with Israelโ€™s Prime Minister Netanyahu to ensure the plan succeeds. โ€˜If they donโ€™t intervene, Iโ€™m afraid there is a risk the plan can fail,โ€™ Fidan said.

โ€˜The amount of daily violations of the ceasefire by the Israelis is indescribable at the moment and all indicators are showing that there is a huge risk of stopping the process,โ€™ he added.

Sheikh Mohammed said Qatar and the other truce guarantors were โ€˜getting together in order to force the way forward for the next phaseโ€™ of the deal.

โ€˜And this next phase is just also temporary from our perspective,โ€™ he said, calling for a โ€˜lasting solution that provides justice for both peopleโ€™.

The ceasefire plan calls for Gazaโ€™s vital Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt to be reopened to allow in aidโ€”a goal shared by humanitarian actors.

Israel this week said it would open the checkpoint, but โ€˜exclusively for the exit of residents from the Gaza Strip to Egyptโ€™.

Egypt swiftly denied that it had agreed to such a move, insisting the crossing be opened in both directions.

Israelโ€™s announcement drew expressions of concern from several Muslim-majority nations, who said they opposed โ€˜any attempts to expel the Palestinian people from their landโ€™.

Abdelatty insisted on Saturday that Rafah โ€˜is not going to be a gateway for displacement. Itโ€™s only for flooding Gaza with humanitarian and medical careโ€™.​
 

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