Tag: palestine

Netanyahu Blasts Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan, Claims Composition of Gaza Executive Board “Runs Contrary” to Israeli Policy – Israel National Security Minister Calls for “Return to War with Enormous Force”

Israel may be displeased with President Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has surprisingly come out claiming that  the President’s Gaza Executive Board was “not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy.”

As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump announced that the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by himself, has been formed as the Trump Administration enters Phase Two of the  20-point Gaza Peace Plan announced last September.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jared Kushner, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, and Trump adviser Robert Gabriel were announced as members of the “founding Executive Board” on Friday.

Additionally, the White House announced that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and senior Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi would serve on the Gaza Executive Board to support the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and “support effective governance and the delivery of best-in-class services that advance peace, stability, and prosperity for the people of Gaza,” sparking rebuke from Netanyahu.

Per the New York Post:

President Trump’s Gaza governance plan sparked backlash in Israel as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the makeup of the body, which includes Turkey and Qatar, contradicts Israeli policy — even as reports from said the lineup had, in fact, been approved.

Netanyahu’s office issued a statement on Saturday saying that the premier instructed his top diplomat to raise the government’s concerns with the Trump administration on the newly created “Board of Peace” set to run the Gaza Strip, according to Ynet.

“The announcement by the US administration regarding the composition of the Gaza Executive Board was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy,” Netanyahu’s office said in the statement, adding that the prime minister had ordered Sa’ar to raise Israel’s objections directly with Rubio.

The dispute centers on the inclusion of senior reps from Turkey and Qatar — two countries Israel accuses of backing Hamas.

However, reports claim that Netanyahu was only posturing “for appearances” as Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir calls for a “return to war with enormous force,” and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claims that the body is made up of “states that breathed life into Hamas.”

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After PM knocks Trump on Gaza panel, Ben Gvir calls for return to war with ‘overwhelming force’

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir calls for a full return to war in Gaza after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated that the US did not coordinate with Israel on the composition of a key panel intended to play a central role in the Strip’s postwar governance.

The panel, the Gaza Board of Peace’s executive committee, includes top officials from Turkey and Qatar, both of which have been highly critical of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza. The premier’s office said the unveiling of the board “contradicts” Israeli policy.

“I commend the Prime Minister for his important statement. The Gaza Strip does not need any ‘governing council’ to oversee its ‘rehabilitation’ — it needs to be cleared of Hamas terrorists, who must be eliminated, alongside the encouragement of large-scale voluntary emigration, in accordance with President Trump’s original plan,” writes the far-right minister in a Hebrew-language post on X.

Trump called early last year for the permanent relocation of Gaza’s population and for the US to take over the postwar Strip, but has since abandoned that plan and is focused on implementing the current Gaza peace framework, which calls for Palestinians not to be displaced from Gaza.

Ben Gvir calls on Netanyahu “to instruct the IDF to prepare to return to the fighting in the Strip with overwhelming force, in order to achieve the central objective of the war: the destruction of Hamas.”

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Slow genocide: Death and displacement continue in Gaza months into ceasefire

The ceasefire has stopped most of the bombs, but not the cancer eating away at Najat Sayed al-Hessi’s body.

The 61-year-old Palestinian from Gaza has been waiting for her monthly cancer medications for 27 months, without receiving a single dose.

“Nothing has changed for cancer patients in Gaza since the ceasefire,” she told Middle East Eye, as the disease continues to progress unchecked.

“I had an appointment to travel to Ramallah for my medication and injection on 7 October 2023, the day the war began,” she added from her makeshift tent in Deir al-Balah. “I couldn’t go that day, and I have been waiting ever since.”

Since the war started, medical referrals outside Gaza have stopped, and hospitals in the war-battered enclave are unable to provide even minimal treatment for cancer patients.

“I fear the disease is advancing in my body with each passing day,” al-Hessi said.

Her plight reflects the wider crisis in Gaza, where nearly two million people continue to live under dire conditions three months after the ceasefire.

After two years of Israeli bombardment, much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and public health system has been destroyed.

People had hoped the October ceasefire would bring some respite and a gradual path to recovery. 

But with continued Israeli restrictions on border crossings, aid, and goods, residents feel the situation has merely shifted from an intense genocide to a slower-paced one.

For those like Al-Hessi, the pause in fighting has brought no pause in suffering.

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Mark Carney to accept role on Trump’s Gaza ‘Board of Peace’

 Prime Minister Mark Carney will accept a role on U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly formed Gaza “Board of Peace,” according to a senior Canadian government official.

Trump will serve as chairman of the board, which includes U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair, and which is designed to oversee the U.S. peace plan to end the war between Israel and Hamas.

According to the Canadian government official, who briefed reporters travelling with Carney in Beijing, the invitation was officially sent on Friday but had been discussed by the two leaders for some time.

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President Trump Announces Board of Peace for Gaza is Officially Formed

President Trump announced on Thursday that the international transitional Board of Peace, which will supervise the governance of Gaza, has been formed. 

Trump announced the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by himself, in his 20-point Gaza Peace Plan last September.

On Thursday, he announced that the board has been finalized, and the members will be announced “shortly.”

“I can say with certainty that it is the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place,” he said.

Full statement below:

It is my Great Honor to announce that THE BOARD OF PEACE has been formed. The Members of the Board will be announced shortly, but I can say with certainty that it is the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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Federal court reverses release of Columbia Gaza activist Mahmoud Khalil

A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court’s decision that released Gaza activist Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail earlier last year. The step brings the federal government a step closer to deporting the activist.

In a 2-1 decision on Thursday, the appeals court did not rule on the removal of Khalil, but said the lower court that released him from immigration jail did not have jurisdiction in the case. “That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero or two,” the panel wrote, per the AP. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”

Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia who was involved with the Gaza encampment that led to agitators in the encampment occupying Hamilton Hall. Khalil was detained in an immigration jail after being detained on March 8 last year. He spent three months in the jail until a judge in New Jersey ruled that his jailing was unconstitutional and ordered his release.

The Trump administration challenged the ruling as the federal judge was not in an immigration court, which usually decides cases for detention of illegal immigrants in the country as well as deportations. It is not clear if federal law enforcement will not seek to detain Khalil after the order from the lower court was overturned by the panel.

The majority opinion from judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, both appointed by Republicans, wrote, “Our legal system routinely forces petitioners — even those with meritorious claims — to wait to raise their arguments. To be sure, the immigration judge’s order of removal is not yet final; the Board has not affirmed her ruling and has held the parties’ briefing deadlines in abeyance pending this opinion. But if the Board ultimately affirms, Khalil can get meaningful review.”

The reversal on the order comes as an appeals board in the immigration system is looking at an order that has set Khalil up to be deported from the country. The judge in the immigration case said that he could be deported to Algeria, where he is a citizen, or Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp. His attorneys argue he would be in danger if he returned to either country.

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From Palestine to Minneapolis, ICE and Israel use the same violent playbook

On January 7, ICE agents shot Renee Good three times through her car window as she seemingly tried to drive away from them in Minneapolis. Then, they blocked ambulances from reaching her for fifteen minutes while she bled out in the driver’s seat with her partner beside her. Within hours, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was calling Good, the woman who had just been executed in broad daylight by a federal agent, a “domestic terrorist,” claiming the agent had acted in self-defense against a woman allegedly trying to run him over with her vehicle.

If this sounds familiar, it should, because it is the exact same play Israel deploys every single time they kill a Palestinian. Take, for example, on December 6, just a few weeks ago, when Israeli soldiers in Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, ordered 17-year-old Ahmad Rajabi to stop his car. He stopped and then they shot him dead anyway. They prevented emergency services from reaching Ahmad and shot at them as well. There are countless others just like Rajabi. 

ICE and the Israeli army are using the same playbook because they are born of the same system of state violence and white-supremacy – the same machinery of racialized control that has been refined in Palestine and imported to American cities through deliberate policy and corporate profit. As Noura Erakat penned, the ‘imperial boomerang has already made its way back.

Calling victims “terrorists” is how you make the dead responsible for their own deaths. Israel has spent decades making it so that every Palestinian killed at a checkpoint was “trying to ram soldiers,” every journalist shot while wearing a press vest was “operating with militants,” every child killed was somehow an imminent threat requiring lethal force. How else can you justify turning Gaza into a graveyard?

This is what occupation looks like everywhere it exists, in every context where armed agents operate with total impunity over populations denied meaningful legal protection or political power. And beyond the paramilitary forces swarming the streets, the same digital systems of occupation are also migrating back here.

Palantir runs ICE’s case management systems that track and monitor immigrants to enable fast-track deportations, and that same company provides AI-based targeting platforms for Israeli military airstrikes that decide which Palestinians to kill using data that includes private communications between Palestinian Americans and their relatives in Gaza. Israeli companies like Elbit and Paragon provide radar, surveillance, and spyware directly to ICE and Homeland Security. The Anti-Defamation League sponsors law enforcement exchange programs where American police travel to Israel to learn “best practices” in checkpoint management, crowd suppression, and in turning entire populations into security threats.

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Once Again, the New York Times Sells Israel’s Genocide in Gaza as Law Enforcement

This is another masterclass from the New York Times in how to sell genocide as law enforcement.

According to today’s headline, “new Israeli rules” mean “suspensions” of aid groups from Gaza – that is, the forced expulsion of 37 humanitarian organizations from Palestinian territory illegally occupied by Israel.

These aid groups organize most of the field hospitals currently operating in Gaza and set up after Israel destroyed the enclave’s proper hospitals. The groups also run emergency shelters, water and sanitation services, and treatment centers for children with acute malnutrition.

Israel’s “registration rules” are a death sentence for a homeless, destitute Palestinian population left vulnerable to starvation, floods, winter cold and disease by Israel’s two-year destruction of their homeland.

Who is to blame? Apparently groups like Doctors Without Borders, Medical Aid for Palestinians and CARE. Why? Because they are “resisting” Israel’s “rules” to “provide detailed information” on their staff in Gaza – information Israel has used time and again to kill those aid workers.

As Doctors Without Borders point out, “we support one in five hospital beds and one in three births” in Gaza. Israel, it added, was “cutting off life-saving medical assistance for hundreds of thousands of people”.

Another organization affected by the new “rules”, the Norwegian Refugee Council, noted that Israel had killed hundreds of aid workers in the past two years. “For us, it is a safety concern for our staff. And acknowledging who they are – it puts them at risk.”

The New York Times wants you to forget who is the criminal here.

It is Israel that’s illegally occupying Gaza and other Palestinian territories – and has been for decades.

It is Israel that has bombed Gaza into the Stone Age.

It is Israel that has ethnically cleansed Gaza’s people from their lands, driving them into ever smaller concentration camps on those ruins, surrounded by Israel’s “yellow line”.

It is Israel that has starved the people of Gaza for months on end by blocking all aid.

It is Israel that’s killed at least 600 aid workers, 1,700 medical staff and 250 journalists in Gaza over the past two years.

It is Israel that has eradicated all Gaza’s hospitals and health care facilities, leaving its maimed and starved population vulnerable to infection and disease.

And it is Israel now expelling aid organizations vital to keep this homeless, bombed, maimed, starved, orphaned, traumatized population alive.

Criminals don’t get to set the “rules” – because the rules they set will, by definition, serve their criminal agenda.

Israel has not hidden that agenda. It wants to eradicate Gaza and its population. It has destroyed the people of Gaza’s homes and the infrastructure they need to survive – from hospitals and schools to sanitation services. It has blocked aid and food, and is now driving out the emergency aid organizations that served as a sticking plaster to keep this population just barely alive.

Israel’s goal is to make life so desperate, so impossible, that the rest of the world will consent to the expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza on “humanitarian” grounds.

The New York Times, like the rest of the media, are using language to persuade you that none of this is happening.

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Palestine was the deadliest place to be a journalist in 2025: Media union

Palestine was the deadliest place to work as a journalist in 2025, with the Middle East as a whole the most dangerous region for media professionals, according to a global journalist union.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said the region accounted for 74 deaths last year – more than half of the 128 journalists and media workers killed – in a new report released on Wednesday.

The Middle East was followed by Africa with 18 deaths, Asia Pacific (15), the Americas (11) and Europe (10), according to the report. The vast majority of those killed were men, but the list included 10 women.

“128 journalists killed in a single year is not just a statistic; it is a global crisis. These deaths are a brutal reminder that journalists are being targeted with impunity, simply for doing their job,” IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said.

Palestinian journalists were the biggest cohort of victims: 56 Palestinian media professionals were killed in 2025. Yemen followed, with 13 deaths, Ukraine, with eight, and Sudan, with six, according to the IFJ.

The Paris-based media union cited Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif as the most “emblematic” of the 56 journalists murdered in Palestine last year covering Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Al-Sharif, 28, was killed on August 10 alongside several colleagues when Israeli forces struck a media tent outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

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Smotrich hails ‘full US support’ for illegal settler expansion in occupied West Bank

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and staunch backer of the illegal settler movement, said on 30 December that Washington has given Tel Aviv “full support” to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.

“The US administration is giving us full support to expand settlements in the West Bank in order to undermine the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich said. 

The statement coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the US and came after a meeting between Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.

“We have had a discussion, big discussion for a long time on the West Bank. And I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100 percent, but we’ll come to a conclusion on the West Bank,” Trump said after the meeting.

When asked by reporters what the disagreement was about, Trump said, “I don’t want to do that, it will be announced at an appropriate time.”

Netanyahu “will do the right thing,” the US president went on to say. 

Since coming to power in late 2022, Netanyahu’s government has been rapidly advancing Israel’s longstanding goal of annexing the West Bank, which was occupied illegally during the 1967 war. 

New illegal settlements are being established at an accelerated rate, and the Knesset has approved a bill calling to impose Israeli “sovereignty” over the territory. 

Trump recently claimed that he would “not allow” Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.

“Trump and his top advisors asked Netanyahu to change Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank during their meeting on Monday,” informed sources told Axios on 30 December.

“The White House thinks a violent escalation in the West Bank would undermine efforts to implement the Gaza peace agreement and prevent the expansion of the Abraham Accords before the end of Trump’s term,” the sources went on to say, adding that the US president’s team asked the Israelis to “calm things down.”

“The president and his team raised settler violence against Palestinian civilians, the financial instability of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli settlements expansion. Netanyahu spoke very strongly against settler violence and said he is going to take more action,” the sources said.

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