By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Politics Discussion - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ 3 hours ago

Colombia, Brazil condemn Trump’s Gaza statements

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the US is about to “ignite the worst war” yet based on the mistaken “belief that they are God’s chosen people”.

“God’s people are not white Americans or Israelis. God’s people are all of humanity,” said Petro, who has also clashed with Trump recently over the US deporting migrants to Colombia.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also questioned whether the US was the right country to take a leading role in the reconstruction or administration of Gaza.

“What happened in Gaza was genocide,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know if the United States, which is part of all this, is the right country to oversee Gaza.”

It's still happening, genocide is ongoing. The intent has only become even more clear with Trump's plan.


Turkiye’s Defence Ministry slams Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza

A spokesperson for the Turkish Defence Ministry said at a weekly news conference that the country was “completely opposed to the exile, displacement, or expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza”.

“Israel, through its annexation policies that aim to displace Palestinians from their lands, is also denying the right of Palestinian refugees to return,” the spokesperson added.


China’s UN envoy says Trump’s Gaza plan is ‘beyond comprehension’

Fu Cong, China’s UN Ambassador, has told Al Jazeera that Donald Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal “is beyond comprehension”.

“I’m sure you noticed that the Arab countries have rejected this proposal. As far as China is concerned, we are opposed to any attempt to change the demography of the [Palestinian] occupied territories,” he said.

 
‘Gaza is the Gaza of Palestinians’: China’s Foreign Ministry

Beijing opposes Trump’s push to move Palestinians out of Gaza and have the US take over the enclave, China’s Foreign Ministry has said, underlining a long-held position against the forced displacement of people.

China supports the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, the ministry’s spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular press briefing. “Gaza is the Gaza of Palestinians, an integral part of the Palestinian territory, not a political bargaining chip, let alone the target of a law of the jungle,” Guo said.

In a position paper in late 2023, China called on the United Nations Security Council to help restore a two-state solution.

“Any arrangement on the future of Gaza must respect the will and independent choice of the Palestinian people, and must not be imposed upon them,” according to the paper.



Around the Network
SvennoJ 3 hours ago

Iran rejects ‘shocking’ Trump plan to ‘forcibly displace’ Palestinians

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has rejected the “shocking” plan laid out by President Trump to assume control of Gaza and “forcibly displace” Palestinians, according to comments carried by Iran’s state-owned Press TV.

“The plan to clear Gaza and forcibly displace the Palestinian people to neighbouring countries is considered a continuation of the Zionist regime’s targeted plan to completely annihilate the Palestinian nation, and is categorically rejected and condemned,” spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said.

“The recent claim by the US to seize Gaza represents an unprecedented assault on the core principles of international law and the UN Charter,” he added.


Jordanian officials fear ‘existential threat’ from Trump’s Gaza plan

US President Donald Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Jordan will spread chaos through the Middle East, jeopardise the kingdom’s peace with Israel and even threaten the country’s survival.

These are the stark warnings Jordan’s King Abdullah plans to deliver to Trump when he meets the US president in Washington on February 11 as part of a diplomatic offensive against any relocation, according to senior Jordanian officials.

One senior official told the Reuters news agency there had been a flurry of phone calls by King Abdullah to muster support from regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

“This is the biggest test in ties with our strategic ally,” the Jordanian official said.

Contingency plans drawn up by the army and security establishment range from declaring a state of war with Israel, to abrogating the peace treaty to declaring a state of emergency, officials told Reuters.

“We hope we won’t see thousands of Palestinians streaming across the border trying to enter the kingdom but we are prepared,” one of the Jordanian officials said.

Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister who helped negotiate Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel, told Reuters that it was an “existential” issue for Jordan.

“There is very strong public opposition, and it’s not something Jordan can entertain. This is not an economic or a security issue for Jordan, it’s an identity issue,” he said.


Loving Palestinian land is in ‘our DNA’: Palestine’s UN envoy

Riyad Mansour, who leads Palestine’s delegation at the UN, reacts to Trump’s plan to forcefully expel people from Gaza, saying “Some people might not understand the meaning and value of having a country and loving the land of your country”.

“For us, the Palestinian people, it is our DNA. We love our country,” he added.

“We love the land of our country – whether we have palaces on it or destroyed buildings. We are resilient people. The Gaza Strip was destroyed many times, and we were able to rebuild it with the help of all of our friends.”


Palestinians will continue to fight for their rights, Hamas spokesperson says

Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan says Palestinians are determined to secure their rights and will not give up that decades-long quest.

“If it was delivered by the international community to them, that will be good. If not, they will resist,” he told Al Jazeera.

“After 15 months of Israeli aggression, it is clear that you cannot defeat the Palestinian people. This nation has been struggling for its legitimate rights for over 75 years, and we will not give up.”



SvennoJ 3 hours ago

Spain rejects Israel’s suggestion it should accept Palestinians from Gaza

Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares has rejected the suggestion by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz that Spain should accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza.

“Gazans’ land is Gaza and Gaza must be part of the future Palestinian state,” Albares said in an interview with Spanish radio station RNE.

Ireland rejects Israel’s suggestion it should accept Palestinians from Gaza

Ireland’s Foreign Ministry has rejected a suggestion by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz that the country should accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza.

“The objective must be a massive scale-up of aid into Gaza, return of basic services and a clear framework under which those displaced can return,” the ministry said in an emailed statement to the Reuters news agency. “Any comments to the contrary are unhelpful and a source of distraction.”

As we have reported earlier, Katz ordered Israel’s army to ready a plan designed so that Gaza residents can emigrate to locations which agree to absorb them, naming Spain, Ireland and Norway as potential destinations.

Last year, Ireland, Norway and Spain recognised Palestine as an independent state, prompting Israeli anger.


UK will oppose any effort to displace Palestinians from Gaza: Minister

The United Kingdom will oppose any efforts to move Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to neighbouring Arab countries against their will, according to Anneliese Dodds, the UK’s minister of state for international development.

“There must be no forced displacement of Palestinians, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip,” Dodds told Parliament.

Her comments come after President Donald Trump announced a plan to take over the Gaza Strip and forcibly remove Palestinians from the besieged enclave.



SvennoJ 3 hours ago

True purpose of Trump’s plan is ‘to bury’ two-state solution: Egyptian ex-minister

Hussein Haridy, Egypt’s former assistant foreign minister, says Cairo will “stand firm” in the wake of Trump’s plan for the US to “take over” the Gaza Strip and move the Palestinians of the enclave to Jordan and Egypt.

“Egypt has made its official position clear. We do not see eye to eye with President Trump’s plan. We don’t think his plan is achievable, or practical,” Haridy told Al Jazeera.

“As such, we are afraid that the true purpose of it is to bury the two-state solution. Egypt has always been committed to a two-state solution, because we believe that without it, insecurity and instability will remain with us in the Middle East,” he said.

Haridy hopes the US will not exert undue pressure on Egypt but also believes that Cairo could withstand it.

“From 1967 until today, American-Egyptian relations have seen ups and downs. We have seen tremendous pressure from the US side to push Egypt to accept certain arrangements concerning Israel. In all these instances, Egypt stood firm. And at the end of the day, the Egyptian point of view prevailed,” he said.

Haridy pointed to key differences in US and Egyptian political objectives: “We have our own national security interests"


Egypt says Gaza displacement plan would ‘incite a return of fighting’

Egypt rejects and will not be part of any proposal to displace Palestinians from Gaza, its foreign ministry said.

The country, which borders the tiny enclave, denounced expressions of support by Israeli cabinet members for Trump’s plan to create a “Riviera of the Middle East” in Gaza under US control.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the army to prepare a plan to allow for the “voluntary departure” of Gaza residents from the strip, Israeli media reported.

Apparently referring to Katz’s order, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said, “Egypt stresses the catastrophic consequences of this irresponsible act which weakens the ceasefire negotiations, and would squash them and incite a return of fighting.”

Trump’s plan to colonise Gaza is rooted in an old white fantasy

The declaration by US President Donald Trump that he planned to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and turn it into an American-controlled “Riviera of the Middle East” has rightly drawn condemnation from across the globe, including, ironically, from Western nations that backed Israel’s genocidal bombardment that devastated the territory.

Many point out that ethnic cleansing violates international law and that the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbid the forcible displacement of civilian populations, for any reason.

This is all true but as an African, I was drawn to a slightly different aspect of Trump’s declaration: his imagined entitlement to other people’s land.

The claims he is making to having the right to take Gaza should not be isolated from the claims he has made on Greenland and Panamanian territory.

They all spring from the same root, one that has been nurtured by half a millennium of European colonial aggrandisement.


A drone view shows Palestinians, forcibly displaced to the south by Israel during the war, making their way back to their homes in northern Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, on January 27

Trump’s Gaza plan ‘strictly prohibited’ under international law: UN rights chief

Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, has said that US President Donald Trump’s proposal to “take over” Gaza and move Palestinians from the war-ravaged territory would be illegal under international law.

“The right to self-determination is a fundamental principle of international law and must be protected by all states, as the International Court of Justice recently underlined afresh,” he said. “Any forcible transfer in or deportation of people from occupied territory is strictly prohibited.”

Turk’s statement is reflected in Article 49 of the Geneva Convention relative to “the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”.

It stipulates that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

That that even needs to be said....



SvennoJ 3 hours ago

Aid finally reaches Gaza but children’s needs are not being met – Save the Children

Some aid trucks prevented for months from entering Gaza by the Israeli military have now reached the territory, yet much more needs to be done, Save the Children’s CEO Inger Ashing has told Al Jazeera.

“The needs are not met, not even close,” Ashing said from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. “We need to do much, much more to ensure that children here have access to their basic needs, including water, food, shelter and medicines.”


Living conditions in Gaza are ‘dangerous’: UNICEF

Tess Ingram, UNICEF’s communications manager, has told Al Jazeera from Gaza that she met families yesterday that were building makeshift shelters on top of the rubble of what used to be their homes.

“They were using pieces of plywood with sheets of tarpaulin. I hope that it’s still standing,” she said, adding she was particularly concerned about children’s wellbeing.

“For kids in these conditions, it’s frightening not only to be outside, exposed to the cold, but also very dangerous. We’ve had a number of children in Gaza die of hypothermia. It’s clear that when you meet with families, they don’t have what they need to protect them[selves],” she said.

Ingram said the needs of the people in Gaza are “immense” and called for ramping up emergency relief efforts fast, adding that requires the delivery of more than 600 aid trucks a day. “But the needs are far greater than that.

“The main things that people are asking me for are tents, tarpaulin and water. The water system has been decimated and people are really struggling to find safe water to drink,” she said.

Ingram also outlined the challenges of Israel’s “dual use” blockade – preventing access to building materials like pipes, steel and cement – for aid workers. “One of the biggest challenges we’re having is with items on the ‘dual use’ list. We need those for repairs – for example, pipes for water, generators to run pumps, and then fuel to run generators.”


Winter storm wiping out tents of displaced Palestinians in north Gaza

What we’ve been seeing in the past hour is that as soon as the rain stopped, just briefly, people came out and they tried desperately to rebuild tents damaged due to the strong wind, and the air depression, that is hitting the Gaza Strip.

[The tents] were destroyed, offering them no shelter and no safe place for them to stay in.

The wind was very strong and the storm got very aggressive as of the early hours of this morning, uprooting many of the tents in the northern part of the Strip, particularly in Jabalia and farther north in Beit Lahiya, where the Israeli military, because of the destruction of many of the residential buildings, created a vacuum for the air to move at very high speed.

Those tents, which were set up by the displaced Palestinians as soon as they returned to their areas [in north Gaza], are made of very simple items, wood, nylon and pieces of plastic, and are not very stable.


Gaza Civil Defence says Israel not allowing essential equipment into Gaza

In comments to our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic, a spokesperson for the rescue organisation says that Israel is not adhering to the humanitarian protocol laid out in the ceasefire agreement.

“No mobile homes or heavy equipment entered the sector … There is Israeli intransigence and procrastination in bringing equipment into the Strip”, the spokesperson said.

As we’ve been reporting all day, there is a severe lack of shelter in the Gaza Strip as it endures a very harsh winter storm due to damage to a staggering percentage of residential buildings by Israel’s war.

Heavy machinery is desperately needed to clear roads and remove the rubble of destroyed buildings, but multiple organisations and authorities in Gaza are accusing Israel of prohibiting its entry into the Strip.

“Mediators must intervene immediately to persuade Israel to allow the entry of equipment and fuel,” the Civil Defence spokesperson continued.

“The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is bitter and life has come to a standstill due to the intransigence of the occupation … After the northern residents returned to their areas, they were forced to live with the corpses.”



Around the Network
SvennoJ 3 hours ago

Two Israeli soldiers killed in northern Gaza accident

The Israeli army has confirmed the deaths of an officer and a soldier as well as the injury of eight others in a crane collapse in the northern Gaza Strip due to stormy weather.

Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said the crane collapsed due to strong winds and fell on a tent with soldiers inside it.

Reports in Israeli media said the army is investigating this incident, which it described as “serious and reflects a lack of preparation for weather conditions”.


Dozens of deported ex-Palestinian prisoners remain in Cairo awaiting transfer: Official

Qadura Fares, head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs in Palestine, has provided an update on the whereabouts of several exchanged prisoners who were part of last month’s ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

He said, “Fifteen deported Palestinians have left Cairo for Turkiye as part of the process of relocating freed detainees.”

Fares also pointed out that “80 deported Palestinians remain in Cairo, awaiting transfer procedures to several other countries,” and that “the occupation authorities have transferred 20 deported detainees to the Gaza Strip in the last batch due to the difficulty of finding places to receive them.”


Gaza death toll rises

Israel has killed at least two Palestinians and injured four others in Gaza in the past 24 hours despite the ceasefire, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

It also said that at least one more person succumbed to injuries sustained in previous Israeli attacks and that 28 other bodies recovered from the rubble were received by hospitals.

The 31 newly registered killings brought the total death toll in Israel’s war on Gaza to 47,583, the ministry said, adding that 111,633 people have been injured since October 7, 2023.


Israel kills Palestinian near central Gaza’s Nuseirat despite ceasefire

A Palestinian man has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the town of al-Maghraqa, north of the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Wafa news agency.

The report identified the victim as Salman Rushdi Salman Abu Ghoula.


People in flooded tents face diseases when Gaza’s healthcare ‘is almost collapsed’

Displaced people, who live in tents in Gaza City, braving the cold and windy weather “without basic necessities”, had their temporary shelters flooded after the rain this morning.

“Women, children and people with health complications are at risk of catching flu and water-born diseases … in a time when the healthcare system across Gaza is almost collapsed,” according to Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from the city.

“There is only one hospital available here that went from small marginal hospital to the main hospital for Gaza City, providing medical care to thousands without having a capacity to do so,” he said.


Death toll due to lack of resources equals those killed by Israeli forces: Ministry of Health

Marwan al-Hamas, director of field hospitals at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, has spoken to Al Jazeera Arabic about the healthcare situation in the coastal enclave.

Here is a summary of his translated comments:

  • Since October 7, 2023, the number of deaths in Gaza due to lack of resources is equivalent to the number killed by Israeli forces.
  • We urgently need field hospitals, medical staff, medicines and medical equipment.
  • Israeli forces are obstructing the entry of field hospitals into the Strip.


SvennoJ 3 hours ago

West Bank healthcare in dire state: MSF

The healthcare system in the occupied West Bank has been in “a state of perpetual emergency” since October 2023, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, has said in a new report.

“A dramatic escalation in violence, marked by prolonged Israeli military incursions and stricter movement restrictions … have severely hindered access to essential services, particularly healthcare, exacerbating already dire living conditions for many Palestinians,” it said.

The report examined “the attacks and the obstructions of healthcare in a context of, what has been described by the ICJ (International Criminal Court) as segregation and apartheid” and revealed “a pattern of systematic interference by Israeli forces and settlers in emergency healthcare delivery”.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 884 Palestinians in the West Bank since the Gaza war began on October 7, 2023.


Palestinian paramedics help people injured during an Israeli raid on Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank

Israeli forces injure three Palestinians in Jordan Valley

Israeli soldiers have injured three Palestinians after assaulting them at the Hamra checkpoint in the northern Jordan Valley, the Wafa news agency reports, quoting medical sources.

Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances helped the men after they were severely beaten, Wafa added.

According to Wafa, Israeli soldiers have been stationed at the checkpoint for two years, and often block Palestinians from crossing.


Israeli soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint near the village of Tayasir in the northern West Bank on Tuesday

 

Israeli raids have displaced 26,000 in northern West Bank

It’s been 16 days since Israeli forces launched this big military operation in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, and the Jenin refugee camp, to be more specific. They’ve since announced that they’ve expanded it to areas like Tulkarem and its surrounding neighbourhoods.

The Israeli army says this is essentially a counterterrorism operation for them. They want to combat armed Palestinian fighters.

But if you look at what’s going on, you have 26,000 Palestinians who’ve been forcibly displaced, forced to leave their homes. You have the Israeli army levelling residential blocks, mirroring essentially what they’ve been doing in Gaza, detonating homes and killing many Palestinians.


Thick smoke rises over the Jenin refugee camp on Monday during an Israeli raid


Israeli soldiers arrest Palestinians in West Bank raids

Israeli soldiers have arrested a young man from the Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus, after raiding several homes nearby, the Wafa news agency reports.

Israeli soldiers also arrested a young man from Silwan, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, Wafa said, quoting Jerusalem officials.


Palestinians believe West Bank crackdown is an extension of Israel’s war on Gaza

What’s feeding those suspicions is what the Israeli army and the prominent ministers of the Israeli government are saying, which is that, first of all, the West Bank is one front in a multifront war that Israel is waging and that Palestinians don’t see their fate and their strife as separate from that in Gaza.

There is a war that Israel is waging on the Palestinians, and the occupied West Bank is part of it – that is how Palestinians view it and that is how they are living it. Hundreds of new roadblocks have been erected in the occupied West Bank, dissecting that territory and making it almost impossible to travel from one place to another.

The forced displacement in Jenin and Tulkarem replicates in tactics and in pattern what Palestinians have seen their brothers and sisters in Gaza endure for many, many months.



SvennoJ 3 hours ago

Trump to impose sanctions on International Criminal Court

US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order today to sanction the International Criminal Court for targeting the United States and its allies, such as Israel, a White House official has said.

The order will place financial and visa sanctions on individuals and their family members who assist in ICC investigations of US citizens or US allies, said the official.

Netanyahu gifted Trump a golden pager during their meeting in Washington

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/06/middleeast/netanyahu-trump-golden-pager-intl/index.html


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted US President Donald Trump a golden pager, a reference to a deadly Israeli operation against Hezbollah that killed 37 people and injured thousands.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted US President Donald Trump a golden pager during their meeting in Washington on Tuesday, an Israeli political source told CNN.

The gift was an allusion to a deadly September operation carried out by Israel in Lebanon, which targeted pagers used by members of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

On September 17, thousands of explosions struck Hezbollah members, targeting their pagers and then walkie-talkies a day later. The blasts killed at least 37 people, including some children, and injured nearly 3,000, many of them civilian bystanders, according to Lebanese health authorities.

In return, on Tuesday, Trump gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of the two of them. He signed the photograph, “To Bibi, A great leader!,” according to a photo on Instagram posted by his son, Yair Netanyahu.



Israeli soldier jailed for seven months for abusing Palestinian detainees

An Israeli military court has sentenced a soldier to seven months in prison after he admitted to “severely abusing” Palestinians at a detention facility near the border with Gaza, the army said.

“The defendant was convicted for several incidents in which he punched the detainees with his fists and used his weapon while they were handcuffed and blindfolded,” the Israeli army said in a statement.

“These acts were committed in the presence of other soldiers, some of whom called on him to stop, and were even documented on the defendant’s mobile phone,” it added, referring to the incidents which the military said took place at the Sde Teiman facility.

The military court determined that “additional masked soldiers participated in the abuse”, but said their identities remain unknown.

In October, a UN commission found thousands of detainees were subjected to “widespread and systematic abuse” in Israeli military camps and detention facilities that amounted to “war crime and crime against humanity of torture”.

In August 2024, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said more than a dozen prison facilities were being used as “de facto torture camps”.

The Israeli military has said it “categorically rejects allegations of systematic abuse” in its detention facilities.