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By Vijay Prashad

During the closing plenaries of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) in Belém do Pará in the Brazilian Amazon, United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell gave a rousing speech.

Stiell, from Grenada, came to his post after a long career in the corporate sector and then as his country’s environment and climate resilience minister under the pro-corporate New National Party. In his speech he said that “denial, division, and geopolitics [have] dealt international cooperation some heavy blows this year.”

He nevertheless insisted that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet with a firm resolve to keep 1.5°C within reach.”

When I heard Stiell’s speech I thought he was talking about another planet.

In May, the World Meteorological Organisation released a report warning that there is an 86 percent chance that global mean near-surface temperature will exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial (1850–1900) average – the threshold set in the Paris Agreement in 2015 – in at least one year between 2025 and 2029; it also warned of a 70 percent chance that the five-year mean for 2025–2029 will exceed 1.5°C above that average.

In late October, just weeks before COP30, the American Institute of Biological Sciences published The 2025 State of the Climate Report: A Planet on the Brink, which found that “the year 2024 set a new mean global surface temperature record, signalling an escalation of climate upheaval” and that “22 of 34 planetary vital signs are at record levels.”

To be fair to Stiell, he did not imply that one should be complacent. “I’m not saying we’re winning the climate fight,” he said. “But we are undeniably still in it, and we are fighting back.”

On that, we agree.

That same month the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) published an alarming report titled Adaptation Gap Report 2025: Running on Empty.

It paints a picture not merely of insufficient climate finance from the Global North but of systematic abandonment of the Global South; it describes a world “gearing up for climate resilience – without the money to get there.”

The issue of money is key. Promises to fund the climate transition first came at COP3 (Kyoto, 1997) through the Clean Development Mechanism, then at COP7 (Marrakech, 2001) through the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund.

But the breakthrough moment came at COP15 (Copenhagen, 2009), when the wealthy countries of the North pledged to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020.

Even the Copenhagen promises were hollow: there was no treaty obligation on the wealthier nations to meet this $100 billion goal, no enforcement mechanism to force those who made promises to follow up on their pledges, and most of the money that was pledged came as loans and not grants.

The $100 billion per year pledge from Copenhagen was reaffirmed at COP21 (Paris, 2015) and extended to 2025. At COP26 (Glasgow, 2021) the wealthier nations admitted that they had not met their goals and recommitted themselves to the $100 billion per year target. UNEP’s report provides a severe account of the missed pledges and false statements. Three points are essential to grasp:

Developing countries will require between $310 billion and $365 billion per year by 2035 for climate adaptation alone (setting aside mitigation as well as loss and damage). If inflation is taken at 3 percent per year, then real adaptation needs will reach between $440 billion and $520 billion annually by 2035.
In 2023 adaptation finance flows from developed to developing countries were just $26 billion, less than in 2022, and 58 percent of the money came through debt instruments and not through grants – a kind of green structural adjustment. The countries that are least responsible for the climate catastrophe are the ones that are driven to borrow in order to cope with the impact of the looming disasters.
By a simple calculation, needs are 12-to-14 times larger than current flows, producing an adaptation finance gap of $284 billion to $339 billion per year.
One of the great tragedies of the entire debate around the climate catastrophe is that 172 countries – mostly the poorer nations – have already developed national adaptation plans, policies and strategies.

But as UNEP’s report points out, one fifth of these plans are outdated due to weak institutional frameworks, limited technical capacity, lack of access to climate data and funding that is both unpredictable and delayed. For the poorer nations, the obstacle is less political apathy than resource constraints.

Even when they try to prepare for the worst, they cannot secure the resources needed to do the work properly. This chronic underfunding reduces the whole process to a hollow ritual: documents are produced for compliance.

As climate debt is put on the table, claims are made that green finance will attract private capital. But this, too, is a myth. UNEP’s report shows that private sector investment in adaptation is less than $5 billion, and that even in the best-case scenario private capital will not raise more than $50 billion a year for adaptation (far less than what is needed).

In practice, private financiers only enter adaptation projects when public funds are used to guarantee or subsidise their returns – so-called innovative finance or blended finance mechanisms designed to “de-risk” private investment.

So, in the end, the cost is borne by the treasuries of the poorer nations, whose governments effectively underwrite the money they borrow to fund adaptation projects that private investors consider too risky without such guarantees.

As we argued in dossier No. 93 (October 2025), The Environmental Crisis Is a Capitalist Crisis, this model of green finance entrenches rather than resolves the climate debt owed to the Global South.

This year, members of the institute went to Belém for COP30. They took part in the People’s Summit Towards COP30 — held from Nov. 12 to 16, to confront the official conference — where they shared the findings of dossier no. 93.

After the summit — which brought together over 25,000 participants and more than 1,200 organisations — Tricontinental’s Nuestra América office asked Bárbara Loureiro of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) to write a newsletter on COP30.

In her letter she wrote that the “invisible general” of the proceedings was the Brazilian agribusiness industry, which sought to greenwash its practices, expand its access to public funds, and shift the debate from mitigation to rebranding.

Watching the proceedings inside the hall of the official COP nevertheless raises a simple question: is it worth being part of the process or should we just let the COP regime die? There are three key reasons why it is important to continue to engage with the COP process:

• COP provides a global stage where the Global South can demand reparations, loss and damage finance, and adaptation support. It is at COP that the argument can be made against climate debt finance and against voluntary targets. COP is not a site of salvation, but it can still be a site of struggle.
• COP allows the Global South to maintain the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” established in the Rio Declaration at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992).
• COP forces the wealthy states to negotiate in the open rather than retreat to backrooms, where climate governance would be taken fully into the hands of private capital and the informality of the rich. The fight over the meaning of climate finance (either as debt or as reparations) can remain in the open.

After COP30 I asked Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth why he thought it was worth fighting in the streets outside the halls of the COP. 

For Asad the first battle is to convince the climate movement to accept that the fight is not about fossil fuel use alone but about a crisis in our economies and societies, which must be transformed. At the same time, he told me, “There is actually some hope.”

This is because the climate movement is saying that the problem is not a lack of finance but a lack of political will. The finance is available (as the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development argues in a new report, All Roads Lead to Reform: A Financial System Fit to Mobilise $1.3 Trillion for Climate Finance).

While COP30 was taking place there was a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, of the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, where the richest countries blocked progress on a fair corporate tax that would make polluters pay for the environmental damage they cause.

If implemented, such a tax could raise $500 billion per year, a good start toward climate reparations. Yet just as the Global North insists that there is no money for climate finance, NATO countries agree to increase military spending to 5 percent of GDP — even as there is clear evidence that militarism is a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions.

“To see the climate movement arguing for debt cancellation, for wealth taxes, and for reforming the trade rules is a positive move,” Asad said. “Now, the climate movement is beginning to understand that this is an economic question. This is a paradigm shift.”

In her letter for the Nuestra América office the MST’s Loureiro described COP30 as a mirror with two sides:

“on one side, the celebration of the so-called ‘market solutions’ and financial decarbonisation; on the other… the growing strength of the popular movement, which made Belém a territory for denunciation, internationalist solidarity, and the construction of real alternatives’.

In her conclusion she calls on us to understand the climate catastrophe as a site of class struggle, one that can only be overcome beyond capitalism:

“There is no real way out of the climate crisis without a rupture with the capitalist model, and there is no possible rupture without popular organisation, without collective struggle, and without confronting the structures that profit from devastation.”

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

7 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

For the first time in the history of the U.S.–Israel relationship, Washington has moved beyond arming, funding, and diplomatically shielding Israeli violence and has instead inserted its own military personnel, intelligence systems, and command structures into Israel’s war machine. It is doing so through a two-center mechanism that places U.S. military coordination on the ground while projecting civilian oversight through an international hub.

This essay traces the transformation across three dimensions: the strategic expansion of U.S. control over Israel’s battlefield decisions, the reduction of Arab and international agency to decorative multilateralism, and the recasting of Gaza from a site of national liberation into a permanently administered humanitarian problem. And yet, even within this daunting architecture of military, diplomatic, and bureaucratic force, Palestinians still retain points of leverage — narrow but real spaces in which to act, disrupt, and reassert political agency. Diagnosis alone is insufficient. The final section sets out concrete counter-moves — legal, diplomatic, institutional, and political — that Palestinians and their allies can deploy to expose the fragility of a trusteeship built without consent.

I. The Ceasefire Oversight Farce

For seventy-five years, the U.S.–Israel military relationship rested on distance: Washington armed, funded, and shielded; Israel acted. That distance has now collapsed. Roughly 200 U.S. personnel operate around the clock inside Israel, and on paper their mandate includes monitoring the ceasefire — watching Israeli conduct in real time. But this presence has neither curbed nor penalized Israeli violations. The shift from enablement to “oversight” is cosmetic; the structure of impunity remains intact.

The Civil–Military Coordination Center (CMCC), a CENTCOM-led hub located in a secure facility inside Israel, is the core of this new arrangement. Equipped with independent drone feeds, satellite imagery, and signals intelligence, it is the first disclosed American military institution built inside Israel with an explicit mandate to track ceasefire compliance and humanitarian access. U.S. reconnaissance flights now generate the primary operational picture around Khan Younis; American officers, not Israeli liaisons, feed coordination data into the battlefield. Every aid convoy, corridor, and “pause” is routed through a U.S.-run room. What is presented as monitoring is, in practice, immersion.

This immersion in Israeli operations is the essence of tutelage. As Palestinian analyst Rami al-Shaqra notes, since October 2023 “the administrative decision over what happens in the occupied Palestinian territories has become American par excellence.” Even the Trump-aligned admission that they are “more careful about Israel’s interests than the Israeli government itself” exposes the logic plainly: Washington sees itself as the responsible adult in the room, supervising a client it refuses to restrain.

Yet this tutelage is performed without the only form of leverage that could alter Israeli behavior — conditioning military aid. Instead of pressure, Washington has chosen proximity. The result is a hybrid in which Israel retains formal sovereignty and the final trigger, but the tempo and political sustainability of its violence are increasingly shaped by American officers watching their screens in Tel Aviv and Tampa.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the management of the ceasefire. Since the nominal 10 October 2025 ceasefire, Israeli forces have repeatedly violated it through drone strikes, raids, and targeted assassinations, killing more than 360 Palestinians, including 70 children. Rather than treating each breach as a violation demanding enforcement, the CMCC folds it into the system as a logistical disturbance to be managed. When an Israeli drone strike kills civilians — as in the 29 November 2025 attack in Beni Suhaila that killed two children gathering firewood — the incident is reclassified as an “operational irregularity.” Aid convoys are rescheduled, corridors rerouted, and diplomatic messaging recalibrated to insist the ceasefire “remains broadly intact.”

For Palestinians, each violation is another layer of deprivation normalized as coordination. For Israel, each violation is politically costless, its consequences absorbed by an American-run system that manages fallout rather than restraining the trigger. Oversight is now the mechanism through which Israeli impunity is reproduced — until the watched begin to watch the watchers, and the managed refuse to be managed.

II. The Multilateral Façade: Forty Nations with No Authority

The International Gaza Coordination and Monitoring Center (ICMC), housed across the border in Egypt near Rafah and al-Arish, is presented as the civilian face of Phase Two of Trump’s ceasefire plan. It is a forty-nation “hub” meant to project multilateral legitimacy. In principle, multilateralism implies cooperation under shared rules and institutions, distributing authority through collective decision-making. In practice here, it has been hollowed out: diplomats from Europe, North America, and a handful of Arab capitals sit in air-conditioned rooms, issuing press releases about humanitarian corridors and security-sector reform, while real authority over borders, airspace, and the use of force remains exclusively Israeli.

On paper, the mandate looks sweeping — supervise aid entry, monitor corridors, liaise with an interim administration, facilitate disarmament. Yet each task assumes conditions that do not exist: low violence, fixed lines of control, a legitimate Palestinian governing partner, and Israeli willingness to accept binding limits. None are present. Israel’s violence never ended in Gaza or the West Bank. Aid trucks cleared by the hub still rot for days at Rafah under shifting Israeli “dual-use” criteria — a moving standard that allows Israel to recast civilian goods and spaces as military threats whenever convenient. Maritime corridors from Cyprus deliver symbolic quantities while land routes — the only ones that matter — remain choked.

Arab states have been deliberately relegated to logistical subcontractors. As one Egyptian diplomat admitted, “We control Rafah, we train police, but we are not consulted on who governs Gaza.” Qatar and the UAE provide funds and mediation but refuse troop deployments; a Qatari official told Reuters, “Our role is financial and political, not military.” Saudi Arabia has withheld engagement until there is a time-bound path to statehood… The region that will live with the consequences has thus been reduced to observer status inside its own crisis.

Egypt’s position exposes the imbalance most clearly. Cairo is operationally indispensable — co-sponsor of negotiations, host of Sinai infrastructure, controller of Rafah, anchor of Gaza’s logistics, and trainer (with Jordan) of Palestinian police units. This gives Egypt leverage, which Egyptian analysts openly acknowledge, yet Cairo remains wary of troop commitments that would entangle it in enforcing an externally designed order and absorbing its political costs. Egypt enables the system; it does not design it.
Qatar’s role is narrower: financier and mediator, not enforcer. Officials in Doha stress that funding has never been the obstacle — access has — and warn against treating Gaza as a technical management problem severed from a political horizon.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states close the circle. Draft U.S. proposals to authorize a stabilization force and Board of Peace have drawn sustained concern over vague sovereignty language and sweeping authority vested in an externally controlled body. The UAE has declined participation without a UN-backed legal mandate, while Saudi Arabia ties any engagement to explicit, time-bound commitments to Palestinian statehood. Gulf capitals are willing to finance reconstruction and provide diplomatic backing, but they withhold troops and enforcement roles by design.

European and non-Arab states mirror this pattern. EU officials have admitted that the CMCC lacks Palestinian representation, stressing that “there’s no Gazans there, there’s no Palestinians” in the monitoring process. The UK, Japan, Canada, and others have signed joint statements demanding Israel comply with humanitarian law and allow sufficient aid, but none have offered troops or binding enforcement. Their role is limited to funding, diplomatic pressure, and symbolic presence inside the forty-nation hub.

Despite their reservations… the forty states said nothing when Trump announced that “phase two is going to happen pretty soon.” No objections. No conditions. No delay. They know there is no ceasefire, no fixed lines, no Palestinian partner, no enforcement. They move anyway.

What ties the CMCC and the ICMC together is a shared political purpose: to convert Palestine from a question of rights and self-determination into a technical problem of governance, security, and humanitarian management. The priority is to confine Palestinian political agency, not to enable it. This is the political essence of the trusteeship: a sequence — stabilization → interim administration → disarmament → reconstruction — in which every phase defers the next, ensuring Palestinian political agency remains perpetually “not yet ready.”

The Board of Peace, the technocratic committees, the vetted police units — all exist to administer Palestinians, not to represent them. If the CMCC is Washington’s war room, the ICMC is its civilian façade — a stage on which international actors perform coordination without authority.

III. Institutional Incoherence in Practice

Institutional incoherence is visible the moment the system begins to operate. Each component — military, diplomatic, humanitarian — moves according to a different logic, producing a structure that generates activity without alignment, authority, or a shared understanding of what the system is meant to achieve.

1. The military track: expansion without strategy
   By late November 2025, the CMCC had grown into a warehouse-sized operations floor, its massive real-time map and daily agenda fed by U.S. drone, satellite, and signals-intelligence streams. Reporters visiting on 20–24 November 2025 described a center that had already expanded to include “nearly 50 countries and organizations,” even as Israeli strikes continued. The military logic is straightforward: expand surveillance, expand coordination, expand presence. It treats volatility as a technical problem to be monitored, not a political crisis to be resolved.
2. The diplomatic track: performance without leverage
   Diplomatically, the system performs consensus it cannot produce. CENTCOM’s 17 October 2025 framing of the CMCC as a hub for “stabilization efforts” presumes conditions — ceasefire enforcement, fixed lines, a Palestinian counterpart — that do not exist. Diplomats continue to speak the language of progress while the military track grows in ways that contradict the very idea of a negotiated settlement. The diplomatic logic is theatrical: maintain the appearance of multilateral agreement while avoiding the confrontations required to build it.
3. The humanitarian track: improvisation under shifting rules
   Humanitarian actors operate under a different logic entirely — one shaped by collapsing institutions and constantly shifting access rules. On 28 November 2025, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation abruptly shut down, deepening the access crisis just as the CMCC assumed control of aid movement. Aid groups described a “severe access gap” as every convoy became dependent on Israeli clearance and rules that changed by the hour. The humanitarian logic is reactive and improvisational, shaped by constraints it cannot influence.
4. The outcome: a system that cannot cohere
   These logics do not converge. The military track expands control; the diplomatic track performs consensus; the humanitarian track struggles to function. Mandates contradict one another, responsibilities overlap, and every actor assumes another is enforcing what no one is enforcing. The system produces motion without direction — an apparatus that manages symptoms it cannot resolve and performs order it cannot impose.

IV. Counter-Moves: How to Break the Trusteeship (Risks & Mitigations)

Refusal remains the most powerful weapon Palestinians have ever had. Now is the time to wield it without compromise and without pause.

1. Legal asphyxiation at the ICC and ICJ
   The strongest lever remains international law, but wielding it invites retaliation. Israel and the United States have already threatened sanctions against ICC personnel and cooperating states, and any new ICJ case on the trusteeship itself would be portrayed as “lawfare” to justify escalation. Mitigation: file through a coalition of 30–40 states so that sanctions become politically and economically impossible. Pre-publish the entire evidentiary package — CMCC drone logs, post-ceasefire victim testimonies, U.S.-approved targeting data — so that any retaliation is immediately seen as obstruction of justice. Quietly secure Chinese and Russian commitments not to veto a future Chapter VII resolution.

Who/How/When: Palestine’s legal team (Ammar Hijazi + Raji Sourani) + South Africa (Minister Ronald Lamola) + Malaysia (PM Anwar’s envoy) coordinate the text in a closed Pretoria meeting January 2026; 35-state joint ICJ request is tabled at UNGA February 2026; Al-Haq/B’Tselem deliver sealed ICC dossiers to Prosecutor Khan simultaneously.

2. Coordinated Arab diplomatic rupture
   An ultimatum from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia would force Washington to choose between its Arab order and its Israel policy, but the immediate price could be brutal: withheld U.S. arms to Egypt, secondary sanctions, or threats to Camp David funding. Mitigation: the three capitals must move together and publicly. One country alone gets crushed; three acting in concert are untouchable. Frame the rupture as defence of Arab national security against “Iranian chaos.” Riyadh and Doha have already discussed a six-month financial backstop.

Who/How/When: Sisi’s national-security adviser, King Abdullah II, and MBS meet secretly in Sharm el-Sheikh or NEOM January 2026; joint 90-day ultimatum letter is hand-delivered to the White House 1 February 2026; $15 bn Arab Solidarity Fund activates automatically if U.S. retaliates.

3. Total Palestinian institutional refusal
   Blanket non-cooperation risks Israel punishing the entire population by cutting electricity, fuel, salaries, and aid. Mitigation: pre-stockpile three months of essentials, publish collaborators’ names instantly, and activate parallel popular committees from day one.

Who/How/When: Unified National Leadership for Popular Resistance (Hamas + Fatah + IJ + PFLP + unions) issues signed public pledge in Gaza City (livestreamed) 20 December 2025; collaborator lists go live on Telegram same day; popular committees already operating in camps declare themselves sole legitimate authority 1 January 2026; Egyptian/Jordanian Red Crescent warehouses open buffers the moment Israel tightens siege.

4. BDS 2.0 against U.S. contractors
   Targeting Anduril, Palantir, Constellis, etc. will trigger lawsuits and anti-BDS laws. Mitigation: start in Europe and Global South, use shareholder resolutions, pair every campaign with geolocated killing footage.

Who/How/When: BDS National Committee + IfNotNow/JVP + ECCO launch public database cmcc-profiteers.org on 1 February 2026; first divestment demands hit Norway’s $1.7 tn fund and Dutch ABP pension fund 15 February 2026; footage-verification unit run by 7amleh publishes weekly evidence packets.

5. Narrative disruption — the “Gaza Live” platform
   Real-time footage risks bans and “Pallywood” smears. Mitigation: decentralized infrastructure, triple-verification protocol, pre-funded legal defense.

Who/How/When: 7amleh + Syrian Archive tech team + Al Jazeera innovation lab launch the 24/7 platform 1 January 2026 on Mastodon/IPFS + 200 Starlink terminals already inside Gaza; triple-verified clips are pushed by 200 trusted creators who survived 2023–25; London/Dublin legal fund (already seeded by Qatar) activates day one.

6. Exploiting the European fracture
   Suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement will hit German-Dutch vetoes. Mitigation: start with unilateral national bans by recognizing states, then force Brussels to follow.

Who/How/When: Spanish PM Sánchez, Irish Taoiseach Harris, Norwegian FM Eide, Belgian and Slovenian counterparts hold joint Madrid press conference 10 March 2026 announcing immediate national bans on settlement goods and CMCC-linked companies; joint letter invoking Article 2 is sent to von der Leyen same day.

7. Poisoning the reconstruction funding pipeline
   Gulf donors could cave under U.S. pressure. Mitigation: lock the money in a Palestinian-vetoed escrow and hold donors publicly to their 2025 pledges.

Who/How/When: Qatar’s Deputy PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman and Saudi Finance Minister al-Jadaan issue joint written declaration (already drafted November 2025) on 1 February 2026 freezing every dollar; Palestinian-controlled escrow account at Qatar National Bank or Credit Suisse Zürich is activated same week with public disbursement conditions (e.g., Netzarim corridor evacuation).

8. Convening a Third Palestinian National Council in exile
   A democratic PNC including Hamas and IJ will be branded “terrorist.” Mitigation: host in a protected state, invite UN observers, base program on unassailable 1988/2006 documents.

Who/How/When: PLO Executive + Hamas political bureau + diaspora networks choose Algeria or South Africa as venue by 15 January 2026; secure online + in-person voting opens 1 March 2026 across refugee camps and diaspora; 1,000-delegate congress convenes and is livestreamed June 2026; first resolution dissolves all trusteeship bodies and reaffirms PLO sole representation.

Taken together, these eight lines of pressure share one strategic logic: make the occupation’s sophisticated new management structure politically radioactive, diplomatically unsustainable, and financially ruinous.

Trusteeship survives by appearing inevitable. Counter-moves work by turning the trusteeship from ‘inevitable’ into ‘unbearable.’

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

7 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Wim Laven

Ceasefire? Peace in the Middle East? Ask a Gazan about it (well, not one of the 360 or more that the IDF has killed during the “ceasefire”). Ask the UN, which said 10 days ago that Israel is blocking most of the desperately needed aid (food, shelter, medical) to simply keep people alive as winter descends.

According to a February 2025 assessment in Gaza, about 92% of housing units in Gaza were unfit for use, either completely destroyed or severely damaged, and almost two million people in need of essential household items and emergency shelter. Nine additional months of bombardment and displacement has intensified and deepened the crisis.

In late 2024 only about 23% of winter-shelter needs had been met, and a million displaced Palestinians were at grave risk during cold, wet weather. Humanitarian doctors warn: “Babies are at higher risk of dying from severe cold as they generate less heat than adults. Hunger compounds the risks.”

Cold winter nights mean the trickle of aid is insufficient for the needs. Gaza’s winters are not extreme by global standards—but winter is lethal when relief tents are flooded, blankets are in short supply, and there is no gas for heat.

The “ceasefire” to the two-year war did not put an end to the humanitarian crisis. Opaque processes that, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, breach international law continue to severely restrict aid flows into Gaza. Detailing that enough food, tents and other essentials to fill the equivalent of up to 6,000 trucks is ready for delivery but:

“As winter approaches and famine continues to grip the population, it is critical that all this aid is allowed into Gaza without delay. Our supplies would be able to provide food … for the entire population for about three months. And that is sitting outside [in Jordan and Egypt], not able to come in. And that is the case for the other UN agencies because the restrictions and the constraints are still there.”

International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits starvation and exposure as methods of warfare. The guise of restraint and false claims of peace ring hollow when infants and children die of hypothermia in the tent camps they have called home for three years. Nighttime lows in Gaza during December often fall into the 40s, with heavy rains and flooding compounding the danger. These conditions can quickly kill malnourished children.

The loosely worded agreement, rushed to headlines by Trump, provided ambiguity and wiggle room that allows continued inhumanity or fails to enforce or implement a credible humanitarian response. Trump’s 20-point deal called for and promised “full aid” but clearly the meager amount reaching the devastated territory is grossly insufficient. A good deal would have included essential features of enforcement, timelines, and penalties to ensure real humanitarian commitments.

Human survival changes in different environments. Starvation can kill in 30 days, dehydration in three days, and hypothermia (in damp, cold, windy conditions) in just an hour or two when people do not have adequate shelter.

Camps of battered tents and soaked mattresses are testament to the blocked and delayed shipments of aid. Every child who freezes to death is an indictment—another life that could have been valued and protected in a real ceasefire and peace process.

The deal melts away without unrestricted humanitarian access and shelter materials. Trump did not negotiate roofs over their heads, dry ground under their feet, or warmth through the night. Winter is the most predictable party in this war, an aid to all those who wish for the extermination of Gazans.

Instead of taking bows and victory laps, it is time to renew humanitarian reality. The cold does not negotiate and is exposing Trump’s theatrics. It is too late for a mere conversation about housing; the need demands it. I assure you, those in the cold do not consider it a peace deal at all.

A ceasefire without shelter is not peace, it is killing by different means, and Trump’s deal leaves millions exposed. Until children can sleep under roofs instead of tarps and tents, the war has not ended, no matter what the headlines claim. Trump’s ceasefire looks more like abandonment.

Wim Laven teaches courses in political science and conflict resolution.

7 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

Israel and its partners continue waging genocide against Palestinian people. Those who, so far, have survived the hideous attacks since October 7, 2023, now face ongoing jeopardy. Hemmed in by yet another military border, over two million Palestinians in “East Gaza” live amid rubble, unexploded ordnance, decaying corpses, starvation conditions, and the uncertainties of inhabiting makeshift homes without sewage, sanitation, clean water, or protection against harsh winter weather. A saddening certainty was hammered home on November 17, 2025, when not a single country stood up for them at the United Nations. The Security Council resolved to accept President Trump’s plan for Gaza’s future, a proposal which makes no effort to hold Israel and the U.S. accountable, in the near term, for war crimes and relentless ethnic cleansing.

Anticipating what some call the “Gazafication” of the West Bank, human rights groups are calling on the Israeli military to cease their attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps. Most recently, the Israeli Defense Forces raided homes in the governorate of Tubas after expelling more than twenty families from the besieged Al Far’a refugee camp.

Throughout the world, nations continue trading with Israel, perpetuating a status quo that flaunts international law. While the U.S. sanctions International Criminal Court judges for ruling against Israeli settlers who illegally occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank, the settlers have intensified their brutality, descending on Bedouin communities, villagers grazing their flocks, and Palestinians aiming to harvest olive tree crops.

Using jeeps, bulldozers, ATVs, rifles, and other equipment supplied by the Israeli government and military, settlers beat civilians with clubs, torch vehicles, steal livestock, and demolish homes.

This violence is not a fringe phenomenon. It is deliberate, escalatory. Shunning all international condemnation, it is ethnic cleansing aimed at involuntary population transfer and, unless disrupted, mass atrocities. The Israeli military throws up its hands at settler violence, but many of the settlers are Israeli military who commit vigilante actions, return to their homes, don Israeli military uniforms, and go back to the very places they have attacked to arrest the victims, blaming them for causing the unrest or for unrelated alleged violations of Israeli law. Fear of imprisonment and torture adds another layer of violence to entrap Palestinians refusing to leave their land.

Those Israeli outposts and settlements already constructed occupy vast stretches of land, akin to suburbs in the United States. They monopolize the best land and the readiest supplies of water for drinking or farming. They connect with segregated highways, designated for use only by Israelis. Settlers and their government leaders fully intend to expand further, accomplishing “Greater Israel.”

Amid the grotesque injustices in Israel, a Palestinian youngster can be sentenced to three years in prison for picking up a rock, while an Israeli youngster in trouble with his school or community or both can be sentenced to a settler outpost where extremist leaders will urge him to attack defenseless villagers, all in the name of racial supremacy and fulfillment of divine command. Israel gives itself a little quiet from youth delinquency by shipping troubled youth wholesale off to the West Bank. There, they can turn their rage upon Palestinians and international observers.

In 1999, Ariel Sharon, as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, avowed Israel would seize all the hilltops in Palestine. Named for Ariel Sharon’s infamous call to turn strategic heights i not “facts on the ground,” the “Hilltop Youth” are bent on creating new facts: demolished homes, seized lands, ground turned black from fire or red from blood.

Why is there no accountability for settler terrorism? The UN office of the High Commission for Human Rights calls the settler attacks abhorrent. “Permanently displacing the Palestinian population within occupied territory amounts to unlawful transfer, which is a war crime,” says a November 14, 2025, press briefing from the UNHCR. “The transfer by Israel of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies also amounts to a war crime.”

Yet, the Hilltop Youth can point to Israeli right-wing leaders in the highest echelons of government who urge continued assaults against non-Jews, regarding them as sub-human.

“The ruling order in Palestine doesn’t see settler terror as a crime,” writes an independent journalist, Andrey X, who has spent three years with unarmed civilian protectors in the West Bank. “Settler terror is an essential part of the state project,” he adds, regarding the Hilltop Youth as Israel’s frontline soldiers. In encouraging these young militants, some of whom are underage, the Israeli leadership is condoning what could be deemed the use of child soldiers.

Activists with various unarmed civilian protection groups witness and record local offenses, at great personal risk. One activist who, for security reasons, cannot be named, is trained to look assailants in the eye while deescalating (or attempting to deescalate) confrontations, in part to keep tabs on which personalities have newly arrived to repress Palestinian neighbors.

During Israel’s most recent Rosh Hashanah celebration, near an outpost about a kilometer up the mountain, Jonas was assailed by an angered youth apparently visiting for the holiday. Gingerly backing away up a rocky incline as the young lad hurled stones at him, Jonas remembers keeping eye contact and gently remonstrating with him. “You know,” he said, “You don’t have to do this … Did anyone ever teach you to attack old men?” One expertly hurled rock (“he could have been a good shortstop,” Jonas told me later) hit so close to the bone that Jonas had to be hospitalized for a hematoma.

Nevertheless, Jonas is quite privileged compared to Palestinians who wouldn’t have access to similar health care or a passport that enables departure.

Jonas says one person in local Palestinian communities usually serves as a point of contact, on a WhatsApp line, for the entire village. In the event of an Israeli incursion, people contact him and when he contacts the international observers, they quickly send a team. Any of the villagers’ watch dogs will most likely have already been shot. At least six days a week, young settlers will drive their goats and sheep down the hill from the outpost into the villagers’ yards and try, behind the shelter of guns, to drive the sheep and goats into the villagers’ living quarters. While kids are getting ready for school and households rise, going about their regular life, the settlers drive their sheep and goats directly into the houses, sometimes entering also into the sheep and goat pens of the villagers. Then, settlers claim all the livestock as their own, stealing the villagers’ livelihoods, as they herd the animals out of the village and back to their settlement. An international team may help prevent the pernicious process.

Unarmed westerners accompanying villagers risk deportation if they make an official complaint. Israelis on other teams can make complaints, but with zero observable effect. Even the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), were they inclined to, would have little impact on the settlers: one of Jonas’s friends heard of a settler who claimed, “I have automatic weapons in my house, and they’re for the IDF if they try to move me out.”

Lest we forget, the Israeli government has basically told the world that it has nuclear weapons inside their Negev desert facilities, and they could use these annihilatory weapons against anyone that tries to stop Israel from establishing an ever-increasing apartheid state.

The current Trump-ordained quiet, so far from being a peace, appears doomed. Since October 10, Israel has violated the terms of the agreement more than 500 times.

In Gaza there is no peace: the brief quiet, punctuated as ever by Israeli gunfire and aerial attacks, is the quiet of a mass grave that cannot begin to be unearthed until Israel allows the land-moving equipment in.

Jonas, who has spent decades as an international activist in conflict and war zones, says he has never before seen the systemic cruelty perpetrated by Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza.

But, the violence may come home to the UN General Assembly members choosing quiet observation. And, if we take the new dispensation as reason to fall silent, we may end up being silent for a long, long time.

A version of this article first appeared on The Progressive Magazine website.

UN Info-Graphic : West Bank, Violence, Destruction and Displacement [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1785qhm0ppP-4FDTHVN1sa2X21A7MoS9LmLSyr5lkw2A/edit?usp=sharing]

Kathy Kelly, (Kathy.vcnv@gmail.com), is board president of World BEYOND War. Her activism has frequently taken her to war zones and prisons.

7 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By JONATHAN COOK

Anyone wondering why the British state and media, despite the latter’s pretension to serve as a watchdog on power, continue to cheerlead Israel’s genocidal slaughter of civilians in Gaza will find the answers in a new film.

It recounts not the current period of history, but a story from nearly 90 years ago.

Palestine 36, directed by the remarkable Palestinian film-maker Annemarie Jacir, illuminates more about the events unfolding for the past two years in Gaza than anything you will read in a British newspaper or watch on the BBC—if, that is, you can find anything at all about Gaza in the news since Donald Trump rebranded the killing and dispossession of Palestinians as a “ceasefire.”

And Palestine 36 does so, unusually for a Palestinian film, with a budget worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster and with a cast that includes names recognisable to western audiences, from Jeremy Irons to Liam Cunningham.

This is a major episode of British colonial history told not through British eyes but, for once, through the eyes of its victims.

The “36” of the title refers to 1936, when Palestinians rose up against British colonial tyranny—more usually, and deceitfully, referred to as a “British Mandate” issued by the League of Nations.

The problem for Palestinians was not just the systematic violence of those three decades of tyranny. It was that Britain’s role as a supposed caretaker of Palestine—an “arbiter of peace” between native Palestinians and mostly Jewish immigrants—served as cover for a much more sinister project.

It was British officials who ushered Jews out of Europe—where they were unwanted by racist governments, including Britain’s—to implant them in Palestine. There, they were actively nurtured as the foot soldiers of a coming “Jewish state” that was supposed to be dependent on Britain and assist in strengthening its imperial, regional agenda.

In effect, an overstretched British empire hoped over time to outsource its colonial role to a “Jewish” fortress state.

Anti-colonial struggle

One of Britain’s top priorities was crushing an Arab nationalism sweeping an area of the Middle East known as the Levant in response to British and French colonial rule.

Arab nationalism was a secular, unifying political ideology that sought to overcome the arbitrary borders imposed by the colonial powers, and strengthen Arab identity in opposition to foreign occupation. It was profoundly anti-colonial, which is why Britain and France were so deeply hostile to it.

The Palestinians were critically important to Arab nationalism because their homeland served as a geographical bridgehead between the powerhouses of Arab nationalism in Lebanon and Syria to the north, and Egypt to the south.

For the British, the impulse for liberation in Palestine had to be snuffed out at all costs. However, the increasing brutality of British despotism simply fed an insurgency that by 1936 solidified into what westerners term a three-year “Arab Revolt” and Palestinians call their very “First Intifada”, or uprising.

Later, there would be years-long, large-scale Palestinian uprisings—this time against Israel’s even more repressive brand of settler colonialism—that erupted in 1987 and again in 2000.

The 1936-39 Revolt grew so large that at its height, according to Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, Britain briefly had more British soldiers stationed in tiny Palestine than in the whole of India.

This is the story recounted by Palestine 36—one that British schoolchildren are never taught, and one that the British media never offer as context for today’s crimes in historic Palestine.

Which is why Britons watching the film are likely not only to be shocked by the extent and nature of Britain’s colonial violence but to see in those savage events a premonition of what is now unfolding in Gaza.

War crimes training

There are small sections of the Palestinian solidarity movement quick to condemn Israel’s brutality towards Palestinians as something exceptional, as something peculiar to Israel and its rationalising ideology of Zionism.

Jacir’s film is a potent reminder of how foolish this approach is.

Israel’s current colonial violence is simply a more sophisticated, more hi-tech version of the techniques employed by British colonialism nearly a century ago. The Israeli military learnt from the British—quite literally.

One of the main characters in Palestine 36 is the British officer Orde Wingate, who carried out night raids on Palestinian villages to terrify their inhabitants. Wingate organised punishment squads, comprised of British soldiers and recently arrived Jewish militia members, to conduct these raids.

The training he offered to the Jewish militias in British military colonial strategy and hybrid warfare would later serve as the Israeli military’s playbook.

The death of Wingate in 1944 in a plane crash in Burma was lamented by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father. He commented that, had Wingate survived, he might have served as Israel’s first military chief of staff.

The film shows Wingate committing routine war crimes: using a Palestinian child as a human shield; rounding up women and children to put them in an open-air, barbed-wire camp, depriving them of water in the midday heat; burning Palestinian crops; blowing up a bus of Palestinian men he had arbitrarily detained.

Meanwhile, British colonial police officer Charles Tegart imported into Palestine militarised forts of a type he had earlier devised and constructed across India to put down the uprisings there.

These forts would become the blueprint for Israel’s series of steel and concrete walls and checkpoints that have fragmented historic Palestine, and caged much of the Palestinian population into prisons—including the largest, Gaza.

Watching Palestine 36, it is hard not be reminded—as we see Palestinians ritually humiliated, abused and killed by the British, supposedly to instil obedience—why each Palestinian generation has grown more radicalised and more desperate.

Britain’s vicious, colonial repression of the three-year uprising of 1936 led ultimately to Hamas’ violent one-day jail-break on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s genocidal, colonial rampage in response.

Israel’s genocide will no more pacify this generation of Palestinians than Wingate’s crushing of the Arab Revolt did to an earlier generation. It will simply deepen the wounds—and a collective will to resist.

Ideological zealotry

Importantly, the film also grapples with—if more obliquely—Britain’s contribution to an ideological zealotry usually attributed to Israel.

Wingate’s fervent subjugation of the Palestinian people and his view of them as little more than animals, as well as his passionate attachment to the Jewish people, were rooted in the ideology of Zionism.

All too often overlooked is the fact that Zionism long predates its modern-day incarnation as Jewish nationalism.

Wingate followed in a long tradition of influential European Christian Zionists, who believed that Biblical prophecy would be advanced by “restoring” the Jewish people to their ancient homeland. Only then, in a supposed “end times,” would the stage be set for Christ to return and establish his kingdom on earth.

Lord Balfour—he of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that promised a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine—was another prominent British Christian Zionist.

The Palestinian people—many of whom, genetic studies suggest, are descended from the ancient Canaanites living in the region thousands of years ago, and who subsequently converted to Christianity and Islam—were viewed by Christian Zionists like Wingate as little more than an obstacle to the realisation of divine prophecy.

If they would not obey God’s will by clearing themselves out of their own homeland to make way for the Jewish people, then they would have to be forced to do so.

The Zionism of Israelis, as poll after poll shows, has led them in a similar, racist direction to Wingate: large numbers support ethnic cleansing and the genocide of Palestinians.

Social media posts by Israeli soldiers openly revel in their depraved treatment of Gaza’s people.

“Not fully human”

Which brings us back to the present day.

Film reviews in the British press of Palestine 36 have been, at best, lukewarm. Even the supposedly liberal Guardian damns it as “heartfelt”—as if mollifying a child over a second-rate school essay.

That should not surprise us. The British establishment—just like the US one that took on the mantle of global policeman from Britain after the Second World War—still treats Arab nationalism as a threat.

It still views Israel as a vital colonial outpost. It still regards Palestine as a testing ground for techniques of surveillance and counter-insurgency. It still views the Palestinians as not fully human.

Which is why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer—sounding like a modern version of Wingate, reinvented as a politician—was unabashed in defending Israel’s decision to deprive the people of Gaza, including its one million children, of food, water and power. That is, to starve them in violation of the fundamentals of international law.

It is why Starmer and the British establishment keep shipping arms to Israel and supplying it with the intelligence it has been using to target civilians. It is why Starmer welcomed to Downing Street Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who rationalised the genocide by stating there were no “uninvolved” civilians in Gaza.

It is why the British army is still training Israeli military officers in the UK, just as Wingate did with their predecessors. And it is why British officers still head to Israel to learn from its genocidal military.

It is why Britain still offers Israel diplomatic protection, and why it has threatened the International Criminal Court for seeking to hold Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to account for committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

And it is why Starmer and his government have changed the definition of terrorism to criminalise Britons who express opposition to the genocide in Gaza.

The truth is we cannot look to our government, schools or our media to educate us about British colonial history, whether in Palestine or in any of the other places around the globe Britain has tyrannised.

Instead, we must start listening to the victims of our violence, if we are ever to understand not just the past, but the present too.

8 December 2025

Source: savageminds.substack.com

By mandissent.com

Via Dropsite

“This is not the first genocide in human history. This is at least the third genocide, if not the fourth or the fifth that occurs in my lifetime. This is the first genocide that awakened global conscience and global response. Palestine is allowing us to see what the law becomes when it is in the hands of power. Palestine is allowing us to see what connects all injustices, what happens to Yemen, to Sudan, to Congo, and including in places where poverty has not been so rooted as it is today for a long time, including in the West, we have a common enemy, and we need to face it where politics is at the service of economic interests.”

That was Francesca Albanese (@FranceskAlbs), the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, during the closing panel of the Doha Forum 2025, which focused on the global collapse of trust in governments and institutions and the meaning of justice.

Speaking on Gaza and Palestine, Albanese called the situation “apocalyptic,” saying it has exposed not a failure of international law itself, but a total political collapse of moral accountability. She said the delayed UN ceasefire vote, followed by Israel using the ceasefire to continue what the genocide did not finish, showed how international mechanisms have been hollowed out by power and impunity. She said Gaza has revealed Western hypocrisy and a deeper dishonesty at the core of the global system.

At the same time, Albanese noted Palestine has also sparked a global awakening, driven by youth, workers, and civil servants who mobilized across the former settler colonial states US, in Europe, and beyond. She addressed the unprecedented US sanctions imposed on her, calling them illegal and a violation of the UN Charter. “What I am left with is my dignity and my voice,” she said. “I will not be silenced while I still have breath in my lungs.”

Ending on a call to action, Albanese said the International Court of Justice has already made the legal path clear: Israel must end the occupation, withdraw its forces, dismantle settlements, and stop exploiting Palestinian resources. Justice, she noted, demands nothing less.

8 December 2025

Source: mandissent.com

By nlginternational

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: Wednesday, December 10

Press Conference: 2:00 PM

Location: Solidarity Center, 121 West 27th, Suite 404, 4th Floor, NY, NY, 10001

Contact: Suzanne Adely, Tel. (773) 510-7446; Corinna Mullin, Tel. (929) 342-8139

U.S. Solidarity Delegation Blocked From Traveling to Venezuela by Illegal Trump “No-Fly Zone” to Discuss Legal and Political Response

New York, NY — A coalition of peace, justice, and antiwar organizers inside the United States announced that they are joining forces with lawyers to explore potential legal challenges after being illegally prevented from traveling to Venezuela to attend the People’s Assembly for Peace and Sovereignty in Our Americas, held December 8–9 and organized by the Simón Bolívar Institute in Caracas. Their travel was obstructed due to Trump’s criminal blockade and illegal GPS interference in Venezuelan airspace. The organizers who were blocked will hold a press conference in New York City on Wednesday, December 9, at 2:00 PM.

Representatives had planned to travel on behalf of a broad coalition of organizations, including Workers World Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the International Action Center, National Lawyers Guild- International Committee, International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), Asociación Americana de Juristas (AAJ), the National Anti-War Action Network, the Black Alliance for Peace, Resist US-Led War, the U.S. Peace Council, Mutual Aid Scientific Socialism (MASS), Veterans for Peace, the Palaver Collective, Crown Heights Bites Back, the December 12th Movement, the Struggle for Socialism Party, Students for a Democratic Society, CODEPINK, International League of Peace and Struggle,

Venezuela Solidarity Network, and the Bolivarian Circle—reflecting the depth and diversity of grassroots, anti-imperialist, and working-class forces committed to international solidarity with Venezuela.

The Assembly brings together over 2,000 delegates from social movements, labor organizations, women’s and youth networks, Indigenous and Afro-descendant movements, and peace organizations across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and North America. Its purpose is to build coordinated strategies for defending peace, sovereignty, and self-determination in the hemisphere—a gathering more urgent than ever amid escalating U.S. military aggression. Yet U.S.-based delegates—operating inside “the Belly of the Beast”—were barred from participating after the Trump administration attempted to impose a de facto no-fly zone over Venezuelan airspace.

On November 29, President Trump declared—without Congressional approval, UN authorization, or legal authority—that Venezuelan airspace should be considered “closed in its entirety.” Almost immediately, pilots began reporting GPS interference and “navigation signal disruptions” while approaching Caracas International Airport. Aviation analysts note that such disruptions mirror electronic warfare tactics the United States has deployed in advance of military operations in other regions. The resulting climate of uncertainty triggered cascading flight suspensions and widespread anxiety among travelers, with 75% of international flights to Venezuela cancelled as a result.

For thousands of Venezuelans abroad, these disruptions have produced a humanitarian crisis for families attempting to return home for Christmas, stranded in airports from Madrid to Panama City. Elderly passengers have gone days without assistance, and many travelers have been forced to reroute through Bogotá and cross into Cúcuta on foot just to reach Venezuelan territory. In response, the Venezuelan government has mobilized state-owned aircraft to assist stranded citizens and ensure reunification during the holiday season.

Against this backdrop, the US peace delegation sees these travel restrictions as a deliberate attempt to disrupt international solidarity. “This is an attempt to blockade solidarity and to isolate Venezuela from the global peace movement,” said coalition spokesperson Sara Flounders. “We were invited to Venezuela to build working-class unity, strengthen international anti-imperialist coordination, and deepen our collective struggle for peace. The U.S. government sought to stop us from even showing up,” said Roger Wareham from the December 12th Movement.

Delegates emphasize that this no-fly zone attempt is not an isolated incident, but part of a decades-long U.S. campaign of imperialist aggression—from multiple failed coup attempts, including the 2002 U.S.-backed coup against President Hugo Chávez; to the backing of astroturfed opposition figures such as Juan Guaidó and María Corina Machado; to the 2020 CIA-linked “Operation Gideon” plot to kidnap President Maduro; to ongoing economic warfare, illegal sanctions, and political destabilization. Despite these escalations, recent polling shows that 70 percent of U.S. residents oppose a war on Venezuela.

“We refuse to accept the lies used to justify regime change and resource theft,” said William Camacaro. “The real threat to peace in the hemisphere is US imperialism—not the Bolivarian Revolution,” added Corinna Mullin, of the U.S. Peace Council.

Though physically blocked, the coalition states that their commitment has only grown stronger. “Our bodies were blocked from traveling, but our solidarity was not,” said Suzanne Adely, of the National Lawyers Guild. Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer for Black Alliance for Peace, noted, “Washington’s greatest fear is not a plane landing in Caracas—it is that people’s movements across the Americas are learning from each other, deepening unity, and organizing together against imperialism.”

The coalition affirmed its determination to expand the antiwar movement inside the United States and strengthen global struggles against capitalism, militarism, and imperialism.

No War on Venezuela.

Venceremos.

END

Source: nlginternational.org

By DROP SITE NEWS

Story by David Schutz

IBSIQ, WEST BANK—On July 20, around ten masked men raided the Palestinian hamlet of Ibsiq in the northern Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. They arrived in a two car convoy, dressed in Israeli military-issue fatigues, and carried assault rifles fitted with green laser pointers.

While their vehicles blocked the road, they stormed into a cluster of homes. At gunpoint, they forced a Palestinian family to their knees and warned them they had 48 hours to evacuate Area C and go to Area B—referring to technical designations of control in the West Bank under the Oslo Accords. Area C is under full Israeli control and Area B is technically under Palestinian civil administration but shares security control with Israel. The masked men said they would “return and burn the community down,” if the family did not evacuate to Area B.

I had been staying with an elderly Palestinian couple for five days in Ibsiq to document settler violence amid rising threats against the community. As the men approached, I asked one of them who he was. They looked like soldiers, but the vehicles in which they arrived had yellow civilian license plates. These masked assailants were members of the hagmar— settler reservist militias formally attached to the Israeli army and tasked with “security” in West Bank settlements.

The men dragged me behind a fence where four of them beat me until I required hospitalization. They stole the phone of an International Solidarity Mission activist who tried to record the attack.

My host, Abu Safi, who was 84, had little choice but to leave his home after that raid by the hagmar. The family packed up their belongings accumulated over decades in the house and moved to a nearby location in Area B. Abu Safi died of a heart attack soon afterwards.

The raid on Ibsiq, whose Palestinian residents have since all fled the depopulated hamlet, offers a glimpse into an essential part of how Israel rules the West Bank.

In parallel with Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza that began in October 2023, Israeli violence from settlers and soldiers in the West Bank escalated to record levels. About 3,000 settler-related attacks causing Palestinian casualties or property damage were recorded between October 2023 and mid-2025, with more than 1,000 of them in the first 8 months of 2025, and 264 incidents in October 2025 alone—the highest monthly total since the UN began monitoring in 2006.

Over the past two years, settlers have increasingly been “going into houses, holding people at gunpoint, and giving them 24 hours to leave, and many have…It happened in Khirbet al-Maktal, Umm Salam, Razeem, and elsewhere,” said a field researcher with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. He spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. “We file complaints, but many times the authorities tell us the perpetrators were acting outside their capacity as soldiers, so we’re referred to the police,” he added. “Then the police say it’s a military matter. We end up in a situation where no one investigates.”

An Integrated Web of Civilians and Soldiers
Settler violence against Palestinians often appears sporadic, but it is an official government system with an organized structure operating as intended.

Since 1967, Israel has ruled occupied Palestinian territories through dual structures—military occupation and civilian settlements—each reinforcing the other while mutually devolving responsibility.

At the heart of this arrangement lies a legal device: regional settlement councils, chartered under the 1964 Municipalities Ordinance as standard Israeli municipalities, yet which operate in occupied Palestinian territory. Israeli jurisdiction rests on military orders and the West Bank Emergency Regulations, which extend most aspects of Israeli law in personam to settlers but not to the land itself. Territorial authority is supplied by the Israeli military, making the army the de facto sovereign.

Within this framework, the state delegates enforcement to settlers. Each settlement appoints a ravshatz, or a civilian security coordinator, paid by the Defense Ministry and authorized by the military to command a plain clothes rapid-response squad, or kitat konenut, of 20 to 40 volunteers within the settlement boundary. Weapons are issued from the Defense Ministry’s Department for Settlement Security; additional arms also flow from the National Security Ministry.

Inside Israel proper, these squads fall under police authority. Beyond it, across the military’s sector that covers rural border areas and all West Bank settlements, the ravshatz usually operates through a local security officer, or kabat, who is appointed by the settlement council to coordinate with the army.

Parallel to the ravshatz are the Hagmar Territorial Defense brigades: a reserve network integrating each settlement into a military grid broken out into districts, blocs, and areas. At the two top levels—district and bloc—the hagmar report to the regional hagmar command of the IDF. At the lowest level, the area hagmar corresponds to a single settlement. Each settlement coordinates with its area hagmar through its appointed kabat.

The hagmar are issued uniforms by the IDF, while the kitot konenut are not. The distinction between the kitot konenut and the area hagmar is merely a technical one, with the same settlers often serving in both units.

In short, the settlement appoints a security coordinator who essentially commands his own volunteer militia that is armed and funded by the state. Those same settler volunteers also often serve in uniformed army reservist militias under the control of the military that coordinates with their settlement. The volunteer militias, the reservist militias, and the military itself all work together to attack and terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank.

Although wartime command is meant to shift from local coordinators to the army, the West Bank has never officially been declared a war zone. It remains under what the military calls “ongoing routine security,” a permanent state of civilian control by armed settlers under military cover.

“On paper, the weapons are checked in and out by the ravshatz, but in reality, they almost never come back,” said an Israeli solidarity activist who monitors settler violence in the South Hebron Hills, and who spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “In some councils, the armory rules are strict; in others, people just keep the guns at home. It depends on the local kabat and how much the army wants to look the other way.”

While the ravshatz and the settlement’s kitat konenut are technically limited to operating within their settlement, military auxiliaries like hagmar, operating in theory at broader territorial echelons, are not.

“The result is that we have settlers operating as the military without regulation,” Roni Peli, of Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, told Drop Site.

Forced Evictions
This system was on full display in mid-October on the outskirts of Al-Mufaqara, a hamlet in Masafer Yatta. Armed settlers broke into a Palestinian family’s cave-home, forcibly expelled them, and moved in—threatening to shoot anyone who approached. I arrived a few hours later to find the family and several Israeli solidarity activists outside waiting for the police.

“When the Palestinians tried to stop them, a group of armed men arrived, some in uniform, some not, including Binyamin Zarbiv, the ravshatz from Ma’on,” an Israeli activist who witnessed the incident told Drop Site, pointing to the settlement some 200 meters away. They also spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “They aimed their rifles at the Palestinians and at us, while the settlers carried their belongings inside.”

As we waited, an armed man in a ragtag uniform, identified by the activist as one of those who had arrived earlier, demanded my ID. He claimed to be representing Hagmar Har Hevron, though no such Israeli military unit officially exists, and identified himself as a member of three bodies: Ma’on’s rapid-response squad, the area hagmar unit, and a so-called farm patrol. He refused to say which group had sent him.

“The settler who broke in called the ravshatz on his phone,” the activist said. “That’s how it usually happens. The ravshatz makes a few calls, and within minutes they start showing up—half in uniform, half not—all with state-issued rifles.”

The man told me that he would be collecting a full day’s pay for his work, and acknowledged that he could do so whenever he wanted. He claimed his rifle came “from the army,” adding that he had received it “from the base,” but when pressed, he clarified that the “base” was the settlement itself, where no army base exists.

When the Israeli Civil Administration and police finally arrived, accompanied by army soldiers, they declined to review documents proving Palestinian ownership and left the militia in control of the site.

A few kilometers away in Susya, footage from August 24 shows a group of armed men invading the small community, some in fatigues, others in civilian clothes. One of them assaulted a Palestinian resident who was later hospitalized with a severe concussion.

The head of the Susya village council, Jihad Nawaja, said he recognized the attackers immediately. “I’ve known this man for 15 years,” Nawaja told Drop Site, pointing to an armed settler wearing civilian clothing. “The one who beat the Palestinian was his son. They came with armed men from Susya, in uniform, to tell us to evacuate. ‘Leave and move to Hebron,’ they said. There was no other reason for them to come that night.”

The B’Tselem researcher, who is also a resident of Susya, said armed groups of organized settlers frequently also detain Palestinians. They “kidnap people often … anyone who tries to resist eviction. They take him, warn him not to do it again, and release him later,” he said. “I once saw them during an attack near Susya. Settlers were escaping from the police, and one of these men helped drive them away.”

In a recurring pattern, settlers raid in broad daylight and, hours later, the same men reappear in uniform to enforce closures and secure the ground they seized.

“They also actively intercept the army’s radio frequency, to listen in on coordinations with the Palestinians. Once we had coordination for plowing, from four to eight o’clock… they found out and made sure it stopped,” the B’Tselem researcher added.

Rights groups report that complaints about organized violence by armed settlers routinely bounce between various jurisdictions of Israeli authorities. Police classify suspects as “military auxiliaries” and pass the files to the army; the army returns them as “civilian” cases; civilian authorities cite military jurisdiction, and the investigations close for “lack of evidence.”

A Private Army
Before October 7, 2023, Israel maintained about 450 rapid response squads, according to a 2024 report by the Knesset Research and Information Center (KRIC)—the non-partisan research arm of the Israeli parliament. Roughly 390 of the kitot konenut operated under army supervision in West Bank settlements, while the border police (a police paramilitary unit that operates on both sides of the green line) oversaw 50 and the police oversaw fewer than ten.

The report found that the division of control between government bodies over these units rests on a 1974 government decision that was never published and is missing from the state archives. Military Order 432 of 1971, which regulates kitot konenut in the West Bank, and related directives on open fire and emergency mobilization also remain classified.

In the report, researchers described sweeping non-cooperation from the Israel police, Defense Ministry, and IDF—none of which provided data on the squads’ authority, arming, or oversight. The KRIC noted that its report relied on partial replies and public sources, as “no response was received from the bodies involved.”

Following October 7, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced more than 700 new kitot konenut, expanding the police-run network, while the army’s share remained largely unchanged. The new units were incorporated under the border police, the only way Ben-Gvir could get a mandate to operate outside the green line. By early 2024, the government listed 906 active units, with a target of 1,086 by year’s end. By late October 2025, 1,052 kitot konenut units were active.

In October 2023, Ben-Gvir’s ministry also began distributing around 10,000 newly purchased assault rifles to kitot konenut and loosened gun-ownership eligibility, while the Defense Ministry supplied training, ammunition, and armory infrastructure. By November 2025, Ben-Gvir’s office said roughly 230,000 gun licenses had been issued over the past two years. Meanwhile, the National Missions Ministry funded vehicles, drones, and surveillance systems; regional councils added weapons and vehicles through private and foreign donors, including U.S.-Jewish federations that gifted sniper rifles to kitot konenut under campaigns like “Friends of Samaria.”

The KRIC noted that much of this equipment was distributed through ravshatz-operated armories, bypassing Israeli military depots. Earlier in 2023, the government created the Mishmar Leumi (National Guard), a Border Police reserve under Ben-Gvir, meant to absorb local militias and volunteer frameworks. Activated after October 7, it became a vehicle for mobilizing and reinforcing kitot konenut, with recruitment tracks allowing civilians to join armed policing roles outside the traditional Magav or IDF pathways. Formally under the police commissioner, its control can shift to the minister of national security in emergencies.Leading critics call it Ben-Gvir’s “private army.”

Simultaneously, the army expanded hagmar battalions, adding about 5,500 reservists for a total of roughly 8,000, divided between regional companies and settlement-level auxiliaries known as bnei hayishuv (“sons of the town”).

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s new Settlements Administration inside the Defense Ministry absorbed powers from the Civil Administration, giving his office direct control over civilian-security budgets: armories, budget lines, weapons requests, and patrol mandates. Under this structure, new siyur havot (“farm patrols”) emerged to police land outside settlement boundaries, funded from the same Defense Ministry budgets as the kitot konenut.

By May 2024, when the army began reducing hagmar deployments, a parallel militia network aligned to Ben-Gvir’s National Guard and Smotrich’s policy priorities was already firmly entrenched. The military is now considering further troop reductions in the West Bank, transferring security responsibilities to “local elements,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

On their websites, West Bank regional councils describe their roles in deliberately opaque terms: the South Hebron Hills Council boasts of “creating and maintaining local security elements”; the Jordan Valley Council pledges to “define security components in conjunction with security forces”; and the Binyamin Council vows to “improve and maintain local security components.”

“They don’t distinguish even between the hagmar and the rapid-response squads, everyone’s in uniform now,” a resident from the South Hebron Hills told Drop Site on condition of anonymity. “I know many of them by name. Some even have criminal records. Now they’ve been given uniforms.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

10 December 2025

Source: dropsitenews.com

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

3 Dec 2025 – The consequences of the US plan to support dividing the Gaza Strip into green and red zones separated by a yellow military line carry grave risks, including the effective displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the transformation of large parts of Gaza into closed military zones under the direct control of the Israeli army.

This plan entrenches long-term illegal control and the forcible de facto annexation of territory. It imposes unlawful collective imprisonment on the civilian population, in clear violation of international law and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

Preliminary information indicates that the US plan for the Gaza Strip, being developed through the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), is based on imposing a rigid geographical separation system that divides Gaza into population blocks and closed military zones.

Accordingly, more than half of the Gaza Strip is effectively designated as a closed military zone under the direct control of the Israeli army. Within this area, strict control and management systems are imposed through severe restrictions on movement, the regulation of aid and basic services, and the deprivation of fundamental rights. These measures are used as tools of coercion to force the population to leave their homes and relocate to designated “safe” areas within the same closed zone, without any genuine option to remain or return.

The first phase of the plan divides the Gaza Strip into a red zone covering 47 per cent, which contains most of the civilian population, and a green zone covering 53 per cent, which is under full Israeli military control and where armed groups established and armed by Israel are deployed. The two zones will be separated by a yellow line designated as a military buffer area, in which Israeli forces will apply a shoot-to-kill policy against anyone who approaches or attempts to cross it.

The yellow line, marked by concrete blocks, has not remained fixed but has been pushed beyond the published maps, advancing in some areas by more than one kilometre inside the Gaza Strip. It is used to unilaterally redraw lines of military control, gradually expanding areas under direct Israeli authority, placing additional territory under closed military rule, and severely restricting freedom of movement. This practice entrenches de facto annexation and fragments Gaza’s territorial unity in clear violation of international law.

The plan intersects with Israeli efforts to impose full control over the Gaza Strip’s coastline, designated on the plan’s map as a “red zone,” and to transform it into a closed area under direct Israeli security and economic domination. This would effectively place Gaza’s maritime resources, including fishing waters, gas fields, and existing and potential coastal infrastructure, under Israeli control.

This approach constitutes an illegal seizure and systematic plundering of the resources of an occupied territory. It contradicts the established principle in international law regarding the permanent sovereignty of peoples over their natural resources, and the obligations of the occupying power not to seize public or private property and not to exploit the natural resources of the occupied territory for its exclusive benefit, especially when this is done within the framework of long-term arrangements that undermine the Palestinian people’s right to manage their own resources and maritime domain.

According to information obtained by Euro Med Monitor, the plan is based on transferring the Palestinian population from the red zone to the green zone through various pressure tactics. This is done by creating a coercive environment in the red zone and making access to relative protection and basic services conditional on relocating to designated areas within the green zone, following extensive security screening and vetting. This removes any genuine element of consent and places the process squarely within the scope of forced displacement prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The plan includes the establishment of “cities” of prefabricated container homes (caravans) in the green zone, each housing around 25,000 people within an area of no more than one square kilometre and enclosed by walls and checkpoints. Entry and exit would be permitted only through security screening, effectively converting these sites into overcrowded detention camps that impose severe restrictions on residents’ freedom of movement and daily life.

The design of these proposed cities mirrors the historical model of ghettos, in which colonial and racist regimes confined specific groups to sealed areas surrounded by walls and guard posts, with movement and resources controlled externally, as seen in Europe during World War II and in other colonial contexts. This system of forced spatial segregation does not constitute “temporary shelter,” but rather creates imposed population enclaves in which entire communities are subjected to management and control instead of being treated as individuals entitled to freedom of movement, residence, and life in their original communities.

Available information indicates that the engineering units responsible for the plan have already begun preparing designs for the first experimental city in Rafah, pending the securing of funding to commence on the ground implementation.

The plan is based on systematic discrimination against Palestinians, as relocation to the temporary “cities” in the green zone is conditional on passing security screening set by Israeli and US authorities. This enables the exclusion of wide categories deemed either “not meeting the requirements” or “posing a security risk,” including those with political or organisational affiliations or civic activity deemed non-aligned with the imposed arrangements, leaving them in areas more exposed to siege and danger. As a result, protection and basic services such as housing, food, and healthcare are transformed from universal rights into tools of selection and coercion, granted or denied based on unilateral security and political assessments.

Life within these temporary cities would be subject to arbitrary security control and externally imposed governance arrangements, leaving residents with no genuine choice to accept or reject them and denying them any role in managing their public affairs. This entrenches a new political and administrative reality that places the future of the Gaza Strip, the identity of its residents, and their right to self-determination on their land under direct threat due to external interference.

The plan goes beyond temporary security or humanitarian measures and forms part of a broader strategy to fragment the unity of the Palestinian land and people. It seeks to entrench a permanent separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by imposing a “starting from scratch” approach through the creation of a new authority in Gaza, separate from the national framework and existing representative institutions and subject to the conditions of the plan’s sponsors. This would re-engineer the Palestinian political structure against the will of people living under occupation, threatening fundamental rights, undermining the social and political fabric, and gravely weakening the inalienable right to self-determination over all occupied Palestinian land.

Euro Med Monitor strongly condemns the United States’ role in formulating and sponsoring this plan, stressing that it is not acting as a “mediator” or humanitarian supporter but as an active party designing a political and operational framework that entrenches occupation, de facto annexation, and forced displacement under the guise of security and humanitarian arrangements. Washington’s supervision of the CMCC, its leadership of the planning process, and its efforts to channel the plan through international frameworks violate its duty under international law not to recognise or assist illegal situations, and raise serious concerns of complicity in grave violations, including forced population transfer, unlawful seizure of land and resources, and the undermining of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

The international community must recognise that no arrangements in Gaza can constitute a solution, or even a legitimate temporary administration, unless they are first based on ending the occupation through a complete and unconditional Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory. This requires ending the illegal military, administrative, and settlement presence, lifting the land, sea, and air blockade, guaranteeing freedom of movement and access including the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials, and enabling the population to rebuild its homes, infrastructure, and civil institutions independently, in full respect of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination on their land.

States and international actors, foremost among them the United Nations and the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions, must reject any plan or field arrangement that maintains or reproduces Israeli control through ghettos or transitional zones, and must refrain from recognising or assisting any situation involving forced population transfer, de facto annexation, exploitation of occupied territory resources, or the undermining of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

Immediate pressure must be applied to lift the blockade, open crossings for aid and reconstruction materials, guarantee Palestinians’ right to manage their own affairs and freely choose their representatives, and support international accountability mechanisms to ensure that crimes and violations do not go unpunished.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe.

8 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Joshua Scheer

3 Dec 2025 – In Gaza, surveillance has become as relentless as the bombing. In “Watched, Tracked, and Targeted in Gaza,” author Mohammed R. Mhawish, describes how Israeli forces use cameras, drones and digital tracking to monitor — and control — every move of Palestinians. The piece pulls back the curtain on a system where daily life, flight and survival are no longer private. If you want to understand what modern conflict means for human dignity — this story is essential.

As I read through this, more than a few points hit especially hard. Here are some of them:

“Life in Gaza … means losing what cannot be seen: the private space of the mind, the intimacy between people, and the ability to speak without fear of being monitored by a machine.”

“The campaign of mass killing … operated, too, through a system of watching, knowing, and collecting us.”

There is so much more — Mhawish spent 16 months reporting for this story, and it shows. This is a must-share article.

You can find their work on Substack, where they’ve published incredible on-the-ground reporting from Gaza. I’ve added this article there as well.

I blame myself for not knowing enough about journalists and people like Mohammed Mhawish — I’m coming back after a long time in the wilderness, so bear with me as I find my ground. But I found it impossible to sit idly by.

Here are some videos:

This first one, from a year ago, features him discussing what it’s like to report on the ground in Gaza — during the same period he would have been working on the original article.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXZQyl0fW_M]

This is his speech from winning the Izzy Award, and his powerful words are for anyone who considers themselves a journalist and for anyone who considers themselves human. I watched this many times over and over just to let his points sink in. I did a podcast about cultural humility and the white mindset but really about those in power and the powerless. No matter your thoughts, he and those who can no longer speak deserve for us to listen, hear, understand, and have humility. And share with everyone.

Here is that video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFDq3j7up1g]

8 December 2025

Source: transcend.org