MONEY

For artists, it is difficult to reflect on the past year without thinking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza that has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians per the official count or more than 220,000 per realistic estimates.

While art is something to be enjoyed, as it enriches every aspect of our lives, identities, and culture, it is also central to struggle. Art is powerful, it allows us to share emotions and stories with people around the world even if we don’t share a common language. Israel knows this, and that’s why it targets all those with a talent and passion to transmit messages about Gaza’s horrific reality.

Indeed, Israel seems to make it a tactic in its broader strategy of ethnic cleansing to wipe out Palestinians who inspire not just their own people, but everyone waging a fight against injustice.

Painters, illustrators, poets, photographers, writers, designers … so many talented Palestinians have already been killed. It is incumbent on us to ensure that they are not forgotten. They are not numbers, and their work should be remembered, always.

We must tell people about Heba Zagout, the 39-year-old painter, poet and novelist, killed along with two of her children in an Israeli air strike. Her rich paintings of Palestinian women and the holy sites of Jerusalem were her way of speaking to the “outside world”.

We must say the name of renowned painter and arts educator, Fathi Ghaben, whose beautiful works that captured Palestinian resistance should be seen by all.

We have to teach the words of Refaat Alareer, one of Gaza’s most brilliant writers and teachers who lectured at the Islamic University of Gaza.

We have to talk about the beauty in the art of Mahasen al-Khatib, who was killed by an Israeli air strike on Jabalia refugee camp. In her last illustration, she honoured 19-year-old Shaban al-Dalou, who burned to death in the Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa Hospital compound.

We must also remind the world of writer Yousef Dawwas, novelist Noor al-din Hajjaj, poet Muhamed Ahmed, designer Walaa al-Faranji, and photographer Majd Arandas.

However, ensuring their stories and works are not erased also means we need to take action, wherever we are. Honouring these martyrs and celebrating their art requires that we go beyond words.

Some in the art world already know this. They have joined the resistance within art spaces and ensured that Israel’s crimes are denounced on their platforms. There have been many acts of solidarity and bravery throughout the past year.

When the Barbican Centre in London cancelled Indian writer Pankaj Mishra’s lecture on the genocide in Palestine in February, art collectors Lorenzo Legarda Leviste and Fahad Mayet withdrew artwork by Loretta Pettway from the centre’s gallery.

“It is incumbent on all of us to stand up to institutional violence, and demand transparency and accountability in its wake … We will never accept censorship, repression and racism within its walls,” they wrote.

In March, Egyptian visual artist Mohamed Abla returned his Goethe Medal, awarded for outstanding artistic achievement by Germany’s Goethe Institut, in protest of the German government’s complicity in the Israeli genocide.

Before the opening of the Venice Biennale in April, more than 24,000 artists from around the world – including previous Biennale participants and prestigious award recipients – signed an open letter calling on the organisers to exclude Israel from the event. One Israeli artist eventually decided not to open her exhibition.

In September, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri refused to accept an award from the Noguchi Museum in New York after it fired three employees for wearing Palestinian keffiyeh scarves.

Earlier this month, artist Jasleen Kaur, who received the prestigious Turner prize, used her acceptance speech to condemn the genocide, calling for a free Palestine, an arms embargo and extending solidarity with the Palestinians. She stood in solidarity with all those who protested outside the Tate Britain in London, where the event took place, calling on it to divest from funds and projects linked to the Israeli government.

“I want to echo the calls of the protesters outside. A protest made up of artists, culture workers, Tate staff, students, who I stand firmly with,” Kaur stated. “This is not a radical demand, this should not risk an artist’s career or safety.”

Despite these acts of solidarity, the vicious censorship, omission, repression and witch-hunts of art related to Palestine have not abated over the past 12 months.

In January, the Indiana University art museum cancelled an exhibition by Palestinian artist Samia Halaby.

In May, the town of Vail in Colorado cancelled the artist residency of Danielle SeeWalker, a Native American artist who had compared the plight of Palestinians to the plight of Native Americans.

In July, the Royal Academy of Arts removed two pieces of artwork from their Young Artists’ Summer Show because they were related to Israel’s war on Gaza. This came after the pro-Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews had sent it a letter regarding the artwork.

In November, the altonale festival in Hamburg cancelled an exhibition of artworks produced by children in Gaza after social media posts attacking it.

These are just a few examples of the massive censorship that Palestinian art and artists and creators who have voiced their solidarity with Palestine have faced over the past year. The silencing and whitewashing within cultural spaces have also taken place at an institutional level.

In the UK, the Arts Council England (ACE) warned art institutions that “political statements” could potentially negatively affect funding agreements. This was revealed upon the trade union Equity’s Freedom of Information request, which also showed that ACE and the Department of Media, Culture and Sport (DMCS) even met about the “reputational risk relating to Israel-Gaza conflict”.

Some have highlighted the contradiction of ACE’s actions given it openly expressed solidarity with Ukraine in 2022 after the Russian invasion. But it is not just ACE that has demonstrated blatant double standards in addressing the slaughter in Gaza.

The brilliant Palestinian artist Basma Alsharif articulated the institutional hypocrisy perfectly in her letter to the “Vapid Neoliberal Art World”.

She wrote: “I hope this genocide finds you well. What exactly are you doing these days? Why did it take you months to write a statement, if you did at all? Why didn’t you just shut down? Why aren’t you able to boycott Israel the way you have Russia, the way you did Apartheid South Africa? Have you seen the number of statements out there? The open letters? The call for strikes? How many hashtags did you all decide it would take to atone for your sins?”

There are no excuses for complacency regarding the genocide in Gaza. The Palestinian people face extermination and our responsibility to them is to ensure our governments, institutions and industry are not left in peace until they cut ties with Israel, stop silencing those speaking out against its crimes, and commit to the liberation of Palestine.

I urge all those in the art world – a pocket of whom were so vibrantly represented in the protest outside the Tate when Kaur was awarded – to remember the words of American author James Baldwin:

“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”

States and their institutions may use the scramble for funding and platforms to repress our expression of solidarity, but ultimately they won’t win. Those who concede for their personal and professional gains may try to convince themselves that this movement will die down and the issue will be forgotten, but until Palestine is free – and this will take place – we are keeping the receipts, we are noting the absence, we are hearing the silence over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It is not too late to stand on the right side of history.

A happy new year will only be possible once the Palestinians and all those facing oppression are free.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The sound of tanks rumbling through the streets outside of Kamal Adwan Hospital woke everyone up, they were already on edge after enduring months of direct Israeli attacks.

Then came the loudspeakers ordering everyone to evacuate – the sick, the wounded, medical staff, and displaced people seeking shelter – early on Friday morning.

It was clear that the medical complex in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya was about to face an Israeli raid, like so many had before it as Israel seemed to systematically destroy all healthcare in Gaza.

It didn’t matter that, according to the World Health Organization, the hospital was the last major health facility operational in northern Gaza, an area that has been suffocatingly besieged and decimated by Israel in its ongoing war.

Nor that it was a refuge for hundreds of Palestinians whose homes had been destroyed by Israel and had nowhere else to go.

Numbers written on their chests

At about 6am, patient Izzat al-Aswad heard Israeli forces summoning Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital director, over their loudspeakers.

Dr Abu Safia came back and told people in the hospital they had been ordered to evacuate. Abu Safia himself, who was a rare voice exposing what Israel was doing to the hospital, was taken by Israel, which has refused to release him despite calls to do so from the UN, humanitarian NGOs and international health organisations.

A little later, al-Aswad said Israeli soldiers demanded that all the men strip down to their underwear to be allowed to leave.

Shivering, frightened, many of them injured, the men were ordered to walk to a checkpoint the Israelis had set up about two hours away, al-Aswad recounted by phone.

At the checkpoint, they gave their full names and had their photographs taken.

Then a number was scrawled on their chest and neck by a soldier, indicating they had been searched.

Some of the men were taken for interrogation.

“They beat me and the men around me,” al-Aswad said. “They hit the injured people like me directly on our injuries.”

Shorouq al-Rantisi, 30, a nurse in Kamal Adwan’s laboratory department, was among the women taken from the hospital.

The women were told to walk to the same checkpoint, which was in a school, and then waited for hours in the cold.

“We could hear the men being beaten and tortured. It was unbearable.”

Then the searches started.

“The soldiers were dragging the women by the head towards the search area,” al-Rantisi said. “[They] shouted at us, demanding we remove our headscarves. Those who refused were beaten badly.”

“The first girl called for searching was told to strip. When she refused, a soldier beat her and forced her to lift her clothes.

“A soldier dragged me by the head and then another soldier ordered me to lift the top of my clothes, then the bottom, and checked my ID,” she said.

Abandoned patients

Al-Rantisi said the women were eventually taken, left at a roundabout, and told they could not go back to Beit Lahiya.

“How could we leave and abandon the patients? None of us ever thought of leaving until we were forced to,” she said on the phone.

Israel assaulted the hospital for many weeks before the raid.

“The hospital and its courtyard were bombed relentlessly, day and night, as if it was normal,” al-Aswad said.

“Quadcopters fired at anyone moving in the courtyard … they targeted generators and water tanks, while medical staff were struggling to care for patients.”

The night before the raid was “terrifying”, al-Aswad added, with Israeli attacks all around, including on the “al-Safeer” building.

“Witnesses say about 50 people were in there, including nurses from the hospital. No one could rescue them or retrieve their bodies, they’re still there,” he recounted.

Al-Aswad and the men who were not taken for interrogation were released after a full day of abuse and humiliation.

“The soldiers ordered us to go west of Gaza City and never come back,” he said. “We walked through destruction and rubble, freezing, until people came to meet us near Gaza City, offering help and blankets.”

‘Betrayed’ and ‘abandoned’

Israel’s raid merely compounded “the global silence and abandonment” Palestinians in Gaza have been faced with throughout more than a year of relentless Israeli attacks that killed more than 45,000 people, al-Rantisi said.

“Over 60 days of relentless shelling – quadcopters, artillery, and targeted strikes on generators,” she said.

“Dr Hussam’s pleas went unanswered until the hospital was stormed and emptied. How does the world allow this to happen?”

“I feel we were all betrayed,” Fadi al-Atawneh, 32, said bitterly on the phone.

“I was wounded, so I stayed in the hospital, hoping that the World Health Organization would evacuate or protect us, but it never happened,” al-Atawneh said.

“I am deeply saddened by what happened to us and the fate of Dr Abu Safia. We’re left alone in the face of this aggression.”

Cold weather in Gaza has claimed the life of a baby, the sixth to die in a week, according to medical sources, as Israel continues its relentless attacks on hospitals across the strip.

One-month-old Ali al-Batran died on Monday at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, quoting medical sources who attributed his death to plummeting temperatures.

The day before, his twin brother, Jumaa al-Batran, perished from the cold in the displaced family’s flimsy tent in Deir el-Balah, also in the centre of the enclave, his father said, describing how Jumaa had been discovered with his head as “cold as ice”.

The babies were born one month prematurely.

Israeli forces have displaced almost all of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza, forcing tens of thousands of them into makeshift tents in open-air camps along the rainy, windswept coast.

Three of the six Palestinian babies who have died of hypothermia in the past week lived in the coastal “safe zone” of al-Mawasi, close to the southern town of Khan Younis.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Monday that “bitter cold and frost” hitting “dilapidated tents” in the strip’s camps had killed seven people, including an adult healthcare worker.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported on Monday that 27 people had been killed over the previous 24 hours.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudari said: “You can’t imagine the situation right now. We are all freezing and shaking due to the very cold weather. … Especially those who are in al-Mawasi very close to the beach are suffering from the cold.”

“We’re talking about Palestinians who have been displaced for more than 14 months. They still have the same tent. There [are] no tent tarps. It’s also very expensive to afford any nylon or any equipment or tools to cover your tent and even winter clothes [and] blankets.”

Hospitals under fire

In parallel, Israel has attacked two hospitals – al-Wafaa and al-Ahli – in Gaza City. The bombing of al-Wafaa on Sunday killed seven people and critically wounded others, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.

A witness at the scene of the al-Wafaa bombing described seeing bodies “ripped to pieces”. The Israeli military said its attack targeted a Hamas “command and control centre”, but it provided no evidence to support this assertion.

Israeli forces also detained hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of medical staff from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza on Friday. Among them was its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia.

The military has not disclosed Abu Safia’s whereabouts. However, CNN reported on Monday that he was being kept at the Sde Teiman army base, which is also a detention facility in the Negev desert in southern Israel. It quoted two recently released Palestinian prisoners who had heard his name being read out.

On Monday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, called for Abu Safia’s immediate release.

Tedros, who last week escaped an Israeli strike on Yemen’s main airport that he said hit metres away from him, said in a post on X that hospitals in Gaza had become “battlegrounds” and the health system was “under severe threat”.

“We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” he said.

Meanwhile, Israeli media released a video of the moments before Abu Safia was detained by Israeli forces. The footage captured his efforts to move hundreds of patients and medical staff to safety after the Israeli military issued a 15-minute warning to leave the hospital.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the military had released the footage in a bid to depict their operations as “incredibly targeted, precise and humane”.

“But later on, we have heard from eyewitnesses … quite the opposite in terms of the humiliation [and] bad treatment that they received at the hands of the Israeli soldiers [and] the brutal beatings that they have witnessed during the military operations,” he added.

Since Israel’s war began in October 2023, Gaza’s residents have endured severe shortages of electricity, drinking water, food and medical services as the vast majority of them have been forced out of their homes and displaced – many repeatedly.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza has killed at least 45,541 Palestinians and wounded 108,338. More than 1,100 people were killed in Israel during Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, and dozens were taken captive.

Beirut, Lebanon – The Palestinian Authority (PA) is cracking down on armed groups in the Jenin refugee camp in what experts say is an attempt to restore its limited authority in the occupied West Bank and persuade incoming United States President Donald Trump that it can be a useful security partner.

However, the crackdown has earned it condemnation from many Palestinians, especially after the Saturday night killing of 21-year-old journalist Shatha Sabbagh, who had been reporting from Jenin and whose family said she was killed by PA gunfire.

Since the start of the PA raids, they have been criticised as serving the interests of Israel over supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination.

“Over the past few years, the PA has lost control over the West Bank, and I imagine it is trying to claw back control to prove its worth to its handlers – Israel and the United States,” said Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, a think tank in Doha, Qatar.

“I think it is trying to prove it can play a part that is still relevant, especially at a time when there are voices in the Israeli government trying to force the collapse of the PA,” Rahman told Al Jazeera.

Heavy crackdown

Over the past three years, Israeli raids – both by the army and settlers – have killed and displaced numerous civilians in the West Bank and destroyed homes and livelihoods.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have stepped up their attacks in the West Bank, killing 729 Palestinians, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

At least 63 were from the Jenin camp.

The PA’s security forces have mirrored some of Israel’s tactics since launching an operation against the camp in early December.

It surrounded the camp with armoured personnel carriers, fired indiscriminately at civilians, summarily detained and abused young men, and cut off water and electricity supplies.

One video circulating online and verified by Sanad, Al Jazeera’s verification agency, shows PA officers stuffing a young man into a rubbish bin and beating him.

“[The Americans] have been training the PA security forces to act as SWAT teams and special forces – not as civil police – to crack down on [Palestinian] armed groups,” said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group.

“Whenever you see American involvement in terms of training, this is when you see hardline and coercive tactics deployed against Palestinians,” she told Al Jazeera.

Security cooperation

The PA was ostensibly created to bring about a Palestinian state after the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, which initiated a peace process between then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Under the agreements, the PA’s Western donors – the European Union and US – tasked it with upholding Israel’s security by stamping out armed Palestinian groups across the occupied Palestinian territory, according to Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal scholar and former adviser and spokesperson for the PA.

In the 1990s, she explained, the PA defended its crackdown on armed groups as necessary to protect the peace process.

However, the peace process in effect has been dead for at least two decades due to Israel’s ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land to build Israeli settlements, she said.

Those settlements are illegal under international law, and since Oslo, the number of settlers has increased from 250,000 to more than 700,000, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit that tracks illegal settlements.

Since October 7, 2023, Peace Now said, Israel has confiscated more Palestinian land in the West Bank  – 23.7sq km (9.15sq miles) – than in the past 20 years combined.

Buttu blames PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, for still sticking to the Oslo process when Israel has so blatantly abandoned it.

“He’s going after the very people who want liberation, not from him, but from Israel,” Buttu told Al Jazeera.

The PA’s security mandate brought it into direct conflict with Hamas, a rival faction that refused to renounce armed struggle against Israel’s occupation after beating Fatah in legislative elections in 2006.

The PA’s Western donors – mainly the US – pressured Fatah to rein in Hamas, exacerbating tensions between the two factions and leading to a brief civil war that began in 2006.

The conflict led to a split in the Palestinian national movement that has still not been bridged despite numerous attempts at reconciliation.

Fatah, under the PA, has since administered two-thirds of the West Bank while Hamas was in control of Gaza.

“The [PA’s] tactic has never been successful. It has never won the hearts and minds of Palestinians,” Buttu said.

Fighting for survival

PA officials reportedly argue that the operation in the Jenin refugee camp is necessary or else Israel will use the presence of fighters there as a pretext to expel more Palestinians from their homes and land in the West Bank, as it has done in Gaza.

However, experts say that Israel is planning to formally annex the West Bank and collapse the PA, irrespective of whether armed resistance continues.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, already came close to crushing the Palestinian banking system by refusing to renew a government waiver that allows Israeli banks to interact with Palestinian banks.

The PA does not have its own central bank and is, therefore, reliant on Israel’s banking system to pay salaries and secure vital imports.

Bowing to US pressure, Smotrich renewed the waiver for a year in early December, yet experts fear he won’t do so again during Trump’s presidency, which begins on January 20.

Not doing so would collapse the PA – and West Bank – economically and accelerate the West Bank’s formal annexation, Rahman from the Middle East Council said.

In addition, Rahman warned the ensuing chaos could serve as an Israeli pretext to ethnically cleanse the West Bank, which is why he believes the PA is trying to persuade the incoming Trump administration that it is still a valuable partner in reinforcing Israel’s security.

“You can’t blame the PA for trying to prevent something like that from happening,” Rahman told Al Jazeera. “At the same time, they have no alternative vision.”

Mustafa, from the International Crisis Group, agreed and added that the PA has isolated itself from regional states and its own constituents, making its survival dependent on Israel and its backers.

“Israel is going to annex the West Bank, and we are already seeing that reality – de facto and de jure,” she said. “[Annexation] won’t be grand, but it will be a slow burn.”

“The PA is really counting its days.”

For Gaza’s women, the hardships of life in the territory’s sprawling tent camps are compounded by the daily humiliation of never having privacy.

Women displaced from their homes by Israel’s ongoing bombardment struggle to dress modestly while crowded into tents with extended family members, including men, and with strangers only steps away in neighbouring tents.

Alaa Hamami has dealt with the modesty issue by constantly wearing her prayer shawl, a cloth that covers her head and upper body.

“Our whole lives have become prayer clothes, even to the market we wear it,” said the young mother of three. “Dignity is gone.”

Normally, she would wear the shawl only when performing her daily Muslim prayers. But with so many men around, she keeps it on all the time, even when sleeping – just in case an Israeli attack hits nearby in the night and she has to flee quickly, she said.

Israel’s war on Gaza has driven more than 90 percent of its 2.3 million population from their homes. Hundreds of thousands now live in squalid tent camps packed close together over large areas – where sewage runs into the streets and food and water are hard to obtain.

Access to toilets and hygiene products is also limited, and many women now cut up sheets or old clothes to use as sanitary pads.

Wafaa Nasrallah, a displaced mother of two, says life in the camps makes even the simplest needs difficult, and she cannot afford to buy sanitary pads. She has tried using pieces of cloth and even nappies, but they have also increased in price.

For a toilet, Nasrallah uses a hole in the ground, surrounded by blankets propped up by sticks.

These makeshift toilets must also be shared with dozens of other people in the camps.

As winter sets in, the challenges grow and women feel constantly exposed. Many say they have to choose between buying pads and buying food and water.

The United Nations says more than 690,000 women and girls in Gaza require menstrual hygiene products, as well as clean water and toilets, as stocks of hygiene kits have run out and prices are exorbitant.

But aid workers have been unable to meet demand, with supplies piling up at border crossings, and Israel continuing to block aid and supplies from entering the besieged and battered Strip.

On December 29, former President Jimmy Carter passed away at the age of 100. As the 39th president of the United States and as a private citizen, Carter was an advocate for peace between nations, democracy and various humanitarian and environmental causes. But in the Middle East, he is going to be remembered as the father of Arab-Israeli normalisation.

Sworn in as president in 1977, Carter was given the opportunity by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to be the architect of the first normalisation deal between an Arab country and the Zionist state. He helped Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin conclude the 1978 Camp David Accords and negotiate the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that formally ended the conflict between the two countries.

As developments in the past four decades have shown, neither the accords nor the treaty led to peace and justice in the Middle East. Israel continues its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and has launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip; the Palestinians still do not have an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital; and an overwhelming majority of the Arab public refuses to recognise Israel or agree to normalising relations with it.

Looking back at the accords Carter brokered, it is clear that they were the beginning of the slow and gradual, although not publicly acknowledged, abandonment of the Palestinian cause by Arab officialdom, and a US campaign to bury Palestinian national aspirations.

The legacy of Camp David

The Camp David Accords were first and foremost a roadmap towards a full Egyptian-Israeli peace, full recognition of Israel by Egypt, and an end to Egypt’s participation in the Arab economic boycott of Israel. To be sure, the accords were a mere framework for negotiations between the two countries that would lead a few months later to the signing of a peace treaty.

But they also included provisions related to the Palestinian people, whose wording was indicative of the ultimate purpose of the accords. The document spoke of a plan to provide “autonomy” to the “inhabitants” of the occupied territory, as if the Palestinians were aliens squatting in the West Bank and Gaza.

At the time, the US had not yet recognised the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Thus, the accords called for electing a “self-governing authority” for the occupied territory. But that autonomy and the elected authority were to be supervised by Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, in obvious violation of the Palestinians’ right to constitute an independent, national government.

Throughout the 1980s, and because of US-supported Israeli objections, the Palestinians were absent and prevented from playing a role in devising peace plans for the Arab-Israeli and Palestine-Israel conflict. But the eruption of the first Intifada in December of 1987 and Jordan’s 1988 relinquishing of its claim to the West Bank made it clear that the Palestinians could no longer be ignored in peace negotiations.

Still, in 1991, the Palestinians participating in the Madrid Conference were only present as part of a Jordanian delegation, once again denying their nationhood.

Like other iterations of the US-led and sponsored “peace process”, the Madrid path led to a stalemate, as Israel continued to ignore the Palestinians’ national rights and reject any talk of ending its occupation. Following the Israeli elections in 1992 that brought the Labor Party to power, the US shepherded the Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel that created the Palestinian National Authority (PA). As a constituted government for the Palestinians, the PA was required to recognise Israel’s right to exist before securing official Israeli acknowledgement of Palestinian grievances and national aspirations.

Jordan, for its part, had to sign a peace treaty with Israel, becoming the second Arab state after Egypt to recognise the Zionist state. All Amman was able to preserve from its relationship with Palestine was its custodianship of religious sites in Jerusalem, a status that is constantly challenged by the Israeli authorities today.

The Abraham Accords

Throughout the so-called “peace process” that the Camp David Accords set in motion, the US was keen to encourage Arab states to consider their interests separately from those of the Palestinians. This encouragement became a full-fledged campaign during the presidency of Donald Trump who, along with his administration lieutenants, evinced more than the usual American bias in favour of the Zionist state.

In 2020, Trump presided over the signing of the so-called Abraham Accords that normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. Sudan joined the following year.

While all Arab states involved insisted that the normalisation of relations with Israel would help improve the lives of Palestinians and should not be seen as abandoning them, the truth was they all got something in return for recognising Israel with no regard for Palestinian interests.

The UAE’s normalisation with Israel appears to be the fastest and deepest. The two countries have quickly developed and expanded military and economic relations. Bahrain aimed to use its relations with Israel as a hedge against an aggressive Iran. Morocco received a much-desired US recognition of its sovereignty over the Western Sahara. And Sudan was able to get itself removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

To be sure, the Abraham Accords were no more than transactions that advanced the signers’ interests at the expense of the Palestinian cause, thus allowing Israel to deepen its apartheid policies and entrench its occupation of Palestinian land.

And it is not difficult to see a strong desire in the upcoming Trump administration for an expanded map of Arab normalisation with Israel, one that includes Saudi Arabia, for example. As was the case with earlier normalisation deals, the Palestinians will be the last to count on any dividends from more Arab openness on Israel.

A welcome change of heart

After the end of his presidential term, Carter continued to pursue efforts for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. But the more he observed the situation on the ground, the more he became convinced that the US policy of steadfast support for Israel was wrong and counterproductive.

Thus in 2007, he published a book titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in which he declared that Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territories amounted to the crime of apartheid. This was a welcome change of heart from a long-held conviction among many US politicians and opinion-makers. Carter remains the only prominent US politician brave enough to call Israeli policies and practices by their proper name.

As Americans mourn his death and remember his legacy, it is important to reflect on the disastrous US policies in Palestine. Over the past four decades, Israel’s occupation has grown more and more violent thanks in large part to unconditional US support.

It is time for Washington to revise its stance on Israel-Palestine. A reversal in US policy on Palestine – one that recognises Palestinian rights and holds Israel accountable for its crimes – is something Jimmy Carter likely would have wanted to see in his lifetime.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

A truck packed with passengers plunged into a river in Sidama state, regional authorities said.

At least 71 people have died in a road accident in southern Ethiopia, according to local authorities.

A truck packed with passengers plunged into a river in Sidama state, some 300km (186 miles) south of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, the regional communication bureau said in a statement late on Sunday.

In a Facebook post, the Sidama Police Commission Traffic Prevention and Control Directorate said “68 males and three females are known to have died in the accident so far”, quoting Chief Inspector Daniel Sankura.

Wosenyeleh Simion, the spokesperson for the Sidama regional government, also confirmed to the Reuters news agency that 71 people had died.

“Five are in a critical condition and taking treatment at Bona General Hospital,” Wosenyeleh added on Monday.

In it’s statement late on Sunday the regional communication bureau had given the death toll as 60, also adding that survivors were being treated at Bona General Hospital.

Blurred images shared by the Sidama Regional Health Bureau showed a mass of people surrounding a vehicle, partially submerged in water, with many seemingly attempting to help pull it from the waters.

Other images shared by the bureau appeared to show bodies, some covered in blue tarpaulin, lying on the ground.

The health bureau expressed its condolences to the families of the victims of the crash and said it would share more information later.

The police commission said the incident occurred at about 5:30pm local time (14:30 GMT) on Sunday when the vehicle plunged into a river.

Wosenyeleh told Reuters the truck had missed a bridge and fell into a river and that the road had many bends.

Some of the passengers were returning from a wedding ceremony and some families had lost multiple members, he said.

He added that traffic police in the region reported the truck was overloaded, which likely caused the accident.

Authorities did not provide details about the number of passengers who were on board at the time of the accident.

Road accidents are common in Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation, where roads are often poorly maintained.

At least 38 people, mostly students, were killed in 2018 when a bus plunged into a ravine in Ethiopia’s mountainous north.

Taipei, Taiwan – The fatal crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 in South Korea has highlighted the risks bird strikes pose to commercial airliners.

Pilots told air traffic control that their aircraft collided with a flock of birds shortly before declaring mayday and making an emergency landing at Muan International Airport, according to South Korea’s Transport Ministry.

Footage of the crash on Sunday showed the twin-engine Boeing 787-800 making a belly-flop landing on the runway without its landing gear deployed.

The aircraft then skidded across the tarmac before hitting a concrete wall and exploding into flames, killing 179 out of 181 people on board.

Geoffrey Thomas, the Australia-based editor-in-chief of Airline Ratings, said that a bird strike was likely only a partial cause of the deadly crash.

Evidence points to the aircraft experiencing an electrical failure because it stopped transmitting location data – known as “ADS-B data” – to air traffic control shortly after declaring mayday, Thomas said.

“It appears as though these pilots were dealing with cascading failures, the exact nature of which we don’t know. What we do know is the ADS-B data stopped, they didn’t deploy their flaps for landing, and they didn’t deploy the undercarriage,” Thomas told Al Jazeera.

“Now, why those things happen, we don’t know, but it all happened after air traffic control warned of a flock of birds,” Thomas added.

It will likely be months before investigators determine the exact cause of the crash, which is the deadliest air disaster to ever take place on South Korean soil.

South Korean authorities are probing the crash alongside the United States National Transportation Safety Board in accordance with global aviation regulations because the Boeing aircraft involved was made in the US.

Bird strikes are a relatively common hazard for commercial aviation but rarely result in serious accidents.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported 19,400 wildlife strikes – including birds – at US airports in 2023 alone. US airlines reported another 236 strikes across 55 countries in the same year, according to FAA data.

In the vast majority of cases, the most serious outcome is minor damage to the aircraft, with such incidents costing the industry some $1.5bn a year, according to Thomas.

Thomas said bird strikes have become more common due to the growth of air travel, with more than 120,000 commercial flights each day around the world, and the development of quieter planes.

Most often, though, aircraft that strike birds are completely unaffected, according to regulatory data.

Of nearly 1,400 bird strikes in the UK in 2022, fewer than 100 caused damage to the aircraft or interrupted the flight, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.

While bird strikes rarely cause problems, they have been implicated in several serious accidents over the years.

Investigators probing the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 found that an object – most likely a bird – activated a flawed flight control system that caused the nose of the plane to pitch downward.

In 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 famously landed in New York’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of birds shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. The Airbus A320-214 was able to make an emergency water landing with no deaths.

In 1995, 24 Canadian and American airmen died after their aircraft crashed at an air force base in Alaska following a collision with geese.

Doug Drury, an aviation expert at Australia’s CQUniversity, said that a bird strike alone should not have led to a fatal crash.

Pilots were warned by air traffic control that birds were in the area, Drury said, while a Boeing 737 plane should be able to make an emergency landing even after losing power in an engine.

“There are more questions than answers, unfortunately,” Drury told Al Jazeera.

He questioned why the pilots failed to slow the aircraft during landing, why they reportedly landed in the opposite direction of the runway and why they landed beyond the normal “landing zone” position.

“Pilots are trained to slow the aircraft down to just above the stall speed to minimise ground run distance. Why wasn’t the runway foamed with flame-retardant material?” Drury said.

Muan International Airport should also have had safety precautions in place to scare flocks of birds, such as loudspeakers that mimic the sounds of shotguns, he said, which are commonly used at airports around the world.

South Korea Chosun Daily newspaper reported that environmental impact assessments at the airport had recommended the deployment of sound cannons, lasers and warning lights, but the rollout of such measures had been delayed due to runway extension work.

South Korea on Monday began seven days of national mourning, with flags flying at half-mast and Acting President Choi Sang-mok travelling to the crash site to pay his respects.

Officials said they had tentatively identified the remains of 141 of the victims so far.

As investigators worked to determine the cause of the disaster, authorities said they were considering carrying out a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800s in operation in the country.

Choi, who assumed his duties just three days ago after the impeachments of the president and prime minister, said he had also directed authorities to carry out a sweeping inspection of the country’s entire aviation sector.

“As soon as the accident recovery is conducted, the transport ministry is requested to conduct an emergency safety inspection of the entire aircraft operation system to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents,” Choi said.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Joint investigation unit requests arrest warrant for suspended president over brief imposition of martial law.

South Korean authorities have requested an arrest warrant for suspended President Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived declaration of martial law.

South Korea’s Joint Investigation Headquarters said on Monday that it sought Yoon’s arrest on insurrection and abuse of power charges after the impeached leader ignored three summonses to appear for questioning.

A court will decide whether to issue a warrant following the request to detain the South Korean leader.

Yoon’s brief imposition of martial law on December 3 stunned South Korea, plunging the East Asian nation into its biggest political crisis in decades.

Yoon has been suspended from his duties since December 14, when the National Assembly voted for his impeachment in a 204-85 vote.

The conservative leader, who served as the country’s top-ranking prosecutor before entering politics, is facing criminal charges of insurrection, a crime punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.

The country’s leadership crisis intensified on Friday after the opposition-controlled legislature voted to also impeach acting president Han Duck-soo after he refused to immediately appoint three justices to fill vacancies on the constitutional court, which is deliberating whether to uphold Yoon’s impeachment.

The court has up to six months to make its decision, after which Yoon will either be removed him from office or restored to the presidency.

At its first preparatory hearing on Friday, the court denied a request by Yoon’s lawyers for a postponement in proceedings to allow the South Korean leader to better prepare his case.

A debate over what shape hardline immigration policies will take regarding high-skilled work visas has become the first major policy dispute among prominent supporters of United States President-elect Donald Trump – just weeks ahead of the Republican’s new presidential term.

On one side are members of Trump’s so-called “Make America Great Again”, or MAGA movement, who have called for a crackdown on the high-skilled H-1B visas as part of the president-elect’s wider pledge to tighten migration and immigration.

Trump’s campaign pledges particularly focused on the US-Mexico border, although he has floated other restrictions.

In the other camp are prominent Trump supporters – including tech billionaire Elon Musk – who have defended the visas as essential to US industrial and economic growth.

Here’s what to know.

How did this start?

The latest debate sparked when Laura Loomer, a far-right personality who has had close ties to Trump in the past, took to social media to criticise the president-elect’s selection of an adviser on artificial intelligence, who has argued the US needs more foreign skilled workers to remain competitive in the technology industries.

The criticism from Loomer, who has been accused of racism and spreading conspiracy theories in the past, was quickly seized on by several high-profile figures in the tech industry.

That included SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk, who has been tapped by Trump to lead a government efficiency advisory board.

In response, Loomer accused tech billionaires of influencing Trump for their own gains.

“We have to protect President Trump from the technocrats,” Loomer said in a post on X on December 25.

Who receives H-1B visas?

H-1B visas are typically reserved for specialised foreign workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who have been offered a temporary job paying an industry-standard wage in the US.

The US authorities can issue 65,000 H-1B new visas a year, with a possible extra 20,000 for people with master’s degrees.

The visas can also be extended upon expiration, with more than 309,000 approved for continuing employment in Fiscal Year 2022, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

About 70 percent of H-1B visa recipients are from India and another 10 percent are from China.

What have Musk and other defenders of H-1B said?

Musk has said that the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low” and has described the H-1B programme as critical “for those who want America to win”.

In a series of posts on X, which he also owns, Musk further pledged to “go to war on this issue”.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate who has been picked to work alongside Musk on the government efficiency board, has criticised the programme as “badly broken”, but does not support removing them completely, instead saying that the visas should be granted on merit.

Ramaswamy antagonised the hardline anti-immigration faction of Trump’s supporters after he posted on social media on Thursday that tech companies hired immigrants because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long”.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote.

What about Trump?

Trump weighed in on the issue for the first time on Saturday.

He told the New York Post: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B.”

“I have used it many times,” he said, referring to his own real estate ventures. “It’s a great programme.”

However, the statements were a departure for the president-elect.

In the past, he has criticised the visas as “very bad” and “unfair” to US workers and his administration sought to increase barriers for applicants during his first term.

Why does this matter?

The back-and-forth underscores a growing fault line between many of the earliest supporters of Trump and those like Musk who only embraced him in the 2024 election campaign. Many of the latter – like Musk – are associated with the tech industry, and are less prone to amplifying nativist rhetoric.

The infighting could inform the next four years of Trump’s presidency, with Musk already warning of a “MAGA civil war” over the issue.

Several of Trump’s most prominent supporters during his first term have joined in, with strategist Steve Bannon condemning “Big Tech oligarchs” who support the visas.

South Africa seal their place in World Test Championship final with a two-wicket win.

South Africa tailenders Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen have hung in against relentless fast bowler Mohammad Abbas for a tense two-wicket win in the first Test in Centurion to seal the Proteas’ place in next year’s World Test Championship (WTC) final.

Jansen (16 not out) overshadowed Abbas’s brilliant figures of 6-54 on Sunday with a square driven boundary against the fast bowler as South Africa reached 150-8 just after lunch on Day 4 and escaped with a close win in the opener of the two-match series.

“Quite an emotional moment for me, good advert for Test cricket,” said South Africa captain Temba Bavuma, who made 40.

“We haven’t been ruthless but have found a way to ensure the result was on our side. Lot of joy and happiness on our side, a bit of a roller-coaster, glad that we were able to get the result.”

Abbas, making a comeback after more than three years in the Test wilderness, had knocked back South Africa’s tricky chase of 148 runs in a marathon 13-over spell before lunch as the home team limped to 99-8, losing four wickets for three runs.

However, Rabada changed gears in an unbroken 51-run stand with Jansen and made an unbeaten 31 off 26 balls with five fours to seal a memorable victory and denied Pakistan its first Test win in South Africa in almost 18 years.

South Africa had started this WTC cycle with a 1-1 drawn series against India before getting swept 2-0 in New Zealand. But since then, the Proteas have beaten the West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to stay on top of the table.

“It [the WTC final] is a big one, not just for myself but also the team and the coach,” Bavuma said. “The way we started our campaign against India and then New Zealand with a not-so-strong team and the way we have gone through with our performances not many gave us a chance.”

India, Australia and Sri Lanka are the other teams still in contention for June’s WTC final against South Africa at Lord’s.

Captain Temba Bavuma (40) and Aiden Markram (37) had thwarted Abbas for an hour after South Africa resumed at a wobbly 27-3, still needing 121 for victory.

Bavuma’s controversial dismissal punctuated a South Africa collapse in the latter half of the first session with Abbas grabbing three off his six balls in a sensational home team collapse.

Bavuma surprisingly didn’t request a television review when replays suggested that Abbas’s ball had brushed the batter’s pocket and didn’t make contact with the inside edge of the bat, and the South African skipper walked back to the dressing room.

Abbas bowled an unchanged marathon spell of 13 overs but had to wait as Markram and Bavuma saw off eight overs from the fast bowlers.

Resuming at 27-3, Bavuma and Markram showed plenty of patience against Abbas’s probing line and length before the fast bowler finally got the breakthrough after the first drinks break.

Abbas was rewarded for his brilliant seam bowling when he beat the outside edge of Markram’s bat and knocked back the off stump.

Bavuma survived a couple of close chances when he successfully overturned an on-field LBW decision against him early in the day and Naseem Shah couldn’t hold onto a sharp catch at fine leg as he overstepped the boundary cushion while grabbing the ball over his head.

South Africa had controlled the game at 96-4 before Bavuma’s dismissal saw Abbas finding the outside edges of David Bedingham’s (14) and Corbin Bosch’s (0) bat off successive deliveries, and in between, Kyle Verreynne dragged Naseem Shah’s delivery back onto his stumps.

Abbas found the outside edge of Rabada’s bat in his first over after lunch that fell just short of wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan before both tailenders took the team home.

“Extremely proud of the efforts, but going forward, we need to be ruthless,” Pakistan captain Shan Masood said. “We keep making the same mistakes, but we have to get over the line, seize moments.”

The second Test begins at Cape Town on Friday.