Gaza

Israel’s military described its attack on a residential complex in central Doha, Qatar, as a “precise” attack.

In an official statement on Tuesday, the Palestinian movement Hamas said the attack killed five of its members, and a Qatari officer, but did not eliminate its negotiating delegation or any of its senior leadership.

Here is what we know about the victims, and the senior leaders who were targeted – but who appear to have survived the attack:

Who is Khalil al-Hayya?

Reports say the strike targeted senior Hamas figures, including Khalil al-Hayya, the group’s exiled Gaza leader and main negotiator.

Al-Hayya rose in importance after the killings of top Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, and military commander Mohammed Deif last year. Sinwar, who had taken charge in Gaza after Haniyeh’s death, was killed later in 2024.

With those losses, al-Hayya is now one of five leaders steering Hamas’s leadership council.

The leadership council refers to the temporary, five-member ruling committee that was formed in late 2024 to govern the group during the war.

Born in the Gaza Strip in 1960, al-Hayya has been part of Hamas since it was set up in 1987, but he became especially important on the diplomatic front, based mainly in Qatar, which became the main hub for mediation with other countries, including Israel, Egypt, and the United States.

Operating outside Gaza allowed him to travel and coordinate between neighbouring countries without the constraints of the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Al-Hayya has also led Hamas’s delegations in mediated talks with Israel to try to secure a Gaza ceasefire deal.

Al-Hayya’s own family have suffered as a result of Israeli attacks: During the 2014 war, an Israeli strike destroyed the house of his eldest son, Osama, killing him, his wife, and three of their children, and during Tuesday’s attack, his son, Humam, was also killed.

But he stressed that the loss of any lives is tragic. “The blood of the leadership of the movement is like the blood of any Palestinian child,” he told Al Jazeera.

Who else is believed to be targeted and who was killed during the attack?

Zaher Jabarin is believed to also have been a target of Israel’s attack. He currently serves as the movement’s chief financial administrator.

Earlier in 1993, Israel arrested Jabarin and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He spent almost two decades in prison before being released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange.

Following his release, Jabarin rose quickly through Hamas ranks. He became head of the group’s financial bureau, managing and overseeing an extensive investment and funding network. He currently also heads Hamas in the occupied West Bank, and he is one of the five members of the leadership council.

The leaders assassinated during Israel’s attack in Qatar also include:

• Jihad Labad – director of al-Hayya’s office
• Humam al-Hayya – al-Hayya’s son
• Abdullah Abdul Wahid – bodyguard
• Moamen Hassouna – bodyguard
• Ahmed al-Mamluk – bodyguard

The sixth person killed, according to Qatar, was Corporal Bader Saad Mohammed al-Humaidi al-Dosari, a member of the Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya).

Who are the current leaders of Hamas?

With many of Hamas’s leadership killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, the group formed a five-man leadership council – which includes al-Hayya and Jabarin – and also has a senior military figure in Gaza itself.

Izz al-Din al-Haddad

Al-Haddad became the most senior Hamas military leader in the Gaza Strip after Sinwar’s death. Israel considers him one of the masterminds behind October 7 and has placed him on its most-wanted list. He is not a member of the five-man leadership council.

Khaled Meshaal

Khaled Meshaal, 68, has been a senior political leader of Hamas, a Palestinian resistance movement, since the 1990s. He became known when Israeli agents attempted to inject a slow-acting lethal chemical into his ear on a public street in Jordan, but the operation was botched, and the men were soon arrested. He is now based in Qatar, serving on the leadership council.

“It is true that in reality, there will be an entity or a state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land,” Meshaal has said. “But I won’t deal with it in terms of recognising or admitting it.”

Mohammad Darwish

He is also based in Qatar, and is the nominal head of Hamas’s leadership council. According to reports, in early 2025, he met Turkiye’s President Erdogan and publicly endorsed the idea of a technocratic or national unity government for post-war Gaza.

Nizar Awadallah

Awadallah is a long-time Hamas leader. He is seen as one of Hamas’s original members and has held several important positions, including in its armed wing. Since the October 7 attacks, he has not spoken publicly or appeared in the media.

As the world’s attention was focused on Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Israeli forces continued their unrelenting bombardment of Gaza, killing more than 50 people on Tuesday.

Among the dead are nine Palestinians, who had gathered in the enclave’s south seeking aid. Israel pressed on with its offensive in Gaza City after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Palestinians to flee to the south for their lives.

The Wafa news agency reported that a drone strike on a makeshift tent sheltering displaced families at Gaza’s port killed two civilians and injured others. Warplanes also hit several residential buildings, including four homes in the al-Mukhabarat area and the Zidan building northwest of Gaza City, it reported.

Another house was reportedly bombed in the Talbani neighbourhood of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, while two young men were killed in an attack on civilians in the az-Zarqa area of Tuffah, northeast of Gaza City.

Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency confirmed footage showing an Israeli strike on the Ibn Taymiyyah mosque in Deir el-Balah. The video captured a flash of light before the mosque’s minaret was enveloped in smoke. Despite the blast, the minaret appeared to remain standing.

Israel issued new evacuation threats on Monday, releasing maps warning Palestinians to leave a highlighted building and nearby tents on Jamal Abdel Nasser Street in Gaza City or face death. It told residents to move to the so-called “humanitarian area” in al-Mawasi, a barren stretch of coast in southern Gaza.

But al-Mawasi itself has been repeatedly bombed, despite Israel insisting it is a safe zone. At the start of the year, about 115,000 people lived there. Today, aid agencies estimate that more than 800,000 people – nearly a third of Gaza’s population – are crammed into overcrowded makeshift camps.

Philippe Lazzarini, the chief of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described al-Mawasi as a vast camp “concentrating hungry Palestinians in despair”.

“There is no safe place in Gaza, let alone a humanitarian zone. Warnings of famine have fallen on deaf ears,” he said.

The Palestinian Civil Defence warned that “Gaza City is burning, and humanity is being annihilated”.

The rescue agency said that in just 72 hours, five high-rise towers containing more than 200 apartments were destroyed, leaving thousands of people homeless.

More than 350 tents sheltering displaced families were also flattened, it added, forcing nearly 7,600 people to sleep in the open, “struggling against death, hunger, and unbearable heat”.

More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, some 20,000 of them children, in the Israeli offensive, which has been dubbed a genocide by numerous scholars and activists. The International Criminal Court has also issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes.

‘The crime of forced displacement’

The Government Media Office in Gaza said that more than 1.3 million people remain in Gaza City and surrounding areas, despite Israeli attempts to push them south. It described the evacuation orders as an effort to carry out “the crime of forced displacement in violation of all international laws”.

More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times in 23 months of genocidal war, and an Israeli curb on aid entry, including food items, has led to starvation deaths. Last month, a UN agency declared famine in Gaza, affecting half a million people.

On Tuesday morning, Palestinians in central Gaza staged a protest against the latest evacuation orders.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said that demonstrators carried banners reading, “We will not leave”, and “Not going out”.

“The primary goal of the [Israeli] occupation is displacement,” said Bajees al-Khalidi, a displaced Palestinian at the protest. “But there’s no place left, not in the south, nor the north. We’ve become completely trapped.”

Violence also flared in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces killed two teenagers in the Jenin refugee camp, according to the Wafa news agency.

Mourners on Tuesday buried 14-year-old Islam Noah, who was shot while attempting to enter the besieged refugee camp. A funeral was also held for another 14-year-old, Muhammad Alawneh. Two others were wounded in the same incident.

Israel targets Hamas leaders

Israel sent missiles at Doha as Hamas leaders were meeting in the Qatari capital for talks on the latest ceasefire proposal from the United States to end the war in Gaza. Hamas said five people were killed, while Qatar said a security official was also among the dead. Hamas said its leadership survived the assassination attempt.

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani condemned Israel’s “reckless criminal attack” in a phone call with US President Donald Trump. Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani called the attack “state terrorism”.

The Qatari prime minister said Doha would continue to work to end Israel’s war on Gaza, but raised doubts about the viability of the most recent talks. “When it comes to the current talks, I don’t think there is something valid right now after we’ve seen such an attack,” he said.

Qatar has sent a letter to the UN Security Council, condemning what it calls a cowardly Israeli assault on residential buildings in Doha.

The Doha attack has drawn global condemnation, with the UN chief calling it a “flagrant violation” of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.

The White House claimed that the US had warned Qatar of the impending strike, but Doha rejected that account, insisting the warning came only after the bombing had begun.

Trump later said he felt “very badly about the location of the attack” and that he had assured Qatar that it would not happen again.

“This was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.”

António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, has called Israel’s ‘targeted strike’ on Hamas officials in Doha a ‘flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.’

There were explosions near a residential area in Doha on Tuesday after the Israeli military said it carried out ‘targeted strikes’ on Hamas officials. Qatar has condemned the attack in the strongest terms.

Sept. 9 (UPI) — A boat of the Global Sumud Flotilla heading to Gaza was struck by a drone, the nonviolence coalition said Tuesday.

The Portuguese-flagged Family Boat was at a port in Tunis, Tunisia, when it was struck at about 2 a.m. local time Tuesday, it said on X, stating the flotilla had been “attacked.”

“While all participants are safe, details about the attack remain limited,” it said in an official statement that followed.

Global Sumud Flotilla posted uncorroborated video of the incident shot by a nearby boat to X, showing a streaking flame hitting the deck of Family Boat.

Crew member Miguel Duarte said he saw the drone “clearly” about 13 feet above him.

“It stopped close to us and then moved slowly to the forward part of the ship and dropped what was obviously a bomb,” he said in a video published to the flotilla’s X account.

“There was a huge explosion, lots of fire, big, big flames.”

The purported bomb landed on a pile of life jackets, he said, which caught fire and had to be extinguished.

“Let me be clear: 100% it was a drone dropping a bomb on the forward deck of our ship,” he said.

The flotilla arrived in Tunis on Sunday after departing Spain a week earlier with climate justice Advocate Greta Thunberg aboard.

The Global Sumud Flotilla said it consists of about 50 boats loaded with food and aid and hundreds of activists from more than 45 countries.

Its mission is to break Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

“Acts of aggression aimed at intimidating and derailing our mission will not deter us,” the Global Sumud Flotilla said in a statement. “Our peaceful mission to break the siege of Gaza and stand in solidarity with its people continues with determination and resolve.”

Israel has enforced a land, sea and air blockade of Gaza since Hamas‘ takeover of the enclave in 2007. The blockade has further been tightened since the Iran-backed militia’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to allow aid into the country in May following a three-month prohibition, but international organizations say it is not enough.

The United Nations has accused Israel of creating a manmade famine in Gaza — accusations that Israel has rejected.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, as well as former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, on allegations of using starvation as a method of warfare.

According to the Palestine Ministry of Health, 387 Palestinians, including 139 children, have died of starvation in Gaza.

At least 64,455 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s war against Hamas, the ministry said.

The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), bound for the Gaza Strip, says a drone struck its main ship in the Tunisian port of Sidi Bou Said, causing a fire, but that all its passengers and crew were safe.

A spokesman for the GSF blamed Israel for the incident, which occurred late on Monday, but the Tunisian National Guard said reports of a drone attack were “completely unfounded”.

The agency instead suggested that the fire was caused by a cigarette butt or a lighter setting a life jacket ablaze.

The GSF, however, insisted the incident was a drone attack and said it would provide more details on Tuesday morning.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The GSF comprises more than 50 boats, heading for Gaza to break the Israeli siege on the war-battered and famine-stricken Palestinian territory.

According to the GSF, the incident on the Family Boat, which is sailing under a Portuguese flag and carrying the group’s steering committee members, took place at 11:45pm on Monday. There were six people on the boat at the time of the drone attack, and some of the passengers quickly extinguished the fire.

All crew members are safe, it said in a statement.

The fire caused damage to the ship’s main deck and below-deck storage, it said.

‘Huge explosion’

The GSF posted multiple videos on social media that it said showed the moment the attack took place.

One video, taken from another vessel near the Family Boat, showed an incendiary device falling on the boat, causing an explosion. Another video, captured on the Family Boat’s security cameras, shows crew members looking up and jumping back before an explosion.

Miguel Duarte, who was on board the Family Boat and witnessed the attack, told the Middle East Eye that he saw a drone hovering over the vessel before it dropped an explosive device.

“I was standing in the back part of the ship, the aft deck, and I heard a drone,” Duarte said in the video posted online by MEE.

“I saw a drone clearly about 4 metres [13 feet] above my head. I called someone. We were looking at the drone, just above our heads, really,” he recounted.

The drone stopped close to the two crew members, then moved slowly to the forward deck of the ship, and dropped what was “obviously a bomb”, he said.

“There was a huge explosion, lots of fire, big, big flames … We could have been killed,” Duarte added.

Members of the GSF held Israel responsible for the attack, noting the Israeli military’s past assaults on ships bound for Gaza.

“There is no other authority that would do such an attack, such a crime, except the Israeli authorities,” spokesperson Saif Abukeshek said in a video posted on the GSF’s official Instagram page.

“They have been committing genocide for the past 22 months, and they are willing to attack a peaceful, non-violent flotilla,” he added.

Tunisia’s National Guard, however, denied reports of a drone attack, saying on its Facebook page that initial investigations show the fire broke out in one of the life jackets on the ship “as a result of a lighter or cigarette butt”.

It added, “There was no evidence of any hostile act or external targeting.”

The GSF later announced it would hold a news conference at 10am local time on Tuesday (09:00 GMT) to update the media and the public about the attack.

The United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, who is taking part in the flotilla, said while details of the attack have to be verified, Israel has a long history of attacking Gaza-bound ships.

“If it’s confirmed that this is a drone attack, it will be an assault and aggression against Tunisia and against Tunisian sovereignty,” Albanese said.

“Again, we cannot keep on tolerating this and normalising the illegal.”

GSF says its mission will continue

Several flotillas have attempted to break the blockade of Gaza in the past.

In 2008, two boats from the Free Gaza Movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, successfully reached Gaza, marking the first breach of Israel’s naval blockade.

Since 2010, however, Israeli forces have intercepted or attacked all such flotillas in international waters, sometimes using deadly force. This includes Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara in 2010, during which its commandos killed 10 activists and wounded dozens of others.

There have been three attempts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza this year. The first one, organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), was aborted in May after drones struck the Conscience ship off the coast of Malta. The FFC blamed the attack on Israel.

The other bids, on the Madleen and Handala, were intercepted by Israeli forces off the coast of Gaza in international waters, and activists were detained and deported.

The GSF organisers say the latest attempt is the largest maritime mission to Gaza, bringing together more than 50 ships and delegations from at least 44 countries. Its participants include Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla Mandela and French actress Adele Haenel.

The first convoy of the flotilla departed from Spanish ports on August 31 and arrived in Tunisia last week. The group was due to depart from Tunis on Wednesday.

Abukeshek, the GSF spokesman, said the flotilla is determined to continue the mission despite the attack.

“We will continue our preparation as soon as we make sure the ships are safe and the crew and the participants are safe,” he said.

“We will continue to break the siege on Gaza.”

Israeli forces bomb more high-rise buildings in Gaza City as Netanyahu warns that this is the opening of the main operation to seize it.

A former Israeli soldier has created a video game based on the Gaza war, which he says aims to ‘humanise’ Israeli troops. Scenes from the game’s promo video depict the destruction in Gaza, which rights groups say Israeli soldiers already treat as if it were a video game.

In recent months, the small East African coastal region of Somaliland has been making international headlines after several high-profile Republicans in the United States endorsed a bill to recognise it as an independent state.

The question of Somaliland’s independence from Somalia has long divided the region. While the territory declared its sovereignty in the 1990s, it is not recognised by Mogadishu or any other world government.

Recently, Republicans in the US House of Representatives, including Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Representative Pat Harrigan of North Carolina, and other key conservative heavyweights, have backed the push for recognition.

“All territorial claims by the Federal Republic of Somalia over the area known as Somaliland are invalid and without merit,” said the text of the bill introduced in June, calling for the US to recognise Somaliland “as a separate, independent country”.

At around the same time, media reports surfaced that said Israel had reached out to Somaliland as a possible location to resettle Palestinians it plans to expel from Gaza.

Human rights advocates from Somaliland have voiced concern that the forced resettlement of Palestinians could “render Somaliland complicit in the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza”, with worries that countries who previously sympathised with Somaliland may potentially “withdrawing their support”.

During a news conference at the White House in early August, US President Donald Trump addressed the issue. “We’re looking into that right now,” he said in response to a question about whether he supported recognition of Somaliland if it were to accept Palestinians. “Good question, actually, and another complex one, but we’re working on that right now,” he added, without giving a clear answer.

Less than a week later, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas penned a letter to Trump calling for Somaliland’s recognition. One of the key justifications stated in the letter by Cruz, who has received nearly $2m in funding from multiple pro-Israel lobby groups, including the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was that Somaliland “sought to strengthen ties with Israel, and voiced support for the Abraham Accords.” The accords are a set of agreements normalising diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab states.

In response to Cruz’s letter, Somalia’s ambassador to the US released a statement warning that any infringement of Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would empower armed groups and “destabilise the entire Horn of Africa region”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the ministers of foreign affairs and information of Somaliland for comment on the plan to forcibly relocate Palestinians and whether they were engaging in talks with the Israelis about this, but did not receive a response.

Somaliland has not commented on the forced relocation of Palestinians, but officials have openly stated that it welcomed US consideration for its recognition, with the spokesperson for the region’s presidency thanking US Senator Cruz for his advocacy and stating that “recognition of this established fact [Somaliland] is not a question of if, but when”.

Recognition plus armed groups: A recipe for disaster?

In Somaliland, a region with traditionally strong support for the Palestinian cause, many people are hopeful about one half of the plan and concerned about the other.

Those who spoke to Al Jazeera shared concerns about the ramifications and possible dangers that could arise from potential Israeli plans to force Palestinians to relocate to Somaliland.

Ahmed Dahir Saban, a 37-year-old high school teacher from the town of Hariirad in Awdal, a province in the far northwest bordering Djibouti, said Palestinians would always be accepted with open arms in Somaliland, but that any attempts to forcibly relocate them from Palestine would never be accepted. He cautioned the authorities in Somaliland about the deal.

“The people of Palestine cannot be forced from their blessed homeland. What the Americans and Israelis are doing is ethnic cleansing, and we in Somaliland want no part of it,” he said.

Ahmed said, aside from the move being morally wrong and inhumane, he believes it would “risk violence from [armed] groups” and have serious ramifications for the region.

“Al-Shabab and Daesh [ISIL/ISIS] could carry out attacks throughout Somaliland if the authorities went through with accepting forcibly relocated Palestinians. Even here in Awdal, we wouldn’t be safe from the violence.”

Ahmed fears that if Somaliland accepts expelled Palestinians, the armed groups will exploit public anger against such a move to expand their sphere of influence and possible territorial control in the region.

Armed groups like al-Shabab maintain a presence in the Sanaag province, which is partially administered by the Somaliland government.

Analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera share similar concerns.

Jethro Norman, a senior researcher with the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), believes the US and Israel’s meddling in Somaliland under the pretext of relocating Palestinians would create significant opportunities for armed groups.

“Al-Shabab and IS-Somalia [ISIL Somalia] have consistently framed their struggle in terms of resisting foreign interference and protecting Somali sovereignty, but they’ve also spent years perfecting narratives about Western-backed dispossession and ‘Crusader-Zionist’ intrigue,” he remarked.

When Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, al-Shabab held protests in areas they govern in support of Palestine. Large crowds also came out in support of the Palestinian cause in rebel-controlled territory in Somalia.

“A Palestinian relocation programme, especially one perceived as externally imposed and aligned with Israeli wishes, would provide these [armed] groups with an unbelievably potent propaganda tool, allowing them to position themselves as defenders of both Somali unity and Palestinian dignity against what they could characterise as a cynical Western-Israeli scheme,” Norman told Al Jazeera.

Peace at what cost?

Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 after the country descended into civil war. In the years since, the administration in the capital, Hargeisa, has been able to create a de facto state within Somalia’s borders. Schools, security and stability emerged, but Somaliland has yet to secure international recognition.

However, some of the decades-long gains have come at a cost to many who call Somaliland home.

Dissent and freedom of expression have come under fire in Somaliland. This has affected the press, civilians and marginalised communities alike, with media outlets raided and journalists arrested.

Members of the public are routinely arrested for having the Somali flag in an attempt to silence unionist voices, which make up a significant portion of the Somaliland populace.

More recently, entire communities have fallen victim to scorched-earth policies implemented by Hargeisa. Nowhere is this more visible than in the city of Las Anod in Sool province. For years, local clans complained of marginalisation by the centre, which led to a public uprising. Security forces responded by killing civilian protesters in December 2022. Somaliland authorities then laid siege to the city for nine months; hundreds of people were killed in the violence, almost 2,000 were injured, and 200,000 were displaced.

Somaliland eventually lost control of Las Anod and the vast majority of its eastern region – about one-third of the territory it claims – to pro-unionist communities who have recently formed the semiautonomous Northeast regional state.

As a result of the siege, rights groups such as Amnesty International released a damaging report in 2023 accusing Somaliland of indiscriminately shelling homes, schools, mosques, densely populated civilian neighbourhoods, and even hospitals in Las Anod, which is a war crime under international law.

The Somaliland administration became the only local actor in Somalia to be accused of war crimes since al-Shabab, which was accused of committing war crimes by Human Rights Watch in 2013.

But now talk of possible Israeli plans to forcibly relocate Palestinians has heightened fears of further violence in Somaliland.

“You can hear the whispers of something,” said Mohamed Awil Meygag in the city of Hargeisa. The 69-year-old witnessed how conflict devastated the region in the 1980s and fears another uncertain path for Somaliland.

Mohamed adamantly supports the recognition of Somaliland as an independent state, but is wary of reports about forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza. He also feels the authorities in Hargeisa have not been sufficiently transparent.

“When Americans talk about recognising Somaliland, they [Somaliland’s government] always welcome it, and it’s right, but when it’s about Palestinians being brought here by force and the role of Israel, you don’t get the same kind of response. They’re quiet,” he said.

“Relocating Palestinians forcefully here, no matter what is given in return, even if it’s recognition, is not worth it. We [Somaliland] will have the blood of fellow Muslims on our hands, and no Muslim should support such a thing,” Mohamed added.

“They [the US and Israel] don’t have good intentions and we cannot risk jeopardising our country.”

For analysts, the possible forced relocation plan is also just one part of broader international interests at play in the region.

“This so-called ‘relocation plan’ is part of a wider architecture of power that extends far beyond the interests of US and Somaliland officials,” noted Samar al-Bulushi, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, who said that more foreign alliances in the region could help fuel political instability.

Al Jazeera reached out to the US Department of State for comment. In response, they directed us to the government of Israel. Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli embassy in the US for comment on the plans to relocate Palestinians to Somaliland, but they did not respond to our queries.

Uncharted waters

Amid reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is in contact with at least four countries to explore the forced transfer of Palestinians, Israel’s Channel 12 reported recently that “progress has been made” in talks with Somaliland over the issue.

On September 2, US Representatives Chris Smith and John Moolenaar also wrote a letter to Secretary of State Marc Rubio, urging the removal of Somaliland from its travel advisory on Somalia, citing Hargeisa as a strategic partner in containing China, actively engaging and supporting US interests, as well as “growing ties with Israel through its solid support for the Abraham Accords”.

“The pro-Israel networks sit in the same Washington ecosystem as Red Sea security hawks and China sceptics, and you can see some sponsors explicitly pairing Somaliland recognition with closer Israeli ties and anti-China rhetoric. Ted Cruz’s August letter urging recognition is a clear example of that framing,” said analyst Norman.

However, if the Trump administration were to recognise Somaliland, it would lead to catastrophic ripple effects in Somalia and beyond its borders, he feels.

“It would risk turning a smoulder into open flame,” the DIIS researcher said.

For al-Bulushi, the deal that is reportedly on the table says more about the region’s lack of global power than its growing influence.

“The very act of entering into such a compact with the US and Israel speaks to the lingering power asymmetries between African leaders and global powers,” she said. “[It] symbolises a lack of independence on the part of Somaliland leaders – ironically at the very moment when they are seeking recognition as a sovereign state.”

Israel has destroyed another high-rise in Gaza City, bringing the number of buildings razed during its campaign to seize the largest urban centre in the Gaza Strip to at least 50, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.

The attack on Al-Ruya Tower on Sunday came as Israeli forces killed at least 65 people across the Gaza Strip, including 49 in the northern part of the besieged enclave.

The Israeli military said it struck Al-Ruya Tower on Sunday after issuing an evacuation threat, forcing residents and displaced families sheltering in makeshift tents in the neighbourhood to flee.

The head of the Palestinian NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, who was near the site of the attack, told Al Jazeera that the situation “is scary”, with panic spreading among the people.

“Today, hundreds of families lost their shelters. Israel [is] aiming to force Palestinians to the southern areas using these explosions, but everyone knows that there is no safe place in the south or any humanitarian zone,” Shawa said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the military was “eliminating terrorist infrastructure and nefarious terrorist high-rises”, a talking point that Israel often repeats as it obliterates civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

The attack on Al-Ruya – a five-storey building with 24 apartments, as well as department stores, a clinic and a gym – follows an earlier one on the Al Jazeera Club in central Gaza City, where tents housing displaced families were also hit.

It comes after Israel targeted the 15-storey Soussi Tower on Saturday and the 12-storey Mushtaha Tower on Friday. Several Palestinians sheltering in tent encampments around those towers were wounded.

One family that had their shelter destroyed when the Soussi Tower was reduced to rubble said, “We have nothing left for us.”

“We quickly left the building without bringing anything with us. The Israelis attacked the building half an hour later,” the Palestinian man said. “Now, we are trying to stay away from the eyes of the other people by trying to sew some fabrics and sheets,” he said, referring to his family’s attempt to put up a new shelter.

Israeli escalation in Gaza City

Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for the military occupation of Gaza City in August, a move Netanyahu suggested had already led to the displacement of 100,000 Palestinians.

As Israel pushes to displace residents of Gaza City to the south of the enclave, Palestinians have been saying that nowhere is safe in the territory.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior issued a statement on Sunday warning Palestinians in Gaza City not to trust Israel’s claim that it had set up a humanitarian zone in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis.

“We call on citizens in Gaza City to beware of the occupation’s deceitful claims about the existence of a humanitarian safe zone in the south of the Strip,” it said in a statement.

The Israeli military had designated al-Mawasi a “humanitarian zone” early on in its campaign against Gaza. Since then, it has been bombed repeatedly.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported that “every five to 10 minutes, you can hear the sounds of explosions from all directions in Gaza City”, including heavy bombing in the Sabra and Zeitoun neighbourhoods.

“Israeli forces are using remotely controlled explosive robots, and detonating them in residential streets, destroying neighbourhoods,” he said. In Sheikh Radwan, Mahmoud added, homes, public facilities, schools and a mosque had been hit.

Rescuers reported that at least eight Palestinians, including children, were killed when Israeli forces bombed the al-Farabi school-turned-shelter, west of Gaza City.

Sohaib Foda, who was sleeping on a mattress in Gaza City’s al-Farabi School when the attack took place, said the attack left her and a young relative wounded.

“I heard a thud, and a block fell on my face. My cousin’s daughter, who was sleeping here, got injured and fell beside me. Another block then fell on her head,” Foda said.

“Everyone was screaming. I was scared. When I touched my face, it was covered in blood, and I realised I had been injured.”

Mohammed Ayed, who witnessed the attack, said the school was hit by two rockets. He said teams were still working in the rubble to rescue missing people or recover their remains.

“We have recovered two hands so far,” he said. “As you can see, these are children’s hands.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 64,368 Palestinians and wounded 162,776 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Thousands more remain buried under the rubble as famine continues to spread across the enclave.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, meanwhile, said at least five people, including three children, have starved to death in Gaza over the past day.

These figures bring the total number of malnutrition deaths in Gaza to 387, including 138 children, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. Since the global hunger monitor, IPC, confirmed the famine in northern Gaza on August 22, at least 109 hunger-related deaths have been recorded, 23 of them children, the ministry added.

Academics, United Nations experts and leading rights groups have described the horrific Israeli atrocities in Gaza as a genocide.

Later on Sunday, United States President Donald Trump suggested that he put forward a new proposal to end the war in Gaza, calling it a “final warning” for Hamas.

The Palestinian group acknowledged receiving “ideas” from the US, saying that it welcomes any efforts to reach a lasting ceasefire.

Sept. 7 (UPI) — A drone launched by Houthi rebels from Yemen struck the arrivals area of the Ramon Airport in southern Israel Sunday, the Israeli military and airport officials said.

It is the latest in a series of ongoing attacks as the Iran-supported group began targeting Israel as what it is says is a sign of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthi-controlled Yemeni Armed Forces issued a warning after the attack that “the airports inside occupied Palestine are not safe and will be continuously targeted,” a statement from the group said. The Houthis said in the statement that the strike caused significant damage to the airport and took responsibility for the closure.

In a social media post, a spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, which is controlled by by the Houthis, said “the airports inside occupied Palestine are not safe and will be continuously targeted.”

The airport reopened after a 90 minute closure.

“There is no indication of a technical malfunction in the existing detention systems,” the military said in a statement on Sunday, adding that an “extensive investigation” is expected, CNN reported. Several other drones on Sunday were intercepted, the military said.

Most of the Houthi-backed drones fired on Israel have been intercepted before striking the country. In this case, the drone was originally not deemed a threat which is why there was no alarm, officials said.

Israel’s emergency response service said it received a report at about 2:35 p.m. that a drone had landed in the Ramon Airport area. Two people received minor injuries, the emergency service, known as Magen David Adom said.

Israel has a complex security system in place to warn of incoming projectiles, but in this case, no alarm was sounded, officials said.

Houthi-backed groups have also targeted shipping traffic in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, among the world’s most important waterways, in the ongoing battle.

US president claims Israel accepted his terms to end the war in Gaza and issues ‘last warning’ for Hamas.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has suggested that he put forward a new proposal to end the war in Gaza, saying that Israel has accepted his terms as it pushes on with its brutal assault on the Palestinian territory.

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump warned Hamas to accept his conditions, saying that he informed the group about the “consequences” of turning down the offer.

Throughout the 23-month war, US officials have repeatedly claimed that Israel has accepted ceasefire efforts – all while Israeli leaders vow publicly to intensify their offensive, which leading rights groups and scholars have described as a genocide.

“Everyone wants the Hostages HOME. Everyone wants this War to end!” Trump wrote in a social media post.

“The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

It remains unclear what Trump’s terms entail.

But Trump has previously issued similar verbal warnings to Hamas and predicted that the war would end soon. On August 25, the US president said he thinks the war would come to a “conclusive ending” within three weeks.

Later on Sunday, Hamas confirmed receiving “ideas” from the US for ending the war.

“Hamas welcomes any initiative that helps in the efforts to stop the aggression against our people,” the group said.

“We affirm our immediate readiness to sit at the negotiation table to discuss the release of all prisoners in exchange for a clear declaration to end the war, the full withdrawal from Gaza, and the formation of a committee to manage Gaza from Palestinian independents, who will immediately begin their work.”

Hamas has been calling for a ceasefire deal that would see a prisoner exchange to release Israeli captives in Gaza and a lasting end to the Israeli offensive.

The Palestinian group also said last month that it accepted a proposal presented by the mediators for a 60-day truce.

Trump’s statement comes as Israel steps up its campaign to capture Gaza City against the pleas of rights groups and Western officials.

The US president has been a staunch supporter of Israel. Last week, his administration imposed sanctions on Palestinian rights groups for cooperating with the International Criminal Court’s investigation into Israeli abuses.

Trump also previously called for removing all Palestinians from Gaza and turning the enclave into a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” – a plan that rights advocates decried as an ethnic cleansing push.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embraced Trump’s mass displacement proposal, presenting the push to ethnically cleanse Gaza as an effort to allow Palestinians to voluntarily leave the territory.

But legal scholars say that people have no real choice when they are under the threat of constant Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli campaign has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians and levelled most of the territory to the ground.

Holocaust Museum LA says the post was misinterpreted as a ‘political statement’ and promises to ‘do better’.

A Holocaust museum in Los Angeles is facing backlash after deleting an Instagram post that suggested the phrase “never again” should apply to all people – not just Jews.

The post, shared with Holocaust Museum LA’s 24,200 Instagram followers, read: “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The slogan “never again”, long associated with Holocaust remembrance, is also invoked more broadly as a pledge to prevent future genocides.

The Instagram message was initially praised online and interpreted by some as an acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering amid Israel’s war on Gaza, which numerous United Nations experts, scholars and rights groups have described as a genocide.

It was later deleted and replaced with a statement on Saturday saying the post had been misinterpreted.

“We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent,” it said.

Holocaust Museum LA also promised to “do better” and to “ensure that posts in the future are more thoughtfully designed and thoroughly vetted”.

The museum, which is currently closed for construction until June 2026, quickly faced criticism online after journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News reposted a screenshot of the deleted message, writing: “Speechless. No words for this.”

Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist, called the museum’s move “absolutely disgusting”, saying that the museum is “cowering under pressure” from pro-Israel voices.

“Countless genocide scholars and human rights organisations have confirmed what Israel is doing in Gaza is textbook definition of genocide,” Taeb told Al Jazeera.

“It’s appalling that a museum established for the purpose of educating the public about genocide and the Holocaust not only refuses to acknowledge the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza, but [is] removing a social media post that merely stated that ‘never again’ is not intended for just Jews, in order for it to not be interpreted as a response to the genocide in Gaza.”

The original now-deleted post did not mention Gaza, but it faced a barrage of pro-Israel comments expressing disapproval, including some that called on donors to stop funding the institution.

By deleting the post and issuing the subsequent statement, the museum sparked accusations of backtracking on a universal anti-genocide principle.

“We live in a world where the Holocaust Museum has to aploogise and retract for simply appearing to sympathise with Palestinians,” Palestinian American activist and comedian Amer Zahr told Al Jazeera.

“If that does not illustrate the historic dehumanisation that Arab Americans have had to live with, I don’t know what does.”

Assal Rad, a researcher with the Arab Center Washington DC, called the controversy “unbelievable”.

“Palestinians are so dehumanized that they’re excluded from ‘never again,’ apparently their genocide is the exception,” Rad wrote on X.

Political commentator Hasan Piker also slammed the museum’s decision. “A real shame that even a tepid general anti-genocide statement was met with unimaginable resistance from Israel supporters,” he wrote in a social media post.

The Holocaust Museum LA did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The Israeli army has bombed another high-rise in Gaza City after telling Palestinian residents to evacuate or face being killed amid its ongoing siege and imposed mass starvation in the enclave.

The Israeli military designated more high-rise towers as targets in a map released on Saturday. Shortly after releasing the map, it bombed the 15-storey Soussi Tower, which is located opposite a building belonging to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood.

“These attacks are causing panic amongst the people, especially considering the time they are given to evacuate. Half an hour or an hour is not enough time for people to escape from these buildings,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said, reporting from Gaza City.

The Israeli military said in a statement, without offering evidence, that the buildings struck were used by Hamas to gather intelligence to monitor the locations of the Israeli army. It also said armed Palestinian groups planted “numerous explosive devices” and dug a tunnel in the area.

Gaza’s Government Media Office rejected the claims and called them “part of a systematic policy of deception used by the occupation to justify the targeting of civilians and infrastructure” and forcibly displace Palestinians from their homes. It said 90 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed by Israel.

The targeted buildings were near the 12-storey Mushtaha Tower, which on Friday was similarly bombed and razed to the ground, as Israel moves to seize Gaza City despite international criticism.

At least 68 Palestinians were killed and 362 wounded across the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military over the past day, the enclave’s Ministry of Health said on Saturday afternoon.

The toll includes 23 aid seekers killed and 143 wounded by Israeli forces. At least six more Palestinians also died of Israeli-induced starvation, bringing the total number of starvation deaths during nearly two years of war to 382, including 135 children.

At least 64,368 Palestinians have been killed and 162,367 wounded by Israel since the start of the war in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Israel declares new ‘humanitarian zone’, bombs the area

Sources at Nasser Hospital, located in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, told Al Jazeera that at least two Palestinians were killed and many wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent housing displaced people in the al-Mawasi area.

While this area was designated as a “humanitarian” or “safe” zone by the Israeli army early in the war, it has been repeatedly bombed, leading to the deaths of hundreds of displaced civilians.

Hours before the latest bombings, the Israeli army had announced the establishment of another similar zone in al-Mawasi, which runs along Gaza’s Mediterranean coast. It claimed the area will have infrastructure such as field hospitals, water lines, desalination facilities and food supplies.

Reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Palestinians do not trust the so-called humanitarian area as tents in similar zones have been attacked by Israel many times before and nowhere is safe.

But people in Gaza City have few options: If they stay, they risk being killed, and if they leave, they face dangers on the road and may have to spend considerable money to move their belongings south.

Those who have returned to their homes in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, where Israeli forces withdrew recently after weeks of ground assaults, have found everything they owned destroyed.

“What we have built in 50 years was flattened in five days,” resident Aqeel Kishko told Al Jazeera. “Nothing remains standing – buildings, roads and infrastructure. We are walking not only on ruins but also on dead bodies of our loved ones.”

Nohaa Tafish said it would be impossible for Gaza’s largest urban centre to be revived.

“What would people return to? There is nothing to return to,” she said.

Ahmed Rihem also had his home in Gaza City reduced to rubble. “It is as if the entire Zeitoun neighbourhood was hit with a nuclear bomb,” he said.

HumAngle has never covered a conflict on the scale of Gaza. None of our reporters has lived through bombardments that erase entire neighbourhoods, killing well over 60,000 people, including women and children. Yet as journalists documenting Africa’s wars — from the insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast to the grinding violence in the Lake Chad Basin — we understand the crushing weight of trauma, the toll of witnessing death and displacement, and the shadow it casts on the well-being of those who dare to report.

But in Gaza, it is no longer only about trauma. It is no longer only about threats. It is about erasure. Journalists are not simply at risk — they are being systematically hunted, exterminated, and buried beneath the rubble along with the people whose suffering they sought to expose.

In May 2022, an Israeli sniper murdered Shireen Abu Akleh. Since October 2023, Israel has killed at least 247 journalists. To put this in perspective: in 33 years of tracking journalist killings globally, the Committee to Protect Journalists recorded 1,708 deaths. In less than two years, Israel has accounted for nearly 15% of that total. The figures are not incidental; they are the result of deliberate policy. The world’s most sophisticated surveillance systems, funded by American taxpayers and protected by European diplomacy, remain effective. Israel knows exactly who it is killing.

To target medics, to bomb children in hospitals and schools, and to strike refugee camps and journalists’ homes is not collateral damage. It is a declaration of contempt for human life and a war on truth itself.

As African journalists, we know the world’s silence when our own people are massacred. We know the indifference when insurgents torch villages in Borno or militias raze communities in the Central African Republic. Yet even by those standards, the West’s complicity in Gaza is staggering. The same governments that lecture Africa on human rights and democracy are funding and shielding the greatest killer of journalists and medics in modern history.

We refuse to be silent.

We condemn Israel’s war not only against Gaza but against the very idea of free journalism. And we condemn the powerful Western countries whose silence, vetoes, and weapons sustain this slaughter. We also condemn Hamas in forceful terms for killing innocent civilians and endangering the lives of hostages.

If the world allows Gaza’s journalists to be murdered without consequence, then every journalist, everywhere, is at risk. And in the aftermath of the Gaza war, powerful Western nations will have eroded the authority and credibility of institutions that can safeguard the rights of journalists and every human being, like the United Nations, to a degree unmatched since its founding in 1945.

The conduct of these Western countries in Gaza has now cast serious doubt on their credibility to lead the world on democratic values, universal human rights, and justice, which they once championed more passionately.

We stand with our colleagues in Gaza. Their courage is our reminder that journalism, at its purest, is not just about reporting events. It is about defying indifference.

~ HumAngle

It was my childhood dream to study medicine. I wanted to be a doctor to help people. I never imagined that I would study medicine not in a university, but in a hospital; not from textbooks, but from raw experience.

After I finished my BA in English last year, I decided to enrol in the medical faculty of al-Azhar University. I started my studies at the end of June. With all universities in Gaza destroyed, we, medical students, are forced to watch lectures on our mobile phones and read medical books under the light of our mobile phones’ flashlights.

Part of our training is to receive lectures from older medical students, who the genocidal war has forced into practice prematurely.

My first such lecture was by a fifth-year medical student called Dr Khaled at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.

Al-Aqsa looks nothing like a normal hospital. There are no spacious white rooms or privacy for the patients. The corridor is the room, patients lie on beds or the floor, and their groans echo throughout the building.

Due to the overcrowding, we have to take our lectures in a caravan in the hospital yard.

“I’ll teach you what I learned not from lectures,” Dr Khaled began, “but from days when medicine was [something] you had to invent.”

He started with basics: check breathing, open the airway, and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). But soon, the lesson shifted into something no normal syllabus would have: how to save a life with nothing.

Dr Khaled told us about a recent case: a young man pulled from beneath the rubble – legs shattered, head bleeding. The standard protocol is to immobilise the neck with a stabiliser before moving the patient.

But there was no stabiliser. No splint. No nothing.

So Dr Khaled did what no medical textbook would teach: he sat on the ground, cradled the man’s head between his knees, and held it perfectly still for 20 minutes until equipment arrived.

“That day,” he said, “I wasn’t a student. I was the brace. I was the tool.”

While the supervising doctor was preparing the operating room, Dr Khaled did not move, even when his muscles began aching, because that was all he could do to prevent further injury.

This story was not the only one we heard from Dr Khaled about improvised medical solutions.

There was one which was particularly painful to hear.

A woman in her early thirties was brought into the hospital with a deep pelvic injury. Her flesh was torn. She needed urgent surgery. But first, the wound had to be sterilised.

There was no Betadine. No alcohol. No clean tools. Only chlorine.

Yes, chlorine. The same chemical that burns the skin and stings the eyes.

She was unconscious. There was no alternative. They poured the chlorine in.

Dr Khaled told us this story with a voice that trembled with guilt.

“We used chlorine,” he said, not looking at us. “Not because we didn’t know better. But because there was nothing else.”

We were shocked by what we heard, but perhaps not surprised. Many of us had heard stories of desperate measures doctors in Gaza had had to take. Many of us had seen the gut-wrenching video of Dr Hani Bseiso operating on his niece on a dining table.

Last year, Dr Hani, an orthopaedic surgeon from al-Shifa Medical Complex, found himself in an impossible situation when his 17-year-old niece, Ahed, was injured in an Israeli air strike. They were trapped in their apartment building in Gaza City, unable to move, as the Israeli army had besieged the area.

Ahed’s leg was mangled beyond repair and she was bleeding. Dr Hani did not have much choice.

There was no anaesthesia. No surgical instruments. Only a kitchen knife, a pot with a little water, and a plastic bag.

Ahed lay on the dining table, her face pale and eyes half-closed, while her uncle – his own eyes brimming with tears – prepared to amputate her leg. The moment was captured on video.

“Look,” he cried, voice breaking, “I am amputating her leg without anaesthesia! Where is the mercy? Where is humanity?”

He worked quickly, hands trembling but precise, his surgical training colliding with the raw horror of the moment.

This scene has been repeated countless times across Gaza, as even young children have had to go through amputations without anaesthesia. And we, as medical students, are learning that this could be our reality; that we, too, may have to operate on a relative or a child while watching and hearing their unbearable pain.

But perhaps the hardest lesson we are learning is when not to treat – when the wounds are beyond saving and resources must be spent on those who still have a chance of survival. In other countries, this is a theoretical ethical discussion. Here, it is a decision we need to learn how to make because we may soon have to make it ourselves.

Dr Khaled told us: “In medical school, they teach you to save everyone. In Gaza, you learn you can’t – and you have to live with that.”

This is what it means to be a doctor in Gaza today: to carry the inhuman weight of knowing you cannot save everyone and to keep going; to develop a superhuman level of emotional endurance to absorb loss after loss without breaking and without losing one’s own humanity.

These people continue to treat and teach, even when they are exhausted, even when they are starving.

One day, midway through a trauma lecture, our instructor, Dr Ahmad, stopped mid-sentence, leaned on the table, and sat down. He whispered, “I just need a minute. My sugar’s low.”

We all knew he hadn’t eaten since the previous day. The war is not only depleting medicine – it is consuming the very bodies and minds of those who try to heal others. And we, the students, are learning in real time that medicine here is not just about knowledge and skills. It is about surviving long enough to use them.

Being a doctor in Gaza means reinventing medicine every day with what is available to you, treating without tools, resuscitating without equipment, and bandaging with your own body.

It is not just a crisis of resources. It is a moral test.

And in that test, the wounds run deep – through flesh, through dignity, through hope itself.

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

Egypt says forced Palestinian displacement a ‘red line’ as Qatar calls it a ‘extension’ of Israel’s policy of violating Palestinian rights.

Egypt and Qatar have expressed strong condemnation over remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the displacement of Palestinians, including through the Rafah crossing.

In a statement on Friday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the comments as part of “ongoing attempts to prolong escalation in the region and perpetuate instability while avoiding accountability for Israeli violations in Gaza”.

In an interview with the Israeli Telegram channel Abu Ali Express, Netanyahu claimed there were “different plans for how to rebuild Gaza” and alleged that “half of the population wants to leave Gaza”, claiming it was “not a mass expulsion”.

“I can open Rafah for them, but it will be closed immediately by Egypt,” he said.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry reiterated its “categorical rejection of forcibly or coercively displacing Palestinians from their land”.

“[Egypt] stresses that these practices represent a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes that cannot be tolerated,” the ministry added.

The statement affirmed that Egypt will never be complicit in such practices nor act as a conduit for Palestinian displacement, describing this as a “red line” that cannot be crossed.

‘Collective punishment will not succeed’

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry also fiercely criticised Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them an “extension of the occupation’s approach to violating the rights of the brotherly Palestinian people”.

“The policy of collective punishment practised by the occupation against the Palestinians … will not succeed in forcing the Palestinian people to leave their land or in confiscating their legitimate rights,” it said in a statement.

It stressed the need for the international community to “unite with determination to confront the extremist and provocative policies of the Israeli occupation, in order to prevent the continuation of the cycle of violence in the region and its spread to the world”.

The war of words comes as Egypt and Qatar continue to lead mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel, seeking to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, said Netanyahu’s comments were “incredibly controversial” since it’s the Israeli government which has outlined that “it wants the Palestinians out of Gaza”.

“The condemnation from both Qatar and Egypt is essentially telling Israel this is all a part of its larger plan, that Israel is the one that waged war on the Gaza Strip, that the continuation of crimes against the Palestinian people and the total closure of the Rafah border crossing is the reason why they’re imprisoned in Gaza, not because of anything else,” she said.

“It is Israel that single-handedly created this policy.”