Israel-Palestine conflict

Arab Barghouti tells Al Jazeera Israel wants to ‘silence’ his father amid reports Israeli guards beat him last month.

The son of prominent Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti says he fears for his father’s life in Israeli prison amid witness reports that he was beaten by guards last month.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday, Arab Barghouti accused Israel of targeting his father because he is a unifying figure among Palestinians.

“We do fear for my father’s life,” Arab said from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Earlier this week, the family told media outlets that they had received testimonies from Palestinian detainees released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal that Barghouti was beaten by guards in mid-September as he was being transferred between two Israeli prisons.

Arab told Al Jazeera that the attack is the fourth time since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023 that his father has been assaulted in Israeli detention.

“They are targeting him,” said Arab, explaining that Israel sees his father as “a danger” because of his ability to bring Palestinians together.

A prominent member of Fatah, the Palestinian political faction that dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs limited parts of the occupied West Bank, Barghouti has been in Israeli prison since the early 2000s.

He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years on murder and attempted murder charges, which he has consistently denied.

A Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll from May found that Barghouti was the most popular Palestinian leader, garnering more support than Hamas official Khaled Meshaal and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinians had called for Barghouti to be released as part of the recent Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, but Israel refused to free him.

As part of the deal, Israel released 250 Palestinians serving life sentences, several of whom were sent into exile abroad. About 1,700 Palestinians who were detained in Gaza and transferred to Israeli detention facilities during the Gaza war were also freed.

One of the released prisoners, Mohammad al-Ardah, told Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli forces would carry out “barbaric” raids in the prisons each week, severely beating Palestinian detainees.

“The latest reports we heard about the great leader Marwan Barghouti is that they broke three of his ribs,” al-Ardah said.

The Israeli authorities have denied that Barghouti was beaten in September, with the Israel Prison Service telling BBC News that it “operates in accordance with the law, while ensuring the safety and health of all inmates”.

But Arab, Barghouti’s son, said the Israeli authorities have no credibility.

He also pointed to an August video that showed far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatening Barghouti in prison, as evidence that the Israeli government is trying to “silence” his father’s voice.

“We know that [Ben-Gvir] showed him an electric chair on his phone and he told him, ‘This is your fate’ … If that’s not a threat to his life, I don’t know what is,” Arab told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Barghouti’s son said the family has repeatedly asked Israel to allow international lawyers and the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit his father in prison, but their requests have been denied.

“They see him as a danger … because he wants to bring stability, he wants to end the cycle of violence. He wants a unifying Palestinian vision that is accepted by everyone, and the international community, as well,” Arab said.

“They [Israel] know what my father represents, and they don’t want that. They don’t want a partner for peace.”

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Statement appears to signal about-face from US president, who previously backed Hamas’s crackdown on Gaza gangs.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to break the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group continues to target gangs and alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza.

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The statement appears to signal an about-face from Trump, who earlier this week expressed support for Hamas’s crackdown on gangs in the Palestinian territory.

“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “And they did take them out, and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.”

More to come…

Israel says Hamas is failing to meet commitments under Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, while Hamas says Israel’s destruction makes recovering captives’ bodies nearly impossible. With 11,000 Palestinians also still under rubble, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh says tensions threaten the fragile truce.

Despite a ceasefire deal with Israel, Palestinians across the devastated Gaza Strip continue to go hungry as food supplies remain critically low and aid fails to reach those who need it most.

As per the ceasefire agreement, Israel was supposed to allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza per day. However, Israel has since reduced the limit to 300 trucks per day, citing delays in retrieving bodies of Israeli captives buried under the rubble by Israeli attacks.

According to the UN2720 Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard, which monitors humanitarian aid being offloaded, collected, delivered and intercepted on its way into Gaza, from October 10-16, only 216 trucks have reached their intended destinations inside Gaza.

According to truck drivers, aid deliveries are facing significant delays, with Israeli inspections taking much longer than expected.

‘Palestinians want food’

While some food aid has trickled in over the past few days, medical equipment, therapeutic nutrition and medicines are still in extremely short supply, despite being desperately needed by the most impoverished, particularly malnourished children.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said some commercial trucks have entered Gaza over the past few days, but most Palestinians do not have the ability to buy any of the items they are bringing in as they have spent all of their savings in the past two years.

So far, what has arrived in the trucks includes “wheat, rice, sugar, oil, fuel and cooking gas”, she said.

While food distribution points are expected to open for parcels and other humanitarian aid, people in Gaza have yet to receive them. “Palestinians want food, they want shelter, they want medicine,” Khoudary said.

She added that even 600 trucks a day would be insufficient to meet the needs of Gaza’s entire population.

Food ‘is not a bargaining chip’

The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, has urged Israel to open more border crossings for humanitarian aid.

“We need more crossings open and a genuine, practical, problem-solving approach to removing remaining obstacles. Throughout this crisis, we have insisted that withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip. Facilitation of aid is a legal obligation,” Fletcher said.

Since the ceasefire began, 137 World Food Programme trucks have entered Gaza as of October 14, delivering supplies to bakeries and supporting nutrition and food distribution programmes.

With the ceasefire in effect, WFP is now scaling up.

🔹137 trucks have already entered #Gaza — supporting bakeries, nutrition, and food distributions.

🔹170,000+ MT of food ready to move, enough to feed 2M people.

The goal: flood Gaza with food, fast. The ceasefire must hold. pic.twitter.com/AjKBu8rap7

— World Food Programme (@WFP) October 14, 2025

Israeli authorities continue to block UNRWA

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the primary and largest organisation providing aid to Palestinians – has faced significant restrictions imposed by Israel.

The agency, which was responsible for delivering food, medical care, education and emergency assistance, says it has enough food aid in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt to supply the people in Gaza for three months.

This includes food parcels for 1.1 million people and flour for 2.1 million, and shelter supplies sufficient for up to 1.3 million individuals.

However, despite the ceasefire, Israeli authorities are continuing to block them from entering.

UNRWA has enough food outside #Gaza to supply people there for three months, amid desperate need. Our teams stand ready to deliver it.

But despite the #ceasefire, the Israeli Authorities’ block on UNRWA bringing any supplies into Gaza still continues after over 7 months.

Let us… pic.twitter.com/O3fwK70d5V

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 16, 2025

Malnutrition among children

As of October 12, at least 463 people, including 157 children, have died from starvation amid Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Nearly one in four children suffers from severe acute malnutrition.

After prolonged starvation, food must be reintroduced carefully under medical supervision to avoid re-feeding syndrome, a potentially fatal condition in which sudden intake of nutrients causes dangerous shifts in electrolytes, affecting the heart, nerves and muscles. A larger supply of nutritional aid, given safely, could dramatically save lives.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 90 percent of children in Gaza less than two years of age consume fewer than two food groups each day, which doesn’t include protein-rich foods.

At least 290,000 children between the ages of six months and 5 years, and 150,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women require feeding and micronutrient supplies.

In addition to this, there are an estimated 132,000 cases of children less than the age of five, and 55,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women projected to be suffering from acute malnutrition by June 2026, if immediate food aid isn’t made available.

Hackers took over the PA system at Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania, broadcasting a pro-Palestine message and insults against the leaders of the US and Israel. Similar incidents were reported at three Canadian airports on the same day.

“They’re digging.” US President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge Hamas’s struggle to recover Israeli captives’ bodies from beneath Gaza’s ruins. Israel says it will not move to the next phase of the Gaza peace plan until Hamas returns the remains of all 28 captives.

‘The big war may be over, but what about the many smaller wars that still await us here?’ Al Jazeera’s Maram Humaid explains the difficult decisions facing Palestinians in Gaza living amid the rubble and navigating on-going violence.

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners – most of them detained without charge – have been released from Israeli jails as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Reunions saw a mix of joy and sadness after people heard about the conditions and mistreatment their loved ones endured.

Hundreds more were forced into exile by Israel.

And the majority return to rubble in Gaza, and others risk being arrested again in the occupied West Bank.

So, is it possible for former Palestinian prisoners to embrace freedom with life under occupation and the scars of Israeli detention?

Presenter: Sami Zeidan

Guests:

Milena Ansari – Israel and Palestine Researcher at Human Rights Watch

Basil Farraj – Assistant Professor at Birzeit University, specialising in political prisoners and carceral violence

Fadia Barghouti – English Supervisor at the Palestinian Ministry of Education

Israel continues to restrict aid entering Gaza, saying Hamas has not met its end of deal to release all bodies of captives.

‘Not only has our past been destroyed but so has our future.’ A Palestinian journalist broke down into tears as he returned to northern Gaza to find his family home as a pile of rubble. Many Palestinians returning to the area are finding nothing left but destruction following Israel’s war.

US President Donald Trump says Hamas may need to be disarmed ‘violently’ as part of the Gaza peace plan. Hamas has so far not agreed publicly to give up its weapons. Soraya Lennie looks at the key questions over how the process is supposed to work.

After two years in an Israeli jail, Yousef Salem set out on a journey to his house in Gaza. The former detainee, who says he was tortured during his time in captivity, was confronted by the devastation of Israel’s onslaught when he finally arrived home. This is his story.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in court to testify in his corruption trial, days after U.S. President Trump called for him to be pardoned. Protesters outside the court demanded the trial continue as a test of Israel’s democracy. Netanyahu denies all charges.

Riot police used tear gas and water cannons to break up pro-Palestinian protests at Israel’s World Cup qualifier against Italy. Defeat for Israel in the match effectively ended the team’s hopes of automatic qualification.

Handover comes as Trump says Hamas must disarm or be disarmed, ‘perhaps violently’.

United States President Donald Trump says his Gaza ceasefire deal will bring peace to the Middle East.

Some 20 world leaders, including Trump, signed the agreement at a special summit in Egypt on Monday.

The deal outlines the steps both Hamas and Israel must take to maintain the ceasefire and end the war in Gaza.

But it does not quite address the bigger question of what will happen in the Palestinian territory beyond the next few months.

What about Israel’s larger occupation? And the establishment of a viable Palestinian state?

How will Trump’s plan address these important issues?

Presenter: Nick Clark

Guests:

Ori Goldberg – political commentator

Phyllis Bennis – fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies

Muhammad Shehada – visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations

President Donald Trump said that Hamas “is going to disarm” but if they don’t the US would act to disarm them “quickly and perhaps violently.” Trump declined to elaborate or to explain how the group would disarm a day after the Gaza peace deal was signed.

Israel has imposed new restrictions on aid entering the besieged Gaza Strip and will not open the Rafah crossing as planned, while Israeli forces killed several people in the Palesitinian territory as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire came under growing strain.

Israel notified the United Nations on Tuesday that it will only allow 300 aid trucks – half of the number it originally agreed to – daily into the Gaza Strip from Wednesday.

Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, confirmed the UN had received the note from the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza.

The COGAT note said no fuel or gas will be allowed into the war-torn enclave except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud noted that allowing 300 trucks of aid each day was “not nearly enough” for famine-stricken Gaza.

“Three hundred is not enough. It’s not going to change anything,” he said.

Israeli authorities also announced the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed.

The restrictions came hours after Israeli forces killed at least nine Palestinians in attacks in northern and southern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

At least six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza City, and three others were killed in Khan Younis.

Sources from al-Ahli Arab Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic on Tuesday that Israeli soldiers killed five Palestinians in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The Israeli military said it opened fire to remove a threat posed by people who approached its forces in northern Gaza.

The attacks come four days after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, preparing the way for an exchange of captives and partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The ceasefire is the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s proposal for ending Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 67,913 people and wounded 170,134 since October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities. The remains of thousands of other people are estimated to be under the rubble in Gaza.

At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 others were taken captive.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas and Israel carried out an exchange on Monday that saw the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails and 20 Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip. Some 154 prisoners were exiled to Egypt.

Hamas was also due to return the remains of 24 dead captives on Monday, but the group only handed over four coffins.

Trump’s ceasefire plan provided a mechanism if that handover didn’t happen, saying Hamas should share information about deceased captives and “exert maximum effort” to carry out the handover as soon as possible.

Hamas said that it would transfer the remains of four more deceased Israeli captives on Tuesday, and the Israeli military said that the Red Cross had received the bodies.

The Israeli military accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire “regarding the release of the bodies of the hostages”.

Trump noted the delay in handing over the remains of the deceased captives in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED! Phase Two begins right NOW!!!” he wrote.

Hamas has previously said recovering the bodies of some captives could take more time because not all sites where they were held are known, and because of the vast Israeli destruction of the enclave.

“The headline here is, Israel is already starting to put threats of restricting aid going into Gaza for what they say is the slow work by Hamas to get the bodies of the deceased captives back to Israel,” Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said, reporting from the UN.

@ajplus

Israel unilaterally broke the last ceasefire in Gaza. AJ+ spoke to journalist and analyst Omar Rahman about what might make this deal different. #Gaza #Ceasefire #Israel #PeaceDeal #Palestine

♬ news, documentary, serious, depressing : L(1488971) – 8.864

UN urges more aid deliveries

The UN and the International Red Cross called for all crossings into Gaza to be opened to allow desperately needed aid into the enclave. The UN had 190,000 metric tonnes of aid waiting and ready to go into Gaza, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said on Tuesday.

UNICEF spokesman Ricardo Pires, meanwhile, said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had 1,370 trucks ready to enter Gaza.

“The level of destruction, again, is so huge that it will take at least 600 trucks a day, which is the aim that we have,” he said. “We’re far from that.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) also stressed the need to send more aid into Gaza.

“We need to scale up the delivery of medical supplies because the pressure on hospitals is not going to ease overnight,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters.

“We need really to bring as many supplies as we can right now to make sure that those health workers who are still providing healthcare have what they need.”

Thousands of displaced Palestinians have been returning to northern Gaza following the ceasefire, only to find their homes reduced to rubble.