Israel-Palestine conflict

Washington, DC – Three days, three countries, hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and a geopolitical shift in the United States’s approach to the region: Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East has been eventful.

This week, the United States president visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the first planned trip of his second presidency, after attending Pope Francis’s funeral last month.

Trump was visibly gleeful throughout the trip as he secured investments, criticised domestic political rivals and heaped praise on Gulf leaders. The word “historic” was used more than a few times by US officials to describe the visits.

With Trump returning to the White House, here are five key takeaways from his trip:

A rebuke of interventionism

Addressing an investment summit in Riyadh, Trump promoted a realist approach to the Middle East — one in which the US does not intervene in the affairs of other countries.

He took a swipe at neoconservatives who oversaw the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as he lauded Gulf leaders for developing the region.

“This great transformation has not come from Western intervention or flying people in beautiful planes, giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs,” he said.

“The gleaming marbles of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neo-cons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities.”

Trump built his political brand with his “America First” slogan, calling for the US to focus on its own issues instead of helping — or bombing — foreign countries.

But his words at the investment summit marked a stern rebuke of the neo-cons who dominated Trump’s Republican Party a decade ago.

“In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump said.

Israel sidelined, but no Gaza solution

It is rare for US presidents to travel to the Middle East and not visit Israel, but Trump omitted the US ally from his itinerary as he toured the region.

Skipping Israel was seen as a reflection of the deteriorating ties between the US administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week’s trip also came in the context of several moves perceived as evidence of the US marginalising Israel. The US has continued to hold talks with Israel’s rival Iran, announced a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen, and conducted unilateral negotiations to release Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, a US citizen, from Hamas captivity.

Moreover, while touring the Gulf, Trump did not use his remarks to prioritise the establishment of formal diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which had been a top goal during his first term.

It remains unclear how Trump’s decisions will affect the “special relationship” between the two allies, but experts say it is becoming increasingly apparent that the US no longer views the Middle East solely through the lens of Israel.

“Is it a tactical problem for Netanyahu and the entire pro-Israel lobby? I think it is,” Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, said of Trump’s shift.

“It does throw a wrench in the machinery because it is a president who is showing openly daylight with Israeli decision-making, and not just in rhetoric, but acting on it — leaving Israel out of the process.”

With that chasm emerging, some Palestinian rights advocates had hoped that the US president’s trip to the region would see Washington pursue a deal to end Israel’s war on Gaza.

But as Trump marvelled at the luxurious buildings in the Gulf, Israel intensified its bombardment to destroy what’s left of the Palestinian territory.

No ceasefire was announced, despite reports of continuing talks in Doha. And Israel appears to be pushing forward with its plan to expand its assault on Gaza as it continues to block aid for the nearly two million people in the enclave, leading to fears of famine.

United Nations experts and rights groups have described the situation as a genocide.

But despite preaching “peace and prosperity” for both Israelis and Palestinians, Trump made no strong push to end the war during this week’s trip.

On Thursday, Trump suggested that he has not given up on the idea of depopulating Gaza and turning it over to the US — a proposal that legal experts say amounts to ethnic cleansing.

“I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good. Make it a freedom zone,” he said. “Let the United States get involved, and make it just a freedom zone.”

Lifting Syria sanctions

In a move that surprised many observers, Trump announced from Riyadh that he will offer sanction relief to Syria, as the country emerges from a decade-plus civil war.

Trump also met with interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and described him as a “young, attractive guy”.

A wholesale lifting of sanctions was not expected, in part because of Israel’s hostility to the new authorities in Syria. Israeli officials often describe al-Sharaa, who led al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria before severing ties with the group, as a “terrorist”.

But Trump said he made the decision to lift the economic penalties against Syria at the request of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” the US president said.

The White House said on Wednesday that Trump had a list of requests for al-Sharaa, including establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and deporting “Palestinian terrorists”.

Removing US sanctions, which had been imposed on the government of former President Bashar al-Assad, is likely to be a boost for the new Syrian authorities, who are grappling with an ailing economy after years of conflict.

“Lifting sanctions on Syria represents a fundamental turning point,” Ibrahim Nafi Qushji, an economist, told Al Jazeera.

“The Syrian economy will transition from interacting with developing economies to integrating with more developed ones, potentially significantly reshaping trade and investment relations.”

A carrot and a stick for Iran

In Saudi Arabia, Trump declared that he wants a deal with Iran — and he wants it done quickly.

“We really want them to be a successful country,” the US president said of Iran.

“We want them to be a wonderful, safe, great country, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon. This is an offer that will not last forever. The time is right now for them to choose.”

Trump warned Iran that, if it rejects his “olive branch”, he would impose a “massive maximum pressure” against Tehran and choke off its oil exports.

Notably, Trump did not threaten explicit military action against Iran, a departure from his previous rhetoric. In late March, for instance, he told NBC News, “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing.”

Iran says it is not seeking nuclear weapons and would welcome a stringent monitoring programme of its nuclear facilities.

But Israel and some hawks want the Iranian nuclear programme completely dismantled, not just scaled back.

US and Iranian officials have held multiple rounds of talks this year, but Tehran says it has not received an official offer from Washington. And Trump officials have not explicitly indicated what the endgame of the talks is.

US envoy Steve Witkoff said last month that Iran “must stop and eliminate” uranium enrichment, but days earlier, he had suggested that enrichment should be brought down to civilian energy levels.

Several Gulf countries, including the three that Trump visited this week, have welcomed the nuclear negotiations, as relations between Iran and its Arab neighbours have grown more stable in recent years.

Investments, investments and more investments

Before entering politics, Trump was a real estate mogul who played up his celebrity persona as a mega-rich dealmaker. He appears to have brought that business mindset to the White House.

While in the wealthy Gulf region, Trump was in his element. He announced deals that would see Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE buy US arms and invest in American firms. According to the White House, Trump secured a total of $2 trillion in investments from the Middle East during the trip.

And his administration is framing the deals as a major political and economic victory for Trump.

“While it took President Biden nearly four years to secure $1 trillion in investments, President Trump achieved this in his first month, with additional investment commitments continuing to roll in,” the White House said.

“President Trump is accelerating investment in America and securing fair trade deals around the world, paving the way for a new Golden Age of lasting prosperity for generations to come.”

More than 19 months into its war on Gaza, Israel shows few signs that it is relenting. The last week has shown the opposite, an intensification of violence across the besieged Palestinian territory, leaving hundreds dead, and hundreds of thousands terrified of what comes next.

This was a week where United States President Donald Trump toured the Middle East, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. There had been hope that some kind of ceasefire deal would be announced, or that the US would put more pressure on Israel to seriously come to the negotiating table. That was particularly the case after Hamas released a US-Israeli captive on Monday without demanding anything in exchange.

Ultimately, none of that happened, with Trump returning to his idea of US involvement in the future administration of whatever is left of Gaza, while acknowledging that Palestinians there were starving.

Israel also intercepted a number of missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, before attacking Yemen itself on Friday.

Lets take a closer look at a week that has devastated Gaza, and left Palestinians there feeling even more abandoned.

How many Palestinians were killed in Gaza this week?

According to figures compiled by Al Jazeera, at least 370 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since Sunday. The violence has been particularly deadly in the second half of the week, with medical sources reporting the killing of at least 100 Palestinians on Friday, and 143 on Thursday. Many of those killed have been women and children.

These are some of the worst single-day death tolls since the beginning of the war in October 2023.

The killings put the total death toll reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health more than 53,000, although the territory’s Government Media Office’s death toll now sits at more than 61,700, as it includes thousands of Palestinians still under the rubble who are presumed dead.

Israeli attacks have targeted the whole Gaza Strip, with a particular focus on the north. Hospitals have also repeatedly been bombed by Israel.

What is being done to alleviate the hunger crisis in Gaza?

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been caused by Israel’s complete blockade of the entry of all food and medication to the Strip since March 2, a decision it made when the ceasefire was still ongoing, and one that goes against international law.

A report released on Monday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative said that the Gaza Strip was “still confronted with a critical risk of famine”, with half a million people facing starvation and 93 percent of its more than 2 million population at severe risk.

People are already starving to death – Gaza authorities last week said that 57 people had died as a result of starvation.

Trump acknowledged that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza and said that the US was “going to get that taken care of”, but provided few details. The US has backed a new body called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that it says will start work in Gaza by the end of the month.

But the plan has been rejected by the United Nations and other humanitarian groups, who say that the plan would lead to more displacement for Palestinians in Gaza, as it would only disperse aid in some areas of Gaza, and set a dangerous precedent for the delivery of aid in warzones.

The UN has reiterated that it has the capacity to deliver aid across Gaza, but is being prevented from doing so by Israel. It says it has enough aid ready to deliver to feed all of the Palestinians in Gaza for four months, if Israel allows its trucks in.

What are Palestinians calling for?

Palestinians in Gaza have been recounting the horrors of the past week, desperately calling for the world to act and stop Israel’s bombing.

In northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, one of the worst hit areas, one civilian had a simple message – “either kill us or let us live.”

“All of [the strikes] were targeting civilians. All the houses are being bombed – everything is gone,” Ahmed Mansour told Al Jazeera. “What is a person supposed to do? They’re all making a joke out of us. I’m heading to the coast now. We’ve been displaced more than 50 times – either kill us or let us live.”

Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, also called on Friday for the US to put more pressure on Israel to open the crossings into Gaza and “allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid – food, medicine and fuel – to the hospitals in the Gaza Strip”.

What does Israel want?

The Israeli government has made it clear that it is unwilling to agree to a deal that would end the war in return for the release of all the Israeli captives still held in Gaza, despite widespread domestic support for such a deal.

Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of total victory against Hamas, although it is difficult to see what that would entail.

Instead, the war drags on, and Netanyahu said on Monday that preparations were continuing for “an intensification of the fighting”. Last week, he said that Israel was planning for the “total conquest” of Gaza.

Trump left the Middle East this week with no ceasefire deal agreed, only saying, “We’re going to find out pretty soon” when asked whether a deal was in place for the return of Israel’s captives.

Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Israel’s position was “rigid” and that the US had “lost interest”. A source told the newspaper that US envoy Steve Witkoff was “no longer involved”.

“He’s waiting to hear what we want, and since we don’t want anything, he has nothing left to do,” the source said.

When my grandmother, Khadija Ammar, walked out of her home in Beit Daras for the last time in May 1948, she embarked on a lonely journey. Even though she was accompanied by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – also forced to leave behind their cherished homes and lands to escape the horror unleashed by Zionist militias – there was no one in the world watching. They were together, but utterly alone. And there was no word to describe their harrowing experience.

In time, Palestinians came to refer to the events of May 1948 as the Nakba, or the catastrophe. The use of the word nakba in this context invokes the memory of another “catastrophe”,  the Holocaust. The Palestinians were telling the world: just three years after the catastrophe that befell on the Jewish people in Europe, a new catastrophe –  very different, but no less painful – is unfolding in our homeland, Palestine.

Tragically, our catastrophe never came to an end. Seventy-seven years after my grandmother’s expulsion, we are still being hunted, punished and killed, for trying to live on our lands with dignity or demanding that we are allowed to return to them.

Because it has never truly ended, commemorating the Nakba as a historical event has always been difficult. But today, a new challenge confronts us as we try to understand, discuss or commemorate the Nakba: it has entered a new and terrifying phase. It is no longer just a continuation of the horror that began 77 years ago.

Today, the Nakba has transformed into what Amnesty International described as a “live-streamed genocide”, its violence no longer hidden in archives or buried in survivors’ memories. The pain, the blood, the fear and the hunger are all visible on the screens of our devices.

As such, the word “Nakba” is not appropriate or sufficient to describe what is being done to my people and my homeland today. There is a need for new language – new terminology that accurately describes the reality of this new phase of the Palestinian catastrophe. We need a new word that could hopefully help focus the averted eyes of the world on Palestine.

Many terms have been proposed for this purpose – and I have used several in my writing. These include democide, medicide, ecocide, culturicide, spacio-cide, Gazacide, and scholasticide. Each of these terms undoubtedly defines an important aspect of what is happening today in Palestine.

One term that I find especially powerful as an academic is scholasticide. It underlines the ongoing, systematic erasure of Palestinian knowledge. Every university in Gaza has been destroyed. Ninety percent of schools have been reduced to rubble. Cultural centres and museums flattened. Professors and students killed. The term scholasticide, coined by the brilliant academic Karma Nabulsi, describes not only the physical destruction of Palestinian educational institutions but also the war being waged on memory, imagination and the Indigenous intellect itself.

Another term I find evocative and meaningful is Gazacide. Popularised by Ramzy Baroud, it refers to a century-long campaign of erasure, displacement and genocide targeting this specific corner of historic Palestine. The strength of this term lies in its ability to locate the crime both historically and geographically, directly naming Gaza as the central site of genocidal violence.

Although each of these terms is powerful and meaningful, they are all too specific and thus unable to fully capture the totality of the Palestinian experience in recent years. Gazacide, for example, does not encompass the lived realities of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, or those in refugee camps across the region. Scolasticide, meanwhile, does not address the apparent Israeli determination to make Palestinian lands inhabitable to their Indigenous population. And none of the aforementioned words address Israel’s declared intentions for Gaza: complete destruction. On May 6, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich chillingly stated, “Gaza will be entirely destroyed … and from there [the civilians] will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.”

As such, I propose a new term – al-Ibādah or the Destruction – to define this latest phase of the Nakba. The term reflects the horrifying rhetoric employed by Smotrich and numerous other Zionist fascist leaders and captures the comprehensive and systematic erasure under way not only in Gaza, but across historic Palestine. Al-Ibādah is capacious enough to encompass multiple forms of targeted annihilation, including democide, medicide, ecocide, scholasticide, culturicide and others.

In Arabic, the phrase for genocide, “al-Ibādah jamāʿiyyah” meaning “the annihilation of everyone and everything” has the word al-Ibādah as its root. The proposed term al-Ibādah intentionally truncates this phrase, transforming it into a concept that signifies a permanent and definitive condition of destruction. While it does not assign a specific geographical location, it draws conceptual strength from the work of Pankaj Mishra (The World After Gaza), who argues that the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza represents a qualitatively distinct form of genocidal violence. According to Mishra, Gaza constitutes the front line of Western neocolonial and neoliberal projects, which seek to consolidate global order around the ideology of white supremacy. By pairing the definite article with the noun, al-Ibādah asserts this condition as a historical rupture – a moment that demands recognition as a turning point in both Palestinian experience and global conscience.

Today, when it comes to Palestine, the word “destruction” is no longer whispered. From military commanders to politicians, journalists to academics, vast segments of the Israeli public now openly embrace the complete destruction of the Palestinian people as their ultimate goal.

Entire families are being wiped out. Journalists, doctors, intellectuals and civil society leaders are deliberately targeted. Forced starvation is used as a weapon. Parents carry the bodies of their children to the camera, to document the massacre. Journalists are killed mid-broadcast. We are becoming the martyrs, the wounded, the witness, the chroniclers of our own destruction.

My grandmother survived the Nakba of 1948. Today, her children and over two million Palestinians in Gaza live through even darker days: the days of destruction.

My pregnant cousin Heba and her family, along with nine of their neighbours, were killed on October 13, 2023. By then, just days after October 7, dozens of families had already been erased in their entirety: the Shehab, Baroud, Abu al-Rish, Al Agha, Al Najjar, Halawa, Abu Mudain,  Al-Azaizeh, Abu Al-Haiyeh.

On October 26, 2023, 46 members of my own extended family were killed in one strike. By last summer, that number had grown to 400. Then I stopped counting.

My cousin Mohammed tells me they avoid sleep, terrified they won’t be awake in time to pull the children from the rubble. “We stay awake not because we want to but because we have to be ready to dig.”  Last month, Mohammed was injured in an air strike that killed our cousin Ziyad, an UNRWA social worker, and Ziyad’s sister-in-law. Fifteen children under 15 were injured in the same attack. That night, as he had done countless times over the past 18 months, Mohammed dug through the rubble to recover their bodies. He tells me the faces of the dead visit him every night – family, friends, neighbours. By day, he flips through an old photo album, but every picture now holds a void. Not a single image remains untouched by loss. At night, they return to him – sometimes in tender dreams, but more often in nightmares.

This month, on May 7, Israeli strikes on a crowded restaurant and market on the same street in Gaza City killed dozens of people in a matter of minutes. Among them was journalist Yahya Subeih, whose first child, a baby girl, was born that very morning.  He went to the market to get supplies for his wife and never returned. His daughter will grow up marking her birthday on the same day her father was killed – a terrible memory etched into a life just beginning. Noor Abdo, another journalist, compiled a list of relatives killed in this war. He sent the list to a human rights organisation on May 6. On May 7, he was added to it himself.

A worker at the restaurant that was hit spoke about a pizza order placed by two girls. He said he overheard their conversation. “This is expensive, very expensive,” one girl said to the other. “That’s okay” she replied. “Let’s fulfil our dream and eat pizza before we die. No one knows.” They laughed and ordered.  Soon after their order arrived, the restaurant was shelled and one of the girls was killed. The worker does not know the fate of the other. He, however, says he noticed a single slice from their pizza was eaten. We can only hope that the one who was killed got to taste it.

This, all this, is al-Ibādah. This is the destruction.

In the face of global inaction, we are all but powerless.

Our protests, our tears, our cries have all fallen on deaf ears.

But we are still left with our words.  And speech does have power.  In the Irish play Translations, which documents the linguistic destruction of the Irish language by the British army in the early 1800s, the playwright Brian Friel explains how by naming a thing we give it power, we “make it real”.  So in a final act of desperation, let the commemoration of this year’s Nakba be the time when we name this thing and make it real: al-Ibādah, the Destruction.

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

Half a million people in the Gaza Strip, or one in five Palestinians, are facing starvation.

The entire rest of the population is suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to a recent report by the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

“The risk of famine in the Gaza Strip is not just possible – it is increasingly likely,” the IPC says.

For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September.

What is famine and when is it reached?

Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.

According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:

• At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages
• More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition
• At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.

Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.

What does starvation do to the body?

Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. A report released by Doctors of the World (Medecins du Monde) this week states that in just 18 months, acute malnutrition in Gaza has risen to levels similar to those found in countries enduring protracted humanitarian crises spanning several decades.

Starvation is when the human body is deprived of food for so long that it suffers and often dies.

Estimates say the body can last up to three weeks without food, but the length of time varies between individuals.

Starvation occurs over three stages. The first begins as early as when a meal is skipped, the second occurs with a prolonged period of fasting where the body uses stored fat for energy.

The third, and often fatal, stage is when all stored fats have been depleted and the body turns to bone and muscle as sources of energy.

The effect on children

Children are most vulnerable to Israel’s continued blockade of essential food items.

More than 9,000 children have been admitted to hospital for treatment for acute malnutrition since the start of the year, according to the United Nations.

The IPC projects that between now and March 2026, nearly 71,000 children under the age of five will suffer from acute malnutrition, including 14,100 children facing severe cases of malnutrition.

The effect of malnutrition on children varies, but the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, which includes the pregnancy up to two years, are critical for a child’s healthy development.

Malnutrition leads to an out-of-proportion height-to-weight ratio, stunted growth and eventually, death.

Earlier this month, at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, Dr Ahmed Abu Nasir said the situation has become worse than ever due to the blockade.

“Children are in their growing stage and badly need certain nutrients, including proteins and fats,” the paediatrician told Al Jazeera. “These are not available in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north.”

Pregnant and breastfeeding women will also need to be treated for malnutrition, with 17,000 women facing this risk.

‘Finding a single meal has become an impossible quest’

The entire population of Gaza, about 2.1 million people that remain, are facing levels of food shortages that threaten their existence.

Earlier this month, Ahmad al-Najjar, a displaced Palestinian in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera, “Finding a single meal has become an impossible quest.”

Despite large numbers of trucks carrying vital supplies piling up on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians in Gaza have resorted to selling rubbish to afford the eye-wateringly inflated food prices.

Some 93 percent of Gaza’s population is at risk of levels of food insecurity above the crisis levels indicated by the IPC. If the situation does not change, the IPC has indicated that of those 2.1 million people:

• 470,000 people (22 percent of the population) will face catastrophic levels of food insecurity – the most severe phase, which indicates famine, leading to starvation and death.
• More than one million (54 percent) will face emergency levels of food insecurity, the second most severe phase where there is a high risk of critical malnutrition.
• 500,000 people (24 percent) will face crisis levels of food insecurity, the third most severe IPC phase where households are dealing with inconsistent food consumption to the point of resorting to extreme measures to secure food.

In essence, in as little as a month, Gaza’s entire population could be starving.

The features of malnutrition and starvation are unmistakable in Gaza, with severely underweight children and babies. In children, severe protein deficiency causes fluid retention and a swollen abdomen.

Where in Gaza is most at risk?

Food insecurity across the Gaza Strip is severely affecting all areas of the blockaded enclave.

All 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme (WFP) closed at the beginning of April due to the lack of supplies, and food stocks for most of the 177 hot meal kitchens are reportedly exhausted.

Certain governorates are experiencing more severe levels of hunger. According to the IPC:

• 30 percent of North Gaza is facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, 60 percent are facing emergency levels, while 10 percent are facing crisis levels.
• 25 percent of Rafah is facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, 60 percent are facing emergency levels and 15 percent are facing crisis levels.

The IPC says Israel’s continued blockade “would likely result in further mass displacement within and across governorates”, as items essential for people’s survival will be depleted.

The Nakba. It’s a concept that accompanied me from birth until I lived through it myself these past two years.

I was born a refugee in the Khan Younis camp, known by the city’s residents as the largest gathering of refugees expelled from their lands during the Nakba, when Israel was founded in 1948.

Whenever someone asked me my name, it was always followed by: “Are you a refugee or a citizen?”

‘What is a refugee?’

As a child, I would ask: “What is a refugee?”

I attended a school run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and my documents always had to include proof that I was a refugee.

I received treatment at UNRWA clinics, always needing to bring that refugee card.

I spent a lot of time trying to understand what being a refugee meant. How did my grandparents flee their land in Beit Daras, a village north of the Gaza Strip that no longer exists? How did my grandfather end up in this camp, and why did he choose this place?

Before Israel’s war on Gaza, May 15, or Nakba Day, the day Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, was a unique occasion. Everyone paid attention to it, seeking out people who had lived through it to hear their stories.

When I began working as a journalist in 2015, Nakba Day was one of the events I looked forward to covering. That year, I went along with colleagues to the Shati camp, west of Gaza City.

It would be my first time writing about the Nakba, and my first visit to a refugee camp in 13 years, since we had moved from camp life to village life in al-Fukhari, south of Khan Younis.

When I entered the camp, memories of my childhood in Khan Younis came flooding back: the small, crowded houses, some newly built, others still original structures.

It was nice that the commemoration falls in May, with good weather.

Elderly men and women sat by their doors, just as my grandmother did when I was a child. I used to love sitting with her; she seemed used to open spaces, like her pre-1948 home in Beit Daras.

We sat with elderly women, all over 70. They talked about their homeland, the stability they had in their lands, their simple lives, the food they grew and ate, and the heartbreak of not being able to return.

We met many – from Majdal, Hamama, and al-Jura, all depopulated villages and towns taken over by Israel in 1948. Whenever I met someone from Beit Daras, we’d share memories, and laugh a lot, talking about the maftoul (Palestinian couscous) the town was famous for.

The visit was light-hearted, filled with laughter and nostalgia, despite these people having been forced into camp life after the occupation drove them from their towns in horrific ways.

Displacement

I began to understand those Nakba stories more deeply when my grandfather began to tell me his own story. He became the central character in my Nakba reports every year, until his death in 2021.

He estimated he was about 15 years old at the time. He was already married to my grandmother, and they had a child.

He would describe the scenes as I sat in awe, asking myself: How could the world have stood by silently?

My grandfather told me they had a good life, working their farm, eating from their crops. Each town had a specialty, and they exchanged produce.

Theirs was a simple cuisine, with lots of lentils and bread made from wheat they ground in stone mills. Until that dreadful displacement.

He said the Zionist militias forced them to leave, ordering them to go to nearby Gaza.

My grandfather said he shut the door to his home, took my grandmother and their son – just a few months old – and started walking. Israeli planes hovered overhead, firing at people as if to drive them to move faster.

The baby – my uncle – didn’t survive the journey. My grandfather never wanted to go into the details, he would only say that their son died from the conditions as they fled.

After hours of walking, they reached Khan Younis and, with nowhere else to go, he pitched a tent. Eventually, UNRWA was set up and gave him a home, the one I remember from my childhood. It was so old; I spent years visiting them in that asbestos-roofed house with its aged walls.

That memory of being forced into exile became their wound. Yet, the idea of return, the right to go home, was passed down through generations.

Memories made flesh, blood, and anguish

The Nakba was a memory passed down from the elderly to the young.

But in the war that Israel began waging on Gaza on October 7, 2023, we lived the Nakba.

We were forcibly displaced under threat of weapons and air strikes. We saw our loved ones arrested before our eyes and tortured in prisons. We lived in tents and searched everywhere for basic provisions to save our children.

My grandfather told me they fled under threat of weapons and planes – so did we.

He said they searched for flour, food, and water while trying to protect their children – so are we, right now in the 21st century.

Perhaps in 1948, the media was more primitive. But now, the world watches what’s happening in Gaza in many formats – written, visual, and audio – and yet, nothing has changed.

Never did I imagine I’d live through an existential war – a war that threatens my very presence on my land, just as my grandparents lived through.

The repeated scenes of displacement are so painful. They’re a cycle, one that we have been cursed to live through as Palestinians again and again.

Will history record this as Nakba 2023?

Years from now, will we speak of this Nakba just as we’ve spoken about the original one for 77 years? Will we tell stories, hold commemorations, and hold close memories of the dream of return that has stayed with us since childhood?

Since I realised what it meant to be called a refugee and learned I had a homeland, I’ve been dreaming of returning.

This pain, we can never forget it. I still remember the camp and my life there.

I’ll never forget the moment Israel destroyed my house and made us homeless for two years, 24 years ago.

Now we live our painful days searching for safety, fighting to survive.

We will tell future generations about this war, the war of existence.

We resist hunger, fear, thirst, and pain so we can remain on this land.

The Nakba hasn’t ended. The 1948 Nakba continues in 2025.

Israeli forces destroyed homes in the occupied West Bank and killed dozens in Gaza as Palestinians marked 77 years since the Nakba. Israel’s ‘brutality’ has displaced 85-year-old Nakba survivor Mohammed once again, but he says this time it’s worse.

Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassouna was killed the day after she learned a film about her life in Gaza would be shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Al Jazeera’s Hind Toussiate spoke with the director of the film, Sepideh Farsi.

Palestinians held marches in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, of their mass dispossession during the creation of Israel in 1948.

More than 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 and an aid blockade threatens famine, while Israeli leaders continue to express a desire to empty the territory of Palestinians.

In the West Bank, too, occupied since 1967, Israeli forces have displaced tens of thousands from refugee camps as part of a major military operation.

This year marks the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, during which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their lands after Israel declared itself an independent state in the territory.

In Ramallah city, Palestinian flags and black ones branded “return” flew at road intersections on Wednesday, while schoolchildren were bussed into the city centre to take part in the weeklong commemoration.

At one event, young boys wearing Palestinian kuffiyeh scarves waved flags and carried a giant replica key, a symbol of the lost homes in what is now Israel that families hope to return to.

No events were planned in Gaza, where more than 19 months of war and Israeli bombardment have left residents destitute and displaced.

Moamen al-Sherbini, a resident of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, told the AFP news agency that he felt history was repeating itself.

“Our lives here in Gaza have become one long Nakba, losing loved ones, our homes destroyed, our livelihoods gone.”

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during Israel’s war.

In early May, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans for an expanded military offensive in Gaza, aimed at the “conquest” of the territory while displacing its people en masse, drawing international condemnation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his government is working to find third countries to take in Gaza’s population, months after United States President Donald Trump suggested they be expelled and the territory redeveloped as a holiday destination.

“Nakba Day is no longer just a memory – it’s a daily reality we live in Gaza,” said 36-year-old Malak Radwan, speaking from Nuseirat in the centre of the enclave.

“This is a miserable day in the lives of Palestinian refugees,” said 52-year-old Nael Nakhleh in Ramallah, whose family comes from the village of al-Majdal near Jaffa in what is now Israel.

Palestinian refugees maintain their demand to return to the villages and cities in current-day Israel that they or their relatives were forced to leave in 1948. The “right of return” remains a core issue in the long-stalled negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

Washington, DC – A federal judge has ordered Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri released from immigration detention, in the latest victory for US visa holders targeted by the administration of President Donald Trump for pro-Palestine stances or advocacy.

The ruling on Wednesday by US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles comes shortly after two other prominent students targeted for deportation, Columbia University Student Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, were ordered released from detention as their deportation cases move forward.

Speaking at a news conference following the hearing at the federal court in Arlington, Virginia, Khan Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, thanked supporters who demonstrated outside of the facility.

“I thank everyone who came out to support the cause of a truth-telling, speaking up and standing for Palestinian rights,” said Saleh, who is Palestinian American.

As with similar cases where visa holders have been targeted for deportation related to their pro-Palestine views and advocacy, lawyers for Suri Khan – who has Indian citizenship and a US student visa – argued ICE agents unlawfully detained him outside his Virginia home in March for speech that should have been constitutionally protected.

The Trump administration has taken the broad position that those constitutional protections do not apply to temporary visa holders or even US permanent residents. The question will likely eventually be decided by the US Supreme Court.

The administration has further relied on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to justify its actions. An obscure provision of the law allows the US secretary of state to deport any non-citizen deemed to have “potentially serious adverse foreign consequences”.

In a separate ruling related to Columbia University Student Mahmoud Kahlil in April, a federal judge adopted a broad interpretation of the provision, saying Kahlil was deportable based on Rubio’s claims he took part in “anti-Semitic” protests. That came despite the top US diplomat providing no further evidence.

Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security had previously claimed in a post on X that Khan Suri was “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”.

It added he “was married to the daughter of a senior advisor for to Hamas terrorist group”.

But speaking to reporters, Nermeen Arastu, one of the lawyers representing Khan Suri, noted that evidence backing up those claims has not been presented by government lawyers in court.

Arastu, who is also an associate professor of law at the CUNY School of Law, said it was notable that “the court today also pointed out that the government is kind of throwing around accusations in social media, but not presenting them in the formal courtroom setting”.

“And tied that to this due process concept that’s so important here to understand – that at the very basic level, you have a right to understand the allegations that are being brought against you,” she said.

‘Badge of honour’

Critics have further accused the Trump administration of targeting Khan Suri based on his familial ties. His wife is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh who left his position with the armed group more than a decade ago.

“He should have never been arrested and jailed for his constitutionally protected speech just because the government disagrees with him,” ACLU of Virginia senior immigrants’ rights lawyer Sophia Gregg, told reporters on Wednesday.

“He should have never been punished for his relationship with his wife or his father-in-law,” she said.

Like in the cases of Ozturk and Mahdawi, Khan Suri’s cases will proceed despite his release. He faces two separate legal proceedings, one in immigration court in the one challenging his arrest and detention in Virginia.

He remained in detention in Texas when the ruling was issued on Wednesday, his lawyers said, adding they were expecting him to be released shortly.

Saleh said at the court that she had recently spoken to her husband from the detention centre in Texas, where he was held.

“He told me if my suffering in the detention centre is because I married a Palestinian and because I spoke out against the genocide in Gaza, then I should wear it as a badge of honour,” she said.

Ben Cohen among seven people arrested after interrupting testimony by US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and six other people have been arrested after disrupting a United States Senate hearing to protest Washington’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

The arrests of Ben Cohen and the other protestors on Wednesday came as US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was giving testimony to lawmakers on his shake-up of federal health agencies.

“Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the US,” Cohen said as he was escorted away by police.

The seven were arrested on charges of “crowding, obstructing or incommoding”, assault of a police officer or resisting arrest, US Capitol Police said in a statement.

Cohen was only charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, according to Capitol Police.

Cohen and his Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Jerry Greenfield are well known for their progressive activism, including opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this month, Cohen, who is Jewish, said the US had a “strange relationship” with Israel that involved Washington “supplying weapons for its genocide”.

“Right now, what it means to be American is that we are the world’s largest arms exporter, we have the largest military in the world, we support the slaughter of people in Gaza,” Cohen said.

“If somebody protests the slaughter of people in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our country stand for?”

In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would no longer allow its Israeli licensee to sell its ice cream in the West Bank and Gaza, saying that doing so would be “inconsistent with our values”.

A US judge the following year rejected Ben & Jerry’s bid for an injunction to block the sales after finding that the company had failed to show that it would suffer irreparable harm.

Ben & Jerry’s, which was founded in 1978 in the US state of Vermont, and its parent company, Unilever, later settled their legal dispute on undisclosed terms.

In March, Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit accusing Unilever of firing chief executive David Stever over his support for the brand’s “social mission”.

More than 51,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war, following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on the country.

Qatari prime minister states that the UN should be allowed to resume aid distribution inside Gaza.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has said that a series of recent Israeli attacks on Gaza show that Israel is not interested in ending the war.

In an interview with the US news outlet CNN on Wednesday, Al Thani said that he had hoped that the release of a US-Israeli soldier named Edan Alexander from captivity in Gaza would be a “breakthrough that will help bring back the talks on track” but that Israel had instead opted to step up strikes on the Strip.

“Unfortunately, Israel’s reaction to this was [bombing] the next day, while sending the delegation,” he said.

Al Thani also stated that a US-backed plan for distributing aid in Gaza through a newly created group is unnecessary. Humanitarian and United Nations aid groups have said that they already have the means of delivering aid to Gaza but are being blocked from doing so by Israel.

Israel has completely cut off Gaza’s access to food, water, fuel, and humanitarian aid since March 2, prompting global monitors of extreme hunger to warn of possible famine and allegations of the use of starvation as a weapon of war by human rights groups.

Israel has claimed, with little evidence, that members of the armed Palestinian group Hamas are stealing large portions of aid entering the Strip, and have pushed for the exclusion of UN organisations, long viewed with ire by Israeli authorities, from aid distribution.

A newly created body with US backing called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said on Wednesday that it would begin operations in Gaza by the end of May, and that it has asked Israel to allow increased levels of aid into the Strip.

Critics have said that the new organisation fulfils an Israeli goal of sidelining the UN and independent international organisations from aid distribution in Gaza.

“GHF emphasizes that a successful humanitarian response must eventually include the entire civilian population in Gaza,” the foundation’s executive director, Jake Wood, wrote in a letter to the Israeli government.

“GHF respectfully requests that the [Israeli military] identify and deconflict sufficient locations in northern Gaza capable of hosting GHF-operated secure distribution sites that can be made operational within 30 days,” he added.

A recent report by the Observer, a UK-based news outlet, notes that a GHF fundraising document appears to mirror claims about the problems of humanitarian assistance in Gaza that do not include the actions of the Israeli government itself and instead blame a “collapse” of “traditional humanitarian channels” due to aid diversion and combat operations.

Thousands of aid trucks have been bottlenecked outside of Gaza amid Israel’s blockade for weeks, with UN officials stressing that they are ready and capable of resuming aid distribution in the Strip, if Israel will lift the siege.

Donald Trump isn’t visiting Israel during his Middle East tour because he knows Netanyahu is bluffing and has nothing to offer him, says Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar. He believes Trump’s snub marks the end of an era in US-Israel relations. #AJOPINION

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in intense Israeli attacks across Gaza, including attacks on hospitals and refugee camps. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher says Israel is using mass starvation as a weapon by deliberately blocking aid deliveries.

What happened in Palestine in 1948?

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

Having secured the support of the British government for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, on May 14, 1948, as soon as the British Mandate expired, Zionist forces declared the establishment of the State of Israel, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war.

Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.

The fighting continued until January 1949 when an armistice agreement between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria was forged. The 1949 Armistice Line is also known as the Green Line and is the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank. The Green Line is also referred to as the (pre-) 1967 borders, before Israel occupied the rest of Palestine during the 1967 war.

Israel’s military occupation of Palestine remains at the core of this decades-long conflict that continues to shape every part of Palestinians’ lives.

Mapping the Palestinian villages Israel destroyed

Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.

On April 9, 1948, Zionist forces committed one of the most infamous massacres of the war in the village of Deir Yassin on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. More than 110 men, women and children were killed by members of the pre-Israeli state Irgun and Stern Gang Zionist paramilitary organisations.

Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta documented detailed records of what happened to these 530 villages in his book, The Atlas of Palestine.

Where are Palestinian refugees today?

Some six million registered Palestinian refugees live in at least 58 camps located throughout Palestine and neighbouring countries.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) provides assistance and operates hundreds of schools and health facilities for at least 2.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, 1.5 million refugees in Gaza, 870,000 refugees in the occupied West Bank, 570,000 refugees in Syria and 480,000 refugees in Lebanon.

The largest camps in each are Baqa’a in Jordan, Jabalia in Gaza, Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Yarmouk in Syria, and Ein el-Hilweh in Lebanon.

More than 70 percent of Gaza’s residents are refugees. About 1.5 million refugees live in eight refugee camps around the Gaza Strip.

According to international law, refugees have the right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced. Many Palestinians still hope to return to Palestine.

The plight of Palestinian refugees is the longest unresolved refugee problem in the world.

I had closely followed the genocidal war in Gaza for nine months when an opportunity came around to volunteer as part of a medical mission organised by the United Nations, World Health Organization and the Palestinian American Medical Association.

As a trained nephrologist, a doctor who treats patients with kidney disease, I felt there was a critical need for specialised medical care amid the collapse of the healthcare system in Gaza and the high number of medical specialists who had been killed.

I also felt it was my duty as a Muslim to help the people of Gaza. Islam teaches us that whoever saves one life, it is as if he had saved all of humanity; taking care of others is an act of worship, and standing up against injustice is a moral obligation.

I believe my degrees are not meant to simply hang on the walls of an air-conditioned office or help me drive the nicest car or live in an expensive neighbourhood. They are a testament to the fact that I have taken an oath to dedicate my expertise to the service of humanity, to maintain the utmost respect for human life and to offer my medical knowledge and compassion to those in need.

So on July 16, I departed for Gaza with a few other medics.

We entered the strip through the Karem Abu Salem crossing. We went from observing the prosperity, comfort and wealth of the Israeli side to recoiling at the destruction, devastation and misery of the Palestinian side. We basically saw what apartheid looks like.

On our short trip through southern Gaza to reach our destination in Khan Younis, we saw many buildings bombed, damaged or destroyed. Homes, schools, shops, hospitals, mosques – you name it.

The amount of rubble was sickening. To this day, I can’t unsee the landscapes of destruction I witnessed in Gaza.

We were accommodated in Al-Nasser Hospital because it was too dangerous to stay at any other place. We were welcomed and cared for so much that I felt embarrassed. We were seen as saviours.

I treated patients with kidney problems, worked as a primary care physician and sometimes helped during mass casualty events in the emergency room.

Dialysis requires clean water, sterile supplies, reliable electricity, medications and equipment that must be maintained and replaced – none of which was guaranteed under the Israeli blockade. Each dialysis session was a challenge. Every delay increased the risk of my patients dying. Many of them did die – a fact I struggled to accept, knowing that under normal circumstances, many of them could have been saved and lived normal lives.

I remember the smiling face of one of my patients, Waleed, a young man who suffered from kidney failure caused by early-onset high blood pressure, a condition that, with access to proper treatment, could have been managed appropriately.

Dialysis was Waleed’s lifeline, but he couldn’t get an adequate number of sessions due to the Israeli blockade causing severe shortages of medical supplies. Malnutrition and worsening living conditions only accelerated his decline.

I remember how short of breath he was, his body overloaded with fluid and his blood pressure dangerously high. And yet, every time I saw him, Waleed greeted me with a warm smile, his spirit somehow intact, his mother always by his side. A few months after I left Gaza, Waleed passed away.

Another patient of mine was Hussein, a gentle, kind-hearted, deeply respected man. His children cared for him with love and dignity.

He suffered from severe hypokalaemia and acidosis: His body’s potassium levels were dangerously low, and acid built up to toxic levels. To address his condition, he needed basic medications: potassium supplements and sodium bicarbonate pills.

These were simple, inexpensive, life-saving medicines, and yet, the Israeli blockade did not allow them in. Because he could not find these pills, Hussein was hospitalised multiple times for intravenous potassium supplementation.

Despite his immense suffering, Hussein remained gracious, brave and full of faith. When speaking, he always repeated the phrase Alhamdulillah (praise be to God). He passed away a few weeks ago, I was told.

Waleed and Hussein should be here – smiling, laughing, living happily with their families. Instead, they became casualties of siege and silence. These are two of so many tragic stories I know of and I witnessed. So many beautiful lives that could have been saved were lost.

Despite this grim reality, my colleagues in Gaza continue to do their utmost for their patients.

These are medics who are bruised in every way. They are not only battling the daily struggles of life like all other Palestinians in Gaza but also witnessing daily horrors of headless babies, amputated limbs, fully burned human beings and sometimes the lifeless remains of their own loved ones.

Imagine working with no anaesthesia, limited pain medications, very few antibiotics. Imagine surgeons scrubbing with plain water, children undergoing amputations with no sedation, full-body burns patients’ dressings being changed with no pain relief.

Still these healthcare heroes just keep going.

One of the nurses I worked with, Arafat, made a deep impression on me. He was living in a makeshift shelter with multiple family members. It offered no protection against the elements – the cold winter, the scorching heat or the drenching rain.

He starved – like all other Palestinians in Gaza – losing 15kg (33lb) in nine months. He walked 2km to 3km (1 to 2 miles) every day to work with worn-out sandals, facing the danger of Israeli drones bombing or shooting him in the street.

And yet, the smile never left his face. He took care of more than 280 dialysis patients, treating them with care, attentively listening to their anxious families and uplifting his colleagues with light humour.

I felt so small next to heroes like Arafat. His and his colleagues’ resilience and persistence were unbelievable.

While in Gaza, I had the opportunity to visit Al-Shifa Hospital with a UN delegation. What once was Gaza’s largest and most vital medical centre was reduced to ruins. The hospital that was once a symbol of hope and healing had become a symbol of death and destruction, of the deliberate dismantling of healthcare. It was beyond heartbreaking to see its charred, bombed-out remains.

I stayed in Gaza for 22 days. It was an absolute honour to visit, serve and learn life from the resilient people of Gaza. Their relentless courage and determination will stay with me until I die.

Despite witnessing what I could have never imagined, I did not have the urge to leave. I wanted to stay. Back in the United States, I felt profound guilt that I left behind my colleagues and my patients, that I did not stay, that I did not do enough.

Feeling this constant heartache, I cannot understand the growing number of people who are accustomed to the daily reports of Palestinian deaths and images of torn bodies and starving children.

As human beings and as health workers, we cannot quit on Gaza. We cannot stay silent and passive. We must speak out and act on the devastation of healthcare and attacks on our colleagues in the Gaza Strip.

Already fewer and fewer healthcare workers are being allowed to enter Gaza on medical missions. The current blockade has prevented all medical supplies from going in.

We, as healthcare professionals, must mobilise to demand an immediate lifting of the siege and free access to medical missions. We must not stop volunteering to help the struggling medical teams in Gaza. Such acts of speaking out and volunteering give our colleagues in Gaza the hope and comfort that they have not been abandoned.

Let us not allow Gaza to be just a symbol of destruction. Instead, let it be the example of unbreakable spirit.

Stand, speak and act – so history remembers not just the tragedy but also the triumph of human compassion.

Let us uphold human dignity.

Let us tell Gaza, you are not alone!

Humanity is on your side!

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

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump says that forging formal relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a “dream”, but he wants the kingdom to do it on its “own time”.

The White House on Tuesday made public a flurry of economic and defence pacts with Saudi Arabia involving hundreds of billions of dollars, but any mention of Israel was conspicuously absent from the announcements.

The so-called “normalisation” drive between Saudi Arabia and Israel dominated his predecessor, Joe Biden’s, approach to the region, but the current US president is shifting focus elsewhere, analysts say.

“The Trump administration has made it clear they are willing to move forward on key agreements with Saudi Arabia without the previous condition of Saudi-Israel normalisation,” said Anna Jacobs, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank.

“This probably reflects growing frustration in the Trump administration with Israeli military action across the region, especially in Gaza.”

‘Time is not right’

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute, also said that Trump has realised that with the ongoing war in Gaza and Israel’s refusal to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state, the “time is not right” for a Saudi Arabia-Israeli pact despite Biden’s emphasis on brokering a deal.

“I think the White House has finally acknowledged that a normalisation agreement at this time is not possible,” Coates Ulrichsen told Al Jazeera.

During his first term, Trump managed to broker the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, which established formal relations with the US ally independently of the Palestinian issue.

However, the agreements were unsuccessful in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as evidenced by the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

But even before the war started, Israel had been intensifying its military raids against Palestinians and expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, further dimming the prospects of a two-state solution to the conflict.

Despite the agreements’ apparent shortcomings, Biden made adding Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords a focal point of his Middle East agenda, and US officials said they worked on securing a deal up until the final days of the administration, even as the war on Gaza was raging.

Biden has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Hamas launched its October 7 attack against Israel in 2023 to thwart an agreement between the Saudis and Israelis.

Still, a day before he left office, Biden boasted that his Middle East policies created an opportunity for “the future of normalisation and integration of Israel with all its Arab neighbours, including Saudi Arabia”.

‘Off the table’

US officials and media reports said that Biden’s deal, which never materialised, would have brought a security pact between Riyadh and Washington and provided US help for Saudi Arabia to establish a civil nuclear programme in exchange for normalisation with Israel.

A major sticking point in that push has been the widely stated Saudi Arabian support for the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which conditions recognition of Israel on the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has categorically rejected the “land for peace” framework, pushing instead for deals with Arab countries that bypass Palestinians.

“This Israeli government won’t even provide lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, making it pretty impossible for Saudi Arabia to seriously consider moving forward with normalisation,” said Jacobs from the Arab Gulf States Institute.

“The Trump administration seems to have understood that it’s off the table, at least for now.”

In Riyadh, Trump announced an agreement to deepen security cooperation with Saudi Arabia.

The $142bn deal will provide Saudi Arabia with “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services” from US firms, the White House said.

It also includes “extensive training and support to build the capacity of the Saudi armed forces, including enhancement of Saudi service academies and military medical services”, it added.

While the weapons and training deals fall short of a NATO-like mutual defence pact, which may have been included as part of an accord with Israel, they take a bite from the US-backed carrots offered to the kingdom for normalisation, experts say.

“The announcements today do further deepen the links between Saudi and US security and defence interests,” Coates Ulrichsen said.

US-Israel rift?

Trump’s visit to the region comes as Israel has promised to not just continue, but expand, its devastating war on Gaza, which has killed more than 52,900 Palestinians, according to health authorities.

Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, noted that Riyadh has described Israeli atrocities in Gaza as a “genocide”.

“The Saudis are not mincing their words; they are not holding back,” Elgindy told Al Jazeera. “They can’t now move toward normalisation with Israel after accusing Israel of genocide. That would just be ridiculous.”

After his trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump will head to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as part of the first planned foreign trips of his presidency, since attending Pope Francis’s funeral last month. Israel is not on the itinerary.

For Coates Ulrichsen and others, Trump’s apparent snub of Israel reflects unease in the US-Israeli alliance.

“It may be a signal that the White House sees much more value in deepening commercial and strategic relationships with the Gulf states at the moment, given that Israel remains mired in conflict,” Coates Ulrichsen told Al Jazeera.

Israel excluded

Tensions between the Trump administration and Netanyahu’s government have become more apparent in recent weeks despite the US’s military and diplomatic backing of Israel.

Trump confirmed talks with Iran over its nuclear programme during Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, despite the Israeli leader’s opposition to negotiations with Tehran.

Last week, the US president also declared a ceasefire with the Houthis. The deal did not demand an end to the Yemeni group’s attacks against Israel.

As Trump spoke in Riyadh on Tuesday, the Houthis fired another missile at Israel – part of a campaign they say aims to pressure an end to the war on Gaza.

The Trump administration also worked with mediators in Qatar and Egypt to secure the release of US citizen Edan Alexander, who served in the Israeli military and was captured by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel. According to Israeli media reports, Israel was excluded from those talks.

Different visions

Elgindy from Georgetown University said the apparent tensions are more than a “bump in the road”, but their impact on the US-Israeli relationship remains to be seen.

“Trump is making clear in word and deed that US and Israeli interests are not one and the same,” he said. “And that’s very significant because Biden didn’t do that.”

For now, Trump remains committed to US military aid to Israel even as it intensifies its bombardment and starvation campaign in Gaza.

And the US president has pushed on with his crackdown on critics of Israel at home, especially on college campuses.

Still, experts say that by skipping Israel during his Middle East trip and de-prioritising normalisation, Trump is pushing forward in pursuit of his own vision for the region.

On Tuesday, Trump lauded Gulf leaders whom he said are building a Middle East “where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together – not bombing each other out of existence”.

That future seems at odds with what Israel appears to be seeking: asserting hegemony over the region with long-term bombing campaigns, including in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

“A very strong signal is being sent that a stable, prosperous Middle East – represented, in the administration’s views, by the Gulf states – is a much more desirable outcome than maybe the Israeli view of the Middle East at the moment, which is one of seemingly escalating a forever conflict,” said Coates Ulrichsen.

Israel’s ‘template for genocide’ is being used in Sudan, according to international law expert Luigi Daniele, who says the paramilitary RSF is using carefully chosen terminology to whitewash killing civilians.