Palestine

For months, Israel and its defenders have insisted that Hamas is stealing humanitarian aid. They used that claim to justify the starvation of two million people in Gaza – to bomb bakeries, block food convoys and shoot desperate Palestinians waiting in bread lines. We were told this was a war on Hamas and ordinary Palestinians were just caught in the middle.

Now we know the truth: Israel has been arming and protecting criminal gangs in Gaza that engage in stealing humanitarian aid and terrorising civilians. One group led by Yasser Abu Shabab, which is reportedly linked to extremist networks and has engaged in a variety of criminal activities, is directly receiving weapons from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

And Netanyahu is proudly admitting to it. “What’s wrong with that?” he said when confronted. “It saves the lives of [Israeli] soldiers.”

What’s wrong? Everything.

This isn’t just a tactical decision – it’s an admission of true intent. Israel never wanted to protect Palestinian civilians. It wants to break them. Starve them. Turn them against each other. Then blame them for the resulting chaos and suffering.

This strategy isn’t new. It’s colonialism 101: create anarchy, and then use it as proof that the colonised cannot govern themselves. In Gaza, Israel isn’t just trying to defeat Hamas. It’s trying to destroy any future in which Palestinians might govern their own society.

For months, Western media repeated the unverified claim that Hamas was stealing aid. No evidence was shown. The United Nations repeatedly said there was no proof. But it didn’t matter. The story served its purpose – it justified the blockade. It made starvation look like a security tactic. It made collective punishment look like policy.

Now the truth is out. The gangs terrorising aid routes were the ones Israel supported. The myth has collapsed. And yet where is the outrage?

Where are the stern statements from the governments of the United States and United Kingdom – the same ones who claimed to care about humanitarian delivery? Instead, we are getting silence. Or worse – a shrug.

Netanyahu’s open admission isn’t just arrogance. It’s confidence. He knows he can say the quiet part out loud. He knows Israel can violate international law, arm criminal gangs, bomb schools, starve civilians – and still be welcomed on the world stage. Still receive weapons. Still be praised as an “ally”.

This is what total impunity looks like.

And this is the cost of believing Israel’s PR machine – of letting it pose as a reluctant occupier, a humane military, a victim of circumstance. In truth, it’s a regime that doesn’t just tolerate war crimes – it engineers them, funds them and then uses them as propaganda.

It’s not just a war on Palestinian bodies, homes or even survival. It’s a war on the Palestinian dream – the dream of ever having a state, of building a future with dignity and self-determination.

For decades, Israel has systematically worked to prevent any form of cohesive Palestinian leadership. In the 1980s, it quietly encouraged the rise of Hamas as a religious and social counterweight to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The idea was simple: divide Palestinian politics, weaken the national movement and fragment any push for statehood.

Israeli officials believed that supporting Islamist organisations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza would create internal conflict among Palestinians – and it did. Tensions between Islamist and secular groups grew and resulted in clashes on university campuses and in the political arena.

Israel’s policy wasn’t driven by a misunderstanding. It was strategic. It knew that empowering rivals to the PLO would fracture Palestinian unity. The goal wasn’t peace – it was paralysis.

That same strategy continues today – not just in Gaza but in the occupied West Bank too. The Israeli government is actively dismantling the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) ability to function. It withholds tax revenues that make up the majority of the PA’s budget, bringing it to the brink of collapse.

It protects settler militias attacking Palestinian villages. It conducts daily military raids in PA-administered cities, humiliating its forces and making them look powerless. It blocks international diplomatic efforts by the PA while mocking its legitimacy.

And this policy doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the occupied territory. Inside Israel, Palestinian citizens face a similar tactic: intentional neglect, impoverishment and engineered chaos. Crime is left to spiral out of control in their communities while infrastructure and services are underfunded. Their economic potential is stifled – not by accident, but by design. It’s a quiet war on Palestinian identity itself: a strategy of erasure that aims to turn Palestinians into a silent, faceless minority stripped of rights, recognition and nationhood.

By engineering instability and then pointing to that instability as proof of failure, Israel writes the script and blames us for living it.

This is not just military policy – it’s narrative warfare. It’s about ensuring that the Palestinian people are forever seen not as a nation striving for freedom but as a threat to be contained.

Israel thrives on chaos because chaos discredits Palestinian agency. It allows Israel to say, “Look, they can’t govern themselves. They only understand violence. They need us.”

It’s not just brutal. It’s deeply calculated.

But Gaza and the West Bank are not a failed state. They are places that have been systematically denied the chance to become one.

Gaza is my home. It’s where I grew up. It’s where my family still clings to life. They deserve better – better than a colonial regime that bombs them, starves them and funds the very people stealing their food.

The world must stop treating Gaza and the West Bank as testing grounds for military doctrine, propaganda and geopolitical indifference. The people of Palestine are not a failed experiment. They are a besieged people, relentlessly denied sovereignty. And still, they try – to feed their children, bury their dead and remain human in the face of dehumanisation.

If Netanyahu’s government can admit to arming criminal gangs and still face no consequences, then the problem is not just Israel. It is us – the so-called international community that rewards cruelty and punishes survival.

What’s needed – urgently – are concrete actions to protect Palestinian lives and safeguard the right to Palestinian statehood before it is erased entirely. Threats to recognise a Palestinian state just won’t do.

If the world continues to look away, it’s not only Palestine that will be destroyed – it’s the very credibility of international law, human rights and every moral principle we claim to stand for.

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

Israel’s war on Gaza rumbles on, even as international condemnation grows.

Hamas has expressed that it is ready for a deal to end the war, even offering to turn over the administration of Gaza to a technocratic government. United Nations Security Council members have overwhelmingly voted in favour of a ceasefire, a resolution blocked from passing only by a United States veto.

But Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is adamant in its refusal of any agreement that does not include what it calls the “defeat of Hamas”, even if that means endangering the Israeli captives still held in Gaza.

“Hamas is already the weakest it’s ever been, and there’s nothing they can do that is remotely comparable to what Israel possesses,” writer and researcher on Israel-Palestine and founder of The Fire These Times podcast Elia Ayoub told Al Jazeera.

“There’s ample evidence by now that the only reason this genocide is ongoing is because Netanyahu wants it to continue. It’s clearly just an excuse to keep the war going.”

Netanyahu is ‘reliant upon Hamas’

But why would Netanyahu want the war – which is Israel’s longest since 1948, and is causing economic crisis – to continue?

One answer is that the war provides a distraction from Netanyahu’s own problems.

Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has well-documented legal troubles; he is being tried for corruption.

And, aside from that, should a permanent ceasefire be realised, some analysts believe Israeli society will hold Netanyahu accountable for security shortcomings that led to October 7.

“He’s afraid once it’s done, eyes will rightfully turn to him over corruption and the failures of October 7,” Diana Buttu, a legal scholar and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, said.

And so, Netanyahu has two main tasks. The first is to prolong the war, allowing him to continue using it as an excuse to avoid accountability. The second is to prevent the breakup of his government, while somehow setting himself up for another successful election, which must happen before October 2026.

Netanyahu has been “reliant upon Hamas throughout the war”, Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel and Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.

“The far right and Netanyahu have consistently used Hamas as an excuse not to negotiate or plan for a day after,” she said.

Israel’s goal has nothing to do with Hamas

The Israeli refusal to negotiate a final end to the war stands in stark contrast to Hamas’s willingness to hand over all captives held in Gaza.

Over the last 20 months, much of Hamas’s leadership has been killed. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, was assassinated in Tehran on July 31, and Yahya Sinwar, his successor, was killed in Gaza on October 16.

Israel is now claiming it killed Sinwar’s successor and younger brother, Mohammed, though Hamas has yet to confirm his death.

Militarily, analysts say, Hamas is estimated to have lost significant strength. It is still conducting some attacks, but fewer and further between than the ambushes it was able to carry out earlier in the war.

In a sign that Hamas perhaps understands that it is no longer in a position to rule Gaza, it has also offered to step down from the administration of the Palestinian territory, which it has controlled since 2006, and hand over to a technocratic government.

“The technocrat offer is not new,” Hamzé Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst from Gaza, said.

“It was on the table since before the invasion of Rafah [which occurred on May 6, 2024]. They want Hamas to give up their arms and give up everything, and Hamas has responded by saying: ‘We’re stepping aside.’”

That has been firmly rejected by Israel, which has not endorsed any vision for post-war Gaza.

Instead, over the last nearly 20 months, Israel has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000 in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

Ethnic cleansing: The deeper goal

In addition, Gaza is now “the hungriest place on Earth”, according to the UN, all its inhabitants at risk of famine after Israel strangled aid delivery throughout its war, then completely blocked it from March 2 until May 27.

Israel has also turned 70 percent of the enclave into no-go zones.

All the while, Israel’s bombing of Gaza continues.

Discounting the pretext of destroying Hamas and returning the captives, some analysts believe there is a deeper goal: pushing Palestinians out of Gaza.

“Neither Hamas nor the hostages are the targets,” Meron Rappaport, an editor at Local Call, a Hebrew-language news site, said.

“The goal is to push the people of Gaza into very few, small and closed areas where food will be delivered scarcely, hoping that the pressure on them will get them to ask to leave the Strip.”

“Israel is no longer fighting Hamas,” he added.

Netanyahu said in late May that Israel would control the entirety of Gaza by the end of its latest offensive, while many foreign officials and experts have warned either directly or implicitly that Israel’s actions amount to ethnically cleansing Gaza.

A recent report in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, cited 82 percent of Jewish Israelis supporting the expulsion of the people in Gaza.

To do so would have a historic impact, Buttu said, one that Netanyahu might feel he can portray as protecting Israel from a Palestinian state – something he has repeatedly promised to prevent.

“He recognises he will be the fall guy or the hero,” Buttu said. “If he is the one who ethnically cleanses Gaza, he becomes the hero.”

Until that happens, analysts believe, Palestinians will continue to die at the hands of the Israeli military. Hamas is the pretext and their willingness to negotiate or succumb is of secondary importance.

“Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of ending this war,” Zonszein said. “It doesn’t matter what Hamas offers. They can offer to return all the hostages or give up governance.

“This war is going to continue until Netanyahu is forced to stop it, and that can only come from Trump.”

Additional reporting by Simon Speakman Cordall

Israeli raids across Gaza have killed at least 75 Palestinians, with rescuers scrambling to find dozens of bodies under the rubble after the bombing of a residential building in Gaza City described by the enclave’s civil defence as a “full-fledged massacre”.

Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basel told Al Jazeera that the military gave “no warning, no alert” before Saturday’s strike on the house in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City that left at least 16 people dead, including women and children.

“This is truly a full-fledged massacre … a building full of civilians,” said Basel, who added that approximately 85 people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.

“We woke up to the strikes, destruction, yelling, rocks hitting us,” said Hamed Keheel, a displaced Palestinian at the site, noting that the attack had taken place on the second day of the Eid al-Adha festival.

“This is the occupation,” he said. “Instead of waking up to cheer our children and dress them up to enjoy Eid, we wake up to carry women and children’s bodies from under rubble.”

Local resident Hassan Alkhor told Al Jazeera that the building belonged to the Abu Sharia family. “May God hold the Israeli forces and [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu accountable,” he said.

The Israeli military said afterwards that it had killed Asaad Abu Sharia, the leader of the Mujahideen Brigades, who it claimed had participated in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023, according to a report in the Times of Israel published Saturday.

Hamas confirmed the killing in a statement shared on Telegram, saying that Abu Sharia’s brother, Ahmed Abu Sharia, had also been assassinated in the attack, which it said was “part of a series of brutal massacres against civilians”.

‘A handful of rice for our starving children’

Also on Saturday, Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians waiting near an aid distribution site run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in southern Gaza’s Rafah, the latest in a series of deadly incidents around the group’s operations that have killed 118 people and left others missing in less than two weeks.

Gaza resident Samir Abu Hadid told the AFP news agency that thousands of people had gathered at the al-Alam roundabout near the aid site.

“As soon as some people tried to advance towards the aid centre, the Israeli [forces] opened fire from armoured vehicles stationed near the centre, firing into the air and then at civilians,” Abu Hadid said.

One woman told Al Jazeera her husband had been killed in the attack after going to the aid point to get “a handful of rice for our starving children”.

“He said he felt he was walking towards death, I begged him not to leave. He insisted to find anything to feed our children,” she said.

The GHF, a shadowy United States-backed private group engaged by Israel to distribute aid under the protection of its troops and security contractors, began operations in late May, replacing existing networks run by the United Nations and charities that have worked for decades.

Critics say the group does not abide by humanitarian principles of neutrality, claiming that its operations weaponise aid, serving Israel’s stated aims of ethnically cleansing large swaths of Gaza and controlling the entire enclave.

GHF said on Saturday that it was unable to distribute any humanitarian relief because Hamas issued “direct threats” against its operations. “These threats made it impossible to proceed today without putting innocent lives at risk,” it said in a statement. Hamas told the Reuters news agency that it had no knowledge of these “alleged threats”.

The United Nations, which has refused to cooperate with the GHF, has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.

‘Lost future generation’

As Israel continued its attacks amid the looming famine, it emerged that health authorities had recorded more than 300 miscarriages over an 80-day period in the enclave.

Expectant mothers face an increased risk of miscarriage and premature births, with basic medical supplies such as iron supplements and prenatal vitamins impossible to obtain.

Brenda Kelly, a consultant obstetrician at Oxford University Hospital, told Al Jazeera that Gaza was “losing a future generation of children”, alluding to a “staggering rise” in stillbirths, miscarriages and pre-term births.

“What we’re seeing now is the direct fallout of Israel’s weaponising of hunger in Gaza – impacting babies’ growth and growth restriction is one of the leading causes of miscarriages and stillbirth,” she said.

Severe malnutrition among pregnant women is compounded by severe stress and psychological trauma, as well as repeated displacement and a lack of safe shelter, she said.

Those babies that do survive face heightened health risks. “We know that famine experienced in-utero has lifelong consequences for children who then go into adulthood with much higher risks of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as mental health disorders,” she said.

Thousands of Israeli protesters in Tel Aviv have again called for the return of captives held in Gaza and an immediate ceasefire, while hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestine supporters gathered in Rome denouncing the Italian government’s “complicity” in the war.

Captive families and antigovernment protesters gathered in front of Israel’s army headquarters on Saturday, several hours after Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that Israeli forces had recovered the body of a Thai captive.

In a statement, the Israeli army said on Saturday morning that the body of Nattapong Pinta was retrieved from the Rafah area in southern Gaza after he was taken captive during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote on X that it “bows its head in sorrow over the murder of Nattapong Pinta”.

“The time is running out for all 55 hostages. We must bring them all home, Now!,” the group wrote on X.

The spokesperson of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, warned that an Israeli captive, Matan Zangauker, is being held in an area targeted by the Israeli army.

He warned that if Zangauker were killed during an attempt to free him, the Israeli military would be responsible.

The captive’s mother, Einav Zangauker, speaking at the Tel Aviv protest, criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for neglecting those being held in Gaza.

“The military pressure is closing in on [my son] and is placing him in immediate danger. The decision to expand the ground operation comes at the cost of Matan’s life and the lives of all the hostages,” she said.

“[Netanyahu] continues to sacrifice the hostages. He is using the [Israeli military] not to protect Israel’s security, but to continue the war and protect his government.”

Police prevented activists from the NGO, Looking the Occupation in the Eye, from reaching the protest area in Tel Aviv, according to reports in the Israeli media. The activists were reportedly carrying placards protesting against Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

אלימות מצד המשטרה, דחיפות וצעקות לעבר מפגינים הנושאים שלטים הקוראים להפסקת המלחמה.

07.06.2025 תל אביב 🎥אריק סגל pic.twitter.com/2vJ3lFkXDl

— אלימות ישראל (@Alimut_Israel) June 7, 2025

Translation: Police pushing and shouting at protesters carrying signs calling for an end to the war.

During the Hamas attack, which killed 1,139 people in southern Israel, the group abducted 251 people; following a series of prisoner-for-captive exchanges with the Israeli government, the group are currently holding 55 captives in Gaza, a number of whom are dead.

Israel’s war on Gaza has now killed at least 54,772 Palestinians and injured 125,834 others, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported.

‘Enough to the massacre of Palestinians’

In the meantime, across Europe, pro-Palestine demonstrators called for an end to the Israeli genocidal assault in Gaza.

In Rome, hundreds of thousands of people marched through the city in a protest called by opposition parties slamming the government’s “complicity” in the war.

The leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, called the turnout “an enormous popular response” in opposition to Israel’s actions in the besieged and bombarded enclave.

The demonstration was “to say enough to the massacre of Palestinians, to say enough to the crimes of Netanyahu’s far-right government” and to show the world “another Italy”, Schlein told reporters.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has come under increasing pressure to take a stronger stance on the war in Gaza as she has backed Israel and Netanyahu throughout, while admitting difficult conversations with the Israeli leader of late.

In the British capital, London, antigovernment demonstrators held placards demanding “Cut war, not welfare.”

Speaking at the Whitehall rally, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said with the “abominable, deliberate starvation of children in Gaza and the genocide that’s inflicted against the Palestinian people”, a world of “peace” was needed.

“We need a world of peace that will come through the vision of peace, the vision of disarmament and the vision of actually challenging the causes of war, which leads to the desperation and the refugee flows of today,” he said.

Pro-Palestine protests were also held Saturday in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, where demonstrators raised banners calling for an end to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Throughout the various ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, western news outlets have repeatedly blamed their failure on Hamas. This week, we hear a perspective that rarely features in the coverage – the group’s own – on the negotiations and the media narratives that surround them.

Contributors:
Tahani Mustafa – Senior Palestine Analyst, International Crisis Group
Basem Naim – Politburo member, Hamas
Julie Norman – Associate Professor, University College London
Abdaljawad Omar – Lecturer, Birzeit University

On our radar:

Ukrainian drone strikes on multiple Russian airfields have further escalated the conflict, as peace talks come up short. Tariq Nafi reports on the messaging on the airwaves both sides of the border.

Is logging off the cure for ‘brain rot’?

After decades of increased connectivity, screen time and addictive algorithms, more and more young people are logging off.

The Listening Post’s Ryan Kohls looks at the community-based movements reevaluating their relationships with digital technology.

Featuring:
Monique Golay – Barcelona Chapter Leader, Offline Club
Hussein Kesvani – Technology and culture journalist
Adele Walton – Author, Logging Off

Medical sources say eight killed in a shooting incident near an aid distribution site west of Rafah in southern Gaza.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 34 Palestinians across Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera, as a key hospital in the south of the besieged enclave said it was inaccessible amid ongoing Israeli military operations.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Saturday that al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis was “no longer accessible” after Israeli forces designated the surrounding area a “dangerous combat zone” and ordered evacuations.

“There are many patients and medical staff in the hospital,” the group said in a statement, urging international organisations to intervene, provide protection for medical sites, and open safe corridors for aid and medical supplies.

The plea comes as medical sources told Al Jazeera that 34 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Saturday, including eight who were killed in a shooting incident near an aid distribution site west of Rafah in southern Gaza.

Palestinians in Gaza have gathered at al-Alam roundabout near Rafah almost daily since late May to collect humanitarian aid, at a centre about 1km (0.6 miles) away, operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Samir Abu Hadid, who was there early Saturday, told the AFP news agency that thousands of people had gathered near the roundabout.

“As soon as some people tried to advance towards the aid centre, the Israeli occupation forces opened fire from armoured vehicles stationed near the centre, firing into the air and then at civilians,” Abu Hadid said.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The GHF had said on Friday that its aid centres would remain closed until further notice due to security concerns, just days after several deadly incidents near its aid hubs.

“Operations at our distribution points have been paused until further notice,” a spokesperson for the GHF said on Friday, despite warnings from humanitarian agencies that the territory is on the brink of famine.

Israel last month partially lifted a total blockade on humanitarian supplies entering Gaza that had been in effect since March 2, but rights groups and the United Nations have warned that only a trickle of aid has been allowed into the territory.

The UN, which has refused to cooperate with the GHF over neutrality concerns, has warned that Gaza’s entire population of more than two million people was at risk of starvation.

In Israel, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the military had recovered the remains of Thai national Nattapong Pinta from Rafah, southern Gaza.

Pinta, an agricultural worker, was seized during the Hamas-led assault on October 7, 2023, from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Israeli officials said he had been held by the Mujahideen Brigades, a Palestinian armed group.

His remains were found alongside those of two Israeli American captives retrieved earlier in the week. Pinta’s family in Thailand has been notified.

Since the mid-1960s, Israel has received significant military and diplomatic support from successive administrations in the United States. But never has it enjoyed such unconditional support as it has in the past eight years – under the first and second administrations of President Donald Trump and the administration of President Joe Biden. As a result, Israel has started openly pursuing its greatest Zionist dream: expanding state borders to achieve Greater Israel and accelerating the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland.

Although the Israeli state may appear more powerful than ever and overly confident that it will achieve regional dominance, its current position paradoxically reflects a strategic failure.

The reality is that after nearly eight decades of existence, Israel has failed to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the region’s peoples and lasting security for itself. Its present resurgence will secure neither. And that is because its foreign, domestic and military policies are based on a settler-colonial logic which makes them untenable in the long run.

Settler-colonial mentality

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has sought to convince the world and its Jewish citizens that it was created “on a land without a people”. While this narrative has successfully caught on – particularly among the younger generations of Israelis – the forefathers of the Israeli state openly spoke about “colonisation” and settling a land with a hostile native population.

Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern Zionism, planned to reach out to well-known British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, who led the British colonisation of Southern Africa, for advice on and approval of his plan to colonise Palestine.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, a revisionist Zionist who founded the far-right Zionist group Betar in Latvia, strategised in his writings on ways to address native resistance. In his 1923 essay The Iron Wall, he wrote:

“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing.”

This settler-colonial mentality played a central role in shaping the domestic, foreign and military policies of the newly founded Israel. Today, almost 80 years after the creation of the Israeli state, expansionism and aggressive military posturing continue to define the Israeli regional strategy.

Despite official rhetoric about seeking peace and normalisation of relations in the region, the Israeli aspiration to achieve a Greater Israel – one that includes not only occupied Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but also parts of modern-day Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan – persists.

That has been apparent in public discourse and government actions. Settler activists have openly talked about an Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates river. Government advisers have penned articles about “reconquering Sinai”, “dismembering Egypt” and precipitating the “dissolution of Jordan”. Prime ministers have stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly, holding maps of Greater Israel.

The idea of Greater Israel has been widely accepted across the Zionist political spectrum, both on the right and on the left. The primary differences have been in how and when to advance this vision, and whether it requires the expulsion of Palestinians or their segregation.

Expansionist policies have been applied under all Israeli governments – from those led by left-wing Mapai Labor to those led by right-wing Likud. Since the 1949 armistice, Israel has occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Sinai (twice), southern Lebanon (twice) and now most recently, more parts of southern Syria.

Meanwhile, its colonisation of the occupied Palestinian territories has proceeded at an accelerated pace. The number of Jewish colonial settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was approximately 250,000 in 1993; by October 7, 2023, this number had risen to 503,732 in the West Bank and 233,600 in East Jerusalem.

Settlements in Gaza were dismantled in 2005, but plans are being made for recolonisation, as the current Israeli government eyes the full ethnic cleansing of the strip.

Today, there is no major political force in Israel that looks beyond the direct application of naked military power to maintain and protect colonisation activities. This mindset is not limited to politicians but is also a widespread conviction among the Israeli public.

A June 2024 survey found that 70 percent of Jewish Israelis think settlements either help national security or do not interfere with it; a March 2025 poll showed that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

No genuine peace camp

The settler-colonial mindset at the core of the Israeli state has precluded the emergence of a genuine drive for peace. As a result, successive Israeli governments have continued to pursue war, colonisation and expansion, even when seemingly embracing peace talks.

In the 1990s, Israel had the opportunity to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict by withdrawing from the territories occupied in 1967 and accepting the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Instead, it used the negotiations as a smokescreen to advance settler-colonial policies.

Even leaders like Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was hailed as a peacemaker and assassinated for it by a Jewish extremist, did not really envision Israelis and Palestinians living side by side. Under his government and during the peace negotiations, the expansion of Jewish settlements continued at a steady pace, while plans for a segregation wall on occupied Palestinian land were pushed forward.

Meanwhile, Rabin and other Israeli leaders involved in the peace negotiations focused primarily on normalising Israel’s existence as it was, without addressing the root causes of the conflict. They sought to pacify Palestinian resistance, rather than establish durable peace.

The absence of a peace camp is not only at the leadership level but also at the societal one. While the Israeli society has active movements for social causes, settlers’ coalitions, and now a movement pushing for continuing the prisoner exchanges with Hamas, it lacks a genuine grassroots peace movement that recognises Palestinian rights.

This is in sharp contrast to other settler-colonial societies, in which there was a push from within to end colonialism. During the French colonisation of Algeria, for example, an anti-colonial movement within France openly supported the Algerian armed resistance. During the apartheid era in South Africa, white activists joined the anti-apartheid struggle and helped sway domestic attitudes.

In Israel, Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights are so few that they are easily ostracised and marginalised, facing death threats and often feeling compelled to leave the country.

The absence of a genuine peace camp reflects the inherent flaw of settler-colonial Israel. It has no coherent political strategy to address broader issues, such as coexistence in the region, which requires acknowledging the interests of others, especially the national rights of the Palestinian people. This makes the settler colony incapable of peace.

Overreliance on Western support

Historically, settler-colonies have always had to rely on outside support to sustain themselves. Israel is no different. For decades, it has enjoyed far-reaching support from Western Europe and the United States, which have provided it with a significant strategic edge.

But this Israeli reliance on Western backing also poses a long-term strategic threat. It makes the country dependent and unable to function like a normal sovereign nation.

Other countries in the region will continue to exist even if they lose support from their Western allies, with only their regimes potentially changing. But that is not the case for Israel.

This unlimited and extravagant support for Israel, aimed at maintaining its dominance as the primary regional power, is likely to backfire.

The growing imbalance of power is generating pressure not only on antagonist countries like Iran, but on other regional players such as Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They increasingly feel that the Western push to defend Israeli interests is infringing on their own.

This situation is likely to push them to increasingly seek alliances beyond the Western bloc to counterbalance this influence. China offers a viable alternative, as it is not a strategic ally of Israel.

A gradual opening to China can shift the political dynamics of the region in the coming years, beyond the capacity of Israel and its allies to control them. That will certainly undermine the Israeli plans to establish regional hegemony.

But Israel faces not only the risk that Western dominance could be challenged from the East, but also that Western societies could pressure their governments to stop backing it.

The Israeli genocidal policies, especially since October 7, 2023, have spurred a profound shift in public opinion across the world, including in Europe and North America.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, its prime minister has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court and Israeli soldiers are facing charges in many countries around the world.

As a result, the Israeli state has notably lost support among those on the left and centre of the political spectrum in the West.

While it still manages to maintain backing in high-level European and American political and military circles, this support is becoming increasingly unreliable in the long term. This uncertainty is further aggravated by the rise of isolationism on the right in the US. If these trends continue, Israel may eventually run out of dependable supporters in the West and lose its financial and military advantage.

The limits of the Israeli settler-colonial state strategy are increasingly becoming clear. The continued use of settler-colonial policies, characterised by excessive violence, along with the pursuit of regional hegemony, is pushing Israel into an untenable position.

The Israeli leadership may be living in a fantasy world, thinking it can pull off a “New World” model on Palestine and exterminate its population to fully colonise it; or to declare itself officially an apartheid state, seeking to make Palestinian subjugation legal.

But in the historical and geopolitical context of the Middle East, neither of these fantasies is viable. Global pressure is coming to bear. The expulsion of the people of Gaza has been outright rejected.

The Palestinian people, like any other nation that has survived brutal colonisation, will not leave their country and disappear, nor will they accept life under a colonial apartheid regime.

Israeli leaders may do well to start imagining the very real possibility of sharing land and accepting equal rights, and start preparing the Israeli society for it.

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

Israel warned ‘there will be no calm in Beirut’ after launching its largest attack on the Lebanese capital since the ceasefire.

The Israeli military will continue to bomb Lebanon if Hezbollah is not disarmed, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has warned, saying “there will be no calm in Beirut” and “no order or stability in Lebanon” unless Israel’s security is assured.

“Agreements must be honoured, and if you do not do what is required, we will continue to act, and with great force,” the Israeli minister said in a Friday statement.

Israel’s military launched a series of strikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday night, sending huge numbers of residents fleeing their homes on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday after issuing a forced evacuation order an hour earlier.

Israel claimed, without providing evidence, that its latest attack was launched against Hezbollah “drone factories” in the Lebanese capital.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah was “operating to increase production of UAVs [drones] for the next war” with Israel in “blatant violation” of the terms of November’s ceasefire.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli fighter jets had carried out about a dozen strikes in the attack. A Hezbollah statement said a preliminary assessment showed nine buildings had been destroyed, while dozens of others were damaged.

Hezbollah also denied there were drone production facilities in the targeted locations.

The Israeli attack was the fourth, and heaviest, carried out targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs – a Hezbollah stronghold – since the ceasefire ended hostilities on November 27.

Israel’s last attack on the Lebanese capital, in which it claimed to destroy “infrastructure where precision missiles” were being stored by Hezbollah, came in late April.

‘Flagrant violation of an international accord’

Across Lebanon, Israel has violated the ceasefire on a near-daily basis in the seven months since it was signed, according to the Lebanese government of President Joseph Aoun, Arab nations and human rights groups.

Aoun has appealed to the United States and France, guarantors of the November ceasefire, to rein in Israel’s attacks.

Speaking late on Thursday, Aoun voiced “firm condemnation of the Israeli aggression”, labelling the attacks a “flagrant violation of an international accord … on the eve of a sacred religious festival”.

On Friday, Ali Ammar, a Hezbollah lawmaker, urged “all Lebanese political forces … to translate their statements of condemnation into concrete action”, including diplomatic pressure.

In the months since the ceasefire, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 190 people and wounded nearly 500 more, the Lebanese government said in April.

Under the ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese military has been tasked with disarming Hezbollah – a political party and paramilitary group once believed to be more heavily armed than the state.

But following Thursday’s attack, Lebanon’s army warned that such attacks are weakening its role in the ceasefire. It added that Israel rejected its proposal to inspect the alleged drone production sites in southern Beirut in order to prevent an air strike.

“The Israeli enemy violations of the deal and its refusal to respond to the committee is weakening the role of the committee and the army,” the military said in a statement.

It added that continued Israeli attacks could lead the army to freeze its cooperation with the monitoring committee “when it comes to searching posts” and dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah re-erupted in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, as the Lebanese group launched cross-border attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas.

Subsequent Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, before the ceasefire was signed. Hezbollah rocket fire in Israel killed a reported 87 Israeli military personnel and 46 civilians.

Muslims around the globe are celebrating Eid al-Adha, one of the biggest holidays in the Islamic calendar that commemorates sacrifice and submission to God.

The festival, running from June 6-9, honours the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to obey God’s command that he sacrifice his only son Ismail, ignoring the devil’s attempts to dissuade him from the act.

The devil appeared before Ibrahim three times, but the prophet responded by throwing stones, driving him away. As he was about to kill his son, God stayed his hand and spared his son, giving him a lamb to sacrifice instead.

The “Feast of Sacrifice” is traditionally marked by the slaughter of an animal, typically a goat, sheep, cow, bull or camel, with the meat shared among neighbours, family members and the poor.

The start of the event coincides with the final rites of the annual Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, observed by adult Muslims.

In remembrance of Ibrahim’s resistance to Satan, pilgrims at Hajj participate in a symbolic “stoning of the devil” at the Jamarat complex in Mina, near Mecca.

The stoning ritual takes place at the three spots where it is said the devil tried to dissuade Ibrahim from obeying God, represented by three concrete walls.

Pilgrims collected their pebbles overnight on Thursday from Muzdalifah, an area located a few kilometres away from Arafat, a hill outside the city of Mecca with great spiritual significance.

On Friday, an estimated 1.6 million-plus pilgrims stoned the devil, throwing their pebbles at the concrete walls in Mina.

For some, the ritual marks a solemn moment – a complete submission to God. For others, it represents a victory over evil.

Numbers of children requiring hospitalisation for complications due to severe malnutrition rising as WHO warns ‘health system is collapsing’.

More than 2,700 children below the age of five in Gaza have been diagnosed with acute malnutrition, marking a steep increase in the number of children suffering from the serious medical condition since screening in February, the United Nations reports.

Of almost 47,000 under-fives screened for malnutrition in the second half of May, 5.8 percent (or 2,733 children) were found to be suffering from acute malnutrition, “almost triple the proportion of children diagnosed with malnutrition” three months earlier, the UN said on Thursday.

The number of children with severe acute malnutrition requiring admission to hospital also increased by around double in May compared with earlier months, according to the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

According to data from the Nutrition Cluster cited by OCHA, more than 16,500 children below the age of five have been detected and treated for severe acute malnutrition in Gaza since January, including 141 children with complications requiring hospitalisation.

Despite the increase in children suffering serious malnutrition and requiring hospitalisation, “there are currently only four stabilisation centres for the treatment of [severe acute malnutrition] with medical complications in the Gaza Strip,” the OCHA report states.

“Stabilisation centres in North Gaza and Rafah have been forced to suspend operations, leaving children in these areas without access to lifesaving treatment,” it adds.

The UN’s latest warning on the health of young children in Gaza comes as the Palestinian territory’s entire population deals with starvation, and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the enclave’s “health system is collapsing”.

Issuing an appeal for the “urgent protection” of two of Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, the WHO said the “Nasser Medical Complex, the most important referral hospital left in Gaza, and Al-Amal Hospital are at risk of becoming non-functional”.

“The relentless and systematic decimation of hospitals in Gaza has been going on for too long. It must end immediately,” the WHO said in a statement.

“WHO calls for urgent protection of Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Amal Hospital to ensure they remain accessible, functional and safe from attacks and hostilities,” it said.

“Patients seeking refuge and care to save their lives must not risk losing them trying to reach hospitals.”

UN experts, medical officials in Gaza, as well as medical charities, have long accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting health workers and medical facilities in Gaza in what has been described as a deliberate attempt to make conditions of life unliveable for the Palestinian population in the Strip.

WHO calls for urgent protection of Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Amal Hospital in the Gaza Strip

WHO warns that the #Gaza Strip’s health system is collapsing, with Nasser Medical Complex, the most important referral hospital left in Gaza, and Al-Amal Hospital at risk of becoming… pic.twitter.com/Rd3ZjASuBp

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) June 5, 2025

In 2010, Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara, a ship in a flotilla trying to break the siege on Gaza. The raid left 10 people dead. Now, a new vessel, the Madleen, has set sail with the same mission – and the same risks. Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal witnessed the 2010 raid firsthand and reflects on its lasting impact.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the country used armed gangs in Gaza to help fight Hamas, his admission coming after a new wave of military strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip that left at least 52 Palestinians dead.

Netanyahu said the government had “activated” powerful local clans in the enclave on the advice of “security officials”, his video statement posted to X on Thursday coming hours after former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused him of deploying the tactic.

The statement marked the government’s first public acknowledgement that it had backed the armed Palestinian groups based around powerful families, which stand accused by aid workers of carrying out criminal attacks and stealing aid from trucks as starvation stalks the entire territory due to a punishing Israeli blockade.

An Israeli official cited by news agency The Associated Press said that one of the groups Netanyahu was referring to was the so-called Popular Forces, led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a local clan leader in Rafah.

Last month, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on the group’s activities – though it was named the “Anti-Terror Service” in the report – saying that sources in Gaza claimed it consisted of roughly 100 armed men operating with the tacit approval of the Israeli military.

In recent weeks, the Abu Shabab group announced online that its fighters were helping protect supply shipments to new US- and Israel-backed distribution centres run by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

“The Israeli opposition claims that there was no consultation within the Israeli government or the Israeli cabinet,” said Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Jordan’s capital Amman. “Netanyahu says that these armed gangs … could essentially help the Israelis defeat Hamas in Gaza.”

“But it’s not going down well within Israel, where people are saying that these are armed criminal enterprises within the Gaza Strip. That they should not be armed and that these are Israeli weapons that are being put in their hands,” she said.

‘Human abattoir’

Netanyahu made his statement on another deadly day in Gaza, the military hitting targets throughout the besieged coastal enclave where the crippling blockade has brought the population to the brink of mass starvation.

Deadly incidents, killing more than 100 and wounding many more, at aid distribution sites run by the GHF since last week have sparked widespread condemnation, with Israeli troops opening fire on Palestinians seeking aid on four separate occasions since last week.

Chris Gunness, former spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told Al Jazeera that the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had turned Gaza into a “human abattoir”.

“Hundreds of civilians are herded like animals into fenced-off pens and are slaughtered like cattle in the process,” he said.

Amid growing international condemnation, GHF shuttered operations for a full day on Wednesday, saying the next day that it would reopen two aid distribution centres in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. It did not say when aid distribution would resume.

At least 52 Palestinians were killed on Thursday, according to hospital sources who spoke to Al Jazeera. The sources said 31 bodies had arrived at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, with 21 admitted to Gaza City’s al-Ahli Arab and al-Shifa hospitals.

Israel killed four journalists in an attack on al-Ahli Hospital itself, also known as the Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City

Gaza City local Fadi al-Hindi told Al Jazeera that he had seen one of the strikes on al-Nasser Street, near the al-Shifa Hospital, witnessing scenes of death after running outside his tent to check on his children.

“When I arrived, I saw a man in pieces; he had been riding a bicycle, and the lower half of his body was gone. Everyone in the street was injured, and we started to collect the pieces of the wounded,” he said.

At least three Palestinians were killed in the strike, reportedly including children.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa also reported five deaths in areas around Khan Younis, four west of Beit Lahiya in the north, and one south of Gaza City, as well as the injuring of a child near Bureij in central Gaza.

Wafa also reported that Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians trying to reach an aid centre near Wadi Gaza.

In the meantime, Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya has said in a prerecorded speech that the group did not reject a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza put forward by US special envoy Steve Witkoff, stating that it had instead requested some changes to ensure an end to the war.

Al-Hayya added that Hamas is ready to engage in further talks and that communications with the mediators are ongoing. Israel broke off a previous truce in March to resume the war in Gaza.

Gaza City – As the Madleen sails towards Gaza to try to deliver life-saving aid to its people, little is known about the woman the boat was named after: Madleen Kulab, Gaza’s only fisherwoman.

When Al Jazeera first met Madleen Kulab (also spelled Madelyn Culab) three years ago, she had two children, was expecting her third and lived a relatively quiet life in Gaza City with her husband, Khader Bakr, 32, also a fisherman.

Madleen, now 30, would sail fearlessly out as far as Israel’s gunship blockade would allow to bring back fish she could sell in a local market to support the family.

When Israel’s war on Gaza began, the family was terrified, then heartbroken when Israel killed Madleen’s father in an air strike near their home in November 2023.

They fled with Madleen nearly nine months pregnant to Khan Younis, then to Rafah, to Deir el-Balah and then Nuseirat.

Now, they are back in what remains of their home in Gaza City, a badly damaged space they returned to when the Israeli army allowed displaced people to head back north in January.

Responsibility and pride

Madleen sits on a battered sofa in her damaged living room, three of her four children sitting with her: baby Waseela, one, on her lap; five-year-old Safinaz beside her; and three-year-old Jamal – the baby she was expecting when Al Jazeera first met her – at the end.

She talks about what it felt like to hear from an Irish activist friend that the ship trying to break the blockade on Gaza would be named after her.

“I was deeply moved. I felt an enormous sense of responsibility and a little pride,” she says with a smile.

“I’m grateful to these activists who have devoted themselves, left their lives and comforts behind, and stood with Gaza despite all the risks,” she says of the group of 12 activists, who include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament.

“This is the highest form of humanity and self-sacrifice in the face of danger.”

Khader sits on another sofa with six-year-old Sandy. He holds out his phone with a photo of the Madleen on it, flying the Palestinian flag.

Madleen has been fishing since she was 15, a familiar figure heading out on her father’s boat, getting to know all the other fishermen and also becoming well-known to international solidarity activists.

In addition to bringing home the fish, Madleen is also a skilled cook, preparing seasonal fish dishes that were so famously tasty that she had a list of clients waiting to buy them from her. Especially popular were the dishes made with Gaza’s ubiquitous sardines.

But now, she can’t fish any more and neither can Khader because Israel destroyed their boats and an entire storage room full of fishing gear during the war.

“We’ve lost everything – the fruit of a lifetime,” she says.

But her loss is not just about income. It’s about identity – her deep connection to the sea and fishing. It’s even about the simple joy of eating fish, which she used to enjoy “10 times a week”.

“Now fish is too expensive if you can find it at all. Only a few fishermen still have any gear left, and they risk their lives just to catch a little,” she says.

“Everything has changed. We now crave fish in the middle of this famine we’re living through.”

Sleeping on a bare floor, newborn in her arms

After the air strike near the family home in November 2023, Madleen’s family’s first displacement was to Khan Younis, following Israeli army instructions that they would be safer there.

After searching for shelter, they ended up in a small apartment with 40 other displaced relatives, and then Madleen went into labour.

“It was a difficult, brutal birth. No pain relief, no medical care. I was forced to leave the hospital right after giving birth. There were no beds available because of the overwhelming number of wounded,” she says.

When she returned to the shelter, things were just as dire. “We didn’t have a mattress or even a blanket, neither me nor the kids,” she said.

“I had to sleep on the floor with my newborn baby. It was physically exhausting.”

She then had to tend to four children in an enclave where baby formula, diapers and even the most basic food items were almost impossible to find.

The war, she says, has reshaped her understanding of suffering and hardship.

In 2022, she and Khader were struggling to make ends meet between Israel’s gunship blockade and the frequent destruction of their boats. There was also the added burden of being a mother with small children and undertaking such physically taxing work.

But now, things have gotten far worse.

“There’s no such thing as ‘difficult’ any more. Nothing compares to the humiliation, hunger and horror we’ve seen in this war,” she says.

A ship named Madleen

Throughout the war, Madleen remained in touch with international friends and solidarity activists she had met through the years.

“I would share my reality with them,” she says.

“They came to understand the situation through me. They felt like family.”

Her friends abroad offered both emotional and financial support, and she is grateful for them, saying they made her feel that Gaza wasn’t forgotten, that people still cared.

She is also grateful for being remembered in the naming of the Madleen, but she worries that Israeli authorities will not let the ship reach Gaza, citing past attempts that were intercepted.

“Intercepting the ship would be the least of it. What’s more worrying is the possibility of a direct assault like what happened to the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in 2010 when several people were killed.”

Regardless of what happens, Madleen believes the mission’s true message has already been delivered.

“This is a call to break the global silence, to draw the world’s attention to what’s happening in Gaza. The blockade must end, and this war must stop immediately.”

“This is also a message of hope for me. They may have bombed my boat, but my name will remain – and it will sail across the sea.”

Lula criticises Israel during Paris visit, as German FM voices rare criticism of onslaught in Gaza and West Bank settlements.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused Israel of carrying out “premeditated genocide” in Gaza during a visit to Paris, as it emerged the military had killed at least 52 people in its latest onslaught in the besieged coastal enclave where a crippling blockade is fuelling starvation.

“What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It’s a genocide being carried out by a highly prepared army against women and children,” said Lula at a joint news conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.

“[It is] a premeditated genocide from a far-right government that is waging a war, including against the interests of its own people,” he said of Israel’s 20-month offensive, which has killed at least 54,607 Palestinians so far, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

At least 52 people were killed on Thursday, including women and children, according to medical sources, who spoke to Al Jazeera, amid growing concern about deadly incidents at aid distribution sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation since last week.

While Lula has previously used the term “genocide” to characterise Israel’s actions in Gaza, Macron has reserved judgement, saying last month that it was not for a “political leader to use the term, but up to historians to do so when the time comes”.

The Brazilian leader’s condemnation of Israel’s offensive came as German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told his visiting Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave in accordance with “prevailing international law”.

Last week, Wadephul had said Germany was assessing “whether what is happening in Gaza is in line with international law” and that arms sales to Israel would be evaluated on this basis.

Wadephul also said he was “concerned about the extremely tense situation in the West Bank”, decrying the Israeli government’s announcement that it would allow 22 more settlements in the occupied territory, saying it threatened the two-state solution further.

On Thursday, King Abdullah of Jordan praised Spain for recognising Palestine and calling for an end to the war in Gaza during a meeting with King Felipe in Madrid. He said work was underway to gain European support.

Jordan’s state news agency Petra cited him as saying work was under way to harness European support for an Arab plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing its residents, as threatened by US President Donald Trump this year.

Israel’s international allies are growing louder in their condemnation of its war on Gaza and its continued construction of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

United Nations experts, human rights groups and legal scholars have all previously told Al Jazeera that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and committing abuses that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank.

And yet less than two weeks after receiving a stern warning from its Western allies, Israel approved 22 illegal settlements in the West Bank, amounting to what has been described as the largest land grab since Israeli and Palestinian leaders inked the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993.

“Israel is all about showing [the world] who calls the shots. They are saying … you can condemn us all you want, but in the end, you will bow down to us and not the other way around,” said Diana Buttu, a legal scholar and political analyst focused on Israel and Palestine.

The Oslo Accords were ostensibly aimed at creating a Palestinian state, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.

However, in practice, Israel has continued to expand illegal settlements and render the two-state solution impossible, analysts told Al Jazeera.

Troubling pattern

Israel has often announced the building of new illegal settlements in response to signals of support for Palestinian statehood from the UN or its allies.

In 2012, Israel went so far as to approve 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank after the Palestinian Authority (PA) – the entity created out of the Oslo Accords to govern swaths of the West Bank – was granted non-member observer status in the UN General Assembly.

Last year, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, warned that a new illegal settlement would be built for every country that recognises a Palestinian state.

The announcement came after Spain, Norway, and Ireland took the symbolic step in May 2024.

“I certainly think there is a pattern where Israel responds to pressure regarding its occupation – or anything else – by announcing settler expansion,” said Omar Rahman, an expert focused on Israel and Palestine for the Middle East Council for Global Affairs.

“We see that pattern repeated over and over again,” he told Al Jazeera.

As global pressure mounts against Israel’s war on Gaza, Israel has continued to test the patience of its allies.

On May 21, Israeli troops fired warning shots at a group of European, Asian and Arab diplomats who were on an official mission to assess the humanitarian crisis in Jenin refugee camp, which has been subjected to a months-long attack and siege by the Israeli army since the start of the year.

“I don’t know where the red line is. It is clear that there is no red line,” said Buttu.

Justifying inaction

After Zionist militias ethnically cleansed some 750,000 Palestinians to make way for the state of Israel in 1948 – an event referred to as the “Nakba” or catastrophe – Israel has increasingly annexed and occupied the little that remains of Palestinian land.

Annexation of the occupied West Bank has accelerated in recent years thanks to far-right settlers who occupy positions in the Israeli government, said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

He believes Israel was always planning to approve the 22 illegal settlements irrespective of the joint statement issued by France, the UK and Canada, as it fit in with the state’s ultimate goal of expanding Jewish settlement of the occupied West Bank.

“Nobody can really think that if those countries didn’t issue an announcement that [further] annexation wasn’t going to happen. Of course, it was going to happen,” he told Al Jazeera.

Rahman, from the Middle East Council, believes Israel’s tactic of announcing pre-planned settlement expansion in the face of Western pressure simply aims to dissuade its allies from taking concrete action.

He suspects Canada, the UK and France will likely not slap on targeted sanctions against Israeli officials, as they have threatened to do, instead using the argument that any moves against Israel will lead to a backlash against Palestinians.

“[Canada, UK and France] may say they are acting for the preservation of the two-state solution by not doing anything to save the two-state solution,” Rahman told Al Jazeera.

Analysts believe that sanctions on Israel would be the only way to rescue the two-state solution and end Israel’s war on Gaza, but accept that comprehensive sanctions against the Israeli state would still be unlikely at this stage.

Instead, Western countries like Canada, France and the UK may target sanctions at the far-right ministers most associated with pro-settler policies, Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“These men … are trying to jam in everything they can do now because they know there is no guarantee they will maintain their positions of power indefinitely,” Elgindy told Al Jazeera.

Buttu fears that European countries will merely resort to more symbolic measures such as “recognising Palestine”, which will have little impact on the ground.

“By the time everyone gets around to recognising Palestine, there won’t be any land [for Palestinians] left,” she told Al Jazeera.