“We Stopped the Genocide. To Some Extent.”

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, says Netanyahu is condemning Israel to deeper international isolation.

He says Israel’s objective is to remove Palestinians from Gaza and leave the enclave without Palestinians if possible.

Then Fidan delivers Ankara’s progress report: Turkey, Egypt and other states joined the Board of Peace to block that project through diplomacy.

“The first goal was to stop the genocide,” he says.

“Fortunately, we succeeded together. We stopped the genocide to some extent.”

To some extent. That phrase is doing extraordinary diplomatic labor. It allows Turkey to claim a moral victory while the war’s core machinery remains unresolved: Israel says it will not withdraw until Hamas is genuinely disarmed; Hamas says disarmament must be tied to a full Israeli withdrawal; mediators want a phased process; and everyone calls the other side the obstacle.

The Board of Peace framework is supposed to connect those contradictions. Hamas would gradually give up its weapons under international supervision. Israel would withdraw in stages. A Palestinian civilian body would govern Gaza. International stabilization forces would be deployed. Humanitarian aid and reconstruction would follow. It is an elegant flowchart, provided every armed actor agrees to dissolve, depart or obey on schedule.

Turkey’s role is not neutral humanitarian theater. Ankara wants a decisive place in postwar Gaza: Palestinian governance, Palestinian security forces, no permanent division of the Strip, and potentially a Turkish role in any international stabilization force.

Israel, meanwhile, has opposed a Turkish military role in Gaza.
So Fidan’s “to some extent” is more than a verbal hedge. It is the current Middle East settlement in miniature.

Turkey calls the arrangement a brake on genocide. Israel calls it conditional demilitarization. Hamas calls it a route to Israeli withdrawal. Washington calls it a peace plan.

Gaza calls it another day after the ceasefire that still needs a dictionary.

#Gaza #Turkey #Fidan #Israel #Netanyahu #Hamas #Egypt #MiddleEast

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Gaza: Two Drones an Hour, Three “Martyrs” in One Family

At noon, an Israeli drone struck a tent near the Kuwaiti Hospital in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. Less than an hour later, another drone hit a home in northern Nuseirat.

Palestinian reporters described injuries in both places. The first strike hit the tent of the al-Rai family in a displacement camp. The second hit the home of Raafat Abu Khabiza.

In the official IDF version, the same hour contained two threats removed from the map: one Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in Khan Younis and one Hamas operative in Nuseirat, both allegedly advancing attack plans.

The agreement, then, is functioning normally. It includes targeted killings.

By evening, the first target was identified as Tareq Anwar al-Rai, described by Israeli sources as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative. Palestinian accounts called him the third “martyr” from his family.

That word has a family archive behind it.

His brother, Mohammed al-Rai, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in 2007. Israeli security sources identified him as the militant who fired the grenade from a mobile launcher during the 2004 APC disaster on the Philadelphi Route, which killed five Israeli soldiers transporting explosives.

Another brother, Khamis al-Rai, was described as a senior Islamic Jihad commander and was killed in Rafah in 2015.

Three brothers. Three Israeli strikes. More than two decades of attrition, promotion, revenge and obituary language.

Israel calls it removing immediate threats. Gaza calls it martyrdom. Both descriptions avoid the more durable fact: a militant organization and the military targeting it have spent a generation turning a family name into a recurring file.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #IslamicJihad #KhanYounis #Nuseirat #AlMawasi #war

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Kushner in Cairo: Hamas First, Netanyahu Later

Jared Kushner met Hamas leaders in Egypt before flying to Israel to see Benjamin Netanyahu. In Middle East diplomacy, this is what a hierarchy looks like when the person with guns must be persuaded before the person with an army can be briefed.

Kushner’s meeting with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya lasted more than two hours and included Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s director general for Gaza, also took part. Tony Blair was part of the wider delegation expected to continue on to meetings with Netanyahu.

The purpose was direct. Washington wanted a personal Hamas commitment to the roadmap for Gaza, especially disarmament, before Kushner met the Israeli prime minister.

The U.S. message was reportedly blunt: no political role for Hamas, no reconstruction and no wider Gaza political track until the group gives up its weapons and military infrastructure.

Hamas has already agreed, in principle, to a phased disarmament plan. Heavy weapons, production sites, depots and tunnel infrastructure would be inventoried and placed under a Palestinian national committee, with international verification and a stabilization force involved.

Israeli withdrawals are supposed to follow verified steps in that process. Hamas insists that implementation depends on Israel meeting its own obligations.

That is the part no one says loudly enough. Hamas is being asked to trade guns for a future administration it will not run, reconstruction it will not control and Israeli withdrawals it cannot enforce.

Israel is being asked to withdraw after Hamas disarms, but is also resisting the political plan built around that sequence.

Kushner reportedly told Hamas not to wait for Israeli elections, because Israel’s position on Gaza would not meaningfully change. That may be the clearest line of the meeting. Elections can change ministers. The U.S. message is that they will not change the terms of Palestinian surrender.

Israel’s Tzav 9 movement condemned the meeting, saying Hamas should have no legitimacy or voice after October 7. The group’s objection is instructive. The preferred peace process is one in which Hamas disarms before it speaks, and speaks only after it has disappeared.

Meanwhile, the personal commitment to disarm was reportedly delivered on the same day Israel struck two alleged militants in Gaza.

First, Hamas promises to put down its weapons.

Then Israel decides whether the promise counts.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #Kushner #Trump #Netanyahu #Egypt #disarmament

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Netanyahu, Kushner, and the Board of Peace

Jared Kushner arrived in Jerusalem after sitting in Cairo with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators, in meetings that included Hamas representatives. Then came more than four hours with Benjamin Netanyahu, a prime minister who had called the new Gaza roadmap “unacceptable” only days earlier.

Netanyahu brought Shin Bet chief David Zini and military-intelligence chief Shlomi Binder. Israel’s message was that Hamas had violated its commitments and that Turkish funding remained part of the problem.

The American delegation included Kushner, Gaza Board of Peace director-general Nickolay Mladenov, Tony Blair and senior advisers.

The agreement, in the Israeli telling, is simple. No reconstruction before Hamas is fully disarmed. No further Israeli redeployment before Gaza is demilitarized.

Every rifle, rocket, tunnel and workshop must become an item in a supervised disposal process. Israel will retain what it calls the right to self-defense and to act against any renewed Hamas activity.

Then comes the public-health track.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the sides created two working groups. One will handle Hamas’s disarmament and Gaza’s demilitarization. The other will address sanitation, clean water and public health, including issues that “also impact the people of Israel.” Gaza’s future has been divided into two tasks: remove the weapons, then contain the disease.

The mechanics of disarmament changed during the day. Early reports said Hamas would hand weapons to an American force for destruction.

Later accounts said Hamas would first transfer them to a Palestinian technocratic government, which would then pass them to an International Stabilization Force. One thing did not change: an American general would supervise and verify the process.

The underlying dispute did not disappear. Netanyahu insists targeted killings will continue while Hamas remains armed. Kushner reportedly wants Israel to take limited steps that could test whether Hamas’s disarmament pledge is genuine, while the U.S. works to prevent a wider escalation.

They agreed to build a “deconfliction” mechanism, diplomacy’s way of admitting that the deal is being negotiated under live fire.

Smotrich said the quiet part out loud. Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas, he argued, is incompatible with negotiating with Hamas leaders who “should not be alive at all.”

That is the whole roadmap in one sentence. Hamas must negotiate its own disappearance. Israel must decide whether each weapon surrendered is enough to pause the next strike. The Americans must turn those two incompatible jobs into a working group.

Inside Gaza, the practical question remains: who will hold the keys to the arms depots while everyone waits to see whether the war is truly over?

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Kushner #Netanyahu #BoardOfPeace #disarmament #MiddleEast

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Trump: Iran, Oman, Gaza, and Israel’s Election

Donald Trump spent Sunday conducting four foreign policies at once. Iran should surrender. Oman could be bombed. Hamas is supposedly disarming. Israeli elections are none of his business, unless he chooses a candidate.

The president returned from New Jersey saying he had a “great weekend” with “a lot of meetings,” but refused to say whether Iran had been discussed.

Hours later, he posted that Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon “in any way, shape, or form.” Silence at the airport, capital letters online, threats on television.

In a Fox News interview, Trump said Iran should “put up the white flag of surrender.” He said he had no deadline and was “not in a hurry,” dismissing the idea that U.S. midterm elections would affect his decisions. Iran, he said, was full of “good poker players,” but was “dying.”

Trump also claimed Washington has a secret backchannel with senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials. Iran denied it. An IRGC spokesman called the claim a product of Trump’s “illusions and nightmares” after U.S. failure in the war.

The reported channel is now either a diplomatic breakthrough or a fantasy, depending on which capital is speaking.

Oman received a threat, not mediation. As Muscat negotiates with Tehran over arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said that if Oman “gets in the way,” the United States would “bomb the shit out of them.”

Oman has been one of Washington’s most useful regional intermediaries for decades. The reward for mediation is apparently to be threatened on Fox News.

On Gaza, Trump told Israel to avoid further attacks because Hamas had agreed to lay down its weapons. “We have our own relationship with Hamas,” he said. “They are giving up their guns.” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem welcomed the remarks and urged Trump to pressure Israel to honor the next phase of the peace plan.

Then Trump addressed Israeli politics with the evasive skill of a man who has already decided he wants to be asked. “I think it’s most appropriate for me to stay out of Israeli elections,” he said. “But I may endorse somebody.”

That is not noninterference. It is a public auction for relevance.

Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene added to the confusion, claiming without public evidence that the administration had discussed using nuclear weapons against Iran in strategy meetings. The White House has not confirmed the claim.

Trump’s diplomatic style is simple. He offers surrender, a backchannel, a threat and an endorsement. Each feature activates when the microphone is on.

#Trump #Iran #Oman #Hormuz #Gaza #Hamas #Israel #MiddleEast

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🏦🌴 Florida Democrats Buy a Message, Not the Candidate

Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist in the Florida legislature, beat Alex Vindman in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.

Vindman raised more than $16 million. Nixon raised about $975,000. He spent roughly $2.2 million on ads; she spent about $60,000. Nixon still won 56 percent to 44 percent.

Vindman had the national donor network, a national security résumé, and the institutional support that usually comes with both. Nixon had a ground campaign, progressive backing, and a record of saying openly what many Democratic candidates try to reduce to a carefully reviewed statement.

A month after October 7, Nixon introduced a Florida resolution calling for a ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine. She has called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and made a point of saying she did not take AIPAC support.

She was backed by progressive Democrats and allied groups, though the Democratic Socialists of America did not formally endorse her.

Her victory does not mean Florida is about to elect a Democratic senator. Nixon now faces Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in a state where Democrats have not won a Senate race since 2012. Moody remains the clear favorite.

But the primary offered a more immediate result: Democratic voters rejected the candidate assembled by donors and party networks in favor of one who ran against the party’s preferred position on Gaza.

Vindman’s money was real. The endorsement machine was real. So was Nixon’s 56 percent.

The Democratic establishment keeps treating its left flank as a messaging problem. Florida just showed that it can also become a ballot problem.

#Florida #Democrats #AngieNixon #AlexVindman #Gaza #Israel #AIPAC #USPolitics

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🔴⚖️ Red Notice Diplomacy

Turkey has asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. The request follows arrest warrants issued in July by Istanbul’s 11th High Criminal Court over Israel’s interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud flotilla in international waters.

Turkish prosecutors accuse the defendants of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, unlawful detention, property damage, aggravated robbery, and hijacking. The proceedings are taking place in absentia.

A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is a request circulated through Interpol asking national authorities to locate and provisionally arrest someone pending extradition or another legal process. Whether to act on it remains a decision for each country.

That distinction matters. Ankara has launched a legal process with international reach. It has not acquired the power to put Netanyahu in handcuffs outside Turkey.

Netanyahu’s office called Erdogan an “antisemitic dictator,” accused him of harboring Hamas, and said Turkey was trying to extend its aggression against Israel into Syria. Ankara says it is pursuing accountability for crimes committed against civilians. Jerusalem says the request is an attempt to intimidate Israeli leaders and soldiers.

The proposed Israeli response followed the same script: seek a Red Notice for Erdogan over Turkey’s support for Hamas and its alleged role in encouraging attacks on Israelis.

Interpol is meant to help police locate fugitives. Turkey and Israel are using it to announce that the other belongs in custody.

Neither leader is booking a flight to appear in the other’s court.

#Turkey #Israel #Netanyahu #Erdogan #Interpol #RedNotice #Gaza #InternationalLaw #MiddleEast

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🎈🟨 The Yellow Line and the Kites

The sequence in Deir al-Balah unfolded in fragments: an Israeli drone strike near the Palestinian Mental Health Association in al-Bassa; reports of casualties; then confirmation that one man was killed and another wounded when two missiles hit a home’s courtyard.

The dead man was Sharif Hussein al-Hasanat, 44. Israel identified him as a Hamas company commander in the Deir al-Balah battalion who had helped rebuild the group’s underground infrastructure and was planning attacks against Israeli troops and civilians. Palestinian medical sources identified him as the owner of the home that was hit.

The strike occurred beyond the Yellow Line, the ceasefire boundary separating Israeli-held areas from the rest of Gaza. The line has also moved westward since the ceasefire took effect, further restricting access to land inside the enclave.

Hamas has called on the ceasefire’s mediators and guarantors — including the Trump administration, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey — to press Israel over repeated strikes. The demand matters because disarmament is supposed to be the next step in the agreement: U.S. officials have discussed beginning it within 30 days, with an American general supervising the process.

The same weekend supplied material for competing ceasefire claims.

Givati troops shot a man who crossed the Yellow Line and approached their position in southern Gaza, the IDF said. Troops from the 99th Division later detained another alleged Hamas operative carrying a knife after he crossed the line in central Gaza.

This is a ceasefire in which killings and detentions are counted by the day.

On the Israeli side of the fence, the day’s threat came on paper and string.

Four kites crossed from Gaza and were found near Be’eri. The IDF said they contained nothing suspicious and posed no danger. Uri Epstein, head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council, said residents would not accept another assurance that “everything will be fine” after October 7. “The writing is already in the sky,” he said, demanding that the army act against every kite in real time.

In Gaza, anti-Hamas militias said they had captured several Hamas members in what they called a successful military operation in the north.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #YellowLine #Ceasefire #DeirAlBalah #Beeri #MiddleEast

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🇮🇶🇪🇬 Hamas Moves Between Baghdad and Washington

A Hamas delegation led by Osama Hamdan was reported to have met in Baghdad with Hadi al-Ameri, head of Iraq’s Badr Organization and a central figure in the country’s Iran-aligned political and militia network.

If confirmed, the meeting would underline a familiar fact: Hamas still operates through the regional relationships built with Iran and its partners. Baghdad is not Doha or Ankara. But it is part of the same political geography in which Hamas’s external leadership has sought money, protection, influence, and military support.

At the same time, Washington is dealing with Hamas through a very different channel.

On Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s envoy, met Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s overall leader, in El Alamein, Egypt. It was Kushner’s second meeting with al-Hayya after their October 2025 talks helped produce the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement. The meeting marked another break with Washington’s long-standing policy of refusing direct engagement with Hamas, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization.

Kushner was joined by Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair, senior envoys of the U.S.-backed Board of Peace.

The body is intended to oversee the Gaza roadmap, including a planned transfer of Gaza’s civilian administration to a Palestinian technocratic committee and a process for placing Hamas weapons under that committee’s control. Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey also sent senior diplomats.

The central dispute was not diplomatic etiquette. It was sequencing.

Hamas told Kushner it would begin handing over weapons only after Israel publicly committed to the plan’s terms. Israel has maintained that it will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.

The American-backed framework asks each side to move first while promising that the other side eventually will.

Freddy Eytan, a former senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official and researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, criticized the meeting as a step toward legitimizing Hamas. In an opinion piece, he wrote: “How can Donald Trump authorize direct negotiations with a terrorist organization?”

He argued that Israel should “be uncompromising on security issues and obtain robust guarantees from the United States.” This is Eytan’s assessment, not an account from the negotiating room.

Hamas can speak with an Iran-aligned militia leader in Baghdad while its leadership negotiates with a U.S. envoy in Egypt.

The organization is not being asked to choose between those channels. It is being asked to surrender weapons while keeping both open.

#Hamas #Gaza #Iraq #Egypt #Kushner #Iran #Ceasefire #MiddleEast

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Peace Council, War Terms

The Board of Peace has sent Hamas a warning through Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators. Stop every militant act, including kite launches, or face “serious consequences.” The U.S.-backed body wants the ceasefire intact long enough to begin Hamas’s disarmament.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty says Hamas and other Palestinian factions have agreed in principle to hand over all heavy and light weapons. The agreement was announced in Cairo, not Gaza. That is where most peace deals sound strongest.

The Board’s own official also delivered the other half of the message. Israel must comply with the ceasefire. Military action, he said, cannot go beyond a response to “genuine and imminent threats.” That is a hard rule to enforce in a war where every side calls its next strike preventive.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board’s Gaza envoy, told the U.N. Security Council that every weapon Hamas keeps and every tunnel it operates gives Israel’s advocates for renewed war another argument. He also warned that continued Israeli strikes are killing civilians and pushing the ceasefire toward a “point of no return.”

Meanwhile, Uganda has agreed to contribute troops to the proposed international stabilization force. Burundi is considering a role after military officials from both countries visited Israel last week, according to the Associated Press.

The plan is to bring African troops to Gaza to oversee disarmament after three years of war and decades of failure by everyone already in the neighborhood.

Hamas promises weapons. Israel demands proof. The Board demands restraint. Uganda may send soldiers.

Peace has now entered the outsourcing phase.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #PeaceCouncil

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The Operation Under Air Cover

An Israeli force entered western Gaza City on Tuesday morning. It was detected near al-Katiba and the American Hospital. Gunfire followed. Israeli aircraft then hit targets across the area to cover the force’s withdrawal.

The IDF confirmed strikes against “several targets” to remove threats to security forces and said no Israeli personnel were injured. Defense Minister Israel Katz later said a senior Hamas operative had been captured. Israeli media reported that the operation involved a special force and an Israeli-backed militia.

Palestinian sources said the apparent target was a Hamas Internal Security officer with the rank of colonel. They said he survived. Hamas-linked outlets reported between six and 10 dead.

Gaza medical officials gave a lower confirmed early toll of three people killed, including two children and a woman, with eight wounded. The figures changed through the day and the identity of all casualties has not been independently established.

Witnesses reported at least 12 strikes. Two vehicles were destroyed near the al-Katiba area. A field hospital and school were reportedly evacuated. Smoke bombs were seen in the nearby Shati refugee camp.

The official version says Israel removed threats. The local version says a force was exposed while trying to seize or kill a Hamas officer. Both accounts agree on the useful part: someone entered Gaza City in daylight, the extraction required airstrikes, and civilians paid for the cover.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #GazaCity

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The Ceasefire Receipt

An Israeli engineering vehicle drove over an explosive device north of Gaza’s Yellow Line. No soldiers were injured. The IDF called it a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire by Hamas, then struck Hamas infrastructure overnight.

That is the ceasefire’s operating system. One roadside bomb becomes the legal receipt for airstrikes, artillery fire and attacks across a territory where civilians live beside militants, military positions and whatever remains of the commercial map.

Palestinian medical sources reported five people killed across Gaza on Sunday, including two children. A drone strike in Gaza City killed Youssef Aqila and his 9-year-old daughter, Wafaa.

Artillery fire hit a classroom sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah, killing a 7-year-old child. Other strikes hit the Tuffah neighborhood and destroyed the former Al-Sakhra commercial complex, wounding nine people, according to those sources.

Hamas-affiliated sources also reported that Youssef Aqila had been a Nukhba company commander and one of Yahya Sinwar’s bodyguards.

Israel previously announced the killing of a different man, Razek Sahil Suleiman Abu Shahma, whom it identified as Sinwar’s bodyguard and a participant in the Oct. 7 attack.

The IDF says its forces remain deployed “in accordance with the agreement.”

The Yellow Line marks the Israeli military’s withdrawal line under the first phase of the October 2025 ceasefire, separating areas under Israeli control from areas where Palestinians are permitted to live and move.

In Gaza, the agreement does not stop the war. It assigns it paperwork. Hamas provides the violation. Israel provides the response. Civilians receive the receipt.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Ceasefire

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Turkey’s Gaza Classroom

More than 300 Palestinian boys and girls received certificates and prizes in Deir al-Balah after memorizing the Quran. The organizer was the Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi Foundation, a Turkish Islamic charity that says more than 10,000 students take part in its education and aid programs across Gaza.

The foundation bears the name of Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi, a Sufi sheikh, poet and spiritual adviser to Ottoman sultans. That heritage is not a random branding choice. Erdoğan’s Turkey has spent years rebuilding influence through Ottoman memory, religious networks, charitable work and the language of Muslim guardianship.

A certificate ceremony is softer than a military base. It is also more durable. Soldiers leave when the war map changes.

A child who spends years inside a foreign-funded religious education network carries its worldview into the next generation.

Turkey calls this humanitarian work. Israel calls it a security problem. Hamas sees an ally’s infrastructure.

All three are correct. Gaza is being rebuilt by competing patrons before it is rebuilt for Gazans.

The weapons arrive with a serial number. Influence arrives with a prize, a certificate and a child reciting from memory.

#Gaza #Turkey #Erdogan #PoliticalIslam

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The Prize and the Shipment

NAZA, the documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.

The film draws on anonymous interviews with 24 men who said they served in Israel’s Unit 8200.

They describe AI-assisted target selection in Gaza and systems that estimated the civilian toll in advance.

The story broke two years earlier. On April 3, 2024, +972 Magazine and Local Call published Abraham’s investigation into Lavender. The Guardian published a detailed account that day.

CNN and Reuters followed on April 4. The Washington Post examined the reporting on April 5, and The New York Times placed Lavender and the earlier Gospel reporting in its account of AI warfare on April 10. The Venice audience received the director’s cut of an open file.

The reporting described Lavender, a system that sources said marked Palestinians as suspected militants, and Where’s Daddy?, a tracking tool that reportedly alerted operators when a marked person had returned home.

Israel said Lavender was a database that cross-referenced intelligence sources, not an AI system that determined whether someone was a target or authorized an attack.

On April 4, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the administration was reviewing the reporting and could not independently verify its claims at that stage.

In May, the State Department sent Congress its NSM-20 report. It said it was “reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces had used U.S.-supplied weapons in ways inconsistent with international humanitarian law or established practices for reducing civilian harm.

The report also treated Israel’s written assurances as “credible and reliable.”

The assessment addressed conduct already documented during the war; the assurances covered how Israel said it would use U.S. weapons going forward.

That distinction allowed Washington to criticize the record and keep the weapons flow intact.

Venice gave the film a prize. Washington kept shipping weapons to Israel.

#Gaza #Israel #AI #VeniceFilmFestival

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Gaza’s Real Estate Comeback

Thousands of Israeli activists, ministers and lawmakers drove toward the Gaza border on Sunday demanding the return of Jewish settlements to the Strip.

They brought housing equipment to the edge of a territory where more than 2 million Palestinians are still supposed to be the population.

The convoy was organized by the Nachala settlement movement. Its leader, Daniella Weiss, said activists were preparing to restore a presence at Nisanit, a northern Gaza settlement dismantled in the 2005 disengagement, as well as elsewhere in the enclave.

Their argument is clean: Israel cannot secure Gaza without settlers inside it.

Activists can drive to the Gaza border. Only the government can provide military control, permits, infrastructure and political cover for a settlement inside Gaza.

Netanyahu has backed what his government calls “voluntary emigration” from Gaza, while calling renewed Jewish settlements there unrealistic.

Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Gaza has no “real solution” without migration.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wants an emigration ministry and a seven-year plan to move 1.86 million Palestinians out, beginning with 250,000 in its first year.

This is the new postwar sequence. First comes “voluntary” departure. Then comes an office to manage it, foreign countries to receive people, incentives for those countries and a timeline for removing almost the entire population.

The settlers arrive last with caravans and a security argument. Nobody calls it expulsion because the paperwork has chosen a nicer word.

Trump’s Gaza plan says no Palestinian will be forced to leave. Netanyahu has refused withdrawal until Hamas is fully disarmed.

The settlement movement does not need to resolve that contradiction. It only needs the army to keep control of enough land while politicians debate whether Gaza’s residents left freely after their homes, jobs, borders and future were removed.

The 2005 disengagement evacuated about 8,000 Israeli settlers and removed 21 settlements from Gaza.

Ben-Gvir named his plan “Disengagement 710” because it promises to reverse the meaning of that word: Gaza without Palestinians, then Gaza with settlers.

#Gaza #Israel #Settlements #BenGvir

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The Aid Worker and the Parade

Four drone strikes hit Gaza on Sunday, according to local journalists, leaving at least two people dead and 16 wounded.

Gaza sources named one of the dead as Saqr Nabil Musa Qaisi, the Gaza representative of the Turkish aid organization Deniz Feneri, after a car was struck near Deir al-Balah. Initial Palestinian accounts put the wounded total from that strike anywhere between one and 10.

Israel later said Qaisi was a Hamas Nukhba Force operative who took part in the October 7 assault and had recently worked to attack Israeli troops and civilians and rebuild Hamas capabilities.

The IDF said he also ran Deniz Feneri’s Gaza operation, alleging that the Turkish charity employed Hamas operatives and financed them. Deniz Feneri presented Qaisi as its humanitarian-aid coordinator.

The car bombing therefore arrived with two biographies attached: Turkey’s aid worker and Israel’s October 7 operative.

The organization sits close enough to Ankara for the politics to be obvious. Deniz Feneri has hosted Hamas figures Khaled Mashaal and Sami Abu Zuhri at its gatherings, and Qaisi was known locally as an imam who preached in mosques across southern Gaza.

Turkey calls this solidarity. Israel calls it a Hamas funding channel. Either way, another Turkish-linked institution has become part of the Gaza battlefield.

Elsewhere, Gaza sources reported the killing of municipal employee Muadh Abu Nseira near Hamad City in Khan Younis, four wounded in Beit Lahiya, two in al-Salatin and three injured in Jabalia.

Figures remain fragmented because the attacks, casualty reporting and claims of responsibility are moving faster than verification.

In Rafah, the anti-Hamas Popular Forces militia under Ghassan al-Dahini released video of dozens of armed men marching under the title “Spear Force.”

The group says it is expanding recruitment and is thought to field roughly 600 to 800 fighters, making it the largest armed faction openly operating against Hamas inside Gaza. A militia parade is not a victory over Hamas. It is a recruitment commercial filmed inside a war zone.

The drone killed a man described as both aid official and Nukhba fighter. The militia marched to advertise its men.

Gaza now has humanitarian logos, Hamas cells and anti-Hamas uniforms sharing the same terrain. Every side calls it protection. Every side needs more bodies.

#Gaza #Hamas #Turkey #Rafah

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Hamas’s Accounts Receivable

Israel bombs Hamas’s infrastructure. Hamas taxes the goods Israel allows into Gaza. The war has a revenue stream.

Channel 12 reports that Hamas collects roughly NIS 250 million a month, about NIS 3 billion a year, largely through levies on merchants importing goods. The money is raised inside Gaza, from goods that enter with Israeli permission.

An Oct. 18 TIME investigation documents how Israeli officials encouraged and coordinated nearly $2 billion in Qatari payments to Gaza over more than a decade, including vetting recipients and urging Doha to keep paying.

Israeli intelligence assessed that Hamas diverted about $4 million a month of those Qatari funds to its military wing from at least 2019 through 2021, roughly half the wing’s estimated budget.

Qatar calls its payments humanitarian assistance. Netanyahu has defended the policy as preventing civilian collapse. Hamas turned money meant to sustain Gaza into funds to sustain itself.

The official objective is to dismantle Hamas. Its income still depends on what Israel lets through, first Qatari cash and now taxed imports.

#BabylonBurning #Gaza #Hamas #Netanyahu #Qatar

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The Riviera Relocation Package

Ben-Gvir wants Gaza’s coastline, fewer Palestinians, and the Defense Ministry to help arrange both.

In an Oct. 19 interview with TIME’s Eric Cortellessa, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for capturing all of Gaza and promoting Palestinian departure. “Gaza could be a Riviera,” he said. His plan would replace Palestinian communities with Israeli settlements, while their residents leave for countries he did not name.

The West Bank gets the same package. Israeli sovereignty, a disarmed Palestinian Authority, and “voluntary emigration.”

“People will choose the option to leave,” he insisted. Israel would control the land and the weapons on it, and call the population’s departure a choice.

Ben-Gvir wants Netanyahu to remain prime minister, with himself as defense minister. Netanyahu has ruled out giving him the portfolio. Ben-Gvir plans to win enough seats to make that refusal expensive.

The transaction is plain. Netanyahu supplies access to government. Ben-Gvir supplies votes and wants more power over the military.

The Riviera has no named destination for its displaced residents. It already has a candidate for management.

#BenGvir #Netanyahu #Gaza #IsraelElections

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The Cease-Fire Body Count

Trump's Board of Peace said Gaza's cease-fire had "largely held." A U.N. commission of inquiry counted 1,431 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire between Oct. 10, 2025, and Sept. 30, 2026, including 300 children. A cease-fire can hold while the bodies accumulate.

In an Oct. 26 report to the General Assembly, the three-member Independent Commission of Inquiry said Israeli forces had continued to commit genocidal acts in Gaza with intent to destroy Palestinians there, in whole or in part.

It cited airstrikes, artillery, and sniper attacks, and reported further verified cases of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees, including gang rape. The International Court of Justice has yet to rule in South Africa's genocide case against Israel.

In the West Bank, the panel reported 1,080 Palestinians killed since the cease-fire, attributing 95% of the killings to Israeli security forces. Military operations there displaced more than 34,000 people between January 2025 and August 2026. The panel characterized military and settler attacks as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel rejected the report as misinformation and an attempt to delegitimize the state.

The commission also accused the Palestinian Authority of using excessive force in operations coordinated with Israel, killing at least 14 Palestinians in roughly two years through October 2025, and of trying to silence journalists and rights defenders. The Palestinian envoy to the U.N. promised misconduct would be addressed.

#Gaza #WestBank #UNReport

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Hamas’s archive goes on air

Hamas’s commanders filmed their meetings. Al Jazeera is now broadcasting the archive. In one underground group photograph, every commander pictured has since been killed by Israel.

Friday’s documentary showed military chief Mohammed Deif, his deputy Marwan Issa, Yahya Sinwar’s brother Mohammed Sinwar, and other commanders meeting in tunnels. It also featured Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Ismail Haniyeh visiting a rocket workshop, and Deif examining models of Israeli tanks in an operations room.

The network presented what it described as an operational order signed by Deif on Oct. 5, 2023, after a six-hour command meeting. It specified a 6:30 a.m. start for the attack. Another document purportedly recorded a February 2023 decision to begin preparations.

The group photograph predates May 2021, because Bassem Issa, visible among the commanders, was killed that month. [Whatever its framing,] it cannot show the final meeting before Oct. 7. The broadcast also included a Sinwar-Deif call marking the 2021 ceasefire.

The archive gives Hamas’s dead leadership another appearance on screen. It also records something less useful to their memorial, the meetings, weapons production, and orders behind the massacre. The commanders are gone, but their paperwork survives.

#Hamas #October7 #Gaza #AlJazeera

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