Author: Gulf News Week

Leaked documents reveal Israel’s spy agency used Microsoft’s cloud to store Palestinians’ phone calls and target them.Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit stored vast volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft’s cloud servers, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call.The surveillance system, operational since 2022, was built by Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s secretive intelligence branch. It enables the unit to collect and retain recordings of millions of daily phone calls from Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.The revelations initially reported on Wednesday stem from leaked Microsoft documents and testimonies from 11 sources,…

Ahmed Al-Najjar writes about the day his phone stopped working, and why that means so much more than it seems.Khan Younes, Gaza – A dear companion doesn’t have to be human to be deeply missed when lost.Sometimes, it’s a phone – a loyal witness to your joys and sorrows, your moments of sweetness and darkest chapters of pain.In the harshness of life in the world’s largest open-air prison, it becomes more than a device. It’s an extension of yourself; your portal to the world, your way of reaching loved ones scattered across the prison or outside it.Through its lens, you…

Italy has approved a $15.5bn suspension bridge which will connect the mainland to the island of Sicily.Italy has given final approval to a long-delayed plan to construct the world’s longest suspension bridge, connecting the mainland to Sicily in a project worth €13.5bn ($15.5bn).Transport Minister Matteo Salvini hailed the Strait of Messina Bridge as “the biggest infrastructure project in the West” after a key government committee cleared the path on Wednesday. He said the project would generate 120,000 jobs annually and revitalise southern Italy through wider investment in infrastructure.Preliminary work could begin as early as October, pending a green light from…

Human Rights Watch says US arms were used in ‘unlawful indiscriminate’ Israeli attacks that killed Palestinian civilians.Israel has used US-made bombs in “unlawful attacks” on schools sheltering displaced civilians in Gaza, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.In a report released Thursday, HRW said Israel had carried out hundreds of strikes on schools since the start of its war on Gaza in October 2023, including “unlawfully indiscriminate attacks” using US munitions, which violated international law.In its report, HRW investigated two incidents in 2024 in which it found that GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs supplied by the United States were used. One attack…

Authorities charged the defendant with carrying out a hate crime, with the murder of the embassy officials described as calculated and planned.A man accused of shooting dead two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, DC, has been indicted on federal hate crime and murder charges, as President Donald Trump suggested he may call on the National Guard to bring down crime rates in the United States capital.Court documents filed in federal court in Washington and unsealed on Wednesday show that defendant Elias Rodriguez has been charged with nine counts, including a hate crime resulting in death.The 30-year-old is accused of…

The world’s largest fund will review its investment in Israeli companies amid Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation.The Norwegian government on Tuesday said it would review its sovereign wealth fund’s investment in Israel after the Scandinavian country’s leading newspaper revealed that the nearly $2 trillion fund had a stake in an Israeli company aiding Israel’s war in Gaza.The newspaper, Aftenposten, identified the company as the Bet Shemesh Engines Ltd (BSEL) group, which provides parts to Israeli fighter jets that are being deployed in its devastating war on Gaza.In recent weeks, Israeli-induced starvation deaths have caused a global outcry, with Western countries ramping…

media Media Network signs joint letter stating journalists in Gaza are being starved to death ‘deliberately, and in real time, while the world watches’.To Governments, International Organisations, Media Institutions, and Civil Society:We, the undersigned press freedom organisations, media organisations, journalists’ unions, and advocates of truth and transparency, demand an end to the forced starvation and targeting of journalists in Gaza by Israel.Journalists in Gaza are being starved to death.Not metaphorically. Not slowly. But deliberately, and in real time, while the world watches.One in three people in Gaza now goes days without food. Among the starving are journalists, the last independent…

The families are demanding that military action not be taken in areas of Gaza where their relatives may be held.Physical confrontations have taken place outside Israel’s Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv between security forces and family members of captives held in Gaza during a rally calling for their release, as the Israeli government appears on the verge of escalating its genocidal war to full occupation of the besieged enclave.Protesters surrounding the Kirya, Israel’s central military headquarters, demanded on Wednesday that the Israeli government not go ahead with its plan, as they were pushed back by police.“Time is running out…

With so many Gaza Palestinians facing malnutrition, donors unable to give in the besieged enclave.Gaza’s already battered healthcare system is in a state of collapse as blood banks run dry and Israeli forces continue targeting clinics and facilities housing patients and displaced families while maintaining an aid blockade.Healthcare officials in the besieged enclave reported on Wednesday that there is a severe shortage of blood as many would-be donors are too malnourished due to a severe Israeli-induced hunger crisis that has so far claimed the lives of 193 Palestinians, including five in the past 24 hours.media’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza…

Plans to expand in the E1 area east of occupied East Jerusalem would bisect area and isolate Palestinian communities.Israeli authorities are moving forward with plans to dramatically expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite growing international condemnation and warnings that the move would destroy already moribund prospects for a two-state solution.The Israeli government has set Wednesday as the date to discuss building thousands of new housing units in the E1 area, east of occupied East Jerusalem. The proposed expansion would link the large and illegal Ma’ale Adumim settlement with Jerusalem, effectively bisecting the West Bank and isolating Palestinian…