Author: Gulf News Week

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…

Netanyahu’s plan for Gaza goes against domestic, international and even his own military’s opinion.After 22 months of full-scale war, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians and forcing Gaza to the brink of famine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly preparing to defy international, domestic and military opinion by escalating the war on Gaza still further and ordering its full occupation.“The die is cast – we are going for a full occupation of the Gaza Strip,” Israeli media cited an anonymous official, supposedly quoting Netanyahu, as saying.Meeting with senior security officials on Tuesday, Netanyahu was said to have come out in…

The Lebanese armed group says the move was dictated by the US and that it ‘fully serves Israel’s interest’.Hezbollah has branded the Lebanese government’s push to have a state monopoly on arms as a “grave sin” and is dismissing it out of hand “as if it doesn’t exist”.The group on Wednesday rejected a decision by the Lebanese cabinet a day earlier that authorises the Lebanese army to draw up a plan to confine arms across the country to six official security forces by the end of the year.The government decision followed ramped-up pressure by the United States to get the…

Iranian judiciary’s news outlet Mizan reported that Rouzbeh Vadi relayed classified information to Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad.Iran has executed a man accused of spying for Israel, state media reported.Rouzbeh Vadi allegedly passed on information about a nuclear scientist killed in Israel’s June attacks on the Islamic Republic, the Iranian judiciary’s news outlet Mizan reported.He was executed on Wednesday and had worked in one of Iran’s “important and sensitive organisations”, Mizan said.Executions of Iranians convicted of spying for Israel have significantly increased this year, with at least eight death sentences carried out in recent months.Israel’s attacks in June involved 12…

A siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has caused a famine in North Darfur’s capital el-Fasher.Sudan’s 27-month civil war is being compounded by a hunger crisis affecting the vulnerable, especially the people trapped in North Darfur’s capital, el-Fasher.Despite numerous pleas for help from the people within, aid agencies say they have been denied access to el-Fasher.As a result, some 740,000 people are deteriorating from hunger, according to the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies.In December 2024, global hunger monitor the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, declared a famine in Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps – two camps housing…

Vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down an ‘unsafe road’, local officials tell WAFA news agency.At least 20 Palestinians have been killed and many injured after a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd of people in central Gaza, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave.The incident occurred on Wednesday as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in central Gaza in search of food and basic supplies, amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.Local officials quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an…

Moscow says Israeli troops did not intervene as settlers attacked a Russian diplomatic vehicle and verbally threatened diplomats.Moscow has lodged a formal complaint with Israel over an attack by Israeli settlers on a Russian diplomatic vehicle near an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Tuesday that Moscow considered the attack a “gross violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961”, and expressed “bewilderment and disapproval” that the attack “occurred with the connivance of Israeli military personnel”.According to Zakharova, the vehicle belonging to Russia’s representation to the…

US president’s comments come amid warnings that expanding Israeli operations would be ‘catastrophic’ for Palestinians.Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has suggested that he will not block possible Israeli plans to take over Gaza.When asked on Tuesday about reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to occupy the entire Palestinian territory, Trump said he is focused on getting “people fed” in Gaza.“As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” the US president told reporters.Washington provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually,…