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Category: War

I saw illegality and complicity with war crimes. That’s why I quit the UK Foreign Office

I saw illegality and complicity with war crimes. That’s why I quit the UK Foreign Office

Mark Smith writes: My name is Mark Smith. I am a former diplomat and policy adviser at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). I spent my career working in the Middle East directorate and serving in the Arab world. As a lead officer on arms sales policy, I was responsible for assessing whether the UK government’s arms sales adhered to legal and ethical standards under domestic and international law. In August 2024, I resigned over the UK government’s refusal…

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Trump’s talk of a Gaza takeover masks a more immediate disaster

Trump’s talk of a Gaza takeover masks a more immediate disaster

Neil Hicks writes: The most important outcome of President Donald Trump’s White House press conference this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not Trump’s lawless and immoral musing that the U.S. would “take over” Gaza to create a new “Riviera of the Middle East.” While Trump’s outrageous comments, as they so often do, ignited dutiful praise from his supporters and instant condemnation from his opponents, the intense focus on the U.S. occupying Gaza and forcibly displacing its entire…

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A Palestinian father and journalist reflects on the ceasefire in Gaza

A Palestinian father and journalist reflects on the ceasefire in Gaza

Mohammed Mhawish writes: On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 19, I turned to my son, Rafik. He was building something with blocks, his small hands working furiously to stack them higher and higher. I watched as the tower wobbled and fell. He laughed and started over again. He kept rebuilding, and it kept falling, over and over. I could feel it inside me, somehow — joy and sorrow fighting for control, just like my son’s toy tower. One moment, his…

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Sweden suspects ‘gross sabotage’ after damage to communications cable under Baltic Sea

Sweden suspects ‘gross sabotage’ after damage to communications cable under Baltic Sea

The New York Times reports: The Swedish authorities on Monday boarded a ship in connection with what they described as “gross sabotage” after an undersea communications cable in the Baltic Sea was damaged a day earlier. The ship was escorted to the coast of Sweden for an investigation, the authorities said. “We suspect that a serious act of sabotage was committed in the Swedish economic zone yesterday,” Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation into the damage, said in…

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Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as plan for ethnic cleansing

Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as plan for ethnic cleansing

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s proposal that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “just clean out” the whole strip has been rejected by US allies in the region and attacked as dangerous, illegal and unworkable by lawyers and activists. The US president said he would like hundreds of thousands of people to move to neighbouring countries, either “temporarily or could be long-term”. Destinations could include Jordan, which already hosts more than 2.7 million Palestinian refugees, and Egypt, he…

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How Assad’s drug trade fueled his downfall

How Assad’s drug trade fueled his downfall

Caroline Rose writes: Many years ago, in Beirut, I learned the first of many lessons about the Assad regime’s constructed counternarcotics narrative — something that simultaneously sustained the regime’s internal power structure and also fueled its very collapse. I was conducting some final fieldwork on a little-known (at least at that time) drug trade in an amphetamine-type stimulant called Captagon, which was quickly gaining popularity in the Middle East. The trip was part of a policy report that was initially…

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Leaked documents expose deepening ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

Leaked documents expose deepening ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

Yuval Abraham reports: Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary. The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in…

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‘My neighborhood was one of the most beautiful in Gaza. All that’s left is rubble’

‘My neighborhood was one of the most beautiful in Gaza. All that’s left is rubble’

Ahmed Ahmed reports: As soon as the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on Sunday, Hamza Othman had only one thought in his mind: to go and see whether his home was still standing. The 22-year-old had refused to leave the Fallujah neighborhood of Jabalia refugee camp for over a year — even after he was wounded by an Israeli airstrike that killed his mother and brother as they sold candy from a stall in front of the house last…

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Israel can no longer ignore the Palestinian cause after failing to quash it by force

Israel can no longer ignore the Palestinian cause after failing to quash it by force

Meron Rapoport writes: It is still too early to say who won and who lost Israel’s war on Gaza, especially since the ceasefire has not yet begun. But if at least the first stage of the agreement goes ahead, it can be said that Israel has not achieved its war goals. Israel has not succeeded in achieving its pronounced goals: wiping out Hamas and returning the captives by military force. More importantly, its undeclared goal was to eliminate the Palestinian…

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A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza

A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza

Gaza: What does it mean to return "home" when Israel has made your home a dangerous toxic waste site of rubble and destruction? https://t.co/o7Qk8ei9XG — Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) January 18, 2025 The Guardian reports: Israel’s war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people and laid waste large swathes of the territory. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, and aid flows into the territory have fallen sharply. As Israel and Hamas reach a deal to pause the war for…

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‘Bye Genocide Joe’: Social media reflects on Biden’s legacy on Gaza

‘Bye Genocide Joe’: Social media reflects on Biden’s legacy on Gaza

Middle East Eye reports: As Joseph Biden’s US presidency comes to an end, many on social media this week are saying that his legacy boils down to one thing: his active role in Israel’s fifteen-month war on Gaza, which has been widely defined as a “genocide” by human rights organisations, international bodies and scholars. Biden’s last day as president, on 19 January, is also the first day of the planned Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal that was reportedly pushed to the finish…

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Hamas, Egypt and Qatar pushing for Marwan Barghouti’s release in ceasefire deal

Hamas, Egypt and Qatar pushing for Marwan Barghouti’s release in ceasefire deal

Middle East Eye reports: Egypt and Qatar, alongside Hamas, are using “all means available” to secure the release of Marwan Barghouti as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement between the group and Israel, three sources informed on the negotiations have told Middle East Eye. The long-imprisoned Palestinian political leader is on a list “of around one hundred senior Palestinian prisoners” being discussed ahead of the second phase of the truce deal, a source close to the negotiations said. “Marwan alongside…

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A ceasefire won’t stop Israel’s genocidal agenda

A ceasefire won’t stop Israel’s genocidal agenda

Tariq Kenney-Shawa writes: Steven Witkoff, Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, reportedly didn’t bother with pleasantries when he informed the Israelis that he would be arriving to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Saturday. When told his visit coincided with Shabbat, meaning the prime minister would be unavailable until the evening, Witkoff made it clear that the Jewish holiday would not interfere with his schedule. Netanyahu, understanding the stakes, went to his office that afternoon to meet the envoy,…

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Israel has declared war on the promise of a strong, democratic Syria

Israel has declared war on the promise of a strong, democratic Syria

Omar Sabbour writes: The end of 2024 delivered a surprising turn of events in the 13-year-long war in Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed spectacularly when faced with a limited operation by rebel forces. Amid the turmoil, Israel expanded its occupation of Syrian land in the south of the country, expelling hundreds of Syrians from their homes. It also launched a devastating campaign of aerial bombardment, wiping out the Syrian air force and military capabilities. Some of the bombardment was so…

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Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

  The Times of Israel reports: A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the…

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No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

Hadeel Awad writes: For 15 months now, Gaza’s children have been reduced to a statistic. The death toll reported gives a specific count for children. Malnourishment and starvation are reported in terms of numbers of children they have affected and killed. Even the cold weather is measured in terms of how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents. But behind these numbers lie heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhood has been cut short. As a nurse working at…

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