Freed Gaza photographer overjoyed to find family alive after being told in Israeli jail they were dead

Freed Palestinian detainee Shadi Abu Sido sits with his wife Hanaa Bahlul and their children at their home in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, after he was released from Israeli detention. (REUTERS/File)

Reuters
October 16, 2025

Shadi Abu Sido says Israeli prison guards told him his family had been killed in Gaza war
The Palestinian photojournalist was detained without trial under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, severely beaten

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Shadi Abu Sido said his world shattered in Israeli detention when guards told him his wife and two children had been killed in the Gaza war.

“I got hysterical,” the Gaza Palestinian photographer said.

It wasn’t until his release on Monday, part of the US-mediated ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that halted two years of war, that he discovered his loved ones were alive.

His wife, Hanaa Bahlul, raced down the hallway of his family’s house in Khan Younis and leapt into his arms. He spun her in the air as they clung to each other. Abu Sido kissed his children’s cheeks again and again, murmuring “my love” as he held the daughter and son he thought he would never see again.

“I heard her voice, I heard the voice of my children, I was astonished, it cannot be explained, they were alive. I saw my wife and children alive. Imagine amid death — life,” he said.

Abu Sido, a photojournalist, said he was detained at Shifa hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on March 18, 2024.

He was among 1,700 Palestinians detained by Israeli forces during the devastating war in Gaza and released on Monday, along with 250 prisoners convicted or suspected of involvement in deadly attacks, in exchange for 20 Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its October 2023 cross-border assault.

DETAINED UNDER THE ‘UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS’ LAW

Bahlul said a lawyer from Addameer, a Palestinian human rights group, had told her Abu Sido was being held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law — a form of administrative detention.

Omer Shatz, an Israeli international law expert at Sciences Po university in Paris, said the law allows Israel to limit access to lawyers, incarcerate people without charge or trial, and arbitrarily detain many Palestinians in Gaza.

According to Addameer, 2,673 Gazans are currently detained under this law.

The Israeli military said in a statement sent to Reuters that its detention policy was “in full alignment with Israeli law and the Geneva Conventions” on legal standards for humanitarian treatment in wartime.

Israel’s Justice Ministry did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

In March 2024 the Israeli military said it raided Shifa hospital, accusing Hamas of operating from the premises. Hamas has denied Israeli allegations it had command posts underneath Shifa and other Gaza hospitals. Reuters could not independently verify the assertions of either side.

’A GRAVEYARD FOR THE LIVING’

Abu Sido said he was severely beaten, handcuffed, blindfolded and forced to kneel for long periods while in detention. His wrists looked raw during his meeting with Reuters, which he said had been caused by the shackles. Reuters could not independently verify the details of his account.

He was first held at Israel’s Sde Teiman military detention camp, then transferred to the Ofer military camp — which is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — and later to Ketziot prison in Israel, according to his wife.

Bahlul said Abu Sido was arrested only for being “a journalist for a Palestinian institution.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service said all inmates were held according to legal procedures and their rights upheld. “We are not aware of the claims described, and to the best of our knowledge, no such incidents occurred under IPS responsibility,” the spokesperson said.

The Israeli military statement said mistreatment of detainees was “strictly prohibited.” The military said that prolonged restraint was only allowed in “exceptional cases” with significant security risks, and denied that detainees were forced to remain in a crouching position.

An Israeli military official told Reuters in September that of around 100 criminal investigations related to the Gaza war, most concerned allegations of abuse or death of detainees in military custody. Two cases have led to indictments, and one soldier was sentenced to 17 months in prison.

Reuters previously spoke to released Palestinian prisoners who said they suffered abuses in Israeli detention.

Many of the Israeli hostages released by Hamas have also described torture, sexual assault, psychological abuse, and denial of food and medical care.

Amany Srahneh of the Palestinian Prisoners Society said conditions for Palestinian inmates deteriorated dramatically after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, with reports of sexual assault, beatings, denial of medication, and food shortages.

She said conditions were even worse for Gaza Palestinians held in military detention.

Abu Sido said that prison was “the graveyard of the living. When I returned to Gaza, it was like my soul returned to my body. But when I saw the destruction..., how can I start again?“

Returned Palestinian bodies show signs of torture and execution as Western media silence persists


MEMO
October 16, 2025 

The Israeli army hands over the bodies of Palestinians to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which were later transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza, for identification, where families gathered to recognize the remains of their relatives on October 15, 2025. [Doaa Albaz – Anadolu Agency


Doctors in Gaza have accused Israel of torturing and executing Palestinians after receiving the mutilated remains of 90 people as part of a ceasefire deal. Forty-five of the bodies were returned this week to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where medics reported that nearly all of them had been blindfolded, had their hands and legs bound, and bore signs of gunshot wounds between the eyes—indicating summary executions.

“Almost all of them had been blindfolded, and had gunshots between the eyes. Almost all of them had been executed,” said Dr Ahmed Al-Farra, head of the paediatrics department at Nasser Hospital. He added that the bodies also showed signs of extensive beatings and post-mortem abuse.

The transfer of the remains was arranged via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has overseen the reciprocal return of Israeli and Palestinian dead as part of the US-brokered truce. While Hamas handed over the remains of several Israeli hostages, Israel returned two batches of 45 Palestinian bodies, which had been kept in refrigeration units in undisclosed locations.

According to Nasser Hospital officials, Israel provided no names for the deceased, only numbered labels. Gaza’s bombed-out medical infrastructure currently lacks DNA capabilities, and families are being asked to help identify the remains of their loved ones.

READ: Killing paramedics is part of Israel’s war on the Palestinian healthcare system

This is not the first time Israel has been accused of killing Palestinians execution-style. In March, 15 medics and rescue workers were found in a shallow grave, all with bound limbs and gunshot wounds to the head. That massacre is also being examined as part of the International Criminal Court’s ongoing war crimes probe.

Yet despite mounting evidence of systematic extrajudicial killings, torture and desecration of Palestinian bodies, Western media have largely remained silent. Critics have pointed out that when Palestinians are mentioned at all, it is often only to serve as a backdrop to narratives that humanise the very Israeli soldiers accused of carrying out massacres—casting them as psychologically scarred participants in war crimes.

A CNN underlined the double standard. Headlined “Haunted by what they’ve seen and done, Israeli soldiers battle trauma and suicide”, it portrays the same soldiers accused of mass killings as broken men struggling to cope. The piece includes emotional accounts of “sleepless nights,” “flashbacks,” and “overwhelming guilt,” but makes no mention of the suffering inflicted on Palestinians. Instead, readers are asked to empathise with troops who described “putting their emotions in boxes,” even as mounting evidence points to war crimes.

The 9,100 Palestinians left behind in Israeli prisons after the ‘peace’ deal

As world leaders celebrate the release of Israeli captives, over 9,000 Palestinian prisoners still face torture, hunger, and isolation behind bars. Half of them are held by Israel without charge or trial.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 October 15, 2025

MONDOWEISS

Allam al-Ra’i, 47, released by Israel from Ofer Prison, arrives in Ramallah as part of the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, October 13, 2025. 

(Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)


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As the leaders of 20 countries gathered in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh to celebrate the ceasefire, mainstream media celebrated the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli captives in Gaza. After reuniting with their families, the captives described the harsh conditions in which they were held. Meanwhile, 1,968 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons, 88 of whom were released in the West Bank, 154 were deported to Egypt, and the rest were released in the Gaza Strip. Most of them were abducted by Israeli forces inside Gaza over the past two years. Of the total number of prisoners released, 250 had been serving life sentences for charges related to armed activity.

But over 9,100 Palestinians continue to be held in Israeli prisons. Some 3,544 of them are held under the Israeli system of “administrative detention,” which allows Israel to imprison Palestinians for up to six months without charge or trial. According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, none of the released prisoners in Monday’s swap were administrative detainees.

Administrative detention orders are ratified by an Israeli military court, and the six-month period of imprisonment can be renewed indefinitely based on a “secret file” that neither the detainees nor their lawyers can access. Consecutive renewals have led many Palestinians to serve up to two years under this system, never having been given due process.

Administrative detainees represent the largest category of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, says Ayah Shreiteh, the spokesperson of the Prisoners’ Club.

Shreiteh added that around 1,000 Palestinians have been arrested and held without trial, without even an administrative detention order. Many of them have spent months behind bars.

As for those who have been sentenced based on clear charges, the majority of sentences are for belonging to political organizations and unions, participating in protests, or throwing stones. Since October 2023, however, Shreiteh points out that the most common conviction has been over “incitement,” a charge that covers anything from a social media post to delivering public speeches, and even to raising the flags of Palestinian political factions in public.

“Before October 7, the detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners had already been deteriorating,” Shreiteh noted. Then everything changed.

“Food quantity and quality deteriorated,” she explained. “Israeli prison guards raided cells on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Medical neglect became widespread.”

“Cells with an average surface of five or six square meters that usually held up to six prisoners were now being crammed with nine to 12 prisoners,” she added. “Four or six of them would sleep on the floor.”

Lawyers who were allowed to visit Palestinians in Israeli jails have reported on these conditions throughout the past two years, corroborated by the countless testimonies emerging from freed Palestinian prisoners who were released in prisoner swaps last January and last Monday

.

Palestinians released by Israel from Ofer Prison arrive in Ramallah as part of the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, October 13, 2025. 

(Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)

Mondoweiss spoke to some of the recently released prisoners earlier this week, who asked not to be named for fear of Israeli reprisal. One of them, who had been detained for a year, said that he and his cellmates had been beaten with batons multiple times during cell raids. Another, who was also detained for a year, said that the Israeli Prison Service, the administrative body running the prisons, ignored his requests for medical treatment for an entire year and only gave him painkillers.

In January, Mondoweiss interviewed Amir Abu Raddaha, a Palestinian prisoner who was released during the first prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas during the January-March ceasefire. Abu Raddaha told Mondoweiss that after October 7, Israeli prison authorities confiscated all books and electronic devices from prisoners, reduced their food so drastically that a meal became three or four spoons of rice alongside a comparable quantity of thin soup, and breakfast was one spoon of yogurt and a piece of bread.
It didn’t start on October 7

But the deterioration of detention conditions of Palestinians did not start on October 7, Milena Ansari from Human Rights Watch tells Mondoweiss. “The restriction of Palestinians’ detention conditions was part of the political agenda of Israel’s National Security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir,” Ansari said. “Since he came into office [in 2022], human rights groups and even the UN have been reporting on these restrictions, well before 2023.”

“Before October 7, cell overcrowding was already a rising problem for Palestinian prisoners, and so was the limitation of food quality and quantity, but these practices increased after October 2023,” she continues. “The food offered to Palestinians in Israeli jails became limited to dry food and beans lacking in most basic nutrients.”

Ansari also notes that “several human rights groups, including Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights, reported that there has been political intervention by Israeli politicians to determine the type of medical treatment that Palestinian prisoners receive, limiting the role of prison clinic doctors to basic nursing.”


“It is unlikely that any of these restrictions will be reversed in the near future, because they are not related to October 7, although they accelerated after that date.”Milena Ansari, Human Rights Watch

“It is important to remember that ensuring proper medical treatment and food is not a privilege,” Ansari added. “It is a right of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel is obligated under international law to respect it.”

After October 7, things got dramatically worse, Ansari says. Both verbal and physical violence increased against Palestinian detainees to the point that violence was used during all phases of detention, starting from the moment of arrest. “But the most noticeable change after October 7 has been the complete isolation of Palestinian prisoners, with the ban of family visitation,” she said. “This is still ongoing.”

A groups of Palestinian detainees from Gaza show signs of abuse and torture on their bodies after being released from Israeli custody. (APA Images)

Ansari says that human rights groups have documented increasing difficulties for lawyers to visit their clients who are detained by Israel.

The families of prisoners who spoke to Mondoweiss last Monday all said that they haven’t been allowed to visit their family members for two full years.

Israel’s ban on family visitation has continued after the ceasefire. “It is unlikely that any of these restrictions will be reversed in the near future,” Ansari says. “Because they are not related to October 7, although they accelerated after that date.”

“They are part of a political agenda,” she explains. “And that agenda hasn’t been met with any accountability.”

Last September, the Israeli High Court ruled in favor of a petition presented by the Association for Citizen Rights in Israel (ACRI), an Israeli human rights group, to halt the violations against Palestinian prisoners, especially food restrictions. The next day, while speaking to the media at the site of a shooting attack in Jerusalem that killed six Israelis, Ben-Gvir slammed the High Court ruling, saying it sends a positive message to “terrorists” that “their detention conditions will be eased.”

Standing beside Ben-Gvir was Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who also challenged the court. “We are all at war, and you, too, are at war,” the Israeli Prime Minister said. “We will not change the detention conditions of terrorists.”

Palestinian prisoners have been largely absent from mainstream media since before October 7, appearing only in the context of prisoner swaps last January and last week. However, the day before October 7, human rights groups reported that a total of 5,000 Palestinians were in Israeli jails — at the time, it was considered a record that had not been met in several years, including 1,300 administrative detainees. Over the past two years, that record-breaking prison population doubled.

Mass captivity as a phenomenon is foreign to Israelis, but for Palestinians, it has been normalized over decades. According to human rights reports, at least 1 million Palestinians have experienced Israeli detention since 1967. Yet after October 7, the Israeli captives became the only talking point for Western politicians and the mainstream media, while Palestinian prisoners remained invisible.

On Monday, Donald Trump celebrated his vaunted “forever” peace after the signing of the ceasefire deal in Egypt. Now that the Israeli captives have been released, the 9,100 Palestinians languishing in Israel’s dungeons can continue to be forgotten.

As solidarity with Palestine grows, thousands of film workers pledge to end complicity with genocide

Despite repression and retaliation, the Gaza genocide has pushed an unprecedented wave of artists across the entertainment industry to back the cultural boycott of Israel.

By William Johnson 

 October 16, 2025 

MONDOWEISS

Entertainment Labor for Palestine activists protest outside the Academy Awards ceremony, on March 2, 2025. (Photo: Michelle Felix)

In recent months, a wave of artists throughout the entertainment industry has begun speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On September 8, more than 1,200 film workers — including A-list stars like Olivia Colman, Tilda Swinton, and Riz Ahmed — publicly pledged to refuse any work with Israeli film companies that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” Since September, thousands more filmworkers have signed onto the pledge, with the number of signatories now exceeding 5,000.

“Both the language of this pledge, which echoes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s emphasis on institutional complicity, and its material commitment to reject offers to work with nearly all Israeli film companies, represent a significant shift for a film world dominated by executives who have either remained silent about or vocally supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza for the past two years. This shift is not simply a result of growing concern about the horrific suffering Israel continues to inflict upon the Palestinian people. Rather, it is the result of two years of tireless organizing led by two rank-and-file formations in the film and entertainment industry: Filmworkers for Palestine and Entertainment Labor for Palestine. In the face of repression and retaliation, FWP and EL4P have built a movement in solidarity with Palestine in the arts that they believe will last long after the genocide in Gaza is over.

Building solidarity, documenting repression

Filmworkers for Palestine (FWP) was formed in January 2024, just months after the genocide began. According to Emre, an FWP organizer who’s been involved since the group’s formation (and who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons), FWP began as an international coalition of filmmakers determined “to call out the industry’s silence on the genocide in Gaza.” Their first move was to put out a statement of solidarity, which quickly garnered thousands of signatures, including notable artists such as Susan Sarandon, Ken Loach, and Boots Riley.

From there, FWP members decided to utilize their position as artists to organize campaigns that supported Palestinian film and cultural workers. According to Emre, a key goal for FWP right from the start was countering the widespread “doxing, discrimination, and harassment of artists for pro-Palestinian advocacy.”

Over the past year-and-a-half, Emre said, FWP has been involved in “several boycott campaigns, [including] one against Disney, and the Captain America and Snow White premieres.” He said they’ve coordinated with PACBI — the cultural wing of BDS — on their Disney and Marvel campaigns. EL4P is also spearheading a fan-initiated boycott of Scream 7. The Scream boycott is itself a response to repression of pro-Palestine voices: back in November 2023, ​​actor Melissa Barrera was fired from her role in the “Scream” franchise for sharing social media posts critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. FWP and other solidarity formations, including Entertainment Labor for Palestine (EL4P), have called for the boycott in response to Barrera’s firing.

FWP and EL4P are also collaborating on an ongoing “storybanking” campaign, which Emre described as an effort to “shed light on the various types of punishment that come for pro-Palestinian advocacy.” Emre said that “a big reason a lot of people don’t want to come forward (about facing repression) is that they don’t know how many other people out there are dealing with the same thing. The more people are silenced about Palestine, the easier it is to erase Palestinian voices and Palestinian stories.”

Film worker and EL4P organizer Miriam Arghandiwal agreed with Emre, arguing that the intensity of Zionist repression has contributed to a “system of fear and silence” in Hollywood. To counter this fear and silence, Arghandiwal explained that the organizers of this storybank campaign collaborated with experienced journalists to create a secure site where arts and entertainment workers who face harassment or discrimination for pro-Palestine views can safely share their stories.

Entertainment Labor for Palestine activists protest outside the Academy Awards ceremony, on March 2, 2025. (Photo: Michelle Felix)

Stepping in where unions fail

One reason it can be challenging for workers to break their silence about Palestine, according to Arghandiwal, is that unions in the arts and entertainment industry “have shown clearly that they’re not going to take any stance against [repression of pro-Palestine workers].” Indeed, EL4P officially formed in February 2025 out of a coalition of rank-and-file formations from dozens of media guilds and local unions, all of whom were struggling to push their unions to show solidarity with the people of Palestine — or to at least protect their own members from harassment and repression.

EL4P organizer Amin El Gamal, a member of the screen actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the chair of that union’s committee for Middle Eastern and North African members, said that since October 2023, Hollywood’s unions have “done nothing” to protect their members who’ve faced harassment and discrimination for pro-Palestine views. He said that while union leaders may “verbally agree that blacklisting is wrong, they haven’t taken any actions towards remedying the problem.”

These failures of union leadership, El Gamal noted, have toxic effects on solidarity within their unions. “People feel very siloed and alone,” he explained. “People feel very vulnerable.”

Arghandiwal said that the storybanking campaign is an example of EL4P “filling the gap left by the unions.” She said that this campaign has already built bonds of solidarity and community among pro-Palestine entertainment workers.

Actor and filmmaker Haley Webb, who’s been involved with EL4P since its inception, said that she “cannot stress enough how important” these bonds of solidarity and community are. Webb said that after her own experience of harassment and repression for speaking out about Palestine, “to find people that share the same moral compass is a blessing.”
Case study in repression

Webb’s case is a representative example of how repression often works in Hollywood. Webb began speaking publicly about Palestine almost immediately after the genocide began in 2023. She consistently made a point to “amplify Palestinian voices and Palestinian journalists” to her more than 60,000 Instagram followers.

Shortly after re-posting a video from Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti criticizing the genocide, Webb became the target of a blacklisting campaign. Webb’s manager began receiving emails from major Hollywood producers pressuring the manager to drop Webb as a client and letting them know Webb would never work on any of their projects again.

Haley Webb headshot. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Next, Webb said, she and her manager got “flooded” with emails, calling her “an antisemite, a nazi…calling me vile names.” A Broadway producer emailed her management company to inform them that they “would never work with her and would tell everyone they know never to work with her.”

Suddenly, Webb said, her auditions “screeched to a halt.” She also noticed that many of her friends in the entertainment industry “began to distance themselves.” Noting that she’s been vocal about human rights and oppression throughout her career, Webb said it was “heartbreaking” to have longtime friends freeze her out for opposing a genocide. At the same time, she said, “If this is what ends my career, that’s fine by me because I could never sit back and watch what we’ve all seen and not say something.”

Webb said that the retaliation she faced was typical for the entertainment industry in that she “can’t say for certain” that work opportunities suddenly dried up because she spoke up about the genocide. At the same time, Webb noted that she’s been a full-time working actor for more than two decades, and that there was suddenly a “marked difference” in what work she could access once she decided to speak out.

Stories like Webb’s show, as El Gamal put it, that repression is “baked into how the industry works.” Arghandiwal drew a parallel between the Palestine solidarity movement and the “Me Too” movement, saying that both movements reveal that “there’s a level of abuse and silence in the face of abuse that’s normalized” in the entertainment industry.

Entertainment Labor for Palestine activists protest outside the Academy Awards ceremony, on March 2, 2025. (Photo: Michelle Felix)

Solidarity with Palestine across the arts

The widespread acceptance of abuse within the arts and entertainment industries is part of what makes the September 8 pledge, made publicly by thousands of film workers, so significant. After two years of effectively silencing all but a handful of pro-Palestine voices in film and television, Zionist film executives have lost control of the narrative within their own industry. What’s more, this wave of solidarity with Palestine is not limited to film and television.

In music, more than 1,000 artists and labels have signed on to the cultural boycott of Israel, joining the “No Music for Genocide” campaign. In theater, more than 25 theaters and performing arts organizations have joined the cultural boycott since 2023, responding to the call put forward by the solidarity formation Theater Workers for a Ceasefire (TW4C). In September, TW4C (of which this article’s author is a member) also launched its Apartheid Free Zone (AFZ) campaign. Inspired by solidarity campaigns that sprang up against South African apartheid, TW4C’s AFZ campaign has already gotten three theaters to officially make the apartheid-free pledge.

With solidarity in the arts continuing to grow, FWP organizer Emre urged industry workers to get involved in the Palestine liberation movement. More than anything, he said, “we need more people to join in the fight and help us organize.”

Webb encouraged workers from every part of the industry to join the movement and speak out against repression. “If we allow the fear-mongering to win,” she said, “we’re doomed.”

The Palestinian Authority may become a casualty of the Trump plan and the new Western consensus

Western support for a two-state solution was never intended to create Palestinian statehood — it was meant to justify the existence of the Palestinian Authority. Now that the Western consensus is shifting, so are thoughts about the need for the PA.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 October 17, 2025 
MONDOWEISS

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas during a swearing-in ceremony of newly-appointed PA ministers, March 31, 2024, in Ramallah. (Photo: Thaer Ganaim/APA Images)

Total and lasting “forever” peace. Not just for Palestine, but the entire Middle East.

That’s what U.S. President Donald Trump promised at the signing of the Gaza ceasefire deal in Egypt last week. One way the plan differs from previous incarnations of the “peace process” is that it abandons the framework of the two-state solution as the accepted way of resolving the Palestine question.

Historically, the U.S. model for integrating Israel into the region was the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 after the Oslo Accords, which was given limited governing responsibilities over the West Bank and Gaza with the nominal assumption that it would be the precursor to a Palestinian state.

Trump’s plan tries to bypass all of this, putting Gaza under the administration of a U.S.-led board of “peace” headed by Trump himself. The PA has no clear role in running the Strip — at least not according to Trump’s 20 points, which mentions that the PA would have to undergo a series of “reforms” that could, in some unspecified future, establish “a path” toward Palestinian self-determination. During the reconstruction phase, the West Bank and Gaza would be politically split.

Israel has made its rejection of a Palestinian state official policy. But it is also a matter of national consensus across the Israeli political spectrum, as recently articulated by Benny Gantz, a member of the opposition, in the New York Times.

It goes back to well before October 7. In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the Nation-State Law, which explicitly stated that the right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belonged exclusively to the Jewish people. Since October 7, this position has only been further entrenched: in July 2024, the Knesset passed a law rejecting a Palestinian state, and just last July 2025, it passed a law allowing the government to annex the West Bank.

Simultaneously, Israel escalated its campaign of economic and financial strangulation of the PA, withholding Palestinian customs money that Israel collects through its control of borders on behalf of the PA, representing at least 60% of its national budget. Israel’s hardline Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has also repeatedly threatened to cancel a waiver Israel grants to Israeli banks that allows them to deal with Palestinian banks, which would likely cause the collapse of the Palestinian economy.

All these actions have made it clear that Israel wants to collapse the PA, even if it has served Israel well in the past. Now that the Trump plan essentially underwrites Israeli actions, it leaves the PA’s future as uncertain as ever.

The rise of the Israeli maximalists

The uncertainty surrounding the PA’s future did not begin with the events of October 7 or the subsequent war in Gaza and the region. In September 2023, nearly a month before October 7, Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, told Israeli media that Palestinians should not have any form of autonomy, that they should not have the right to vote or “run their own lives,” and that the PA should be dissolved. At the time, the PA was already facing what was described as the worst financial crisis in its history, which had been ongoing for a year. But in the aftermath of Gaza’s destruction, and amid conflicting attempts to translate Trump’s plan into concrete measures, the fate of the PA now depends on this critical moment.

Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the PA will have no role in governing the Strip in the future. Yet the calls by Ben-Gvir and the Israeli far right to abolish the PA altogether are not so easy to implement.

The PA runs civil affairs in the West Bank, responsibilities that would otherwise fall to Israel. It also sustains the image of a peace process on which most Western countries and the UN base their official positions, anchored in the rhetoric of a “two-state solution.”

But nominal Western support for a two-state solution was never meant to actually implement it. Rather, the function this support has ended up performing has been to maintain the political rationale for supporting the continued existence of the PA. The demands of the maximalist Israeli far right have placed this in jeopardy.

If Trump’s “peace” plan, if one can call it that, is to have a chance, it would need some European buy-in, especially in funding and bankrolling the so-called “reforms.” That puts it at odds with the maximalist Israeli position.

Last Monday, as the leaders of 20 countries met in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh to sign the Gaza ceasefire deal, the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, told the media that the EU would increase its aid to the PA by 1.6 billion euros. He added that European intervention will focus on humanitarian aid, police training, governance, border control, and PA reforms, to ensure that “in the future, Palestine will be a democratic state, free of terrorism.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, September 8, 2025. (Photo: Thaer Ganaim/APA Images)

The new global consensus

The PA has already adopted a political platform that recognizes Israel, rejects armed resistance, and commits to security cooperation. But the PA is also part of a larger Palestinian political spectrum. Even if there aren’t elections, the PA is still bound to operate in relation to other Palestinian political forces. This sets a bare minimum “floor” that the PA is obliged to maintain, which is the rhetorical insistence on a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and perhaps as an afterthought, paying some lip service to the right of return. Decades of Palestinian struggle since the Nakba have made it impossible for the PA to rhetorically sidestep this political ethos, even though it has done virtually everything on the ground to render it materially meaningless.

In other words, the PA cannot abandon its pretenses to being Palestinian and representing some notion of Palestinian nationhood. This is what Palestinians fear the “reforms” are about — turning the PA into a self-governing and apolitical body shorn of any remnants of Palestinian national culture and memory.

In August of last year, the PA signed an agreement under Egyptian auspices with the rest of the Palestinian political forces in Cairo, including Hamas. The agreement stipulated the creation of an independent, apolitical, technocratic, and entirely Palestinian commission to run Gaza. Hamas accepted handing over the control of the Strip to this commission.

The commission would have answered to the PA, and would have been formed by presidential decree. This would have guaranteed the political unity of Gaza and the West Bank during the transitional reconstruction phase. The hope was that this could lay the foundations for Palestinian statehood in the future. Trump’s plan was about preventing that.

Meanwhile, the PA is expected to receive financial relief from Arab and European countries to keep functioning, all under the banner of a two-state solution. This is happening even as Israel expands settlements in the West Bank, undermines Palestinian demographic and geographic continuity, and intensifies raids on Palestinian towns and even PA-administered cities.

Even though the PA attended the Sharm al-Sheikh summit — touted as a turning point for peace in the region — it didn’t have any role in the negotiations or the signing of the ceasefire. The emerging middle ground between the Israeli far-right vision of eliminating any Palestinian political entity and the traditional two-state framework is becoming increasingly clear: a self-governing Palestinian body that relieves Israel of its responsibilities as an occupying power, maintains internal Palestinian control, preserves the existing order, but holds no real political authority. This is the newly emerging de facto Western consensus.

Opinion

Trump’s so-called peace plan offers no justice, no peace


US President Donald Trump signs a Gaza ceasefire agreement on October 13, 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. [Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

by Fareed Taamallah
MEMO
October 19, 2025 

I skipped the olive harvest in my village near Nablus to listen to Donald Trump’s much-anticipated speech before the Israeli Knesset and the subsequent summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. I had hoped—perhaps naively—that the US president, now once again playing a central role in Middle East diplomacy, might finally acknowledge Palestinian suffering or offer a genuine vision for peace. Instead, what I heard left me deeply disappointed, even angry.

Trump spoke for nearly an hour, full of self-congratulation and exaggerated praise for Israel’s “resilience” after 7 October. He called it one of Israel’s darkest days, repeating stories of Israeli pain, fear, and heroism. But not once did he mention the ongoing genocide in Gaza—the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed, the families buried under rubble, the starving children trapped in what has become the world’s largest open-air graveyard.

He seemed proud—boastful even—of his role in arming Israel. He bragged about how his administration “stood by Israel like no other” and reminded the audience that it was he who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognized the illegal Israeli settlements as “legitimate.” He said all this as though gifting our land away was an act of peace.

As a Palestinian living under occupation, I felt that his words were not just ignorant but cruel. They erased our humanity. They erased 77 years of Palestinian displacement and oppression. They erased the checkpoints that divide our lives, the walls that suffocate our villages, and the soldiers who humiliate our elders and children daily

While Trump was speaking in Jerusalem, my close friend in Gaza was searching for food and shelter for his family after their home was destroyed by Israeli bombing. He lives with his wife and children in a small tent, far from their shattered neighbourhood. In a short voice note he sent me — with the sound of drones buzzing above — he said they had eaten only a little food in two days. As Trump boasted about “supporting Israel’s defence,” my friend was struggling to defend his family from hunger, cold, and despair — not from an army, but from a war machine that has turned his life into rubble.

Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” unveiled once again with great fanfare, offers nothing resembling peace. It is not even a plan—it is a continuation of the same colonial logic that has defined every failed American initiative since 1948: to secure Israel’s dominance while pacifying Palestinians into submission.

From what we have seen, the “plan” does not even address the root cause of the conflict—the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. It speaks vaguely about “economic opportunities” and “regional cooperation,” as if what we need are more jobs instead of freedom. It promises “security for Israel” but nothing about security for Palestinians living under constant military siege. It celebrates normalisation between Israel and Arab regimes, while ignoring the normalization of apartheid and dispossession on the ground.

This is not peace. It is a political mirage designed to buy time for Israel to continue its colonization project.

I remember the last time Trump presented a “deal of the century,” back in 2020. Back then, too, he stood beside Israeli leaders while excluding Palestinians entirely from the process. That plan, like this one, sought to legalize the illegal: annexation of settlements, denial of refugee rights, and the permanent fragmentation of Palestinian territory. The difference now is that the destruction in Gaza and the tightening of Israel’s control over the West Bank have made such plans even more grotesque.

When Trump stood before the Knesset and described Israel as “a beacon of democracy and civilization,” I thought of the olive trees uprooted near my village by settlers under army protection. I thought of the hundreds of checkpoints that prevent us from reaching our land. I thought of my friends in Gaza who haven’t had a single night of safety in two years. Is this the “civilization” he was praising?

For us Palestinians, peace has never meant simply the absence of war. Peace means justice. It means accountability for war crimes. It means the right to live freely on our land without occupation, without siege, without fear.

At the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Trump was joined by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and several Arab officials. They all spoke in the same language of “stability,” “security,” and “ending the cycle of violence.” But what they did not say was more telling: none demanded an end to occupation; none called for lifting the siege on Gaza; none spoke of justice for Palestinian victims.

Many Arab regimes seem eager to move on from the Palestinian issue, to normalize with Israel and focus on their own interests. But ignoring injustice will not bring stability to the region. The Palestinian struggle for freedom cannot simply be erased because it is inconvenient to powerful governments. Injustice breeds resistance. And no amount of political summits or empty declarations will change that fact.

Trump’s “peace plan” is not only about politics—it is also about profit. He treats diplomacy as a business deal, where justice and human rights are bargaining chips. His approach is transactional: sell weapons, secure contracts, reward allies. By promoting this plan, Trump is trying to whitewash Israel’s crimes, to make genocide and apartheid look like stability and partnership. He aims to polish Israel’s image internationally while creating lucrative opportunities for arms deals and regional investments. It is the commercialization of oppression.

But if Israel is not held accountable for what the entire world has seen—massacres livestreamed to our screens, starvation used as a weapon, entire families erased—then the international system itself has collapsed. The institutions that were built after World War II to uphold justice and prevent genocide will have proven meaningless. If such atrocities can occur in broad daylight, with impunity, while world leaders speak of “peace,” then the moral foundation of the international order has crumbled.

When Trump left the podium to applause from Israeli lawmakers, I realized that this was not a peace process—it was a performance. It was meant to reassure Israel and its allies that nothing would fundamentally change, that Palestinian suffering would remain background noise to the “new Middle East” they dream of.

But for us, the reality is very different. Every day, we wake up to news of more killings in Gaza, more arrests in the West Bank, more land confiscations, more despair. We do not have the privilege of pretending that peace can exist without justice.

I returned to my olive trees after Trump’s speech, with the noise of his words still echoing in my head. As I picked the olives from branches planted by my grandfather, I felt the deep connection between our land and our struggle. These trees have survived droughts, wars, and occupations. They are witnesses to our history and symbols of our steadfastness.

Trump may talk about “peace” in grand halls and luxury resorts, but real peace begins here—in the soil of Palestine, in the dignity of our people, and in the pursuit of justice that no speech can silence.

Until the occupation ends, until the siege on Gaza is lifted, until those responsible for genocide and ethnic cleansing are held accountable, there will be no peace—no matter how many plans or summits are announced.

The world must understand that Palestinians do not reject peace; we reject oppression disguised as peace. We are not asking for privileges or favours. We are demanding our basic human rights: freedom, equality, and justice.

Trump’s visit has only reinforced one truth—that peace built on denial and injustice will never last. The path to real peace begins not in the Knesset or in Sharm el-Sheikh, but in the recognition of Palestinian rights and the end of Israeli occupation. Only then can we speak of peace with meaning.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Israeli court extends detention of Gaza hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya for 6 months


MEMO
October 16, 2025 

Israel has extended Dr Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention by 6 more months. [dr.hussam73/Instagram]

An Israeli court extended the detention of Gaza hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya, 52, for six months, a Palestinian human rights center said Thursday, Anadolu reports.

Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was arrested by the Israeli army from inside the hospital in December 2024.

Abu Safiya appeared via video conference before the Bir al-Sabi’ court, which decided to extend his detention for six months under the “unlawful combatant” law, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said in a statement.

It added that Al Mezan’s lawyer attended the session and objected to the legality of his detention, arguing that there is no evidence justifying his arrest and indictment filed, making the detention unlawful.

The center condemned the court decision to extend the hospital director’s detention, calling it a “violation of international law and the rules protecting medical personnel, as well as an infringement of the guarantees of a fair trial.”

It stressed that no charges have been brought against the doctor, who has also been denied the right to defend himself, including the ability to review evidence or present rebuttals.

“This effectively makes him a hostage held arbitrarily by Israel, without any legal basis or fair judicial proceedings, in a flagrant breach of human rights and international humanitarian law,” the rights center said.

The Israeli army killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in a brutal war in Gaza since October 2023. A ceasefire agreement took effect on Friday.

UK ends surveillance flights above Gaza following ceasefire deal



MEMO
October 16, 2025 

F-35B aircrafts land at Akrotiri Royal Air Forces base near coastal city of Limassol in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. [Photo credit should read PETROS KARADJIAS/AFP via Getty Images]

The UK has ended surveillance flights above the Gaza Strip following the signing of a ceasefire agreement, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced Thursday, Anadolu reports.

It said British Shadow R1 reconnaissance aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus had conducted more than 500 missions above Gaza since December 2023.

The operations, the MoD said, were “tasked solely to locate hostages” taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

The final flight was Oct. 10, three days before the peace deal was formally signed, marking the end of the UK’s aerial intelligence operations in the region.

Defense Secretary John Healey said he was “proud” of the UK’s role in “supporting the safe return of the hostages,” and that “the safe return of all hostages, along with the immediate restoration of aid, are critical first steps in efforts to securing a lasting peace.”

The flights have drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian activists, who argued that intelligence collected by British aircraft could have been used by Israel in military operations that have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, The National publication reported.

Scottish Greens Member of Scottish Parliament Patrick Harvie said the flights showed the UK’s “active participation in, and enabling of, genocide.”

He added that those involved “cannot claim to be unaware of the atrocities that Palestinians have been subjected to.”

The MoD maintained that the aircraft were “always unarmed” and played no combat role, emphasizing that information shared with Israeli authorities was “strictly limited to hostage rescue.”

While surveillance operations have ended, the UK continues to export weapons to Israel. According to a Channel 4 analysis, British arms exports to Israel have reached a “record high” in recent months, with more than 300 export licenses currently in place.

Rights groups have accused London of “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s actions in Gaza, though ministers have rejected the claims.

The phased ceasefire agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas last week, based on a plan presented by US President Donald Trump. Phase one included the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The plan also envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and the establishment of a new governing mechanism without Hamas.

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians in the enclave, most of them women and children, and rendered it largely uninhabitable.

US activists detained by Israel urge Washington to halt arms transfers


MEMO
October 16, 2025



Activists and protesters take part in a rally in support of Palestinians in Washington, DC, United States. [Yasin Öztürk – Anadolu Agency]

US citizens who were detained by Israel while on board the Global Sumud Flotilla earlier this month gathered outside the US State Department on Thursday, urging an end to military assistance to Tel Aviv and demanding accountability, Anadolu reports.

The 10 Americans said their humanitarian mission, which sought to break Israel’s siege of Gaza and deliver food and medical supplies to the enclave, was legal under international law but was violently intercepted by Israel on Oct. 1.

Tor Stumo, one of the activists, said he “did not feel like a US citizen in Israel,” despite the close alliance between the two countries.

“As soon as I stepped foot off that boat, I was beaten, punched in the stomach, and clubbed on the back of the neck. I was handcuffed so tightly I passed out,” he said. “The Israelis have nothing but contempt for humanitarian activists and US citizens and our government.”

Marine veteran Jessica Clotfelter said she joined the flotilla out of moral conviction. “Veterans take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she said, pointing to the State Department building behind her.

Appealing to law enforcement officers present, she urged them to “come back to humanity” and reject US policies enabling Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Stephen Wahab, a Palestinian American whose family fled in 1948, said the flotilla managed to temporarily disrupt Israel’s blockade. “We tied up the Israeli Navy to a point where they couldn’t patrol Gaza, and the fishermen were able to feed their families. That’s beautiful,” he said, adding that global solidarity movements are growing.

‘Children die at our hands’

Antony Aguilar, a former contractor turned US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation whistleblower, condemned Washington for continuing to militarily fund Israel despite a prolonged government shutdown.

“Tomorrow makes day 17, and it’ll be the third-longest in history, soon to be the second, and then the longest. So, congratulations to our effective government, who shuts down our government, but we still pay $3.8 billion so Israel can continue to bomb Gaza,” he said. “Every day, children die at our hands, all of us who pay taxes.”

The activists said they plan to meet members of Congress and human rights advocates this week to push for legislation to halt US arms transfers to Israel and protect Americans abroad.

Israel, as the occupying power, has previously attacked several Gaza-bound ships, seized their cargo and deported activists on board.

It has maintained a blockade on Gaza, home to nearly 2.4 million people, for nearly 18 years and tightened the siege in March when it closed border crossings and blocked food and medicine deliveries, pushing the enclave into famine.

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed more than 68,000 Palestinians in the enclave, most of them women and children, and rendered it uninhabitable. A ceasefire to end two years of Israeli bombardment on the enclave was set last Thursday.

Hague Initiative affirms support for ICC and victims of Gaza genocide

MEMO
October 16, 2025 

A general view of the International Criminal Court (ICC) building in The Hague, Netherlands on April 30, 2024 [Selman Aksünger/Anadolu Agency]

The Hague Initiative, an independent human rights organisation based in the Netherlands have issued an international call for lawyers and legal professionals to join in a collective global effort to defend the independence of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In a statement issued on Thursday, the group declared its full support for justice for the victims of genocide in Palestine and called for lawyers and legal professionals to join a vigil in front of the ICC in The Hague on Friday 24 October. The statement said those who were unable to attend the gathering in The Hague should hold parallel gatherings before their courts and bar associations in their respective countries.

The Hague Initiative declared full support for justice for the victims of genocide in Palestine and unwavering endorsement of the International Criminal Court (ICC). “We refuse to remain silent in the face of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank;” the statement read.

They further called for: the removal of all obstacles and threats so that the ICC would be enabled to carry out its mandate freely and without any political interference; an immediate end to all sanctions imposed on the Court or its Prosecutor; the issuance of arrest warrants for all political and military officials responsible for committing war crimes in Palestine; and the unhindered and unconditional delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.