INDIA

NPOA‑SSF: Capitalist Expansion Masked as Community Empowerment?

The National Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries (NPOA‑SSF), 

Sandip Chakraborty | 31 Dec 2025

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The small-scale fisheries plan risks becoming another instrument of capitalist expansion, co‑opting the community’s voices while advancing agendas that prioritise profit over people.

Image Courtesy: PxHere

Narendrapur, Kolkata: The National Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries (NPOA‑SSF), unveiled with much fanfare at the Ramakrishna Mission Campus in Narendrapur, is being hailed as a “landmark” in India’s fisheries governance. Government officials, international organisations, and select community leaders gathered on December 28–29 to declare their commitment to a rights-based, inclusive framework. Yet, beneath the rhetoric of empowerment, lies a troubling reality: the NPOA‑SSF risks becoming another instrument of capitalist expansion, co‑opting the fishing community’s voices while advancing agendas that prioritise profit over people.

Promise vs. Reality

The Bay of Bengal Programme (BOBP), which leads the initiative, insists the plan will strengthen communities and safeguard ecosystems. But critics argue that the language of “participation” and “consultation” masks a deeper intent: to integrate small-scale fisheries into global markets, subjecting them to the same exploitative dynamics that have long undermined artisanal livelihoods.

By aligning the NPOA‑SSF with international guidelines, the government positions itself as progressive. Yet, the emphasis on “science-informed management” and “technical expertise” often translates into top-down control, sidelining traditional knowledge and community autonomy. What is framed as modernisation may in fact be a mechanism to discipline fishers into compliance with industrial and export-driven priorities.

A Pattern of Dispossession

India’s fisheries sector has long been a site of conflict between artisanal fishers and industrial interests. Since the 1970s, the introduction of mechanised trawlers has displaced thousands of small-scale fishers. In states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, violent clashes erupted between artisanal communities and trawler operators, leading to bans on night trawling and seasonal restrictions. Yet, enforcement remained weak, and industrial fleets continued to dominate.

The 1990s liberalisation era intensified these pressures. Coastal aquaculture, particularly shrimp farming, expanded rapidly to meet export demand. While India became the world’s largest exporter of farmed shrimp, local communities bore the costs: salinisation of agricultural land, destruction of mangroves, and loss of traditional fishing grounds. Reports from Andhra Pradesh documented widespread displacement, with fisher families forced into precarious wage labour.

The NPOA‑SSF emerges against this backdrop. Its promises of rights and sustainability echo earlier policy rhetoric, yet history suggests such frameworks often serve to legitimise capitalist expansion rather than restrain it.

Case Study 1: Shrimp Aquaculture in Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh’s aquaculture boom illustrates how “development” can devastate small-scale fishers. By the early 2000s, shrimp farms covered over 100,000 hectares of coastal land. Mangroves, once vital breeding grounds for fish, were cleared. Traditional fishers lost access to estuaries and lagoons.

While the industry generated billions in export revenue, local communities faced declining catches, polluted water, and health hazards. Women, who depended on mangroves for firewood and crabs, were particularly affected. Promises of employment in shrimp farms proved hollow: jobs were seasonal, low-paid, and often unsafe.

The NPOA‑SSF’s emphasis on “livelihood diversification” risks repeating this pattern. By encouraging fishers to enter aquaculture or allied industries, the plan may push them into exploitative labour markets rather than securing their traditional rights.

Case Study 2: Trawler Conflicts in Kerala

Kerala’s coastline has witnessed decades of conflict between mechanised trawlers and artisanal fishers. In the 1980s, fishers organised mass protests against trawler incursions into nearshore waters. The government responded with seasonal bans, but enforcement remained lax.

Artisanal fishers argued that trawlers destroyed juvenile fish and damaged nets, undermining sustainability. Yet, industrial operators, backed by export lobbies, continued to expand. The result was declining catches for small-scale fishers and rising indebtedness.

The NPOA‑SSF’s proposed “co-management frameworks” may appear inclusive, but without structural limits on industrial fleets, they risk becoming token consultative bodies. Fishers may be invited to meetings, but decisions will remain aligned with export priorities.

Case Study 3: Coastal Development in Goa

In Goa, tourism-driven coastal development has displaced fishing communities. Traditional landing sites have been converted into resorts and private beaches. Fisher families report harassment when they attempt to dry nets or sell fish near tourist zones.

Government policies often prioritise tourism revenue over fisher rights. The NPOA‑SSF’s silence on such conflicts is telling. By focusing on “ecosystem health” and “climate resilience,” the plan avoids confronting the structural drivers of dispossession: privatisation of coastal commons and commodification of natural resources.

Scale of the Crisis

India is the second-largest fish producer globally, with annual production exceeding 14 million tonnes. The sector contributes 1.2% to GDP and supports 28 million livelihoods. Yet, marine capture fisheries have stagnated at around 3.5 million tonnes annually since the mid-2000s, reflecting resource depletion.

Small-scale fishers account for 85% of active fishers, but their incomes have declined sharply. A 2023 study found average monthly earnings of artisanal fishers at ₹6,000–8,000, compared with ₹25,000–30,000 for industrial operators. Women, who dominate post-harvest activities, earn less than ₹200 per day, often without social protection.

These figures highlight the structural inequities the plan claims to address. Yet without redistributive measures — curbing industrial fleets, protecting customary rights, and investing in social infrastructure — the NPOA‑SSF risks becoming another technocratic exercise.

Gender and Youth: Token Inclusion

The plan’s emphasis on gender equality and youth engagement is laudable on paper. Yet, fisherwomen continue to face systemic exclusion from decision-making, and young people are pushed into precarious migration due to lack of viable opportunities.

In Odisha, women fish vendors report harassment by police and municipal authorities, who view informal markets as “illegal.” In West Bengal, youth migrate to cities for construction work, abandoning fishing due to declining catches and lack of credit.

Without structural change — redistribution of resources, protection from industrial encroachment, and genuine co-management — these commitments risk becoming token gestures, useful for donor reports but hollow in practice.

Capitalist Logic of ‘Sustainability’

The most insidious aspect of the NPOA‑SSF is its framing of sustainability. By emphasising ecosystem health and climate resilience, the plan appears progressive. But sustainability here is often defined in terms of resource efficiency and market stability, not community well-being.

Fishers are asked to adopt “responsible practices” while corporations continue to profit from large-scale extraction and export. The burden of conservation is shifted onto the poorest, while the structural drivers of ecological collapse — industrial fleets, pollution from coastal industries, and global trade demands — remain untouched.

Community Voices: Co‑opted or Heard?

Community leaders at a recent workshop held in Kolkata spoke passionately about rights and livelihoods. Yet, the very format of such events raises questions: are these voices genuinely shaping policy, or are they being staged to legitimise a predetermined agenda?

Translating documents into vernacular languages and holding consultations may give the impression of inclusivity, but without binding commitments to redistribute power, these measures risk becoming performative.

Need for Vigilance  

The Narendrapur workshop ended with pledges of collaboration and optimism. But for many observers, the NPOA‑SSF represents less a breakthrough than a continuation of capitalist capture of fisheries governance. By cloaking market integration in the language of rights and sustainability, the plan risks undermining the very communities it claims to empower.

If the government is serious about justice for small-scale fishers, it must move beyond symbolic gestures and confront the structural inequities that define India’s fisheries sector. Otherwise, the NPOA‑SSF will be remembered not as a tool of empowerment, but as a policy of pacification — a capitalist cloak draped over communities struggling to survive.

From Algiers to Gaza: Frantz Fanon and the unfinished decolonisation

Fanon at 100: As Algeria criminalises French colonialism, his vision of decolonisation speaks powerfully to Gaza's genocide today, writes Rachid Sekkai.

Perspectives
THE NEW ARAB
Rachid Sekkai
29 Dec, 2025
It was inside the Algerian revolution that Fanon’s thoughts were forged, in its ethics of solidarity and sacrifice, writes Rachid Sekkai.

On the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, Algiers hosted an emotionally charged conference on 6 December that gathered scholars, psychiatrists, and activists from Algeria and beyond. The event came just weeks before Algeria adopted a landmark law officially classifying French colonialism as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This historic act seemed to restore Fanon’s spirit at the heart of political life.

When we entered the unexpectedly trendy conference hall in the unassuming district of Mohamed Belouizdad in central Algiers, the room was already overflowing. A portrait of Frantz Fanon hung on the stage, making it feel like the Martinican psychiatrist was staring out at the crowd with his familiar intense gaze.

Fanon’s thoughts and analysis on decolonisation was the subject of the programme, yet the emotional temperature of the room was set by the present: the ongoing colonisation of Palestine, Congo, and Western Sahara. These are territories where the machinery of empire never disappeared but merely changed form.

His sentences, written for another age of torture centres and counter-insurgency, felt as if they had been drafted for Khan Younis or Goma.

This is the very reason that Fanon’s centenary should not be a nostalgic homage. It is a stress test for Algeria’s own unfinished decolonisation - and for the region’s willingness to confront Fanonian questions about violence, complicity, and what kind of “new human” we are prepared to become.

Indeed, Fanon’s name is splashed everywhere in Algeria — on streets, schools, hospitals, and even psychiatric institutions. Yet, as Raouf Farrah - co-founder of Twala and organiser of the centenary - notes, “his intellectual legacy occupies remarkably little space in contemporary debate.”

The conference, he explains, was designed not to sanctify Fanon but to “move him away from being a totem and back into the terrain.”

It was inside the Algerian revolution that Fanon’s thoughts were forged, in its ethics of solidarity and sacrifice. As the leading psychiatrist at the Blida-Joinville Hospital during French colonisation, his proximity to his colonised patients gave him profound insight into how domination invades both body and psyche, how violence becomes internalised, and how the colonised resist not only externally but psychologically.

Gaza and beyond

Throughout the event it was impossible to ignore Gaza - at once a black hole where international law collapses, and a moral compass.

The genocide compelled a return to Fanon’s central intuition: colonialism is neither abstraction nor metaphor, but “an architecture of domination that dehumanises Indigenous peoples and governs their life and death.”

Fanon’s words from The Wretched of the Earth (1961) echoed through the discussions: “Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip; it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”

Speakers connected Gaza to a continuum of imperial violence stretching across the Global South – from Western Sahara’s occupation to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo - where extraction and dispossession remain the engines of power.




Sociologist Professor Fatma Oussedik pushed further Fanon’s desire to unsettle power. His legacy, she explained, is not only political but anthropological, and he forces us to confront the coloniser inside ourselves.

“Leaving the posture of the colonised, is the only way to make the coloniser within us disappear,” she added.

Drawing on Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Oussedik argued that the colonised internalise the voice of domination, carrying its violence into postcolonial societies. The task, she insists, “is to abolish those relations of domination — not only intellectually or culturally, but geopolitically.”


This is why Algeria passing the historic law officially classifying the 132 years of French colonisation as war crimes, has echoed with so many populations around the world who have been impacted by imperialism and colonialism. It has marked a rupture for those nations and leaders who assumed the oppression and abuse waged in the name if their empires has been somehow forgotten.

Beyong its legal symbolism, the measure echoes Fanon’s warnings about the dual nature of colonial violence - both physical and psychological - and the danger that the colonised, through fear or assimilation, might be coerced into internalise the coloniser’s methods.

By naming colonialism itself as a crime against humanity, Algeria has, in effect, turned Fanon’s diagnosis into law, asserting that liberation must confront not only historical atrocities but also their lingering psychic imprints.

Elaine Mokhtefi, author of 'Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers' at Frantz Fanon centenary in Algiers. [RS]

That also means confronting postcolonial order everywhere, in whichever form it takes, and certainly in Africa we must be pointing the finger at multinationals like French nuclear fuel group Orano, that generate huge profits from natural resources while Niger sinks into misery.

And lest we forget that the Sahara remains partitioned by imperial convenience.

The West must learn from Fanon

The centenary also revealed how Fanon’s work is too often misread in Western academia.

Dr. Latefa Abid Guemar, based at the University of East London, lamented the neglect of Fanon’s essay Algeria Unveiled, often reduced in Western academic spheres to a debate about veiling rather than an analysis of colonial power over women’s bodies.

“Fanon explained that Algerian women used the veil strategically, to join the resistance, to carry messages or explosives,” said Abid Guemar, author of Algerian Women and Diasporic Experience. “His essay was not about culture; it was about control.”

Certainly, it was a significant symbolic moment that global thinkers and scholars gathered in Algiers following over two years of the Gaza genocide during which academic freedoms and free speech on colonialism, occupation and solidarity across the West have been under attack. But it was also crucial in clarifying the direction of travel and reminding us about important lessons from past struggles that will serve in the oppression and repression we face today.

By naming colonial violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity, Algeria reclaims its narrative not as perpetual victim but as moral witness. Yet Fanon would remind us that liberation is never legal alone. It must dismantle the hierarchies of humanity that persist within us.

The law gestures toward that renewal, translating memory into sovereignty. For Algerians, Palestinians, and all peoples still trapped in colonial continuities, the task is to build Fanon’s “new human,” capable of healing without reproducing domination.

Rachid Sekkai is a journalist, media coach, and PhD researcher in identity and belonging.

Follow Rachid on X: @RachidSekkai

Understanding the relationship between Zionism and Fascism

Despite the mutual admiration between Zionists and fascists, they are usually seen as separate political movements. However, when viewed through the lens of Western racism, colonialism, and imperialism, the connections become clear.

By Alana Lentin 

 December 28, 2025

MONDOWEISS

Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir takes part in a march in Jerusalem, on April 20, 2022. (Photo: Jeries Bssier / APA Images)

Editor’s Note: The following paper was presented during the online seminar, “Is Zionism fascist? What will judges think?” hosted by Riverway Law on December 9, 2025.

Despite the mutual admiration of Zionists and fascists, both historically and in the present, it is generally considered unhelpful to characterize Zionism as fascism. However, viewing fascism from the perspective of the Black radical tradition, with its emphasis on racialism, colonialism and imperialism, rooted in supremacist ideas of western civilization, helps make fascism a useful concept for understanding Zionism.

In popular definitions of fascism it is detached from nationalism and associated most strongly with authoritarianism. Israel’s self-presentation as a liberal democracy, the result of a national self-determination project, and even an anticolonial Indigenous manifestation, conflicts with dominant ideas of what fascism is. But this approach to fascism is elusive by design.The history of fascism is dominated by liberal historians who mainly do not see racialism, colonialism and imperialism as central to it. Rather, they tend to see fascism as an aberration of the European/western political project.

In contrast, the revolutionary Black imprisoned intellectual, George Jackson, wrote in 1972 that the definition of fascism is not settled because of ‘our insistence on a full definition… looking for exactly identical symptoms from nation-to-nation.’ In fact, fascism is still under development. For the Black radical political scientist, Cedric Robinson, speaking in 1990, because Black political thought is treated as derivative, Black theories of fascism have generally not been considered ‘worthy of investigation’. Rather, popular culture and mass media are informed by mainstream academic fascist studies which constructs fascism as ‘right-wing extremism’ and ‘neurotic authoritarianism’, and ‘fascism proper… restricted to Europe between the First and Second World Wars.’ These western theorists found it very difficult to see fascism as anything other than the ‘dark side of Western civilization’, briefly flirted with but ultimately rejected.

Black theorists, Robinson goes on to say, based themselves on the experiences of the Black masses. They therefore did not see fascism as the ‘inherent national trait’ of Spain, Italy or Germany, but as ‘composed from the ideological, political and technological materials’ of the entirety of Western civilization. Their approach to fascism was shaped by the ‘crushing defeats’ Black people had already sustained in Cuba, Haiti and Liberia well before Mussolini invaded Libya and East Africa. Indeed, they mobilized en masse against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 because, as the Black radical intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote they recognized that ‘other nations have done exactly what Italy is doing’. Italy wanted a slice of the colonial pie that other European powers had kept for themselves. Italian colonization of East Africa was seen as the latest in a litany of attacks on Black life up to and including enslavement which many descended from directly. ‘Anti-fascism,’ Robinson remarks, ‘was thus spontaneously extended throughout the Black world.’

Not all Black intellectuals took the same approach to fascism. For example, C.L.R James tended to side with Marxists who saw fascism as the result of the clash between capitalism and Communism. Fascism was seen by capitalists as their salvation from a workers’ movement with revolutionary potential. But when the Trinidadian intellectual George Padmore returned to the question in 1956, he saw that something more than the crisis of capitalism within Europe was at stake: fascism was the sign of ‘a new aggression of Europeans in Africa.’

W.E.B. Du Bois already saw this in the early 1930s writing later, ‘I knew that Hitler and Mussolini were fighting Communism, and using race prejudice to make some white people rich and all colored peoples poor. But it was not until later that I realized that the colonialism of Great Britain and France had exactly the same object and methods as the fascists and the Nazis were trying clearly to use.’ This echoes Aimé Césaire’s famous remark that Nazism was the manifestation of what had already been done to non-Europeans before being brought to the Continent and turned inwards.

What Dan Tamir calls, a ‘genuine fascist movement’ also existed in Palestine in the 1920s and 30s, especially within the virulently anti-Communist Revisionist Zionist movement’ of Jabotinsky which opposed the supposedly more gradualist approach of Labor Zionism. Tamir suggests that because fascism emerges in periods of crisis, it is unsurprising that it also emerged in what he calls ‘modern Hebrew society’ in Palestine in the 1920s and 30s, a society riven by deep in crisis. However, like most mainstream fascism scholars, and from a perspective that almost totally ignores the existence of Palestinians, he sidesteps the emphasis placed by Black radicals on race.

For many, it was – and continues to be – unthinkable that Zionists could be fascists because of the centrality of antisemitism to fascism in Europe. However, Zionist fascists, like Abba Ahimeir, an admirer of the authoritarian philosopher Oswald Spengler, believed that fascism had no inherent connection to antisemitism, and that therefore Zionists could be fascists. However, more consistent with the Black radical approach is that the European Zionists – Christian but also Jewish – were in fact antisemites, in addition to being racists. Theodor Herzl famously declared antisemites Zionism’s ‘most dependable friends’ and opposed Jewish immigration, arguing they carried ‘the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.’ In 1897 he depicted the anti-Zionist caricature, ‘Mauschel’, ‘a distorted, deformed and shabby fellow’ who he did not see as belonging to the same race as the Jewish Zionist who must be freed from association with Mauschel.

It is well-known additionally that Zionists actively thwarted the saving of European Jews from the Nazis. Ralph Schoenman documents that ‘From 1933 to 1935, the WZO turned down two-thirds of all the German Jews who applied for immigration certificates’ because they were seen as of little use to the requirements of the Zionist colony.

Despite this, the dominant tendency to exceptionalize antisemitism leads many to downplay the role of race for Zionism. But there is no colonial project that is not founded on racial rule. Thus, Zionism enacts racial domination over Palestinians. The ability to colonize another’s land is based on the belief that the people are inferior at best, less than human and utterly killable at worst. Statements and actions to that effect are made constantly by Zionists throughout the current genocide.

The case of Zionist collusion with Italian fascism demonstrates the centrality of race to both fascism and Zionism. Mainstream interpreters of Italian fascism have tended to downplay race, for example citing the fact that Mussolini did not enact racial laws until 1938, and only to side with Hitler. However, as Robinson shows, Mussolini believed in Italian racial supremacy before this pivot, but more important than his personal attitudes were his ambitions in Africa. Mussolini’s relationship with Zionists, according to an article by Michael Ledeen discussed by Robinson, was because they ‘could be useful agents’ to destabilize the British mandate in Palestine and to ‘enlist Jewish populations in Libya and east Africa in the “pacification” of colonized populations.’ Mussolini kept Jews on side in various ways, for example allowing a rabbinical school to transfer from Germany.

Jews in Italy and beyond were widely favorable to Mussolini. However, this was not only because of the protection offered them up to 1938, but also because Italian Jews believed in Mussolini’s colonial project, considering, as Shira Klein notes, ‘that Italy’s pride and reputation depended on its colonial conquests.’ There was thus no reason why Jewish Zionists would not see Italy’s ambitions in East Africa and the Levant as consistent with their aspirations in Palestine.

Zionist obsessions with what Max Nordau called ‘muscular Judaism’ echoed Nazi practices, but also the eugenicist beliefs that were widespread among Europeans, US Americans and practiced throughout the colonized world, including by those with ostensibly social democratic views. Medical experiments carried out on Arab Jews were part of the quest to trace the genetic line of Homo Israelensis to Biblical times. Medical experimentation has also been carried out on Palestinian prisoners. Zionist eugenics cannot be detached from its aim to ‘form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism’ as Herzl put it in The Jewish State, as European is synonymous with whiteness. This is expressed in Palestine via the appeal to a messianic Jewish destiny, but contra the worrying trend of white nationalist attempting to capture the Palestinian liberation struggle in the west, this should be seen as consistent with all settler colonial visions of manifest destiny.

Indeed, it was the ambition of Zionist founders such as Arthur Ruppin to be accepted as wholly European, something they could only achieve by emulating European Herrenvolk nationalism in Palestine.

Zionism is fascist because it is the tip of the spear of European, western, white supremacist racialism, settler colonialism, and imperialism in the current conjuncture. But it is not unique in that regard. In the context out of which it emerged and of which it is a product – European civilizational supremacism, driving colonialism and imperialism – it is no surprise that Zionists admired and emulated fascism and continue to do so, building ever stronger ties to fascist movements globally, from Trump to Millei and Orban. It is also no surprise that Zionism embodies the ambitions of white supremacist nationalists everywhere.

Fascism’s global nature was remarked upon by George Jackson who noted that ‘we have been consistently misled by fascism’s nationalistic trappings. We have failed to understand its basically international character.’ Zionism can be seen as part of an international movement whose acute manifestations resulted from the crisis of capitalism. But as Black radicals showed, it never developed without its core defining feature: racial supremacism.

Just as Black radicals identified that fascism was a manifestation of their everyday experiences under colonialism and slavery, Zionism’s fascism goes far beyond its most extremist proponents, from Jabotinsky to Kahane to Ben-Gvir. From the perspective of the Black radicals, beyond these figures, it is the fact that almost the entire Israeli population is in lockstep with its genocidal colonial project which makes Zionism fascist in all its dimensions.

2025 End: This Isn’t a Ceasefire; Israeli Genocide Continues

Vijay Prashad | 31 Dec 2025

As 2025 comes to a close, Vijay Prashad assesses the situation in Gaza where Israel has continually violated every ceasefire it has agreed upon, jeopardizing future efforts and the lives of the people in the Gaza Strip.

Injured children at Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City in the aftermath of an Israeli bombing in August 2025. Photo: PRCS

On January 19, 2025, a ceasefire took effect to halt the Israeli bombing of Palestinians in Gaza. This ceasefire emerged from a mediation process by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, which had been sealed in June 2024 with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2735. However, the Israelis rejected the agreement and waited until Donald Trump won the US presidential election to proceed so that Trump could take credit for the deal.

Yet, Israel neither fully withdrew from Gaza nor ceased its attacks, nor did it allow the necessary aid into Gaza. Despite the “ceasefire”, the genocide against the Palestinians continued. A month into the ceasefire period, it was clear that Israel had committed at least 265 violations of the agreement (including home demolitions, ground incursions, and shootings targeting civilians). During this time, the United Nations found that 81% of Gaza was either controlled by the Israeli military or subject to arbitrary Israeli displacement orders.

That first ceasefire ended in March and was only revived in October 2025. During the intervening period, Israel took advantage of the situation to pummel Gaza once more without facing criticism from its major backers in Europe and the United States (who continued to arm Israel). The second “ceasefire” has been as ineffective as the first, with Israel having violated its terms 969 times between October 10 and December 29.

Thus, there is a ceasefire in Gaza, insofar as the intensity of the bombing has lessened; but there is no ceasefire in substance, as Israel’s genocidal pressure campaign against the Palestinians continues.

It is worth assessing the situation on the ground in Gaza. Facts are important, and it is key that the United Nations agencies have resumed their basic humanitarian aid work – which includes the collection of data on the problems faced by the Palestinians. I rely heavily on UN data here, especially from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, (UNRWA), which is itself under attack from Israel for being an impediment to its extermination campaign. For clarity, I have provided a brief sketch of four principal areas of bare life in Gaza (some of the data relies on the UN’s dashboard for monitoring UN Security Council Resolution 2720):

Displacement and housing

In March 2025, UNRWA estimated that 92% of all housing in Gaza had been either destroyed or severely damaged. Therefore, the 2.1 million surviving residents of Gaza have been living in UN-run displacement sites or in tents and temporary shelters perilously built into destroyed buildings. The UN Mine Action Service warns that unexploded Israeli bombs litter the rubble and that it would take experts 20 to 30 years to remove them. Heavy rain in Gaza this winter has flooded tents, creating a serious crisis of acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, and hepatitis.

Food and water

The ceasefire deal stated that the Israelis, who control the frontier, would allow 600 trucks of aid into Gaza per day. However, between October and December, the Israelis only allowed an average of 216 trucks per day, according to the UN 2720 Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard. This shortfall is a primary reason why the food, water, and fuel situation in Gaza remains dire. Three sentences from a recent UN report deserve wide coverage: first, “at least 1.6 million people – or 77% of the population – are still facing high levels of acute food insecurity in the Gaza Strip, including over 100,000 children and 37,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women”, second, “Nutrition-rich foods, particularly proteins, remain scarce and prohibitively expensive, leaving 79% of households unable to buy food or have access to clean water”, and third, “No children are reaching minimum dietary diversity and two-thirds experience severe food poverty, consuming one to two food groups” (out of five food groups).

Healthcare

By December 2025, Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure remained severely degraded. Many hospitals and clinics are damaged or only partially functional, with critical shortages of medicines and supplies, frequent interruptions of fuel and electricity, and service availability far below pre-conflict levels. UN agencies describe conditions as fragile, overstretched, and struggling.The Gaza Health Cluster Bulletin provides useful data, with the most recent bulletin noting that “the ongoing military operations continue to exacerbate several operational constraints that has been numerously elaborated including continued restrictions to access program sites and severely limited entry of essential medical supplies, continuous looming threats of deregistration of INGOs [international non-governmental organizations].” Nonetheless, in the ruins of the al-Shifa hospital, 168 Palestinian doctors graduated on Christmas Day.

Education

The UN Education Cluster reports that more than 97% of Gaza’s schools have been damaged, with only 38% of school-aged children able to access any learning over the past two years. Over 700,000 Palestinian children have lost the right to education, including 658,000 who have already lost two academic years. Around 71,000 students in Gaza could not take their General Secondary Education Examinations (Tawjihi) and therefore cannot move to higher education.

Bare life is not yet restored, nor has the capacity for the Palestinians to revive their political institutions. No real progress can be made to end the genocide and occupation if Israel continues to prevent Palestinian leaders of different factions from rebuilding their political institutions. During this “ceasefire”, Israel has assassinated several important Palestinian political leaders, such as Issam al-Da’alis (Hamas’ Government Administrative Committee), Mahmoud Abu Watfa (Interior Ministry), and Huthayfa al-Kahlout (spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades), and Israel continues to hold leaders such as Marwan Barghouti (Fatah) and Ahmad Sa’adat (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) in prison. Israel’s insistence on the disarmament of Hamas demonstrates Tel Aviv’s lack of seriousness to negotiate in any direction.

This is both a ceasefire and not a ceasefire. It is a relief that the intensity of the bombing has decreased, but it is no relief for everyday life– especially with no end in sight beyond the anticipation of the next atrocity.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

Israel blends ethnic cleansing and human trafficking


Jared Sacks 

The Electronic Intifada 

12 December 2025

The designs of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump for Gaza must be rejected.

 Shawn ThewUPI

On 14 November, South Africa was abuzz with news that about 150 Palestinian refugees from Gaza were being held on the tarmac at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. Even though Palestinians did not require a visa at that time, they were unable to enter the country because they could not tick a few bureaucratic boxes such as having proof of accommodation while in the country.

There was significant pressure from protesters who showed up at the arrivals area in the airport for the Palestinians to be permitted entry. Some civil society organizations also intervened.

When campaigners convinced Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, to overrule the callous decision to deny entry taken by the Border Management Authority, most of the Palestinians were allowed to come into the country. Nearly two dozen others were able to board flights for other countries, where they have family or friends.

The buzz involved widespread misinformation shared on social media, as well as in some mainstream news outlets.

One claim made by pro-Israel sources was that the Gift of the Givers Foundation – a humanitarian aid group – had brought the refugees to South Africa and dumped them at the airport. The intent behind this claim was to rile up xenophobic sentiment – which is exactly what happened.

Many social media accounts started claiming that Gift of the Givers’ founder Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman had paid for the flights himself.

One account on X (formerly Twitter) bearing the name Simon Rossouw called Gift of the Givers a terrorist organization and argued that its support for refugees was “a middle finger to all people who died” fighting for freedom from apartheid. Rossouw also warned – without evidence – that “Hamas is now fully entrenched in South Africa.”

Others claimed – again without evidence – that the arrival of the Palestinians in Johannesburg constituted a security risk and blamed the African National Congress (ANC). Even The Kiffness – a racist comedian famous in South Africa – jumped into the fray in his typical Islamophobic manner and had a go at Imtiaz Sooliman.

The danger here was real. The spread of xenophobic rhetoric and violence in South Africa, usually limited to Africans from other parts of the continent, is now also being directed at Palestinians.

The situation worked in favor of xenophobic groups like the Operation Dudula and the Patriotic Alliance, which supports Israeli apartheid and has denied the genocide taking place in Gaza.

Of course, these xenophobic groups opportunistically elide the fact that Palestinian refugees entering South Africa are compelled to do so precisely because of the atrocities Israel is committing against the Palestinians.

Why do the xenophobes support Israel which is the root cause of this crisis? Critical thinking has never really been their strong suit.
Trafficking

After further investigation, it was discovered that while the refugees were indeed fleeing the Gaza genocide, the trafficking operation which brought them to South Africa was facilitated not by Gift of the Givers or any other pro-Palestinian organization, but by Israel itself.

What was behind the sudden arrival of Palestinian refugees from Gaza?

After the misinformation spread blaming Gift of the Givers for bringing refugees to South Africa, civil society activists began doing their own research.

They found out that an unregistered nongovernmental organization called Al-Majd Europe had chartered the Romanian carrier, Flyyo Airlines, to take the Palestinian refugees to Nairobi. There, the refugees were put on another flight operated by South Africa’s Lift Airlines to take them to Johannesburg.

Investigations into Al-Majd Europe led to the conclusion that it is not a well-meaning humanitarian initiative. Rather, it appears to be a front group for human traffickers.

Its website is, to put it mildly, suspect. Much of the content appears to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

The group claims to be headquartered in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. Yet that information appears to be fake.

Al-Majd claims on its website that its coordinators are two men named Adnan and Muayad. No surnames are given for the men.

I checked the photos of the two men on the Al-Majd website using an AI detector app. According to the app, the photos were almost certainly AI-generated.

While Al-Majd says that the organization was founded in Germany in 2010, there is no evidence of the group’s existence before its website was launched in February this year.

Donations through the well-known online processor Stripe are currently not functioning, so the only way to send Al-Majd money is through untraceable cryptocurrency transfers.

Reports indicate that Al-Majd was charging between $1,500 and $2,700 per person to take Palestinians out of Gaza. Those that arrived in Johannesburg on 14 November, as well as another group that arrived in South Africa the previous week, had filled out an online form and transferred the money to personal accounts, after which they were transported through Kerem Shalom, an Israeli-controlled boundary crossing in Gaza.

At the crossing, the Israeli army stole virtually all their belongings, leaving them with nothing but their passports and a little bit of money.

Once allowed into Israel, they were driven to Ramon Airport and put on the chartered plane. They were promised to be taken to countries such as India and Malaysia, but were surprised when they arrived in South Africa instead.

It gets worse.

Investigations by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, not only link Al-Majd to the Israeli government, but also demonstrate that it operates as a tool of Israeli military policy in Gaza.

Al-Majd, Haaretz discovered, was being run by an Israeli-Estonian national named Tomer Janar Lind who, according to a follow-up report by France24, has ties to a billionaire supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Removing Palestinians from Palestine

Al-Majd has been operating in close cooperation with Israel’s so-called Voluntary Emigration Bureau. This is a division of the defense ministry created earlier this year for the sole purpose of using the apocalyptic conditions that Israel has created as a pretext to remove as many Palestinians as possible from Palestine.

As no country in the world is willing to directly accept Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Gaza, Israel cannot reach formal agreements with third states on accepting people pushed out of Gaza.

The situation is one which Israel can exploit. Israel is able to claim it is allowing “humanitarian” exits from Gaza, while also maintaining plausible deniability of the fact that it is actually facilitating human trafficking.

Israel is able to claim it is not involved and, in effect, shift the blame for how Palestinians are being treated onto Al-Majd and the countries of destination.

It is not a coincidence that Palestinian refugees are ending up in South Africa. Rather, it seems calculated for at least two reasons.

Firstly, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wishes to punish South Africa for taking Israel to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention. And secondly, Israel and its supporters have fomented a xenophobic media storm that undermines the South African government’s humanitarian actions.

South Africa – not Israel – would be blamed if it was to reject entry to Palestinian refugees on the grounds that accepting them would be enabling Israel’s illegal removal of the Palestinian population from Gaza.

South Africa did the right thing by accepting these Palestinian refugees, who showed up unannounced on our doorstep. We cannot reject people fleeing a genocide.

But the world cannot allow Israel to continue to depopulate Gaza – first by making the enclave uninhabitable, and then trafficking survivors to other countries so that US President Donald Trump and his real estate buddies can take over the land and build their “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Unfortunately, instead of holding Al-Majd and similar fronts for Israeli policy to account, the South African government has instead chosen to withdraw its 90-day visa exemption policy for Palestinians. This will collectively punish all Palestinians traveling to South Africa, making it extremely difficult for Palestinians to seek asylum in the country, rather than ensuring a ban specifically on these Israeli-backed human trafficking operations.

More broadly, the recent US resolution at the United Nations Security Council authorizing a “stabilization force” in Gaza will only entrench the occupation, giving Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign an aura of legitimacy. This attack on the Palestinian right to self-determination will not end the genocide, but instead keep it going for years to come.

We must oppose Trump’s designs for Gaza, designs which will allow Israel to continue to facilitate the human trafficking of Palestinians to South Africa and elsewhere.

South Africa and all the other nations of the world must unite in opposing this strategy.

The only solutions are the end of the genocide and the end of the blockade of Gaza – both of which have continued despite Trump’s so-called “ceasefire.” The Israeli forces of occupation must be expelled immediately from Gaza, unlimited amounts of humanitarian aid must be allowed in, and the reconstruction of Gaza by Palestinians and for Palestinians must be foregrounded as the way forward.

Jared Sacks is an activist, writer and member of South African Jews for a Free Palestine.

UN urges Israel against expelling charities from Gaza

The New Arab Staff
31 December, 2025




The UN has urged Israel against barring 37 international NGOs from operating in Gaza, saying that their work with UN agencies in the enclave is essential for humanitarian services.

"The UN and its partners are urging the Israeli authorities to reconsider today's announcement on international NGOs, which are an essential part of the life-saving humanitarian operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a statment issues yesterday.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the move, saying in a statement that "Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem."

"Israel does not want any witnesses to its crimes, nor does it want institutions that support the Palestinian people and prevent Israel from implementing its colonial project aimed at destroying the lives of the Palestinian people," the statement added.

NGOs that are set to stop work in the Gaza from 1 January include Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

NRC says Israel did not meet in good faith with aid groups

The Norwegian Refugee Council has said that Israel did not meet in good faith with aid organisations following its announcement that it will bar 37 organisations from carrying out humanitarian work in Gaza.

Shaina Low, the group's communications advisor, told NPR that the NRC worked with diplomats and donors "to try and engage the Israeli authorities to productively find an alternative solution" to Israel's demands, which include vetting staffers, a key demand that was denied by agencies over concerns for staffer safety and complying with EU data protection laws.

"But we were not met with good faith from the Israeli authorities. We were not given any alternatives, and so this is where we are now," Low said.

"It falls in line with what we've seen over the last two-plus years of Israeli authorities continually obstructing the operations of humanitarian aid organisations - impartial, independent, neutral, principled humanitarian agencies," Low added.

EU warns Israel over suspending Gaza NGOs

The New Arab Staff & Agencies

The EU warned Wednesday that Israel's threat to suspend several aid groups in Gaza under new registration rules would block "life-saving" assistance from reaching the population.

"The EU has been clear: the NGO registration law can not be implemented in its current form," EU humanitarian chief Hadja Lahbib posted on X, after Israel said several groups would be barred from 1 January for failing to comply with rules concerning the listing of their Palestinian employees.

"IHL (international humanitarian law) leaves no room for doubt: aid must reach those in need," Lahbib wrote.

10 countries warn of 'catastrophic' Gaza situation

The New Arab Staff & Agencies

The foreign ministers of 10 nations on Tuesday expressed "serious concerns" about a "renewed deterioration of the humanitarian situation" in Gaza, saying the situation was "catastrophic".

"As winter draws in, civilians in Gaza are facing appalling conditions with heavy rainfall and temperatures dropping," the ministers of Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland said in a joint statement released by the UK's Foreign Office.

"1.3 million people still require urgent shelter support. More than half of health facilities are only partially functional and face shortages of essential medical equipment and supplies. The total collapse of sanitation infrastructure has left 740,000 people vulnerable to toxic flooding," the statement added.

The foreign ministers in their statement said they welcomed the progress that had been made to end the bloodshed in Gaza and secure the release of Israeli hostages.

"However we will not lose focus on the plight of civilians in Gaza," they said, calling on the government of Israel to take a string of "urgent and essential" steps.

UNRWA says Israel still blocking aid entry

The New Arab Staff & Agencies

The UN's agency for Palestine Refugees has accused Israel of continuing to "block UNRWA from directly bringing aid into the Gaza Strip," despite the harsh winter conditions of the enclave, adding "tents and tarpaulins are desperately needed."