This says a lot about the ways in which international law is being deployed in this moment as a way of restraining and regulating Iranian behavior, while effectively allowing the United States and Israel a free hand to do what they want.
With the sounding of a siren at 8pm on Monday, Israel begins the commemoration of Memorial Day, remembering soldiers killed since the establishment of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine in 1860, through Israel's many wars with its neighbours and attacks on Palestinians, up to those who died enacting its genocide in Gaza.
Finance Minister Smotrich stated, 'On this exciting day, we celebrate a historic correction to the criminal expulsion,' during the reopening ceremony of Sa-Nur, emphasizing the government's stance against the idea of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al-Haq, and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights are attempting to subpoena arms export documents to assess the legality of permits granted to Israel.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah stated that negotiating with Israel is wrong and warned of internal division, reflecting the sentiments of many Lebanese citizens who oppose such talks.
At least three Palestinians have been killed in Israeli drone strikes in war-battered Gaza, nearly two and a half years into Israel's genocidal war on the enclave, as severely limited medical evacuations restarted through the Rafah border crossing. Doctors at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said two people were killed in a drone strike in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, in the eastern part of Gaza City.
In October, Hamas and Israel signed a peace deal supposedly intended to stop two years of slaughter in Gaza. Since then, more than 420 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire-an average of about four people a day-in what international mediators continue to describe as a successful de-escalation. The distance between that official narrative and the facts on the ground reveals how the language of ceasefire has been repurposed: It no longer describes a pause in violence but rather a mechanism for managing it, sanitizing ongoing military force under the guise of restraint.
Hamas's political leader abroad, Khaled Meshaal, has rejected calls to disarm Palestinian factions in Gaza, arguing that stripping weapons from an occupied people would turn them into an easy victim to be eliminated. Speaking on the second day of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Sunday, Meshaal described the discussion around Hamas handing over its weapons as a continuation of a century-long effort to neutralise Palestinian armed resistance.
Through a new land registration drive, Israel is trying to secure through paperwork what warfare alone has failed to deliver. Israel always had a plan to annex more land in the occupied West Bank, and its actions prove it. This week, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to claim Palestinian lands in the West Bank as state land. The proposal, pushed by far-right Israeli leaders, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defence Minister Israel Katz, emphasises Israeli supremacy over Palestinians.
Al Jazeera Forum discusses the regional impact of Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Four months into the Gaza ceasefire, Palestinians in the devastated territory are coming to terms with the post-war situation. At this year's edition of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, delegates are focusing on the power shifts created by Israel's genocide. A new committee of technocrats is expected to be in charge of Gaza's governance.
He said it twice, to leave no room for doubt. on Tuesday, in the Israeli parliament, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that, following the recovery of the body of the last hostage in Gaza, the next phase of the ceasefire is not the reconstruction of the devastated Strip, but the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza.
The reopening of Rafah, the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, has rekindled the hope (or at least raised a previously unthinkable question) of returning to the Strip for the approximately 100,000 Palestinians who managed to escape almost two years ago from the constant air strikes, forced displacement, and hardships of the Israeli offensive. Almost all of them did so within the first seven months of the war, until Israeli troops seized Rafah in May 2024 and Gazans lost their only exit route.