President Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” is considering altering its framework for a Hamas disarmament deal due to pushback from Israel, The Times of Israel reported on Tuesday.
Under the initial plan announced by President Trump, Hamas would begin “decommissioning” its weapons in phases, which would correspond with Israeli withdrawals from certain areas where demilitarization is confirmed. But Israel has rejected the proposal and wants Hamas to hand over all of its weapons before any Israeli pullback.
People walk at a site destroyed during the Israeli offensive, in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, August 18, 2026. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
A source told the Times that the Board of Peace is considering the changes, but the dispute over the deal’s terms was not settled during a meeting on Monday between President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which ended with an agreement that Israel would continue strikes in Gaza.
The Board of Peace previously suggested it was making changes to the disarmament plan after an earlier meeting of its officials with Netanyahu on August 3. After those talks, the board said that the IDF would withdraw from Gaza only after Hamas disarmed, contradicting its previous statements that said the disarmament and withdrawal would happen “in lockstep.”
The report acknowledged that making the change to the disarmament framework would risk losing Hamas’s support, as the Palestinian group agreed to the US proposal after months of negotiations. Hamas also has no reason to trust that Israel would withdraw after it disarmed, since Israel has blatantly violated the October 2025 ceasefire deal with daily attacks.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has also said that the IDF won’t withdraw from Gaza, even if Hamas disarms, and that the ultimate goal was to establish Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory.
A meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a long-time family friend of the Israeli leader, ended with an agreement that Israel will continue so-called “targeted strikes” in Gaza, Haaretz reported on Monday.
The reported agreement to allow Israel to continue attacks in Gaza comes despite Kushner holding a meeting a day earlier with Hamas officials, who said they were committed to the disarmament plan announced by President Trump and the so-called “Board of Peace.”
Later in the day, Kushner told Fox News that the US wouldn’t “restrict Israel’s right to defend itself” and that one purpose of the meeting was to “clarify what that means.” He also described the disarmament deal as a “win-win” for Israel because either Hamas disarms, or Hamas doesn’t “follow through” and then Israel would have “a lot more support from the US and others to go and finish the job.”
Also on Monday, President Trump said that Israel should “stop striking Gaza” because Hamas agreed to “lay down their weapons,” comments that Hamas welcomed, though the results of the Kushner-Netanyahu meeting suggest Trump isn’t serious about putting pressure on Israel to halt all of its attacks.
Kushner and Netanyahu were joined by the Board of Peace’s top Gaza envoy, Bulgarian politician Nikolay Mladenov, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Kushner and Netanyahu speaking at the White House on September 29, 2025 (White House photo)
The Haaretz report said the officials agreed to allow work to begin in Gaza on sanitation infrastructure to prevent disease outbreaks and contamination of groundwater and coastal waters, but broader reconstruction will still not be allowed.
They also discussed a preliminary plan that would involve Hamas handing over its weapons to a force led by Jasper Jeffires, a US Army general who’s been designated as the commander of the “International Stabilization Force,” which is supposed to deploy to Gaza under President Trump’s plan.
But the Haaretz report said Israeli officials expressed skepticism about the disarmament plan, and Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected the overall proposal. An Israeli official told The Guardian that there had been no breakthrough in the meeting and that Israel would continue to carry out operations in Gaza.
Israel’s attacks in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025 have killed at least 1,265 Palestinians and wounded 4,198, according to the latest numbers released by Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry said that over the previous 48 hours, Israeli attacks have killed at least two Palestinians and injured 15.
Abbas Araghchi has accused Israel of actively sabotaging diplomacy, describing the country as the primary obstacle to a lasting ceasefire deal with the US, IRNA news agency reports.
“The Zionist regime was and remains the biggest opponent and obstacle to the implementation of the memorandum of understanding. They made every effort to prevent such an agreement from being reached, every effort to make this agreement fail, and every effort to prevent it from being implemented,” he said.
Araghchi added that Trump’s demand for an “unconditional surrender” from Iran failed to materialise, as Tehran ultimately accepted a ceasefire and conducted negotiations with the US on its own terms.
According to the report, Araghchi said those who “sought an unconditional surrender, within a short time of the war’s commencement, were begging for negotiations”.
“It was us who said we would not accept a ceasefire and continued the war until we reached a point where they accepted a ceasefire and negotiations on Iran’s terms,” he said.
Ben Gvir made the comments when discussing the reduction in Israeli attacks in Gaza, though the IDF hasn’t fully stopped its strikes and continues to violate the US-backed October 2025 ceasefire deal.
“It’s no secret, I disagree with the prime minister,” Ben Gvir said on a podcast hosted by Rom Braslavski, who was previously held captive in Gaza, according to The Associated Press.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joins pro-settlement Israelis on a march towards the Gaza Strip near Kibbutz Zikim and Israel’s border with Gaza, in southern Israel, July 19, 2026. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
“I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat — there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people,” he added.
Ben Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, is known as an outspoken proponent of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory, views that he reaffirmed in the podcast interview.
“I see all of Gaza as ours,” he said. “Settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, encouraging as much emigration as possible, sending them to their countries, and for the terrorists, no emigration, nothing, just to kill them one by one.”
While often portrayed as a fringe figure, Ben Gvir has significant influence in the government and holds a powerful position, as he oversees police and prisons, where nearly 100 Palestinians have died since October 7, 2026, due to increasingly worse conditions, which Ben Gvir has boasted about implementing. He is now pushing a plan to create crocodile-filled moats around Israeli prisons.
The state’s commitment to the murderous Netanyahu regime outstrips its dedication to preserving democracy at home
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are pictured in Jerusalem on 7 December 2025 (Ariel Schalit/AFP)
Two events in Germany last month shed light on the country’s stance on international law and its own democracy.
On 20 July, the anniversary of a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, new German recruits were sworn in at the Bendlerblock, which housed army headquarters during the Nazi period and was simultaneously the centre of a resistance group led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, whose members were executed at the site after their failed coup.
In recent years, during speeches at the ceremonies for new recruits, top German government officials have praised democracy and emphasised the importance of the rule of law for world peace and freedom. Yet praising the rule of law and taking it seriously are not the same thing.
This year, recruits heard from German intellectual Navid Kermani, one of the few public figures permitted to appeal to the conscience of the country’s political elite at public events.
Far from taking a radical position, he said: “None other than the German chancellor has made a habit of downplaying international law and glossing over violations of it whenever it seems politically expedient… But the threat to wipe out an entire civilisation, or the declared attack on a country’s civilian infrastructure, are such blatant injustices that one need not be a lawyer or consult one’s own conscience to recognise them.”
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That is undoubtedly true: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz does not appear to care one bit about international law, which the country has committed to upholding as a lesson learned from its Nazi past.
Even before taking office, he declared that he would find ways to inviteIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then already facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, to Germany – regardless of the obligation under international law to execute that warrant, should Netanyahu set foot on German soil.
This did not merely display a flagrant disregard for international law and its institutions. It revealed the chancellor’s readiness to dismantle the very foundations of democracy – the separation of powers – in order to welcome the butcher of the Palestinian people.
‘Disastrous signal’
Kermani also hinted at the nexus of external and internal developments with regard to the Iran war: “When, of all people, a German chancellor – the only western leader to do so – defends the American president’s threat to wipe out an entire civilisation, it is devastating not only for our reputation… The trivialisation of international law from the highest levels also sends a disastrous signal for our democracy.
“For if the rule of law erodes in our foreign relations, it won’t be long before it is also discredited at home.”
On 24 July, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul joined this unworthy spectacle when asked in an interview on a local satirical show: “Does international law, as admirable as it is, also come up against the limits of realpolitik?”
The minister answered: “Yes, if you’re honest, yes. That’s true. But to be honest: that’s how legal systems work. Think about yourself when you’re driving – have you always followed the rules 100 percent of the time?… The law says that when you’re driving in a built-up area, you’re only allowed to go 50. Still, some people drive faster.”
Had he mentioned Palestine, even Kermani would likely have fallen victim to the guillotine of silencing
He continued: “And it’s the same with international law. It’s basically the same thing. You have to deal with it. Legal systems are there to provide guidance. But they’re never followed 100 percent to the letter.”
The minister was serious, without the slightest hint of satire.
Equating international law with everyday traffic rules is, of course, a shocking trivialisation and denigration of it – though, given Germany’s silence on the annihilation of more than 70,000 Palestinians by Germany’s Israeli ally in Gaza, this comes as no surprise.
What once was a significant achievement in the wake of Nazism is now, for the German chancellor and his foreign minister, nothing more than a commodity to be exploited for their own self-interest. International law has become a pawn in the hands of neoliberal western hubris.
In contrast, Kermani can see the situation clearly, and is firm in his stance against the US threat to send Iran “back to the Stone Ages where they belong”.
As he spoke this truth in the face of a US president who has openly mulled destroying a civilisation dating back millennia, and a German chancellor who has failed to take a stand against such horrors, observers noted the pained expression on the face of German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who was sitting behind Kermani and had presumably expected a somewhat different speech.
Shameful complicity
But despite Kermani’s bold move to hold up a mirror to the German government at this highly symbolic event, his analysis was wrong in two respects: Iran is not the litmus test for Germany’s international standing, nor do we need to fear a future de-democratisation at home. It is already well underway.
The litmus test for Germany’s international reputation was, and still is, its shameful complicity in several ongoing crises: the genocide in Palestine, the spate of settler terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and the Zionist garrison state’s “total war” on Lebanon.
Germany’s UN defeat is a verdict on its complicity in genocide
Berlin’s backing for Israel in the current context has irrevocably ruined Germany’s international standing.
At the same time, as a result of Germany’s neoliberal restructuring, processes of de-democratisation have been ongoing for years.
The deliberate erosion of democracy has paved the way not only for the selective application of international law, but also for the restriction of fundamental rights within Germany itself.
The German population is firmly against their country’s participation in the extermination of the Palestinian people. In a recent poll, 73 percent said they had a negative view of Israel, while 80 percent have rejected further weapons exports to Israel. Despite this, German arms export licenses to Israel have surged, enabling the state to continue committing war crimes.
While the German government’s blatant disregard for the will of its own people already points to a process of de-democratisation, this is exacerbated by domestic restrictions on fundamental rights, including freedom of assembly, freedom of opinion and speech, and academic freedom, alongside violations of due process – all in the service of the Zionist slaughterers.
Silence is supposed to reign in Germany. People are not supposed to know what the state is enabling the Zionists to do in Palestine, nor that Israel’s ideology of white supremacy draws a deeper commitment from Berlin than international law.
Had he mentioned Palestine, even Kermani would likely have fallen victim to the guillotine of silencing.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Jurgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a temporary Professor for the Structure of modern societies at the University of Erfurt, Germany and a visiting professor for Political Sociology at Humboldt University Berlin. His latest books include On Social Closure. Theorizing Exclusion, Exploitation, and Elimination (Oxford University Press 2024). Siedlerkolonialismus. Grundlagentexte und aktuelle Analysen (edited with Ilan Pappe; Nomos 2024).
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has categorically rejected the US disarmament roadmap for Gaza that President Donald Trump described as “HISTORIC” and “monumental”.
Insisting that Israel will not withdraw its armed forces until Hamas has completely disarmed, Netanyahu made clear that the future he envisages for Gaza remains one emptied of its Palestinian citizens through ethnic cleansing.
The Israeli military’s three-year-long campaign has killed more than 73,300 Palestinians, at least two thirds of whom were women and children, while an untold number have died from disease, malnutrition and lack of medical treatment. Much of the 2.3 million population has been rendered homeless.
Israel has transformed Gaza into a wasteland, destroying agricultural land, water purification facilities, local markets, communal food pantries, municipal infrastructure, roads, hospitals, mosques, schools, universities and the social infrastructure on which modern life depends. The remaining population has been made almost entirely dependent on an aid infrastructure that Israel can turn on and off at will to terrorise the Palestinians into submission.
President Donald Trump listens as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during an arrival at his Mar-a-Lago club, December 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]
Trump’s plan for Gaza, signed amid much fanfare at Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2025, was never more than the official endorsement by Washington and its European and Middle Eastern allies of an Israeli policy already in operation—but with the US, not Israel, reaping the economic rewards of the development of land seized. The arrangement would be partially managed by some coalition of Arab powers to give it a more acceptable face.
This was a potentially lucrative prize. The 40-kilometer Gaza coastline is estimated to have a $50 billion real estate and tourism potential and to offer control of billions more in offshore natural gas reserves. The scheme’s broader purpose was to facilitate wider regional cooperation in the coming US-Israel war on Iran by reducing the visibility of Israel’s increasingly unpopular war among the restive populations of Washington’s despotic allies.
Israel’s subsequent actions made clear that it never intended to accept a genuine withdrawal, or external interference with its plans to control Gaza. In December, Defence Minister Israel Katz declared that Israel “will never leave all of Gaza”.
This position is endorsed by the cabinet and shared by much of the political opposition. Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff and Netanyahu’s principal challenger for the premiership, served in Netanyahu’s cabinet during the first eight months of the war and supported the wars in Lebanon and Iran; he too opposes Trump’s Board of Peace deal.
Far from implementing the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement, Israel has continued almost daily attacks across Gaza, killing 1,300 Palestinians, while expanding its territorial control from the 53 percent sanctioned under the agreement to more than 70 percent.
The same strategy is being pursued in the West Bank. Israel has presided over an expansion of Jewish settlements and escalating settler violence against Palestinians and their property, carried out with the support of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The most recent provocation began on Sunday, when settlers, who operate with near total impunity, blocked the road to the homes of Palestinian families—including some who held US citizenship—in Qusra, in Nablus province, and cut off their power and water supplies.
The first Israeli soldiers who came to the site solidarized with the settlers and prayed with them. On Wednesday, Israeli security forces confronted a much larger group of settlers, using tear gas and stun grenades in an attempt to dislodge them. Last month, settlers set fire to a newly completed mosque.
These provocations are bound up with a policy of de facto annexation led by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has channelled ever more public money into the settlements. Smotrich has declared that the next Israeli government should push Palestinians to flee the area. He and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have also called for expanding Israeli borders and establishing an Israeli military or civilian presence in parts of Lebanon and Syria.
The consequences of this Greater Israel offensive are stark. According to the UN, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the West Bank this year, while settler violence, demolitions and evictions have displaced around 3,800 Palestinians, nearly half of them children.
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned the settlers as “criminal” in a rare rebuke from a US official. But while the White House is reportedly furious at the government’s failure to rein in the rampant settler violence, Trump has so far remained publicly silent.
The events follow weeks of increasingly frosty relations over disagreements about the war in Iran. Netanyahu had hoped his meeting with Trump at the White House last month would allow him to bolster his election chances by parading his close relationship with the leader of the world’s most powerful country. Instead, the low-profile meeting ended without a joint statement to the media, with Netanyahu leaving through a side door.
Trump’s proposal on Gaza was always likely to collide with Netanyahu’s strategy. On July 30, his Board of Peace unveiled a plan for the second phase of the Gaza agreement, based on a phased reciprocal process in which Hamas would surrender its weapons as Israel withdrew from Gaza. Hamas would hand over its weapons for storage under a US-backed Palestinian technocratic administration supervised by the Board of Peace. Hamas accepted the arrangement following pressure from Qatar, Turkey and Egypt.
But an Israeli withdrawal is precisely what Netanyahu cannot accept. He immediately authorised a wave of airstrikes that killed 18 people, one of the deadliest days since the supposed October ceasefire. The apparent aim was to provoke a militant response from Hamas that could then be used to justify a return to full-scale war.
Three days after Trump’s announcement, following a “difficult” meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the Board of Peace issued a “clarification” requiring Hamas to complete its disarmament before Israel withdrew. Even this concession was insufficient. On Sunday, August 9, facing mounting opposition from far-right cabinet ministers who want to expel Palestinians from Gaza and establish Israeli settlements there, Netanyahu publicly rejected the plan.
He told his cabinet: “Israel rejects the 15-point document.” The Israel Defense Forces, he said, “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed”, which meant the surrender of “all weapons”. He reiterated that no Palestinian state would arise while he remained prime minister.
Accepting Trump’s Gaza proposal would have exposed Netanyahu’s long-promised “total victory” over Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza as a fiction, while enraging the far-right coalition partners on whom he depends to remain in power after the October 27 elections. His Likud bloc is trailing in the polls and his long-running corruption trial is at a critical point.
Netanyahu’s position points to a strategy of permanent war—not only against the Palestinians, but against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran. His statement follows Israel’s de facto rejection of a US-brokered Lebanon ceasefire and support for the continuation of the US-led war against Iran.
Israel’s relentless war flows from the logic of the Zionist state, founded on the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 and the refusal to allow them or their descendants to return to their homes. This established a political order dependent upon permanent confrontation with its neighbours.
The Israeli state has consequently built much of its political identity around the narrative of a permanent existential threat. Any form of accommodation between Washington and Tehran, however partial or temporary, would fundamentally undermine that narrative.
Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas has made it a major obstacle to Israel’s regional ambitions, while removing Iran as a regional power would facilitate Israel’s attempt to complete the dispossession of the Palestinians and establish unchallenged regional hegemony—described by Netanyahu as “redrawing the map of the Middle East”. The Iranian threat has also provided successive Israeli governments with a means of diverting attention from domestic crises, deteriorating economic and social conditions and deep political polarisation.
Israel has been able to pursue this strategy because it can ultimately rely on Washington, which provides it with $3.8 billion a year in military aid and treats it as its principal regional proxy. What unites them, despite repeated clashes, is a shared class interest in crushing any Palestinian, Arab nationalist, Iranian or working-class challenge to their domination of the world’s most strategically vital, oil-rich region—a domination that Washington regards as essential to preparing for confrontation with China.
There have been periodic tensions before between Tel Aviv and Washington, as over the 2015 nuclear deal and now Gaza and the West Bank. But these are tactical disputes within a fundamentally aligned imperialist relationship.
Displaced Palestinians, including many children, wait in long queues to receive hot meals distributed by a charitable organization in Gaza City, Gaza on June 7, 2026.
(Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design.”
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that the Israeli government is still restricting the entry of engine oil and generator parts to the Gaza Strip, imperiling life-saving hospital functions and other essential services in the decimated territory.
Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), noted that Gaza’s remaining healthcare system relies “almost entirely” on generators, “with most electricity cut by Israeli authorities and much of the electrical infrastructure destroyed.” The group said that in some Gaza facilities, its teams barely have sufficient engine oil to last a month and have been forced to “buy engine oil at the local market at exorbitant prices.”
Filipe Ribeiro, MSF’s head of mission in Palestine, said that “what we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design.”
“For more than two years, we have observed Israel’s policies restricting the entry of supplies,” said Ribeiro. “These policies do not merely delay aid; they dismantle the very systems people rely on to survive.”
Israel’s continued restriction of supplies comes as the country’s military, which is armed by the United States, keeps up its deadly bombing of the strip despite a purported ceasefire deal that took effect in October 2025. Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 people in Gaza since the start of the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed plan for Hamas disarmament in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Earlier this week, a group of United Nations experts condemned Israel’s recent “strikes on hospitals and shelters, the killing of police officers and UN-contracted staff, attacks on fishers, and abductions and abuses by armed groups reportedly collaborating with the Israeli military, as well as the killing of humanitarian workers, who through their work protecting and promoting fundamental human rights, are human rights defenders.”
“These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment.”
According to MSF, Israel’s sustained attacks and obstruction of supplies “extend far beyond hospitals.”
“Without engine oil, all transport services could stop, including much-needed water trucks during the peak of summer heat, ambulances, buses transporting medical staff to work, and trucks delivering humanitarian supplies,” the group said. “Bakeries and flour mills also rely on generators, meaning food production could also be affected.”
MSF characterized Israel’s continued obstruction of engine oil and spare generator parts as “one piece of a larger pattern of structural violence imposed by Israeli authorities to intentionally restrict access to vital services and supplies as part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
“These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment,” the group said. “The shortages now impact virtually every aspect of life in Gaza, leaving hospitals and humanitarian organizations without basic supplies.”
Ribeiro said in a statement that “the items change, but the logic remains the same: reducing people to conditions in which life becomes untenable, and dignity is systematically stripped away through the denial of the most ordinary, most essential goods.”
“This is not bureaucracy,” he added. “It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible.”
Recent reports indicate a serious mutiny situation aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Seven U.S. Navy personnel have possibly been killed and several others injured in a violent clash among the crew, highlighting growing unrest and morale issues during an extended deployment.
Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.
A woman at the meeting told acting navy secretary, Hung Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported. The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. “He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.
Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard the Lincoln, told MS NOW she had been told a doctor or therapist on the ship warned the crew needed to reach port before people started “losing their minds.” She voted for Trump—and partly because he promised not to start any new wars. She no longer believes the country is safer for it. “You’ve essentially stranded them out there,” she said of the crew.
Seven US Navy personnel have reportedly been killed and several others wounded in a violent clash aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as growing unrest among the carrier’s crew has exposed mounting pressure inside the US military amid a prolonged deployment.
The incident erupted after an adviser to US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper boarded the carrier to address mounting complaints from crew members following protests by their families over the ship’s prolonged deployment, according to Tasnim News Agency, citing an informed military source. The adviser was reportedly met with boos and had water bottles thrown at him while addressing a gathering of personnel. The confrontation subsequently escalated into a fight among crew members involving knives and other bladed weapons, leaving seven personnel dead and several others wounded, according to the source.
Pistol Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dismissed the accounts as “more fake news”.
Deployment Context
The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for over 260 days, which is a modern-era record for a U.S. aircraft carrier. This prolonged deployment has led to significant stress and mental health challenges among the crew
Conditions and Morale
Reports from military families describe poor living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate facilities, contributing to the deteriorating morale.
Response and Claims
In addition to internal conflicts, there are external tensions, with Iran claiming to have attacked the carrier, although U.S. officials have denied these allegations.
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(Photo credit: X) Large fires continued to burn and spread in south Lebanon on 13 August due to continuous strikes, artillery shelling, and deliberate arson operations carried out by Israeli occupation forces illegally positioned inside the country.
The Israeli arson operations in particular are targeting forests and greenery.
Israel has been damaging the environment in Lebanon for years, increasingly so over the past several months and specifically since the latest round of fighting began – including through the spraying of toxic chemicals.
Firefighters said, as they put out the blazes caused by Israel’s attacks and arson, that the fires were sparked “deliberately” by occupation forces.
The fires escalated overnight as Israel intensified attacks, but have been raging for weeks, environmental groups have said.
Israeli occupation troops used flares in a wooded area near the southern city of Khiam, sparking large blazes.
Hussein Fakih, head of the Lebanese Civil Defense in Nabatieh, said firefighters were targeted by an Israeli drone as they were heading to put out the flames.
“Most of our missions are now related to fires. There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30–40 percent of the land has been affected by fires,” he added.
Much of the agriculture in south Lebanon, including olive groves, has been affected by the fires, sparked by Israeli occupation troops and worsened by the hot summer weather.
The fires were seen in numerous videos posted across social media.
Meanwhile, Israeli infantry forces advanced into the area between the towns of Aita al-Jabal and Beit Yahoun in the Bint Jbeil district, as Tel Aviv carried out attacks in other areas on Thursday.
Occupation troops continued to detonate civilian infrastructure in multiple southern towns and villages, including Majdal Zoun, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).
On 12 August, Israeli War Minister Israel Katz renewed his repeated vows that occupation forces “will not withdraw” from south Lebanon.
Israel’s escalation and expansion in Lebanon have escalated since Beirut violated its own laws and agreed to an unconstitutional framework deal with Israel in June, during direct talks with Tel Aviv.
The deal demands Hezbollah disarmament before any withdrawal and allows Israel to maintain its occupation.
Tel Aviv says it has established a “security zone” in the dozens of villages it has occupied since March, but Hezbollah resistance fighters remain entrenched across this area.
Someone had to organize the catering; that’s the detail that got me.
From the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, Arab states have issued a steady stream of condemnation – labeling it genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing – even as they’ve been secretly deepening their military ties with the very state carrying it out. The secrecy, however, hasn’t protected them.
That was the conclusion of a leak obtained by the Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – published in October 2025, months before the United States and Israel’s own war on Iran began: five CENTCOM PowerPoint presentations documenting an entity called the “Regional Security Construct” – a secretive network, operating since 2022, tying Israel to six Arab states: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, with Kuwait and Oman standing by as “potential partners.” Every one of these governments has at some point in the last three years stood up and condemned the genocide in Gaza. Every one of them has also helped keep Israel’s military machine running. It’s a staggering betrayal.
Now look at what those same states were getting up to in private. In May 2024, high-level Arab and Israeli military officials met to coordinate – at Al Udeid Air Base, the US facility located inside Qatar. Traveling the usual way – the airport at Doha, passport and diplomatic controls – would leave a paper trail, hence the Israelis bypassed formalities and instead flew directly onto the base.
The internal planning document for the meeting contained a section with the heading “MUST NOT DO”, and strictly forbade photographs and any media contact. Beneath the itinerary, a note reminded staff they should observe culinary restrictions for both Muslim and Jewish delegates: “No pork / crustaceans.” Someone still had to sort the catering for this shadowy military alliance. Mirrors, Cocteau said, are the doors through which Death comes and goes. In this case, it was the catering memo.
As Palestinians in Gaza were being bombed, the men whose governments claimed to speak for Palestine were coordinating regional air defenses with Israeli military officials down the hall – discussing radar coverage against Iran over lunch, while the genocide continued next door. By 2024, CENTCOM had linked most of the seven partners – the six Arab governments plus Israel – into a joint radar and air-defense picture focused on Iranian missiles and drones.
A detail in the slides that catches the eye: a 2025 meeting at which a Saudi representative and a US intelligence official jointly delivered an “intelligence overview” – Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Islamic State – one of the two briefers from a kingdom with no formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
All of this elaborate scheming failed spectacularly when Doha was struck on 9 September 2025 in a sneak assassination job on Hamas officials. The complex air-defense system the Arab-Israeli network had just spent three years building amounted to nothing. The American radar was pointing in the wrong direction, since the attack didn’t come from Iran – but from Israel. Qatar’s separate air defense systems missed it too. The Trump administration reportedly leaned on Netanyahu, who apologized three weeks later.
The network’s failure wasn’t limited to Doha. On 28 February 2026, the day the US and Israel opened their war of aggression on Iran by killing its Supreme Leader, Iran’s retaliation went for the network’s jugular – ballistic missiles and drones struck the US Fifth Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain, while simultaneous strikes smashed a THAAD missile-defense radar at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and a phased-array radar in Qatar, with widespread damage reported across the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Following a brief pause, hostilities resumed in early July, and on 23 July Iran’s military said it had destroyed a second radar and a Patriot system at another US base near Azraq, in Jordan. Every partner state named in the CENTCOM documents except Egypt has now had its radar coverage hit, disabled, or claimed destroyed.
On 29 July, Iran returned to Muwaffaq Salti – the same US/Jordanian base it struck earlier in February – launching ballistic missiles in what CENTCOM had the cheek to call a “surprise attack.” CENTCOM did not clarify whether it came before or after the US and Saudi Arabia struck Iran-backed militias in Iraq that same morning. Trump’s response was characteristically restrained: “We are going to beat the f**king sh*t out of them.”
Fresh strikes were hinted at for the first weekend in August but did not materialize – according to reports that came to light during the pause, Washington’s munitions stockpiles, both defensive and offensive, have been significantly depleted since the start of its war on Iran in February. The secret network that these Arab states built in collaboration with Israel and the US to guard the Gulf is in ruins. The global hegemon that built it with them is running low on ammunition.
The system is crumbling under the threat it was built to stop.
So why the secrecy? Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies identified the answer: it allowed everyone involved to sidestep the bitter pill of the political argument. Working covertly with Israel’s generals is more palatable than being seen as direct collaborators. But, he said, the network masks how profoundly these states distrust each other and Israel – a distrust the Qatar strike exposed. “A key member of the American effort has attacked another,” he said, “with America seen as complacent, complicit, or blind.”
Mainstream media coverage has largely framed this as merely embarrassing – hypocritical Arab leaders caught out, business as usual. Except that is not what the documents are about, and it lets the governments involved off far too lightly. The same regimes that normalized ties with Israel have essentially reduced the Palestinian cause to lip service – and the CENTCOM documents show exactly how far that abandonment extends, as The Electronic Intifada has argued. This goes way beyond leaders occasionally crossing paths with their Israeli counterparts on the sidelines of a conference. Built by the United States, this three-year-old network has its own dedicated bureaucracy – a cyber center, an encrypted messaging network, information-operations planners, even special dietary instructions and a “MUST NOT DO” slide – all of it built to hide an alliance that Israel’s genocide in Gaza had already made politically toxic.
The Palestinians are not an incidental factor; they are the reason for all the secrecy. The Gaza genocide is built into this, with each government named in these documents consciously choosing to sustain it.
Richard Edain is a teacher and writer based in the UK and Vietnam. His long-form historical journalism appears on Substack as the Ulysses Files and has been published on Antiwar.com. Contact: edainrichard@gmail.com.
(Photo credit: X) Large fires continued to burn and spread in south Lebanon on 13 August due to continuous strikes, artillery shelling, and deliberate arson operations carried out by Israeli occupation forces illegally positioned inside the country. 
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