Published date: 8 February 2026 13:43 GMT | Last update:1 day 23 mins ago
Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said the Palestinian movement would reject any attempt at foreign domination of Gaza.
Speaking at a conference in Qatar’s capital, Doha, Meshaal added that Hamas would also not relinquish its weapons despite calls for disarmament from Israel and the US.
“Criminalising the resistance, its weapons and those who have led it is something we should not accept,” he said.
“As long as there is an occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is the right of people under occupation. It is something nations are proud of.”
Following the implementation of a nominal ceasefire on 10 October, US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the conflict in Gaza entered its second phase in mid-January.
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This phase is set to include the disarmament of Hamas and the gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army from the enclave.
According to a report in Haaretz earlier this week, Israeli officials are exploring ways for Israel to benefit economically from Gaza’s reconstruction.
Middle Eastern leaders including Netanyahu and Sisi line up to join Trump ‘Board of Peace’
Senior finance ministry officials discussed potential opportunities with senior Israeli army officers, the Israeli newspaper reported on Wednesday, including the construction of a highway in Israel connecting to Gaza.
It was suggested that countries seeking access to Gaza via Israel would pay for Israeli highway construction.
This would include a highway along the southern Route 232, which would provide better access for Palestinians travelling between Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israeli officials also discussed economic opportunities over the supply of electricity to Gaza.
Hamas, which has governed the territory since 2007, has ruled out disarmament, but has indicated it is open to handing over its weapons to a future Palestinian-led authority.
Governance of the territory would be temporarily transferred to a committee of 15 Palestinian technocrats, under the authority of the “Peace Council” chaired by Trump.
Meshaal said the “Peace Council” should adopt a “balanced approach” that would allow for the reconstruction of Gaza and the influx of humanitarian aid.
“We adhere to our national principles and reject the logic of guardianship, any foreign intervention, or the return of a mandate in any form,” Meshaal said.
“Palestinians must be governed by Palestinians. Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza and to Palestine. We will not accept foreign domination.”
Speaking at Al Jazeera Forum, Khaled Meshaal describes discussion around Hamas handing over weapons as a continuation of a long effort to neutralise Palestinian armed resistance.
Head of Hamas abroad says ‘resistance is a right’ for occupied people
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.
“In the context that our people are still under occupation, talking about disarmament is an attempt to make our people an easy victim to be eliminated and easily exterminated by Israel, which is armed with all international weaponry,” he said.
“If we want to talk about it … it is necessary to provide an environment that allows reconstruction and relief and ensures that the war does not reignite between Gaza and the Zionist entity. This is a logical approach, and Hamas — through mediators Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt, and through indirect dialogues with the Americans via the mediators — has reached, or there has been, an understanding of Hamas’s vision on that. Yes, this is something that requires great effort, not an approach of disarmament.”
United States President Donald Trump last month sought to achieve a “comprehensive” demilitarisation of Hamas, threatening the Palestinian group with repercussions if it fails to do so. Hamas has refused to give up arms as long as Israel continues to occupy Gaza.
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In the second phase of a US-mediated “ceasefire” deal between Israel and Hamas, agreed in October last year, Washington says it will tackle the disarmament of Hamas and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.
But Israel continues to carry out near-daily deadly attacks across Gaza in violation of the “ceasefire” and has so far refused to withdraw from the so-called “Yellow Line” in eastern Gaza, an informal boundary separating more than half of the territory that remains under Israeli military control from the rest of the Strip. Israel has killed at least 576 Palestinians and wounded 1,543 others since the latest “ceasefire” started.
“The problem is not that Hamas and the resistance forces in Gaza provide guarantees; the problem is Israel, which wants to take the Palestinian weapons … and put them in the hands of militias to create chaos,” he said.
Meshaal pointed to Hamas’s proposals for an extended calm as an alternative to dismantling its military wing.
“Hamas proposed a truce of five to seven to 10 years. This is a guarantee that these weapons are not used,” he said, adding that the mediating nations, who have a “deep relationship with Hamas, can form a guarantee”.
Meshaal pointed out that if people were to go back to the origin of the conflict, the issue is one of “occupation and a people resisting occupation, with the right to self-determination and independence”.
“Resistance is a right for people under occupation; it is part of international law and the heavenly religions. Resistance is part of the memory of nations,” he added.
‘Palestinian cause must have a solution’
Meshaal said the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel was a “turning point”, arguing that the Gaza conflict forced the world to reopen a “second question” of the Palestinian cause itself.
“The [Operation Al-Aqsa] Flood and this genocidal war have shaken the world. There is now a question – the Palestinian cause must have a solution,” he said, referring to the October 2023 attack, as he welcomed a growing number of nations recognising a Palestinian state, calling the moves “insufficient”.
“The fact that 159 countries have approved or recognised the Palestinian state is good, but it is not enough. How do we turn the Palestinian state into a reality on the ground? That is the big question we are concerned with as Palestinians, as Arabs, as Muslims, and along with our friends around the world,” he said.
Gaza: A Forever War
Meshaal called on the Arab and Muslim states to move from a “defensive policy” to “offence” in the diplomatic arena.
“We want to entrench that it is a pariah entity and a burden on security, stability, and international interests; to pursue it and turn it into an entity that loses its international legitimacy completely, just like the apartheid regime in South Africa,” he added.
“We are the owners of a just cause, and the accused is the one who committed the war crime of genocide,” he said.
Over two years after the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, retired Israeli reserve general Yitzhak Brik acknowledged sweeping military, economic and social damage, saying the campaign has failed to achieve its primary objective.
Key Takeaways
Brik said Israel failed to defeat Hamas after two years of war.
Hundreds of billions of shekels were lost economically.
Israeli soldiers face a rapidly expanding PTSD crisis.
Suicide attempts and depression rates surged among combat troops.
Ongoing multi-front deployments continue to strain the military.
Failure to Achieve War Objectives
In a Channel 13 television interview, Brik described the war as a prolonged conflict whose costs exceeded its gains.
“In reality, we have lost national and social resilience over these two years, along with hundreds of billions of shekels,” he reportedly said.
The retired general added that Israel had not succeeded in defeating Hamas, arguing that the campaign imposed heavy casualties while failing to produce a decisive outcome.
“Over the past two years, we have borne severe losses,” Brik stated, referring to both battlefield casualties and long-term physical and psychological injuries among soldiers and civilians.
He also warned of diplomatic repercussions, saying Israel had “lost credibility in the world,” and suggested Washington has intervened after viewing the war as strategically stalled.
Expanding Psychological Crisis
Parallel reports from Israeli institutions and healthcare providers indicate a growing mental-health emergency inside the military.
According to data from the Israeli Security Ministry, around 22,300 soldiers and personnel are receiving treatment for war-related injuries, with approximately 60 percent suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Israel’s healthcare provider Maccabi reported that 39 percent of soldiers under its care sought psychological assistance, while 26 percent displayed symptoms of depression.
A parliamentary committee documented 279 suicide attempts between January 2024 and July 2025, with combat soldiers representing the majority of cases.
Authorities have expanded mental-health funding and alternative treatment programs, but specialists warn the scale of trauma could continue rising sharply in the coming years.
Clinical psychologist Ronen Sidi, director of combat veteran research at Emek Medical Center, also noted widespread “moral injury,” describing emotional distress linked to actions taken during combat.
Multi-Front War
The war has extended across several arenas simultaneously.
The Gaza Health Ministry confirmed that more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, while thousands more have been killed in south Lebanon.
Israeli sources acknowledge over 1,100 Israeli soldiers killed during the same period. Resistance groups, however, have disputed these figures, arguing that Israeli authorities do not disclose the full extent of battlefield losses and that the real number of casualties is likely higher than officially reported.
Despite a US-backed ceasefire announced in October, Israeli occupation forces remain active across large areas of Gaza, with continued operations causing further casualties in recent months.
Israeli occupation troops also remain deployed in parts of south Lebanon and expanded areas in southern Syria.
Internal Debate over Strategic Outcomes
Brik’s remarks have intensified debate inside Israel regarding the feasibility of the war’s goals.
The retired general has long argued that prolonged ground operations against an entrenched resistance movement would produce high costs without decisive victory.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio listens to a presentation by Trump administration officials about post-war Gaza following a signing ceremony for the “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum on January 22, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The board’s vision for Gaza is a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.
While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called “Board of Peace” might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore.
Last month, President Donald Trump and his new, thuggish boys’ club of heads of state publicly celebrated the launch of the Board of Peace (BoP) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its hypocrisy was inadvertently underscored by Elon Musk—Trump’s on-again, off-again ally—when he quipped onstage that one might call it the Board of “p-i-e-c-e,” a venture devoted to claiming “a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela,” to which his interviewer, Larry Fink, billionaire CEO of BlackRock, responded with cheer, “We got one.” Only a room filled with the world’s tech and business elite could find this funny.
In the weeks since, people of conscience around the world have been left to reckon with what may come of this brazen proclamation of a Trumpified world order. In particular, the board’s presentation of plans for “New Gaza” offered stark clarity about the greed-driven intentions Trump, his inner circle, and their Israeli billionaire partners seek to pursue, while raising a fundamental question as to how such a project of colonization and land theft could claim any legal basis at all, let alone a moral one.
As it stands, the BoP charter elevates Trump to a position akin to a global dictator for life, unchecked—on paper— by any external mechanisms of accountability or transparency. Acting as permanent chairman, chief executive, and controlling shareholder of the organization, Trump has declared that he holds absolute veto power, while retaining complete discretion over the potential multibillion-dollar slush fund generated through permanent member fees. In keeping with his long record of felonies and fraud, all budgets, financial accounts, or disbursements the BoP deems “necessary” to carry out its sweeping mission are subject only to the so-called “institutions of controls or oversight mechanisms” designed by the very same Executive Board.
Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.
A few invited world leaders, mostly from the European Union, have done little more than politely decline their invitations. While they have not yet bent the knee to Trump in this mobster’s reality-show version of US imperial power in action, this has not stopped those same governments from endorsing the other “peaceful actions” Trump is poised to pursue under the guise of BoP authority. These include the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the seizure of Venezuelan oil; the execution of dozens of extrajudicial boat strikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean; threats of war and the promotion of dangerous regime-change fantasies in Iran and Cuba; and support for his complete takeover of occupied Palestine through United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803. That resolution effectively granted Trump authority in Gaza by endorsing his 20-point Gaza peace plan and welcoming the BoP as a transitional governing body. Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.
Despite some rejections, other governments have gone ahead and accepted their invitations for a free three-year membership. The participation of Israel’s wanted genocidaire-in-chief, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should serve as the clearest red flag that this organization has no interest in even pretending to care about the lives of the Palestinian people or any standard of international law. Netanyahu could not even fly to Davos to attend the BoP’s self-appointed pomp and circumstance for fear of being arrested as a wanted war criminal.
Other beacons of democracy and world peace, eager to lend legitimacy to the BoP, include Trump’s own “favorite dictator,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Argentina’s scandal-prone, right-wing President Javier Milei; “Europe’s last dictator,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko; Netanyahu’s idea of a “moral conscience,” Albanian President Edi Rama; and Hungary’s model in authoritarianism, Viktor Orbán. Leaders from Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Qatar—have also joined, and will presumably stand alongside Trump and the Executive Board to help oversee, and quietly endorse, “New Gaza.”
Their participation set the stage for Davos, where none other than Jared Kushner delivered the first public presentation of an investment plan contingent upon the ethnic cleansing and erasure of a national Palestinian identity. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a member of the BoP “Executive Board,” has long served as the self-styled “master planner” of transforming Gaza into a prime real estate opportunity. He has a track record of articulating his absolute disregard for Palestinian life, describing the besieged Gaza Strip in February 2024 as “very valuable… waterfront property.”
Kushner began his chilling slideshow by urging skeptical investors to “just calm down for 30 days,” declaring, “The war is over. Let’s work together.” Eager to move on to their real business of “peace,” Kushner appeared wholly willing to ignore the ongoing forced starvation, imprisonment, systemic torture, murder, and displacement of Palestinians across the occupied territories. Since the supposed “ceasefire” in October 2025, the Israeli military has killed at least 477 Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump has also failed to address Israel’s continued ban on dozens of international humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, a policy that has deliberately denied lifesaving aid and medical care to the region while newborn babies continue to die of hypothermia. Instead, Kushner outright lied about the current scale of Israel’s designed humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that “100% of the food needs are met” and that “the cost of needs has gone down,” before unironically describing the administration’s role as “the largest humanitarian effort into a war zone that anyone’s been able to tell us about.” Meanwhile, as the conference unfolded, Israeli forces bulldozed the UN Refugee headquarters in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli Knesset voted by an overwhelming majority to annex the entirety of the West Bank.
Amid the distortions and denials of reality, Kushner did allow the logic of the project to surface when he identified the architect behind the purported $25 billion master plan for Gaza: Yakir Gabay, whom he described as “one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know.” Gabay is an Israeli billionaire and international real estate tycoon with close familial ties to the Israeli government. Reports also indicate that he has participated in efforts to pressure Columbia University administrators to suppress student protests.
Much like Kushner, a recent article by the editor-in-chief of Jerusalem Post described Gabay as having been eager to craft a plan for “New Gaza” from the very first weeks of Israel’s prolonged assault on the densely populated region:
October 7, [Gabay] tends to say, woke him to action. [Gabay] thought: This time, my capabilities can change the face of reality…Other businesspeople heard about his work a year and a half ago. The White House had asked him to develop something even during Joe Biden’s term. He has good relationships with Tony Blair and Kushner, and when Trump won the elections, it became easier to push the issue.
On the whole, Kushner’s “New Gaza” presentation made no attempt to acknowledge a Palestinian state, recognize Palestinian self-determination, nor address Israeli occupation or the implications of Gaza’s “reconstruction” for the other occupied Palestinian territories. Instead, the eerily bizarre AI-generated slideshow of skyscrapers, oil rigs, and industrial complexes offered only a glimpse into the twisted billionaire fantasy that Kushner’s inner circle—including figures like Gabay—has sought to merge with Zionist imaginaries.
The only part of Kushner’s presentation that even acknowledged Palestinians was a single slide on “Palestinian-led demilitarization.” Beyond this ominous token reference, the narrative repeatedly circled back to framing Gaza as “an amazing investment opportunity” to the room full of multimillionaires and billionaires.
Recent reporting from Drop Site News has confirmed and expanded upon this language, revealing “Resolution No. 2026/1,” an unsigned State Department document from December 2025 that declares the Board of Peace aims to transform Gaza into a “deradicalized and demilitarized terror-free zone.”
Here, “deradicalization” functions as a catch-all term to delegitimize resistance and criminalize opposition to Israeli occupation—a legal right under international law. Palestinians who maintain their political consciousness, national identity, or will for self-determination, and who refuse to normalize occupation, are almost certain to be labeled “terrorists” or deemed insufficiently “deradicalized.” Those who take up arms to defend their people against some of the world’s most heavily armed and nuclear powers risk being denied existence in their own lands—murdered or turned away by the very architects of genocide who now claim to bring “peace.” Access to basic rights is made contingent on surrendering political and economic agency, including abandoning a historically rooted cultural identity of resistance under occupation, forsaking traditional livelihoods, and subordinating the desire to shape the future of the land to whatever “economic opportunities” BoP members deem investible.
The document further states that only those who “support and act consistently” to establish a “deradicalized, terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” may participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance. It also bars any individuals or organizations the board deems to have “supported or demonstrated a history of collaboration, infiltration, or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups”—a sweeping allegation Israel has long weaponized without evidence.
In practice, such standards mean that anyone who stands in firm solidarity with Palestinians, including international NGOs that seek to hold Israel to even minimal standards of accountability, will likely be barred from operating in Gaza. This has already become an entrenched and worsening reality since October 2023. What the BoP presents as a security framework is, in essence, a blueprint for controlling Palestinian movement, erasing any viable possibility of a Palestinian state, and ultimately, advancing ethnic cleansing, while preventing humanitarian organizations from participating in any meaningful process of reconstruction or the delivery of aid. A framework that insists “no one will be forced to leave Gaza”—as if forced removal were ever legitimate—while simultaneously conditioning access to aid, resources, and even limited political participation on compliance with what Trump and his confidants dictate, is not a framework in which any meaningful shred of freedom or dignity can exist.
In essence, Trump now supposedly wields full legislative, executive, and judicial control over the future of Gaza. He alone, along with his board of resort profiteers—who would hastily clear away the rubble burying the bodies of erased bloodlines and the remnants of mosques, churches, hospitals, and schools—will have complete authority over how surviving Palestinians live, how they are governed, and who may participate in decision-making. Only at the very bottom of the BoP’s tyrannical hierarchy sits a so-called “technocratic committee,” nominally including members of the Palestinian Authority. Its role appears purely advisory, permitted to exist only insofar as it appeases Trump and aligns with his agenda. There is little indication that it will serve, or even slightly represent, the people it claims to speak for.
The development is ultimately so jarring, so rooted in supremacist ideologies, and so flagrantly opposed to basic principles of sovereignty and human rights that it has few historical parallels. The closest comparison seems to be the gruesome reign of Belgian King Leopold II.
The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity.
Those who participate in this process, including figures such as World Bank President Ajay Banga, lend legitimacy to a project that advances a perverse vision and a chapter of history that is not inevitable. Collaboration in the name of “reconstruction and development of Gaza” for a project so morally and legally corrupt is not a pragmatic compromise—it is active participation in a plan that has no place in the world. The human cost of this complicity is impossible to ignore.
The BoP plan also offers no conception of justice, reparations, or accountability for Israeli terror. Its version of “peace” is imposed through state violence to silence, control, and force Palestinians into submission. It is a project that raises skyscrapers for Western elites atop mass graves, without including, or even acknowledging, the Palestinians its architects have killed and displaced. It relies too on the pathetic inaction of the overwhelming majority of UN member states.
Much remains unknown about what is immediately required to take a single step toward “peace” in the region: if and when Palestinians may finally find reprieve from Israeli bombardment; whether the Rafah crossing will actually open; what will become of finding and returning the bodies of loved ones buried under the rubble; whether human rights organizations or journalists will even be permitted to document the reality–and work safely–on the ground; if displaced Palestinians will ever be allowed to return to Gaza; and crucially, whether other states will intervene. What is clear, however, is the sheer evil of this project.
Following Kushner’s presentation, many have rightfully said that if this BoP monstrosity were fictional, it would be so dark it would border on being unbelievable. And yet it is profoundly real: a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.
World leaders have long entrenched impunity and rewarded the most atrocious US-Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially over the past two and a half years. Yet the board’s ambitions—laid out in a charter that mirrors the UN and spans what Trump calls “the whole region of the world”—reveal a danger that stretches far beyond Palestine. The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity. And still—precisely because of the chaos, confusion, and sheer audacity of their plans—this dystopian vision for “New Gaza” is not inevitable. Those with political and economic power must firmly reject and actively work to rein in this Orwellian BoP. If any entity requires immediate disarmament and deradicalization, it is Trump and his so-called Executive Board.
The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets.
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Published date: 6 February 2026 08:53 GMT | Last update:51 mins 11 secs ago
Clear away the fog of conspiracy theories, and both are the product of an imperialist framework built on a consistent process of dehumanisation
The US Capitol building is pictured in March 2022 (Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP)
The release of the latest Epstein files has upended social media, amid a scramble to verify the morality of the names that are on and off the list.
This obsession with “who is in the files” effectively exonerates US institutions, imposing a veil of individual deviance. By framing the Epstein network as a secret cabal of bad actors who are politically compromised by blackmail, this discourse fails to recognise that we are not witnessing an anomaly of power, but rather a manifestation of its most basic structural reality.
As a result, the dominant narrative across the political divide suggests that Washington’s unwavering support for Israel, and its direct complicity in the Gaza genocide, are the result of politicians being coerced by external intelligence assets.
This framework is analytically deficient, operating on the flawed assumption that the American political class is somehow guided by a liberal moral compass; that its support for mass slaughter is a departure from its otherwise benevolent values.
In reality, western colonial and capitalist elites don’t need to be extorted to justify their participation in the destruction of Palestinian life. The American-Zionist alliance is rooted in material and ideological imperatives, with Israel functioning as a key outpost for American hegemony and a strategic military-industrial laboratory in the region.
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From its inception in 1492, American empire has been defined by the systematic displacement, enslavement and extermination of indigenous populations in favour of the expansion of European capital.
The genocide in Gaza is the contemporary expression of this historical heritage. Suggesting that US support for the colonisation of Palestine is a product of political blackmail, ignores centuries of American atrocities around the world. The US commitment to the Zionist settler-colonial project remains constant regardless of who holds office, because the strategic interests of empire demand it.
‘Human animals’
This imperialist framework relies on a consistent process of dehumanisation – one that facilitates both state-sponsored genocide and sex trafficking. In both cases, the human being is systematically stripped of political and moral agency, and reduced to a mere object or commodity.
In Gaza, the dehumanisation of Palestinians is a prerequisite for genocide. When an entire population is characterised as a “demographic threat” or “human animals”, their elimination is no longer framed as a crime, but as a logistical necessity for the “security” of the settler-colonial state.
In the case of the Epstein trafficking ring, victims were reduced to expendable objects who could be traded and exploited for the interests and pleasures of an elite class.
It isn’t accidental that members of the same political and economic class facilitating the ethnic cleansing of two million people in Gaza appear on a list of potential sexual predators. This isn’t about a secret society that hijacked the state; it’s about a class of people whose ideological and materialist worldview is predicated on the absolute exploitation of others.
American empire is not being blackmailed into supporting genocide. It is performing its historical function
For imperialist powers, the body – whether of a Palestinian child in a besieged enclave, or of someone being trafficked on a private island – is simply an object for the sustainability of political hegemony and the pursuit of sexual predation.
The moral degeneracy shown in the Epstein files is the domestic extension of the depravity exported by these same elites to the Global South. Their private sexual predatory crimes reflect the same tenets of empire as their public violent political crimes.
Indeed, their sexual criminality is entirely consistent with their supremacist worldview. If the elite class is comfortable with signing off on the slaughter of children for geopolitical gains, their involvement in sexual trafficking shouldn’t be a surprise.
We must also reject the intellectual laziness that seeks to frame this imperialist and capitalist depravity through the lens of conspiracy theories. Such theories often rely on western antisemitic tropes to explain corruption and evil, effectively protecting western power structures by conflating Judaism with Zionism.
This conflation serves western decision-makers by creating a buffer class, which is blamed for the consequences of imperialist projects around the world. Within the structures of empire, public servants are agents of imperialism regardless of their religious or ethnic identities. Their primary allegiance and objective is preserving the global capitalist order.
False narrative
By reducing the Zionist project or the Epstein ring to the work of a “Jewish cabal”, the dominant discourse serves to exonerate broader western colonial structures and elites, essentially letting imperialist powers off the hook for a project they have historically championed.
This narrative wrongly suggests that the US-Israel relationship is a hijacking of the American agenda, rather than a calculated and strategic partnership between two settler-colonial powers. To frame the liberation struggle as a fight against a religious conspiracy is to naively ignore the material conditions of ethnic cleansing, land theft and resource control.
This distraction is furthered by the algorithmic economy of social media, which rewards engagement farming by prioritising sensationalist fabrications over structural analysis and accurate information.
Attempts to “collect” likes by sharing ridiculous theories undermines the political legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, amid a surge in viral tweets that shamelessly claim to uncover evidence of ancient religious rituals, based on nothing more than obvious digital errors.
From Epstein to Gaza: The depravity of the western elite is now fully exposed
As the conversation shifts towards such fabricated narratives, the architects of the Gaza genocide are portrayed as being driven by ancient myths, rather than by the modern materialist and high-tech military logic of resource exploitation and geopolitical hegemony. Even when ritualistic language is used by the perpetrators, the bombs dropped on Gaza remain tools of a clear settler-colonial project.
The conspiracy framework obstructs a proper understanding of the international order; namely, how elites and powerful institutions make decisions in service of western imperialism.
Conspiracy theories suggest that colonial powers are so clandestine and all-powerful that we must decode their secrets from leaked documents. Yet the actual plots of imperialist powers are rarely secret: they are published in the white papers of think-tanks, discussed by world leaders, and codified in American and international institutions.
The millions of victims over centuries of European and American colonialism highlight the true nature of these imperialist and capitalist projects. The truth is operating in broad daylight: American empire is not being blackmailed into supporting genocide. It is performing its historical function.
The moral degeneracy in the Epstein files isn’t an aberration. It is a true reflection of a colonial and capitalist class that feels invincible in its capacity to exploit the whole world. The Gaza genocide and the Epstein trafficking ring aren’t mysteries to be decoded; they are the logical outcome of a materialist order that has viewed human beings as a disposable commodity since 1492.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Raja Abdulhaq is a Palestinian political organiser and researcher. Raja is a co-founder of Quds News Network and a former Executive Director of Islamic Leadership Council of New York. Raja has a masters degree in Political Science from Brooklyn College.
Former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon has compared what he described as Jewish supremacy in Israel to Nazi ideology.
Ya’alon – who, as chief of staff in 2002, said Palestinians posed a “cancer-like” threat – criticised rising settler violence in a post on X over the weekend.
The post was prompted by an attack last week by what he called “Jewish pogromists” against Palestinians near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, in which settlers stole Palestinian-owned sheep and set property on fire.
He said “Jewish terrorists” blocked ambulances from reaching the area, delaying medical care for three Palestinians wounded in the attack, who were later taken to hospital.
Ya’alon added that despite the Israeli military telling him the incident was being handled, no action had been taken.
“No Jewish terrorist has been arrested (as in many other cases), because Israel’s police are controlled by a convicted criminal, a racist and fascist Kahanist,” he said, referring to Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security.
He also alleged that the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, is controlled by a representative of “Jewish supremacy”, referring to David Zini, the newly appointed head of the agency.
‘The ideology of “Jewish supremacy”, which has become dominant in the Israeli government, resembles Nazi racial theory’
– Moshe Ya’alon, former Israeli defence minister
Zini, a former major general in the Israeli army and a religious Zionist, has previously described Palestinians as a “divine existential threat” and said that “our enemies are the enemies of the Holy One”.
Ya’alon further criticised the defence minister for preventing the use of administrative detention against “Jewish terrorists”, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who also holds a post in the defence ministry – for “encouraging illegal outposts and equipping them with off-road vehicles in order to make Palestinians’ lives unbearable, to the point of dispossessing them of their land and settling it with Jews”.
Under international law, all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.
“The ideology of ‘Jewish supremacy’, which has become dominant in the Israeli government, resembles Nazi racial theory,” Ya’alon said.
He warned that should the next Israeli government not reverse course, the ideology of Jewish supremacy would “bring destruction upon our state”.
“The ‘Jewish supremacy’ government – the government of lies and betrayal, the government of messianists, draft dodgers and the corrupt – must be replaced before ruin comes.”
‘Palestinians must be fought to bitter end’
Ya’alon has had a decades-long career in the Israeli military. He took part in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the violent suppression of the first and second Palestinian intifadas, and the 2014 war on Gaza.
He served as the army’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 and as defence minister from 2013 to 2016.
Ethnic cleansing in Gaza: Why did a former Israeli army chief speak out?
In 2002, Ya’alon said: “The Palestinian threat harbours cancer-like attributes that have to be severed and fought to the bitter end.”
In 2015, he barred Breaking the Silence – an NGO of former Israeli soldiers who document army abuses – from engaging in activities with the military.
In recent years, Ya’alon has adopted a more critical tone towards the current government, accusing it of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza in 2024.
“The path we are being dragged down is occupation, annexation and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip – population transfer, call it what you want, and Jewish settlements,” he said in an interview with the Israeli channel Democrat TV.
Israeli forces have killed over 71,800 Palestinians since October 2023 and destroyed nearly 90 percent of the territory’s infrastructure.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops and settlers during the same period, including 217 minors.
Trump and Kushner’s plans for Gaza are bound to fail. Here is why.
US President Donald Trump takes part in a charter announcement for his Board of Peace initiative on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 22, 2026 [Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]
Professor in public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University,.
Published On 25 Jan 202625 Jan 2026
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By any measure, Gaza’s devastation demands urgent and serious reconstruction. Homes, hospitals, schools, farms, cultural heritage, and basic infrastructure lie in ruins. Entire neighbourhoods have been erased. The humanitarian need is undeniable. But urgency should never become an excuse for illusion, spectacle, or political shortcuts.
The contrast between rhetoric and reality could not be sharper. While United States President Donald Trump and a group of world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, to sign the charter of the so-called Board of Peace and unveil glossy reconstruction plans, the killing in Gaza continued.
Since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, no fewer than 480 Palestinians have been killed. Four of them were killed on the very day the charter was signed by 19 ministers and state representatives, many of whom were less interested in the issue of Gaza and much more in being seen alongside Trump.
Against that backdrop, the board’s carefully staged optimism feels like performance rather than transformation. It resembles a sandpit where those signing up get to build sandcastles with Trump that will wash away with the first real wave.
The proposals may look impressive and sound hopeful, but structurally, they are hollow. They sidestep the real drivers of the conflict, marginalise Palestinian agency, privilege Israeli military priorities over civilian recovery, and align uncomfortably with longstanding efforts to maintain the occupation, displace Palestinians, and deny the right of return for the population uprooted in 1948 and 1967.
Gaza is not a real estate prospectus
The glossy vision of presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner treats Gaza not as a traumatised society emerging from catastrophic violence, but as a blank investment canvas for luxury housing, commercial zones, data hubs, beachfront promenades, and aspirational gross domestic product (GDP) targets.
It reads less like a recovery plan and more like a real-estate prospectus. Development language replaces political reality. Sleek presentations replace rights. Markets replace justice.
But Gaza is not a failed start-up looking for venture capital. It is home to more than two million Palestinians who have endured siege, displacement, repeated wars, and chronic insecurity for decades. Reconstruction cannot succeed if it is detached from their lived experiences or if it treats Gaza primarily as an economic asset open to speculative investment, including by extreme Zionists, rather than as a human community struggling to preserve its identity and social fabric.
For many families, even modest homes in Gaza’s formal refugee camps represented a fragile bridge worth holding on to as a step towards an eventual return to places from which they were forced to flee, in what is today known as Israel.
These homes were valued not for their comfort or market worth, but for the social networks they sustained and their symbolic links to continuity, memory, and political claims. Palestinians are therefore unlikely to be swayed by offers of glitzy towers, luxurious villas, or promises of a “market economy” under siege. Their experience over the past decades has taught them that no level of material improvement can substitute for deeper aspirations tied to dignity, rootedness, and the right of return.
A future designed without Palestinians
A glaring flaw of Trump’s plan is the systematic exclusion of Palestinians themselves from shaping the vision of their future. These plans are unveiled in elite conference halls, not debated with the people whose neighbourhoods have been flattened.
Without Palestinian ownership, legitimacy collapses. Experience from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has shown repeatedly that reconstruction imposed from the outside — however well branded — reproduces the very power imbalances that fuel instability in the first place.
Equally troubling is the plan’s deliberate avoidance of addressing the root causes of Gaza’s suffering: occupation, blockade, and military control. You cannot rebuild sustainably while continuing to preserve and fund the machinery that repeatedly destroys what is built.
No amount of concrete, branding, or foreign investment can substitute for political resolution. A territory that remains militarily besieged, economically sealed, and politically subjugated will never achieve durable recovery.
Prosperity cannot flourish inside a cage. The European Union learned this lesson the hard way through multiple reconstruction cycles it funded in Gaza, which may help explain why none of its members rushed to join the board, despite being able to afford the permanent membership fee and despite the political incentives of cultivating a more cordial relationship with Trump in light of the war in Ukraine and his threats on Greenland.
Aiding Israel’s military control through spatial redesign
There is also a serious risk that the proposed physical design of Gaza would entrench Israeli military strategy rather than restore Palestinian life. The plans envision buffer zones, segmented districts, and so-called “green spaces and corridors” that would break up the territory internally.
This kind of spatial engineering would facilitate surveillance, control, and rapid military access. Urban planning would become security architecture. Civilian geography would turn into militarised space. What is sold as modernisation would constitute a sophisticated system of containment, just like the illegal settlement networks and road systems in the occupied West Bank.
The emphasis on reclaiming land from the sea using rubble may repeat the problems of Beirut’s reconstruction after the civil war, where newly reclaimed areas attracted disproportionate investment because they were free of unresolved ownership claims, ultimately allowing elites to appropriate the city’s waterfront and pull it away from public use.
The demographic implications of the plan are equally profound. Shifting Gaza’s population centre southward — closer to Egypt and further from Israel’s settlements — would quietly alter the political and social centre of gravity of Palestinian life.
It may ease Israeli security anxieties, but it would do so at the expense of Palestinian continuity, identity, and territorial coherence. Population engineering under the banner of reconstruction raises serious ethical concerns and risks externalising Gaza’s long-term humanitarian burden onto neighbouring states. This may also help explain Egypt’s absence from the signing ceremony and its decision to limit participation to its intelligence leadership.
No amount of political theatre can replace freedom
The Board of Peace itself also deserves careful scrutiny. Its branding suggests neutrality and collective stewardship, yet its political framing remains highly personalised around Trump, with little clarity about how it is meant to operate in practice.
This is not the kind of multilateral peacebuilding mechanism envisaged by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 of November 2025; it is political theatre. Peace mechanisms anchored in personalities rather than institutions and international law rarely survive political change.
At the heart of all this lies a familiar but dangerous assumption: that economic growth can substitute for political rights. History teaches the opposite. People do not resist simply because they are poor; they resist because they lack dignity, security, freedom of expression, and self-determination. No master plan can bypass these realities. No skyline can compensate for political exclusion.
This does not mean Gaza must wait for the perfect peace before rebuilding. Recovery must proceed urgently. But rebuilding must empower Palestinians rather than redesign their constraints. It must dismantle systems of control, not embed them into concrete and zoning maps. It must confront the political roots of destruction rather than cosmetically repackage its aftermath.
Until those foundations exist, the Board of Peace and Kushner’s vision risk becoming exactly what they resemble — a form of sandcastle diplomacy: impressive to the global public, comforting to elites, and destined to wash away when the first serious wave of political reality arrives.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Sultan BarakatProfessor in public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University,Sultan Barakat is professor in public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, honourary professor at the University of York, and member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute ICMD Expert Reference Group.
Refusal to join will be an act of national self-respect. The UN-based international order, however flawed, should be repaired through law and cooperation, not replaced by a gilded caricature.
The so-called “Board of Peace” being created by President Donald Trump is profoundly degrading to the pursuit of peace and to any nation that would lend it legitimacy. This is a trojan horse to dismantle the United Nations. It should be refused outright by every nation invited to join.
In its Charter, the Board of Peace (BoP) claims to be an “international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” If this sounds familiar, it should, because this is the mandate of the United Nations. Created in the aftermath of World War II, the UN has as its central mission the maintenance of international peace and security.
It is no secret that Trump holds open contempt for international law and the United Nations. He said so himself during his September 2025 speech at the General Assembly, and has recently withdrawn from 31 UN entities. Following a long tradition of US foreign policy, he has consistently violated international law, including the bombing of seven countries in the past year, none of which were authorized by the Security Council and none of which was undertaken in lawful self-defense under the Charter (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Venezuela). He is now claiming Greenland, with brazen and open hostility towards the US allies in Europe.
So, what about this Board of Peace?
It is, to put it simply, a pledge of allegiance to Trump, who seeks the role of world chairman and the world’s ultimate arbiter. The BoP will have as its Executive Board none other than Trump’s political donors, family members, and courtiers. The leaders of nations that sign up will get to rub shoulders with, and take orders from, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Tony Blair. Hedge Fund owner and Republican Party mega-donor Marc Rowan also gets to play. More to the point, any decisions taken by the BoP will be subject to Trump’s approval.
If the charade of representatives isn’t enough, nations will have to pay $1 billion for a “permanent seat” on the Board. Any nation that participates should know what it is “buying.” It is certainly not buying peace or a solution for the Palestinian people (as the money supposedly goes to Gaza’s reconstruction). It is buying ostensible access to Trump for as long as it serves his interests. It is buying an illusion of momentary influence in a system where Trump’s rules are enforced by personal whim.
The proposal is absurd not least because it purports to “solve” a problem that already has an 80-year-old global solution. The United Nations exists precisely to prevent the personalization of war and peace. It was designed after the wreckage of two world wars to global base peace on collective rules and international law. The UN’s authority, rightly, derives from the UN Charter ratified by 193 member states (including the US, as ratified by the US Senate in July 1945) and grounded in international law. If the US doesn’t want to abide by the Charter, the UN General Assembly should suspend the US credentials, as it once did with ApartheidSouth Africa.
Trump’s “Board of Peace” is a blatant repudiation of the United Nations. Trump has made that explicit, recently declaring that the Board of Peace “might” indeed replace the United Nations. This statement alone should end the conversation for any serious national leader. Participation after such a declaration is a conscious decision to subordinate one’s country to Trump’s personalized global authority. It is to accept, in advance, that peace is no longer governed by the UN Charter, but by Trump.
Still, some nations, desperate to get on the right side of the US, may take the bait. They should remember the wise words of President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address “ those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
The record shows that loyalty to Trump is never enough to salve his ego. Just look at the long parade of Trump’s former allies, advisers, and appointees who were humiliated, discarded, and attacked by him the moment they ceased to be useful to him.
For any nation, participation on the Board of Peace would be strategically foolish. Joining this body will create long-lasting reputational damage. Long after Trump himself is no longer President, a past association with this travesty will be a mark of poor judgment. It will remain as sad evidence that, at a critical moment, a national political system mistook a vanity project for statesmanship, squandering $1 billion of funds in the process.
Ultimately, refusal to join the “Board of Peace” will be an act of national self-respect. Peace is a global public good. The UN-based international order, however flawed, should be repaired through law and cooperation, not replaced by a gilded caricature. Any nation that values international law, and the respect for the United Nations, should decline immediately to be associated with this travesty of international law.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
There is no ceasefire, no aid, no Hamas disarmament, IDF withdrawal or stabilization force. Just a lot of talk about Trump-run panels with little buy-in.
The Trump administration’s announcements about the Gaza Strip would lead one to believe that implementation of President Trump’s 20-point peace plan, later largely incorporated into a United Nations Security Council resolution, is progressing quite smoothly.
As such, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff announced this month on social media the “launch of Phase Two” of the plan, “moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction.” But examination of even just a couple of Witkoff’s assertions in his announcement shows that “smooth” or even “implementation” are bitter overstatements.
Witkoff said that Phase One has “maintained the ceasefire.” No, it has not. Israel has continued daily attacks against the Gaza Strip ever since the ceasefire was supposed to go into effect last October. As usual with unobserved ceasefires, both sides accuse the other of violations. The casualty count, however, reveals which side lethal violations are coming from. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli attacks since the start of the supposed ceasefire have killed at least 451 Palestinians and injured 1,251. As was true of Israeli attacks during the previous three years, many of the victims have been civilians. On the other side, the Israeli military states that three of its soldiers were killed in combat during the first few days of the ceasefire in October 2025.
Witkoff also said that “Phase One delivered historic humanitarian aid” to Gaza. What he did not say is that continued Israeli rejections of requests to deliver aid to the Strip have made the flow of aid much less than what was agreed to and far less than what is needed. As of mid-January, 24,611 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the ceasefire agreement—fewer than half of the 57,000 that Israel should have allowed in under the agreed allocation.
Phase Two thus is being announced without anything close to full implementation of Phase One.
The administration has announced some, though not all, members of the “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump, that is supposed to function as an international board of directors overseeing implementation of the rest of the plan. Recruitment of a full slate of members evidently has been difficult. Hesitation by many governments to participate is perhaps understandable, given the uncertainties about implementation so far and the nature of the overall project as one that Trump has directed in coordination with Israel.
Recruitment will not be made any easier by the administration requiring a $1 billion cash contribution from any government wanting extended membership on the board.
The personnel announcements made so far are sufficient to displease each side in this conflict. The Board of Peace includes, among others, Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former British prime minister Tony Blair. Arab governments and many others in the Muslim world distrust Blair because of his role in the Iraq War and his perceived pro-Israel bias when he was an international envoy addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel has been quick to object to the membership of a “Gaza Executive Board,” which the White House also announced and will have a vaguely defined relationship with the other bodies involved in Gaza. This board will include — besides Blair, Kushner, Witkoff, and others — the Turkish foreign minister and a senior Qatari official. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the Gaza Executive Board as constituted is “at odds with Israeli policy.” The statement evidently reflects Israel’s sour relations with Türkiye and Qatar, largely because of the relations of those two governments with Hamas.
The Israeli objections will provide Netanyahu’s government with an additional rationale for overturning the whole diplomatic process whenever it chooses to do so. It is not just the government, but also the Israeli opposition that is making an issue of the Executive Board membership. Opposition leader Yair Lapid called the inclusion of Türkiye a “grave diplomatic failure.” Itamar Ben Gvir, the extreme right-winger who is minister of national security, called for the Israeli military “to return to war with tremendous force in the Strip.”
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Meanwhile, some apparent organizational progress has taken place in Cairo, with the first meeting of the National Committee for the Administration of the Gaza Strip (NCAG), a group of 15 Palestinian technocrats who are supposed to function as an interim administration under the supervision of the Board of Peace. The committee met with Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, who has been named “director-general” of the Board of Peace. Members of the NCAG have not been announced apart from the committee’s head, a civil engineer and former deputy minister of transportation in the Palestinian Authority named Ali Shaath.
In his announcement about Phase Two, Witkoff said nothing about the prospective International Stabilization Force (ISF), which is supposed to play a major security role during the interim administration and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Recruiting participants in the ISF has been even more difficult than recruiting members of the Board of Peace. Governments do not want their troops to get involved in an active combat situation, as the Israeli attacks continue. They especially do not want to be involved in a mission of disarming Hamas, an objective that Israel was unable to achieve through three years of unrestricted warfare.
Amid frequent mention by Witkoff and others about Hamas needing to live up to its obligations, it is important to remember that Hamas never signed up to Trump’s 20-point plan. What Hamas has agreed to, going back to a framework agreement in 2024, has been a complete ceasefire, release of all hostages in exchange for release of an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners, and return of remains of the deceased, amid an ending of the siege of the Gaza Strip and the beginning of internationally supervised reconstruction of the territory.
Hamas also has made clear it is willing to cede governance of the Gaza Strip to independent Palestinian technocrats. In this regard, Hamas publicly welcomed as an “important positive development” the establishment and initial meeting of NCAG. Hamas also accepts in principle the presence in Gaza of a neutral international peacekeeping force.
As for disarmament, the conditions matter. Hamas has offered to bury its weapons as part of the long-term truce or hudna that it has long offered Israel. But it would completely surrender its weapons only to a genuine Palestinian government.
What Hamas will not do is unilateral disarmament as Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territory and to kill Palestinian citizens. It is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect that, especially in view of the slaughter in Gaza of the past three years.
The technocrats on NCAG have an enormous task, and they face it with major handicaps. Perhaps symbolic of the handicaps is how Shaath, to get to the Cairo meeting from where he has been living in the West Bank, had to travel through Jordan and was detained by Israeli authorities for six hours at the Allenby crossing. A Palestinian official commented that this incident demonstrates an Israel intention to sabotage the committee’s work.
An Arab diplomat observed that a committee of 15 members cannot administer the Gaza Strip without large numbers of civil servants. But Israel is blocking the participation of not only anyone on Hamas’s payroll but also anyone on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll.
In his initial public comments after being named chairman of NCAG, Shaath talked about the huge task of clearing the rubble, which could take three years while overall reconstruction would take about seven years. The situation could become even worse. Israel is continuing to create still more rubble by methodically demolishing buildings in the half of the Gaza Strip that it still occupies.
Neither Trump’s plan nor any other peace plan will be able to bring anything close to peace, security, and prosperity to Gaza as long as Israel is the controlling power on the ground and is determined to oppose anything that looks like Palestinian self-governance.
Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.
The eight hunger strikers: From top left to right; Qesser Zuhrah, Amu Gib, Heba Muraisi, Jon Cink (bottom left to right) Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Lewie Chiaramello, Umer Khalid [Photo: Prisoners for Palestine]
Four young pro-Palestinian political prisoners remain in acute danger of starving to death in jail at the hands of Britain’s Labour government as they continue a near two-month hunger strike.
Kamran Ahmed, Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha and Lewie Chiaramello, remain on hunger strike after three others—Amu Gib (49 days), Qesser Zuhrah (48 days) and Jon Cink (38 days)—paused theirs on December 23. Umer Khalid, the other of the eight original hunger strikers ended his action after 13 days.
On Christmas Day, Heba Muraisi completed 53 days without food, Teuta Hoxha 47 days, Kamran Ahmed 46 and Chiaramello 32. Death usually occurs between 60 to 70 days without food but could come sooner depending on the health of the individual and their circumstances.
On Friday, a group of United Nations experts including Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, intervened to denounce Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s treatment of the protesters. Their statement declared, “These reports raise serious questions about compliance with international human rights law and standards, including obligations to protect life and prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
They added, “Preventable deaths in custody are never acceptable. The state bears full responsibility for the lives and wellbeing of those it detains… Urgent action is required now.”
The Labour government is spearheading a global campaign of state repression against opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
None of the protesters—who are on remand—has been found guilty of anything. They have all suffered ill treatment and unjustified blocks on communication with the outside world, due to the court’s arbitrary and unjust claim that charges against individuals arrested for Palestine Action (PA) protests have a “terrorist connection.”
In breach of the standard pre-trial custody limit of six months, all the hunger strikers have been held on remand for over a year—with Qesser Zuhrah held for 16 months. They are demanding immediate bail, the right to a fair trial, an end to censorship of their communications, the de-proscription of Palestine Action and the closing of all UK sites run by Israel’s biggest weapons manufacturer Elbit.
Justice Minister David Lammy has refused all pleas by the group’s lawyers and family representative to even meet them. The hunger strikers are on remand ahead of trials as part of the Filton 24 case for alleged involvement in an August 2024 Palestine Action protest of Elbit—in Filton, near Bristol. Some are also accused of involvement in a June 2025 protest at the Brize Norton Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire, where two military supply planes were daubed with red paint.
Over the past 26 months the criminalisation of opposition to the Gaza genocide has escalated in Britain as the major imperialist powers have allowed Israel a free hand to commit some of the worst war crimes of this century.
Over 2,700 people have been arrested in just four months under the Terrorism Act 2000 for peacefully protesting the banning of Palestine Action. Anti-genocide protests have been subjected to strict conditions, and denounced as “hate marches.”
Such measures are replicated in country after country, including campus raids with students being arrested in the United States and elsewhere.
A study issued in October by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)—focussing on the UK, the US, France and Germany—noted that protests in these countries were “powerful indicators of a growing global awareness of ongoing genocide and systematic violations of international law, and of the critical need for citizen action where governments remain complicit or inert.”
The FIDH added, “Yet, as this report demonstrates, such expressions of solidarity are being met with widespread repression, not only under authoritarian regimes, but also in liberal democracies that have long claimed to uphold human rights.” It noted that all four countries had “weaponised” counter-terrorism legislation to crack down on legitimate protest against Israel’s onslaught in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The brutal treatment by Britain’s Labour government of the hunger strikers is a step change in this lurch to authoritarianism and dictatorship. The government made clear from the outset that it would not consider any of the legitimate democratic demands of the political prisoners. Instead, Starmer, Lammy and Health Secretary Wes Streeting all refused to intervene to prevent the deaths of the hunger strikers.
More than two weeks ago (December 10), lawyers for several of the hunger strikers put the matter sharply in a letter to Lammy: “should this situation be allowed to continue without resolution, there is the real and increasingly likely potential that young British citizens will die in prison, having never even been convicted of an offence.”
But not even the repeated hospitalisation of the hunger strikers and the December 22 threat of High Court legal action by lawyers challenging Lammy’s refusal to meet their representatives has forced a retreat from Downing Street.
Instead, ministers and MPs deserted Westminster for Parliament’s Christmas recess on December 18, not to return until January 5. This is under conditions in which one of the remaining hunger strikers, Kamran Ahmed is—as reported by his sister—is losing up to half a kilogram a day.
Hunger striker Qesser said they are up against a “government who think it’s appropriate to ‘break for Christmas’ while 8 of its citizens starve in their cells, while Gaza starves… all because of the British governments persistent and nauseating commitment to the most unjust Zionist project.”
Starmer’s barbaric actions mirror those of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, which allowed the starving to death of 10 Irish Republicans—most famously Bobby Sands—during the 1981 hunger strike at Long Kesh prison. The hunger strike was to protest the British government’s revocation of Special Category Status for political prisoners of war. Sands was starved to death even as he was elected to the House of Commons, along with two other Republican prisoners (one hunger striker) to the Dáil Éireann.
There is barely any opposition to Labour’s historic crime within the Labour Party or parliament more generally. Just 62 MPs, less than a tenth of the 650 in Parliament, have signed an Early Day Motion calling on Lammy “to intervene urgently to ensure their [hunger strikers] treatment is humane and their human rights are upheld.” Among these just 31 (7 percent) are numbered among Labour’s 404 MPs.
Workers and youth in Britain and internationally must mobilise in opposition to the most concerted attack on democratic rights in history. The basis for this political fightback was explained in an analysis by Socialist Equality Party (UK) National Chairman Chris Marsden this July. The transformation of a party which arose out of the fight for workers’ democratic rights to organise and strike against their employers into the spearhead of the worst attack on democratic rights in British history
cannot be attributed to a few bad leaders. Rather Starmer, a former human rights lawyer turned right-wing zealot, and his government are the end product of a fundamental shift within the very foundations of world capitalism…
Capitalism is being driven into an existential crisis by its inherent contradictions, between an interconnected system of production and the division of the world into antagonistic nation states based on upholding private ownership of the means of production. To maintain its rule and immense privileges, the bourgeoisie in every imperialist country must wage trade and military war abroad and class war at home to ensure national competitiveness against their rivals.
This agenda is incompatible with the preservation of democratic rights. They are being torn up, spearheaded by the attacks on anti-genocide protests and on migrants.
Starmer’s Labour government is proof that Trump’s drive towards dictatorship in the United States is only the most advanced expression of a forced march to far-right authoritarianism under way internationally.
Workers and young people in Britain and internationally must demand the immediate release of the hunger strikers and all those held without charge for peaceful protest and the withdrawal of the proscription on Palestine Action.
Bitter experience the world over demonstrates that protests limited to placing pressure on imperialist governments complicit in all the crimes of the fascistic Netanyahu regime are not enough. A new anti-war movement must be built on socialist, internationalist foundations and based on the working class—the great revolutionary force in society—acting independently of every faction of the ruling elite.
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