Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awards the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, on 7 May 2026 [sanchezcastejon/X]
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awarded on Thursday the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, recognizing her work documenting violations of international law in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
Sanchez received Francesca Albanese in Madrid, where they discussed the situation in Palestine, the importance of international law and “the need for an immediate end to the violence and the building of a lasting peace based on dignity and humanity,” according to a government statement.
“Public responsibility also implies the moral obligation of not looking away,” Sanchez wrote on social media, praising Albanese as “a voice that upholds the conscience of the world.”
The Order of Civil Merit is one of Spain’s highest civilian honors and is awarded to Spanish and foreign citizens for extraordinary services benefiting the state or society.
Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has served since 2022 as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She has become one of the most prominent international voices criticizing Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
On Tuesday, Sanchez also sent a letter to the European Commission calling for the activation of the EU’s Blocking Statute to counter US sanctions imposed on Albanese as well as judges and prosecutors from the International Criminal Court.
“It’s like an international mafia — they want to silence everyone who demands an end to genocide, an end to the crimes,” Albanese told Spanish broadcaster RTVE, referring to the sanctions against her.
Also on Thursday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares criticized Israel’s continued detention of Spanish-Palestinian activist Saif Abukeshek, calling it “inadmissible and unacceptable.”
Jose Manuel Albares told the Spanish parliament that he summoned Israel’s top envoy in Spain on Wednesday to discuss the situation and had also spoken with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.
Albares said Abukeshek was “illegally” detained in international waters where Israel had “no jurisdiction” while traveling with a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla.
“Spain reacted without hesitation, with complete clarity and firmness, in response to violations of international law,” Albares said.
West Bank commander boasts about high death toll and defends looser rules of engagement, including firing at unarmed Palestinians
An Israeli soldier stands on guard during an army raid at a cafe in the Rafidia neighbourhood of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on 23 April 2026 (Nasser Ishtayeh / SOPA Images via Reuters)
Published date: 4 May 2026 14:13 BST | Last update:2 days 20 hours ago
Israel’s top commander in the occupied West Bank has said the army is killing Palestinians at levels “not seen since 1967”, according to Haaretz.
Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army’s Central Command, made the remarks in a closed forum, where he also defended looser rules of engagement allowing troops to fire at unarmed Palestinians.
He acknowledged a discriminatory approach whereby Jewish Israeli stone-throwers are not targeted while Palestinians carrying out similar acts are fired at.
“In three years, we have killed 1,500 terrorists,” he said, referring to Palestinians.
“So how is there no intifada? Why aren’t they taking to the streets? Why is the Palestinian public indifferent? Why are there no disturbances?” Bluth, a settler who has been the Israeli army commander in the West Bank since 2024, added.
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“The Arabs understand that ‘if someone rises to kill you, kill him first’ is part of the rules of the Middle East, and therefore we are killing like we have not killed since 1967.”
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), since 7 October 2023, Israel has killed 1,081 Palestinians in the West Bank and the occupied East Jerusalem, including at least 235 children.
Bluth attributed the high number of Palestinian deaths to orders he gave, which made it easier for Israeli soldiers to open fire at civilians.
He said troops are permitted to shoot, from the knee down, at Palestinians attempting to cross the West Bank separation barrier.
“Today, there are many ‘limping memorials’ in Palestinian villages of those who tried to infiltrate and got hit, so there is a price that is paid,” Bluth said, according to Haaretz.
Preferential treatment for settlers
Bluth admitted that his subordinates do not shoot Israelis who throw stones at army forces because of “sociological implications,” while they kill Palestinians who do the same.
He added that in 2025, Israeli forces killed 42 Palestinians accused of stone-throwing, which he described as terrorism.
When shown footage of settlers throwing stones at troops, he cited an incident in which two masked Israelis were shot, noting it caused a public outcry.
Bluth’s remarks come amid growing discontent about his actions among hilltop youth, the settler militias who terrorise Palestinians communities in the West Bank, who view him as yielding to left-wing and international pressure.
Ex-Mossad chief says Israeli settler violence reminds him of the Holocaust
Last week, Haaretz reported that Bluth labelled the growing numbers of settler attacks as “terror,” and criticised hilltop youth who establish outposts without coordinating it first with the army’s command.
Bluth added that the army, with the coordination of the settlers, established some 150 outposts in Area C in the West Bank in recent years, which he alleged helped prevent Palestinian “terror” and building expansion.
Last week, Knesset Member Limor Son Har-Melech, a vocal supporter of the settler militias, called Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz to immediately fire Bluth from his post over his remarks.
Meanwhile, the Israeli NGO Peace Now reported on Sunday that the Israeli government assigned some 130 million shekels to those same settler groups under the guise of curbing settler violence.
The funds were allocated towards “reducing risk situations and expanding positive responses for youth in the Judea and Samaria area,” using the Israeli name for the West Bank.
Peace Now said the funds will, in practice, be used to strengthen the settlements and “channel millions” to their regional councils.
“The government uses every excuse to justify pouring more and more millions into settlements. This is a programme to expand settlements under the guise of combating violence,” Peace Now statement said.
“The government is directing a significant portion of the funds to the same actors and activities that currently serve as the main supporters of the outposts and farms from which the violence originates,” the NGO added, calling on the government to stop the funds and the army and police to stop the violent acts.
Lawyers says two activists are being subjected to ‘psychological torture’ as their detention is extended for another week
Activist Thiago Avila, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla seized by Israel in international waters, sits at a magistrate’s court hearing in Ashkelon, Israel, 3 May 2026 (Amir Cohen/Reuters)
Published date: 5 May 2026 12:08 BST | Last update:21 hours 34 mins ago
Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.
The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.
On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.
Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.
They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.
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Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.
Global Sumud Flotilla: When states fail, humanity sets sail
Avila reported being subjected to repeated interrogations lasting up to eight hours, during which he was allegedly threatened that they would be “killed” or “imprisoned for 100 years”.
He is also being held in very low temperatures, the group said.
The two men, now in solitary confinement, have entered their sixth day of a hunger strike in protest at what legal experts have described as an unlawful seizure outside Israel’s territorial waters.
Lawyers Hadeel Abu Salih and Lubna Tuma of Adalah told the court the case was “flawed and unlawful”, arguing there is no legal basis for applying Israeli law to foreign nationals in international waters.
During Friday’s raid, Israeli forces intercepted at least 21 Gaza-bound vessels and detained 175 activists, in what organisers from the Global Sumud Flotilla described as an act of “piracy”.
The boats were seized about 600 nautical miles from Gaza’s coast, near the Greek island of Crete.
Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday describing the detention of Avila and Abu Keshek as illegal.
Published date: 4 May 2026 12:14 BST | Last update:19 hours 42 mins ago
Israel has expanded its control of the Gaza Strip to nearly 60 percent of the territory despite the ceasefire, as it prepares for a possible resumption of the war, Army Radio reported on Sunday.
Senior military officials, cited by the broadcaster, said they are pressing to restart fighting, arguing that now is the optimal moment to defeat Hamas.
Operational plans for renewed attacks have been completed, the report said, with a final decision pending approval from Israel’s political leadership.
The military has also reduced forces in southern Lebanon while redeploying brigades to Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Army Radio also reported there has been an increase in attacks lately.
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Meanwhile, Israeli forces have expanded the so-called “Yellow Line” to absorb more of Gaza, pushing the population into roughly 40 percent of the enclave while troops remain stationed across the remaining 60 percent in the south, north and east.
Gaza cannot be rebuilt until Palestinians control their own political future
The US brokered a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in October, intended to end Israel’s two-year genocide by halting attacks and allowing humanitarian aid to flow into the territory.
However, Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire, killing at least 832 Palestinians in near-daily shelling, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Overall, Israeli forces killed more than 72,000 Palestinians since October 2023. Thousands more remain missing and beneath rubble.
Under the agreement, Israel was required to lift restrictions and allow up to 600 aid trucks a day carrying food, fuel, medical supplies, shelter materials and commercial goods. However, Gaza authorities say Israeli limits have kept the average at just over 200 trucks daily.
Additionally, the Israeli military controlled nearly half of Gaza when the ceasefire began, establishing a unilateral demarcation known as the “Yellow Line”. The agreement’s later phases envisaged a gradual Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza.
However, Israeli forces have since steadly expanded the “Yellow Line” and now control 59 percent of the territory, according to Army Radio.
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Joshua Scheer
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has delivered a rare rupture in official Washington’s script: accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza—and acknowledging that the United States is not a bystander, but a participant in its outcome.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Sherman pointed directly to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing they have driven the devastation in Gaza while fueling wider instability across the Middle East. This is not the language of ambiguity or “both sides”—it is an indictment from within the establishment itself.
More damning still, Sherman underscored the uncomfortable truth at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: Washington’s actions are inseparable from its alliance with Israel. That relationship, she suggested, is no longer politically or morally sustainable without serious reassessment.
Her comments carry unusual weight. Sherman is not an outsider—she helped shape U.S. diplomacy at the highest levels. And her warning comes as global outrage grows over the scale of destruction in Gaza and the mounting civilian toll.
According to Gaza health authorities, at least 817 Palestinians have been killed and 2,296 wounded in reported Israeli violations of a ceasefire agreement since it took effect—figures that continue to climb as the violence grinds on.
International pressure is now building to force a reckoning: calls are intensifying to condition U.S. support for Israel on adherence to international law. The question is no longer whether the world is watching—it’s whether Washington will finally be forced to see what it has helped make possible.
In the full interview, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman—no outsider, but a career diplomat and reliable mouthpiece of empire—did not arrive at the word lightly. She is not a campus protester, not an antiwar dissident, not someone who has challenged the foundations of U.S. power. She is a lifelong architect and defender of it. That is precisely what makes her admission so jarring: Israel, she said, has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and the United States helped pave the road that made it possible.
Let’s be clear—this is not an endorsement of Sherman’s worldview. She has spent decades advancing the very system now producing this devastation. But when even a figure so deeply embedded in that machinery begins to name what is happening, it signals something deeper than dissent—it signals rupture.
This is the moral collapse Washington keeps trying to launder as strategy. Gaza has been demolished, civilians slaughtered, hospitals and homes reduced to rubble, and still the political class hides behind euphemism while the dead pile up faster than the truth can be spoken. Sherman’s words matter not because she stands outside power, but because she doesn’t. They expose what official Washington already knows and refuses to confront: this is not an accident, not collateral damage, not a tragic excess of war. It is the destruction of a people—enabled, armed, and excused by the United States.
When a figure like that uses the word “genocide,” it punctures the careful language Washington relies on to avoid accountability. But it also reveals the limits of insider critique: naming the crime without challenging the structure that enables it. Her words expose a truth the political class already understands—that U.S. power is deeply entangled in this devastation—yet still stops short of confronting what that means. And that is the real indictment: not just what has been done, but how fully it has been absorbed into the logic of empire itself.
More from the interview
“Genocide” from inside the system Sherman—no outsider—says Israel has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and admits the U.S. helped create the conditions for it. U.S. power ≠ strategy She warns Trump’s approach is “tactical” and impulsive, lacking any real long-term strategy—despite massive military escalation. Iran cannot be forced to surrender The idea that Iran will simply capitulate is fantasy—its nuclear knowledge, regional ties, and strategic posture cannot be bombed away. War is weakening U.S. global dominance Allies are drifting, trust is collapsing, and countries are turning toward China—accelerating a shift away from U.S. power. China and Russia are the real winners The war strengthens China economically and geopolitically, while also giving it justification for its own future military actions. Strait of Hormuz = permanent leverage Even after military strikes, Iran retains the ability to disrupt global trade—meaning the U.S. cannot fully control the situation. Negotiations are not about trust—only power Sherman bluntly states diplomacy isn’t about trust but managing competing interests between adversaries. U.S. foreign policy built this crisis She acknowledges decades of American decisions—from coups to wars—helped create today’s instability. Both parties share blame Republicans and Democrats alike failed to create stability in the Middle East, with Iraq and failed diplomacy fueling long-term chaos. Even insiders are “angrier” now Sherman admits growing anger and fear over the global cost—economic, political, and human—of current U.S. policy.
Leading U.K. media don’t mention the Israel Lobby because they’re part of it, writes Mark Curtis. But its influence over U.K. politics is likely to be greater than any other state, except perhaps the U.S.
BBC Bias Kills – London protest against Israel’s assault on Gaza, May 15, 2021. (Alisdaire Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Britain’s national media fails to recognise the influence – and even the existence – of an Israel lobby, our new media analysis shows.
Declassified researched two years of reporting by seven British media outlets and found only 16 mentions of the phrase Israel lobby without speech marks.
Nearly all those mentions are in comment articles rather than news pieces and none we found expound on what influence such an Israel lobby might have.
The phrase “Israel lobby” – used with speech marks – is slightly more common in these outlets, with 26 mentions in two years, and tends to be used to quote others in a disparaging way or to suggest such a lobby does not exist.
For example, one Guardian article refers to “the trope of the ‘Israel lobby’.” The Daily Mail reported in May 2024 of hecklers at a speech by then foreign secretary secretary David Lammy “accusing the MP of having taken ‘shady money’ from the ‘pro-Israel lobby’ on the grounds that he once lawfully accepted £30,000 from a Zionist lobbyist named Trevor Chinn.”
In fact, British businessman Trevor Chinn has funded Keir Starmer and several senior Labour ministers and was awarded the Israeli medal of honour for his “dedication” to and “love” for Israel.
Of seven media outlets analysed — BBC, Express, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Telegraph and Times — the BBC and the Express are the most extreme. No mentions of the phrase Israel lobby, used without speech marks, could be found at all in their publications.
BBC Broadcasting Building entrance at night, 2013. (Zizzu02/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The BBC is failing to mention the Israel lobby while having regular meetings with it. As Declassified recently revealed, the BBC held nine meetings with Jewish groups strongly sympathetic to Israel in the first year of the Gaza genocide.
TheGuardian was found to have made only five mentions of an Israel lobby without speech marks, three of which are in comment pieces by columnist Owen Jones.
By contrast, independent Scottish newspaper The National, which has consistently criticised U.K. policy towards Israel, has mentioned the Israel lobby twenty-three times in the two-year sample period, never in speech marks.
Israel Lobby
The Israel lobby in Britain is extensive. Declassified has revealed that a quarter of MPs have been funded by pro-Israel individuals and groups, as have one half of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet.
Neither of these findings have been reported in the mainstream media, as far as Declassified is aware.
British ministers and officials are known to hold off-the-books meetings with pro-Israel lobbyists, and under Starmer’s government, the Foreign Office has held numerous meetings with pro-Israel advocacy groups such as Board of Deputies of British Jews and the European Leadership Network (ELNET).
The U.K. government’s total proscription of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah in 2019 was the work of pro-Israel lobbyists while the lobby group, We Believe in Israel, has taken credit for the U.K. government’s proscription of Palestine Action last year.
Keir Starmer, as Labour Party leader, attending the Labour Friends of Israel vigil on Oct. 10, 2023, at Labour Party conference in Liverpool following the Hamas attacks on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. (Keir Starmer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
As long ago as 2009, a landmark Channel Four documentary, Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, which was presented by journalist Peter Oborne, revealed the close relationship between the Israel lobby and the Conservative and Labour parties, and its attempts to curb criticism of Israel in the media.
The Israel lobby’s influence over U.K. politics is likely to be greater than any other state except perhaps the U.S., and certainly far more than Russia which has received decidedly more media attention.
Friends of Israel
The British media’s failure to explicitly acknowledge an Israel lobby comes alongside nearly 300 articles in these seven outlets during the two years mentioning either Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) or Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), of which dozens of MPs are supporters.
These lobby groups are invariably mentioned in the media without any analysis of their influence or even that they are explicitly part of a lobby that advocates for goals which benefit a foreign country, such as opposing an arms embargo on Israel.
TheIndependent has mentioned the phrase “influential Labour Friends of Israel” group three times, and TheTimes once, without mentioning how it is influential.
Yet CFI has been the largest donor of free overseas trips for MPs in recent years, and both CFI and LFI refuse to provide a list of their funders. LFI says its work is funded by “the generosity of members of the Jewish community and those who share our commitment to the State of Israel.” It adds that it “does not receive any money from the Israeli government or the Israeli Embassy.”
The Times has mentioned the phrase Israel lobby, without speech marks, on only four occasions in the two years, but has mentioned Labour Friends of Israel in over 50 articles. That LFI might be a part of a broader Israel lobby has apparently not been spelled out by The Times to its readers.
Part of the Lobby
These omissions might be because the seven media outlets we analysed often function as part of the Israel lobby that they refuse to sufficiently recognise.
The most extreme is TheTelegraph, which routinely publishes articles supportive of Israel during its genocide in Gaza, illegal war on Iran and brutal attacks on Lebanon.
The paper has recently called to restore U.K. military ties to Israel, headlined with “Israel condemns ‘hateful and racist’ Greens,” and published an article by pro-Israel writer Jake Wallis Simons headlined “The case for Trump attacking Iran,” among many similar articles.
Some articles in these outlets suggest that recognition of an Israel lobby is anti-semitic. One opinion piece in TheTelegraph runs:
“Anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about how the world works. You think you live in a democracy, it runs, but actually there is this secret invisible system of Jewish power that rules the world through the banking system, the media and the Israel lobby.”
Similarly, TheGuardianreported on Labour MP Diane Abbott in May 2024, stating:
“She apologised for liking tweets about the influence of the Israel lobby, which she admitted could be interpreted as an anti-semitic trope.”
TheGuardian has been found to cave in to pro-Israel pressure, to amplify Israeli propaganda, and to be responsible for the same “systemic bias, deliberate distortion and deceptive underreporting” on Israeli crimes as the rest of the British media.
When the vice chair of LFI, Damian Egan, was forced to pull out of a school visit in January this year due to pressure from a pro-Palestinian group, both TheIndependent and TheTimes chose to focus on Egan simply being Jewish, headlining: “Jewish MP’s visit to local school cancelled after pro-Palestine campaign.”
Over 100,000 people have recently signed a petition calling for a public inquiry into pro-Israel influence on politics and democracy.
Note – our media analysis covered the period Apr. 7, 2024 to Apr. 7, 2026, using the Nexis media database and conducting website searches of the seven media outlets.
Mark Curtis is the co-director of Declassified UK and the author of five books and many articles on U.K. foreign policy.
An aggregated food security report released on 29 April warns that more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon will face acute hunger from April to August 2026 due to worsening living conditions from the US-sponsored Israeli war.
Joint findings by the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Lebanon’s Agriculture Ministry have concluded that around one in four people will fall into the “crisis” phase of food insecurity or worse.
This marks a steep increase from November to March, when 874,000 people – around 17 percent of the country’s population – were already in that category, as more than one million people were displaced by Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Israeli forces continue their attacks in south Lebanon, where residents have been warned not to return, with both sides continuing to exchange fire despite a ceasefire announced on 17 April.
The instability has compounded existing vulnerabilities in agriculture and rural livelihoods, particularly in the south and the Bekaa Valley, where some of the heaviest Israeli attacks have taken place.
WFP official Allison Oman Lawi said earlier gains had been reversed, warning that “families who were just managing to cope are now being pushed back into crisis.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis indicates that households are increasingly unable to meet basic food needs, with many reducing meal sizes, skipping meals, or turning to debt and asset sales to survive.
FAO representative Nora Ourabah Haddad said the findings confirm “continued and deepening fragility,” calling for urgent agricultural support to prevent further collapse.
The report warns that without sustained humanitarian assistance, acute food insecurity is likely to deepen further in the coming months.
Israeli forces intensified attacks across Lebanon on 27 April, expanding strikes to the Bekaa region for the first time in weeks while continuing heavy bombardment across southern towns, causing injuries and widespread destruction.
The escalation came alongside Hebrew media claims that Israeli occupation forces had begun scaling back parts of their ground presence, redeploying units while maintaining “limited operations” that include raids and the demolition of buildings under claims of Hezbollah affiliation.
Despite these reports of partial withdrawal, airstrikes and artillery fire persisted, with jets flying low over areas such as Bint Jbeil, where Lebanese resistance fighters continue to operate.
Israeli army soldiers add zip ties to the mast of an Israeli flag flying at a special area for exercises during a military drill in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on July 8, 2025.
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Syrian journalist Oudai Efnikher is deeply familiar with life under Israeli occupation. He was born in Kafer Hareb, a village in Syria’s Golan Heights, from which he and his family were expelled after Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Now he is once again facing down Israeli forces, as they “take our land, kill our crops, and abduct our fathers.”
“This is a slow occupation, but soon, we will lose what they have not yet taken,” Efnikher told Truthout.
After Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Syrian rebels in December 2024, Israeli forces wasted no time before launching a massive aerial bombardment campaign on the country, destroying almost 80 percent of the military capacity left behind by the Assad regime.
Israeli forces also entered the demilitarized buffer zone established by a UN Security Council resolution in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. They seized the territory and then established a “security buffer” beyond the last demarcation line administered by UN observer forces.
200 masked settlers descended on the West Bank on March 22, throwing Molotov cocktails and terrorizing Palestinians. By Theia Chatelle , Truthout
March 28, 2026
The area now under Israeli military control is off-limits to Syrian civilians and government forces. Farmers have been unable to tend to their land, and landowners have little hope they will ever be able to access it again
In total, Israel now occupies an additional 177 square miles of Syrian territory than it did before the fall of Assad.
“Maybe Israel will take it all. They already have a safe zone in southern Syria, so that could ultimately be the best option for Israel,” Syrian political analyst Issam Khoury told Truthout.
But what is most concerning for Efnikher is not the Israeli military’s presence in Syria, but what has become regular incursions by Israeli settlers.
On April 22, a group of roughly 40 settlers affiliated with the far right Halutzei HaBashan movement, or the Pioneers of Bashan — a reference to the name in the Torah for the fertile territory located northeast of the Sea of Galilee, which the Torah says was once ruled by the tyrant King Og before Moses defeated him — entered Syrian territory and asked the Israeli government to legalize settlement activity there.
According to Efnikher, who has been working to monitor Israeli settlement activity in Syrian territory since Assad’s fall in December 2024, this was the fifth such incursion by Israeli settlers into Syria.
According to Etkes, this is how the Israeli settlement movement functions: by “changing the facts on the ground” until what was once unthinkable becomes reality.
The settlers see themselves as fulfilling a biblical mandate. They consider this Syrian territory part of the ancient land of Israel. Still, the Israeli military condemned the incursion, calling it “a criminal offence that endangers civilians and IDF troops.” Dror Etkes, a longtime Israeli settlement monitor who led the advocacy group Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project and later founded Kerem Navot, an organization that tracks Israeli land seizures in the West Bank, says none of this comes as a surprise.
“Nothing is surprising anymore, not after Gaza,” he said. “Many things I didn’t think would happen have happened, so I think I should be pretty cautious when it comes to predicting what will happen in this country.”
Etkes watched settlers build their first outposts in the West Bank in the 1960s, and then, after the Second Intifada, the construction of the separation barrier. “If you had asked me 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago, not to mention 50 years ago, whether half a million Jews would be living in the West Bank, whether we would have 350, 360, 370 outposts in the West Bank, of course nobody would have said yes,” he added.
According to Etkes, this is how the Israeli settlement movement functions: by “changing the facts on the ground” until what was once unthinkable becomes reality. And this, he says, is the goal of the settlement movement — whether it’s in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank.
The Pioneers of Bashan is not the only settler organization entering closed military zones to pressure the Israeli government to legalize settlements in foreign territory.
In southern Lebanon, a group called Uri Tzafon has worked to build a movement to establish outposts in territory currently occupied by the Israeli military. The group has flown drones into Lebanese territory, urging residents to leave, and planted trees to cement a claim to the land.
It was the same in Gaza with the far right Tzav 9 movement, which on more than one occasion since October 7, 2023, attempted to enter the enclave and establish outposts.
Slowly, the borders of the Israeli imagination — much like the state’s own physical borders — are being expanded by the settlement movement.
Slowly, the borders of the Israeli imagination — much like the state’s own physical borders — are being expanded by the settlement movement. In many cases, these incursions have taken place with the implicit endorsement of the Israeli military.
According to both Etkes and Efnikher, it would have been impossible for the settlers to enter Syrian territory without at least the tacit approval of Israeli forces. There are hundreds of miles of fencing dividing the Israeli-controlled Golan from Syrian territory, reinforced by hundreds of thousands of mines.
Efnikher added that there are a number of gates in the fencing that allow the Israeli military to cross into and beyond the demilitarized buffer zone, which is how the Pioneers of Bashan were able to enter Syrian territory.
The Israeli military said in a statement after detaining and escorting the settlers back to Israeli-controlled territory that “settlement in Bashan is essential to preserve the achievements of the war.”
The push for these settlements is part of the project of Greater Israel, which seeks to expand Israel’s borders to what some settlers and religious nationalists claim were the boundaries of the ancient Israelite kingdom — a biblical vision, contested by mainstream archaeology, that imagines a realm stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, encompassing parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt
But the expansionist drive is not only about land. It is also about water. Efnikher pointed to the Mantara Dam, the largest dam in Syria’s Quneitra Governorate. The dam controls water flow into the Yarmouk River, another critical water supply for southern Syria.
Before he was a journalist, Efnikher owned a restaurant overlooking the dam. It has been closed since Israeli forces expanded their occupation of the territory — a significant financial blow to him and his family, though he stressed that he is better off than most.
Israeli forces have destroyed thousands of dunams of farmland with pesticides in the process of building their outposts, and have established checkpoints — including aerial ones — to regulate the movement of Syrians near the buffer zone.
“There is a heavy psychological toll, falling heaviest on children and the elderly,” Efnikher said. “We’re talking about villages displaced since 1967 and families still affected across generations, now living through yet another occupation.”
He pointed to the West Bank as emblematic of what the Quneitra Governorate might soon become.
Israel has held control of the West Bank for so long that many Palestinians and Israelis in the territory, more than a third of whom are children, do not remember a time when it was free of Israeli outposts and settlements. Now, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, there are more than 279 illegal settlements and 700,000 settlers living in the West Bank.
“This is a model [they’re] trying to copy-paste in Syria and in Lebanon. It’s the same people, coming from the same places, from the same ideological greenhouses.”
The commitments of the settlement movement vary, but at its forefront are those who see it as their personal mission to restore Jewish sovereignty over the land they claim as Greater Israel, even if it must be paid for in blood.
“It’s been almost 58 years since this project started. And all of it started actually illegal[ly] or half-legal, started without official authorization. This is a model [they’re] trying to copy-paste in Syria and in Lebanon. It’s the same people, coming from the same places, from the same ideological greenhouses,” Etkes said.
Efnikher warned that Israeli forces are intensifying their incursions in the Quneitra region: They enter the villages, make arrests — by his tally, more than 70 Syrians from the Quneitra Governorate are currently held in Israeli prisons — set up checkpoints, and then withdraw.
But Efnikher fears it is only a matter of time before they stay. The presence of the Pioneers of Bashan is one troubling sign. “They are winning,” Efnikher said of the Israeli forces. Even for Etkes, there is little hope.
“Look at what they achieved in the last 58 years in the West Bank,” he said. “They have very good reasons to be very optimistic.”
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Theia Chatelle is a freelance journalist and photographer covering conflict, human rights, and displacement across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Based in Jerusalem, she reports on war and social movements, with a focus on human-interest storytelling and investigations into state power. Her work has appeared in The Forward, The Nation, Haaretz, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, among other outlets. Her photography has been published by MS NOW and USA Today, among others. Chatelle holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American Studies from Yale University. She was a 2025 fellow at the International Women’s Media Foundation and is an alumna of the Rory Peck Trust and the Type Media Center.
Israeli rights group says Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya held in ‘harsh conditions’ without medication or treatment
Lina Altawell
28 April 2026
Istanbul
An Israeli court extended Tuesday the detention of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Gaza Strip, without filing charges against him, amid harsh conditions and denial of medical care, a rights group said.
Abu Safiya, a pediatric consultant, was detained on Dec. 27, 2024, when Israeli forces raided the hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia, detaining him at gunpoint after the facility was destroyed and put out of service.
“The Beersheba District Court approved Tuesday morning the extension of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention under the Unlawful Combatants Law without filing any charges, and rejected the defense’s request for his immediate release,” Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights said in a statement.
The Unlawful Combatants Law allows Israeli authorities to detain Palestinians from Gaza for prolonged periods without trial.
Although the Beersheba court extended his detention for six months in October 2025, the group said authorities indicated that the latest extension is “indefinite.”
“The court upheld the detention despite arguments that detaining a doctor while performing his medical duties constitutes unlawful detention,” it said.
“Dr. Abu Safiya is currently held in Negev Prison under harsh conditions, without access to his medication or receiving medical treatment, despite the deterioration of his health,” the rights group warned.
Israel continues to detain Abu Safiya despite his repeated denial of engaging in any activity outside his professional medical role, disregarding calls from Israeli, Palestinian and international rights groups demanding his immediate release.
“Dr. Abu Safiya had been tirelessly running the hospital, providing essential care to children and bearing witness to the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare sector under Israel’s genocide.
He continued his work even after the tragic death of his own son during an Israeli airstrike. Like many health workers before him, he was detained while caring for his patients and carrying out his medical duties,” Amnesty International said in an earlier report.
With US support, Israel launched a genocidal war on Oct. 8, 2023, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000, most of them women and children, since October 2023, and causing destruction to about 90% of civilian infrastructure.
Despite a ceasefire in place since Oct. 10, Israel has continued its actions through blockade and daily attacks, killing 818 Palestinians and injuring 2,301 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israel also continues to block the entry of agreed quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies and shelter materials into Gaza, where about 2.4 million Palestinians, including 1.5 million displaced, live in severe humanitarian conditions.
*Writing by Lina Altawell
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The years 2024 and 2025 were the deadliest for reporters worldwide since records began. In those two years, Israeli attacks were responsible for 70% of the deaths
Funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Weshah at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza Strip on April 9.Majdi Fathi (NurPhoto/ Getty Images)
The death of Amal Khalil, 43, a Lebanese reporter for the media outlet Al Akhbar, brings up to nine the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army in seven weeks of offensive in Lebanon, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The reporter’s killing occurred even though a ceasefire, which called for a 10-day cessation of hostilities by Israeli troops in Lebanon, was in effect since Thursday.
These figures add to the 264 other journalists killed in the line of duty in the context of the wars in Gaza and Iran since October 7, 2023. According to CPJ, 260 of these deaths were caused by Israel. The majority of the victims were Palestinian journalists in Gaza, although the count also includes 31 journalists killed in Yemen, 15 in Lebanon, and four in Iran in the last two and a half years. According to the Lebanese Press Editors Syndicate, the number of reporters killed in Lebanon since October 2023 stands at 27.
While Lebanon remains in shock over Khalil’s death, Beirut has announced it will seek international justice, considering the Israeli attack that killed her a war crime. The Lebanese government accuses Israel of deliberately targeting her and her colleague Zeinab Faraj. The two women had taken shelter in a house in the southern village of al-Tiri after an initial airstrike killed two people traveling in a vehicle. Shortly afterward, the building where they were located was also attacked. The Lebanese Red Cross rescued Faraj, who was taken to a hospital, but as teams searched for Khalil, an Israeli drone dropped another grenade on the building.
Funeral of journalist Amal Khalil, in Basariye (Lebanon), this Thursday.Aziz Taher (REUTERS)
“This is not the first time that Israel has prevented emergency services from reaching journalists injured in their strikes,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Journalists are civilians and protected under international law. Israel’s blatant disregard for such norms — and the international community’s failure to hold them accountable — is abhorrent.”
In many cases, Israeli troops justify the attacks by claiming the journalists have connections to Hamas or Hezbollah. In Khalil’s case, the Israeli army, without denying the Lebanese government’s version of events, maintains that the two journalists had just left a building used by Hezbollah for military purposes. According to a spokesperson, both vehicles had crossed the defensive line and approached Israeli troops, thus constituting “an imminent threat.”
“Targeted assassinations”
2024 and 2025 were the deadliest years for journalists worldwide since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began documenting these cases in 1992. In both years, Israel was responsible for 70% of the recorded deaths, according to the organization. In addition to the 264 journalists who were killed, 174 were wounded and 106 imprisoned since the start of the war in Gaza.
The CPJ counts both journalists killed while carrying out their work and those whose deaths are linked to their professional activity, whether accidentally in conflict zones or as a result of deliberate attacks. According to the organization, Israeli troops have carried out more targeted killings of journalists than the military of any other government since records began. To date, the CPJ has documented 64 cases of journalists deliberately killed by Israeli forces between 2023 and 2025 in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen.
Among the dead was Anas Al Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter and one of the most recognizable faces of the Gaza war. He was killed in August 2025 in an Israeli attack on the journalists’ tent where he lived with five other reporters, outside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Anticipating he might be targeted, Al Sharif had left a farewell message.
That same month, five other journalists were killed in a bombing of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. After an initial explosion at the building, where civilians and reporters had gathered to assess the damage, a second blast occurred and was broadcast live by several television stations.
The head of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau has also been targeted: he was wounded and lost several family members, including a son who was also a journalist. This April, Al Jazeera journalist Muhammad Washah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the vehicle he and another Palestinian were driving on the coastal road in Gaza City, according to health officials cited by Reuters.
Funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Weshah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, on April 9.Majdi Fathi (NurPhoto/ Getty Images)
In the last incident in Lebanon recorded by the CPJ before Khalil’s death, three other journalists were killed in the south of the country. An Israeli attack on a vehicle on the Jezzine road killed journalist Ali Shoaib of the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV; journalist Fatima Ftouni of Al Mayadeen TV; and her brother, freelance photojournalist Mohamad Ftouni.
War crimes
“The deliberate attacks and killings of journalists by Israeli forces constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law,” Amnesty International notes on its website.
Since October 2023, Reporters Without Borders has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court against Israel for “war crimes against Palestinian journalists in Gaza.”
These actions are in addition to previous ones, such as the lawsuit filed by Al Jazeera in 2022 after the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in May of that year while covering a raid by Israeli troops on a refugee camp in Jenin, in the West Bank.
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![Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awards the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, on 7 May 2026 [sanchezcastejon/X]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/pedro-sanchez-francesca-albanese-award.jpeg.webp?fit=920%2C615&ssl=1)
(Photo credit: Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo/picture alliance)
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