Middle East Press On: Gaza Tribunal Verdict, Genocide, Apartheid: New Age Islam's Selection, 27 October 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
27 October 2025
Gaza Tribunal’s Final Verdict Declares Israel’s Actions Genocide, Calls for Global Action
Che Guevara And Palestine: When The Latin American Revolution Met The Spirit Of Palestinian Resistance
Settler-Colonial Attempt To Uproot Palestine: Olive Harvest Under Apartheid And Genocide
Catherine Connolly’s Victory: Europe’s Moral Rebellion Against The Israeli Occupation
High Hopes, Unresolved Questions: Weak Optimism Over Israeli Politics, Gaza Ceasefire
A Narrow Set Of Choices For Gaza: What’s The Future For Hamas?
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Gaza Tribunal’s Final Verdict Declares Israel’s Actions Genocide, Calls for Global Action
By Romana Rubeo
October 26, 2025
The Gaza People’s Tribunal, an international civil society initiative composed of jurists, academics, and human rights advocates, has concluded that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
The announcement came on Sunday at Istanbul University, where the Tribunal delivered its final statement and moral judgment after four days of public hearings. The proceedings marked the culmination of a year-long process that began in London in November 2024 and continued in Sarajevo earlier this year.
The panel was chaired by Professor Christine Chinkin, an expert in international law, and presided over by Professor Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. Its jurors, drawn from multiple continents, examined testimony from witnesses, legal experts, and survivors.
According to the panel, the evidence presented across these sessions demonstrates a “coherent and consistent pattern of exterminatory violence” against Gaza’s civilian population, carried out through the deliberate destruction of life, infrastructure, and cultural identity.
The Palestine Chronicle has made the full version of the final verdict available, transcribed from the video published on the official Gaza Tribunal YouTube channel.
A Tribunal of Conscience
In its final statement, the jury said it did not speak with the authority of states but as moral witnesses in the face of international inaction. Guided by conscience and informed by international law, the jurors declared that “when law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal.”
They described the initiative as a civil-society response to the international community’s continuing failure to hold Israel accountable. “Genocide in Gaza is the concern of all humanity,” they said. “When states are silent, civil society must speak out.”
The Tribunal emphasized that it had gathered extensive documentation—eyewitness accounts, expert analyses, and legal papers—that now form a permanent archive of the truth of what it described as “the genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Beyond the Humanitarian Narrative
The jurors expressed solidarity with global acts of protest and civil resistance, including rallies, encampments, flotillas, and strikes, describing these efforts as expressions of conscience in a world where institutions have failed.
They rejected the framing of Gaza’s destruction as a mere humanitarian disaster, calling it instead “the deliberate commission of the gravest of crimes imposed with the direst of consequences.”
Throughout the hearings, the panel heard testimony not only about Israel’s crimes and the complicity of other states but also about “the courageous resistance and resilience of Palestinians and of global civil society.” The Tribunal said that such steadfastness—whether manifested in survival, community solidarity, or political organization—remains integral to the Palestinian struggle against genocide and dispossession.
Crimes of Genocide
The Tribunal concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute an ongoing genocide that neither began in October 2023 nor will end with the ceasefire. It warned that deaths and severe physical harm “will continue,” and that “the trauma of the surviving population will be transmitted through generations.”
The jury identified a series of specific crimes forming the structure of genocide. Among them are:
Starvation and famine through the deliberate deprivation of food and the systematic destruction of Gaza’s food system;
Domicide, or the annihilation of homes, communities, and cultural memory, leading to the disintegration of society;
Ecocide, defined as the ruination of land, air, and water, and the destruction of Gaza’s environment and agricultural capacity;
The systematic targeting of the health-care system—hospitals, clinics, and personnel—described as decades long and now almost total;
Reprocide, the targeting of reproductive care and the prevention of births intended to eliminate future generations;
Scholasticide, the destruction of knowledge through the killing and displacement of students and teachers and the obliteration of schools and universities;
Attacks on journalists documenting the war;
Torture, sexual violence, disappearances, and gender-based violence in detention and displacement;
And politicide, the assassination and abduction of political, cultural, and civic leaders.
According to the statement, these acts together reveal “a coherent and consistent pattern of exterminatory violence” encompassing homes, hospitals, schools, cultural institutions, and natural ecosystems. “The weaponization of hunger, denial of medical care, and forced displacement,” it said, “are not collateral damages of war. They are instruments of collective punishment and of genocide.”
Complicity and Global Failure
The Tribunal found that Western governments—particularly the United States—are not only complicit but, in some cases, actively colluding in the genocide by providing weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover. Such actions, it said, amount to a breach of the legal duty to prevent genocide and to cooperate in ending violations of international law.
The jury also highlighted the role of non-state actors, naming media institutions, academic bodies, global corporations, and technology firms as participants in sustaining Israel’s campaign. Biased Western media reporting, it said, conforms to the political and economic interests of ruling elites. Universities, through investments and institutional silence, contribute to normalization, while staff and students who speak out for Palestine are punished.
Corporations and financial institutions maintain the “supply chains of genocide” through weapons production, banking, logistics, and digital infrastructure. The Tribunal described the technology sector as providing “the computer power for genocide,” enabling surveillance, targeting, and information control.
These interlocking systems, the jury concluded, form what it called “the political economy of genocide – the highest form of hyper-imperialism of the 21st century.”
The statement condemned the paralysis of the international system, particularly the United Nations Security Council, whose veto structure it said has “abdicated its foundational responsibility to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The jury commended, however, the work of the UN Human Rights Council’s special procedures, including the Commission of Inquiry and the Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, for affirming the reality of genocide despite political pressure.
Root Causes and Context
According to the Tribunal, the genocide in Gaza cannot be understood apart from the broader context of a century-long settler-colonial project. The jurors described it as “the latest stage of a system rooted in the ideology of Zionism – a racist and supremacist project aimed at dispossessing and erasing the Palestinian people, supported by a neocolonial power structure led by the United States and its allies.”
The Tribunal noted that the genocide is being carried out in a closed territory against a captive population using advanced technology and real-time surveillance. Despite Israel’s attempts to suppress documentation, the crimes are “highly visible in real time.”
It also observed that international judicial processes—such as the proceedings initiated by South Africa before the International Court of Justice and the investigations of the International Criminal Court—have been met with defiance and impunity. Instead of sanctioning Israel, the United States has targeted ICC personnel and NGOs assisting the court, further undermining the rule of law.
Right to Resistance and Self-Determination
The Gaza Tribunal reaffirmed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to choose the tools of resistance against occupation and colonial domination. This right, it said, is enshrined in international law and central to any just political solution.
It called for Palestinian steadfastness and non-displacement and urged the creation of a single rights-based political order grounded in equality, decolonization, restitution, and the right of return. “The struggle is with Zionism as a racist, supremacist, settler-colonial enterprise,” the statement concluded, “not with Jews or Judaism.”
Recommendations
In its concluding section, the Tribunal issued a comprehensive set of recommendations to the international community.
It called for all those responsible for the genocide—politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically — to be held fully accountable by every lawful means and to the fullest extent of international law. Accountability, it said, must include those who enable or sustain the crimes through weapons transfers, diplomatic protection, or economic collaboration.
The Tribunal urged the suspension of Israel from international organizations and institutions, particularly the United Nations and its affiliates, until it complies with international obligations and ends the ongoing violations in Gaza.
It also called on the UN General Assembly to invoke Resolution 377, the Uniting for Peace mechanism, to mandate collective measures for the protection of Palestinians, including the establishment of an international protective force in Gaza and the West Bank.
Finally, the jury appealed for coordinated global action to dismantle the structures of impunity that perpetuate genocide and to challenge the political and economic systems that enable it.
The statement concluded with a warning that has echoed throughout the Tribunal’s year of hearings: “Silence is not neutral; silence is complicity; neutrality is surrender to evil.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/gaza-tribunal-finds-israel-guilty-of-genocide-urges-immediate-global-response/
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Che Guevara And Palestine: When The Latin American Revolution Met The Spirit Of Palestinian Resistance
by Dr Rassem Bisharat
October 26, 2025
More than half a century ago, on 9 October 1967, the rifle of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara fell silent in the Bolivian mountains. Yet the echo of his words has remained alive across the Global South, from the Andes to the refugee camps of Gaza.
Today, 58 years after his death, the question returns: What connected the Argentine doctor who fought in the Cuban jungles with the Palestinian people, who have resisted occupation for decades? Was the connection merely symbolic, or did Che leave a tangible mark on Palestinian revolutionary thought?
From Buenos Aires to the Sierra Maestra to Gaza
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna — later known simply as Che — was born in Argentina in 1928. He abandoned his medical studies in pursuit of what he called “healing the world from injustice.” His journey across Latin America transformed him into one of the key figures of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that overthrew the US-backed Batista regime.
But Guevara was not content with Cuba’s victory. He believed that true revolution knows no borders, declaring that “every true revolution is a war of liberation against colonialism.”
This internationalist vision would eventually set the stage for a symbolic meeting between him and Palestine. In June 1959, only a few months after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara arrived in the Gaza Strip, which was then under Egyptian administration. Although his visit lasted only two days, it carried profound meaning. He toured the refugee camps of Al-Bureij and Al-Nuseirat, met with early Palestinian resistance figures, and visited several training camps in the Gaza Strip.
Photographs of him among the refugee tents quickly circulated in international newspapers, placing Palestine on the map of “global liberation movements.” Che’s visit bridged the struggle against imperialism in Latin America with the fight against Zionist colonialism in the Middle East. He was the first world leader to treat Palestinians as a national liberation movement, not merely a humanitarian issue.
Palestinian historian and researcher Salman Abu Sitta later described the visit as “a historic event that marked the beginning of the internationalisation of the Palestinian cause.”
From Guevara to the fedayeen: Deep roots in thought and practice
During the 1960s and 1970s, Palestinian factions — especially the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), began adopting the internationalist rhetoric inspired by Che’s ideas. His portrait was raised in refugee camps, alongside chants of his immortal slogan: “Hasta la victoria siempre – Until victory, always.”
Many Palestinian cadres trained according to the foco theory (foco meaning a small revolutionary nucleus) — the strategy Che developed in Cuba and Bolivia: small vanguard groups capable of igniting a mass uprising. Some Palestinian training camps in Lebanon were even named “Camp Che Guevara.”
To this day, Che’s name remains embedded in Palestinian popular memory: streets and cafés in Gaza and the West Bank bear his name; murals depict him alongside Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yasser Arafat; and in the Nuseirat refugee camp stands the Che Guevara Cultural Club, founded by leftist youth in the 1990s.
While his influence is often described as symbolic, historians note that such symbolism is an essential part of revolutionary power itself. Every liberation movement needs icons that transcend geography to inspire others.
On the 58th anniversary of his death, Che’s words still echo on the walls of Gaza and the West Bank: “If I return, I shall come back with all the poor who believed in me.”
Perhaps that is why a graffiti artist in Khan Younis once wrote beneath his portrait: “Guevara did not die in Bolivia… he lives in every street that resists occupation.”
Conclusion: When revolutions intersect
Che Guevara’s story with Palestine was not a passing diplomatic visit, but rather a symbolic meeting of two revolutions sharing the same goal – freedom.
From the mountains of the Sierra Maestra to the refugee camps of Gaza, Che embodied the idea that revolution has no nationality and justice is indivisible. “Wherever there is injustice,” he once said, “it is the duty of every human being to fight it.”
In his memory, we repeat his own words, ones that remain as urgent today as ever: “You cannot trust imperialism, not even for a single second.” “Hasta la victoria siempre – Until victory, always.”
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251026-che-guevara-and-palestine-when-the-latin-american-revolution-met-the-spirit-of-palestinian-resistance/
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Settler-Colonial Attempt To Uproot Palestine: Olive Harvest Under Apartheid And Genocide
By Anisha Patel
October 26, 2025
Every year, autumn in Palestine marks the beginning of the olive harvest season — a cultural practice that bears witness to the deep relationship of the Palestinian people with their land and a pillar of economic and food sovereignty.
The harvests in 2024 and 2023 have been very limited and marred with increased violence carried out by the Israeli army and its settler militia, some of the worst in recent years, documented by grassroots movements, Palestinian Civil Society organizations, UN agencies, and others on the ground.
This year, in August, Israeli forces uprooted 10,000 olive trees, some of them over a 100 years old, in al Mughayyir as collective punishment; in September, the Israeli forces have issued multiple orders to clear out over 600 dunams of land for “protecting” illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and since the beginning of October, state-sanctioned settler militias have escalated their violence against Palestinian people and their land. These are just a few examples of a consistent and deliberate pattern of land dispossession, motivated by a settler-colonial ideology.
While a fragile ceasefire has recently come into force in Gaza, Israel has already violated it several times over the last week, continuing to kill hundreds of Palestinians and blocking humanitarian aid. This ceasefire comes as we entered the third year of the most brutal manifestation of the ongoing Nakba, the genocide being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, marred by starvation, death, and a complete destruction of conditions of life.
Although the international community’s focus has remained on the unrelenting genocide in Gaza, a persistent campaign of violence continues to intensify across the West Bank including East Jerusalem – land is being annexed settlements are expanding more rapidly than ever, communities are being forcibly displaced from their homes, large number of people, including children, are being arbitrarily detained and shot in the streets. As such, this year, like the two before it, the olive harvest in Palestine continues under the shadow of a deepening apartheid, an unlawful military occupation, and the ongoing brutality of a genocide.
Uprooting a People
The olive tree is rooted in Palestinian identity, culture, and, over the last century, resistance. A cultural practice rooted in generations of care, olive farming in Palestine is a communal act of memory and resistance—bringing together land stewardship, ancestral knowledge, and seasonal rituals into a practice that sustains both the people and their sense of belonging.
Their capacity to survive under duress means that a large number of olive trees that survive in Palestine today have borne witness to the ongoing Nakba and have become a core element of the connection between the Palestinian people and their land. Over the past century, the olive tree has also come to embody Palestinian resilience in exile, becoming a site of both a memory of a land many can no longer access and the hope of one day returning to this home.
Prior to the genocidal assault on Gaza, olive farming constituted almost half of the cultivated land in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and, therefore, is an important component of the Palestinian agricultural sector. The olive harvest was the only source of income for over 100,000 Palestinians and generally contributed to 4.6% of Palestine’s GDP.
In an economy strangled by unlawful military occupation and apartheid, which has been coercively reshaped to depend on the Israeli economy, the olive sector remains a vital lifeline in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. But these numbers have been declining over the century as a result of Zionist policies of settler-colonial replacement. As comprehensively described most recently by the UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri in his report, “from the beginning, agriculture and food were central to Zionist colonial techniques,” and we see them being operationalized for over a century now.
At the heart of this structural violence, against the people and the olive trees, is Zionist settler colonialism. As with other settler-colonial regimes, the Zionist movement has long prioritized the takeover of Palestinian land as fundamental to its existence and has pursued it through a range of political, legal, and military strategies.
The relationship of the Palestinian people to their land is integral to their identity and, as such, the severing of this relationship is also key to the Zionist project’s success and is enforced through coercion and deprivation associated with land and resources. Olive farming, a deeply rooted cultural practice, stands as both a symbol of Palestinian identity and connection to the land, and a target of settler-colonial efforts to erase that very identity.
Olive trees are not only central to Palestinian culture and economy—they are also a cornerstone of food sovereignty and, by extension, the right to self-determination, as enshrined in international law. In accordance with international legal frameworks, people have the right to freely determine their food systems, access natural resources, and sustain themselves in accordance with their cultural practices.
However, Israel’s settler-colonial regime systematically undermines these rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and across historic Palestine through land confiscation, movement restrictions, state-sanctioned settler militia violence, and targeted destruction of agricultural infrastructure. In essence, the Palestinian people’s ability to sustain their communities is being decimated. This structural violence is not incidental—it is a calculated method of colonial erasure. The most extreme manifestation is unfolding in Gaza, where mass starvation has been weaponized as a tool of domination.
The apartheid regime imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people, across the region and in the diaspora, provides the legal scaffolding for this structure of subjugation and dispossession. Over the last two years, significant legal changes have ensured that, for all intents and purposes, the control of the West Bank has moved from the Israeli military to a civilian oversight led by militia leaders.
While the de facto annexation of the West Bank has been ongoing since 1967, this transformation paves the path for a de jure annexation.
This week, the Knesset approved with a majority the first reading of a bill to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, a move that comes on the heels of the so-called.
In May 2025, the Israeli Knesset passed the Land Registration Law, transferring control of land registration in Area C of the occupied West Bank to Israeli authorities — a step towards cementing de facto annexation of nearly 60 percent of the territory, in contravention of international law. Additionally, the approval of the settlement E1 in August 2025 is slated to sever the north and south of the West Bank and cut off East Jerusalem.
From the apartheid wall to the hundreds of military checkpoints, the ever-expanding network of illegal settlements, and the arbitrary permit systems to access farmlands, the mechanisms are varied, but the objective is the same: to fragment the Palestinian people and forcibly displace them from their land. This is further reinforced by the State of Israel through the theft of water resources, the designation of military firing zones, and the routine seizure of private land under the guise of ‘security’—all of which make meaningful access of Palestinians to land increasingly impossible.
This violence—whether carried out through bombs, bulldozers, or legal codes—is not a deviation from Israeli policy; it is a pattern repeated over decades. And in the harvest season, this policy will be brutally enforced on those Palestinians trying to exercise their right to self-determination and remain on their lands. As history has taught us, settler-colonial apartheid regimes do not dissolve themselves, nor do such regimes act out of the moral or legal sense of doing what is right. Apartheid regimes cease to commit the crime of apartheid when it is no longer feasible to continue doing so.
Dismantling Apartheid
In its Advisory Opinion of July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s presence in the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful. The Court called for Israel’s full withdrawal—an opinion endorsed by the UN General Assembly in Resolution ES-10/24, which set a deadline of September 18, 2025, for compliance. It also called for wide reparations, including returning land and assets seized during the duration of this unlawful occupation.
And yet, the situation in all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory only worsens. Under international law, third States are legally obligated not to aid or assist in internationally wrongful acts, such as the Israeli apartheid and unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territory. Yet many continue to offer Israel diplomatic cover, weapons, and preferential trade—directly enabling the very system the Court has condemned.
For over a year now, the legal and moral responsibilities before the international community have been clear- it must enforce Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through sanctions and legal accountability focused on dismantling state structures that sustain apartheid and corporations that enable and profit from it. This continued impunity extended to Israel has brought us to the edge of a complete collapse of the larger international legal order and demanding concrete actions from States that enable Palestinian self-determination remains a legal and moral imperative.
Additionally, given the pattern of structural and overt violence documented in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the policies and practices, such as the fragmentation of the territory and the attempt to sever the ties between the Palestinian people and their land, and the destruction of cultural practices, are all designed to destroy the conditions of life of the Palestinian people.
When viewed in conjunction with the statements of genocidal intent being expressed by the Israeli leadership and society towards all of the Palestinian people in the region and the history and trajectory of Zionism, it is necessary that the Genocide Convention be applied to all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
This should, at the very least, trigger third State obligations to prevent genocide in the West Bank, as warned by the UN SR on the Occupied Palestinian Territory in her October 2024 report and more recently by the by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel in their Conference room paper published in September 2025.
States have failed in discharging their obligations, but grassroots movements stood their ground. Palestinian initiatives such as the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, Manjala, Stop The Wall, and Union of Agricultural Work Committees work on the ground to reclaim their agency by collectively strategizing for the preservation of traditional systems of agriculture, despite the apartheid.
Grassroots actions like the Zaytouna Campaign 2025, which supports Palestinian olive farmers and mobilizes international activists and observers during the harvest, offer tangible ways to stand with Palestinians—not just in principle, but in practice. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement remains a vital constituent of global solidarity, isolating the apartheid regime and making its genocide increasingly unsustainable.
Generating political incentives within third states to ensure they discharge international legal obligations is critical to bringing an end to the apartheid regime.
Because justice for the Palestinian people cannot be left to the will of powerful governments, it must be demanded, built, and fought for—through legal action, grassroots organizing, and sustained resistance. As this olive harvest season continues, despite the escalating violence, it reminds us that Palestine’s struggle is not only for their liberation from colonial domination —it is for their right to exist as a people and to remain rooted in the land that has nourished generations.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/settler-colonial-attempt-to-uproot-palestine-olive-harvest-under-apartheid-and-genocide/
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Catherine Connolly’s Victory: Europe’s Moral Rebellion Against The Israeli Occupation
By Dr Rassem Bisharat
October 26, 2025
by Adnan Hmidan
When Catherine Connolly was elected President of Ireland, the shockwaves were felt far beyond Dublin. Her victory was not a symbolic gesture, nor a routine political milestone. It was a direct moral rebuke to the Israeli occupation and to the lobbying networks that have relied on silencing, intimidating, and dictating Europe’s discourse on Palestine for decades.
Those networks understood the danger immediately. Their panic was not about the limited constitutional powers of the Irish presidency; it was about something far more threatening to them: the collapse of narrative obedience in Europe. Connolly’s rise signalled that a European electorate, when fully awake and fully informed, can no longer be manipulated into calling genocide “self-defence” or occupation “security.”
Ireland’s memory of occupation
Ireland knows occupation not from textbooks but from experience. It is a nation that remembers siege, dispossession, and the machinery of colonial power. No media spin, however well-funded, can persuade such a people that the slaughter of trapped civilians is a “right.” That is why the Irish streets overflowed in solidarity with Gaza during Israel’s recent atrocities. As Nelson Mandela declared, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” For many Irish voters, Connolly embodied that moral instinct — unfiltered, unapologetic, and unafraid.
The backlash of fear
The pro-occupation backlash was swift and vicious. The aim was not to debate but to delegitimise, intimidate, and silence. They fear Connolly not for what she can sign, but for what she can say — because she speaks unvarnished truths: ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, war crimes. Words that shatter the comfortable illusions on which European complicity has rested.
Frantz Fanon wrote that colonialism “is not a thinking machine… it is naked violence.” Those who defend that violence know that once exposed, it begins to crumble. Connolly has torn away the mask. She refused to repeat the cowardly vocabulary that equates occupier and occupied, or the euphemisms that Western leaders hide behind. She named the crime — and in doing so, broke the spell of fear.
A turning point for Europe
This is bigger than Ireland. It is a moment of moral reckoning for a continent that has preached human rights while arming their violators. Aimé Césaire warned Europe that “no one colonises innocently, and no one colonises with impunity.” Today, Europe stands before a mirror: either honour the values it claims to defend or admit that those values were never universal. Ireland, true to its history, has chosen the side of the oppressed.
For Palestinians — especially in the diaspora — Connolly’s victory proves that the battle for narrative in the West is winnable. The occupation may dominate weapons, corporations, and lobbies, but it is losing the moral argument. Each honest voice, especially from within Europe, accelerates that loss.
Beyond celebration: a strategic opening
This is not a moment for applause and retreat. It is a strategic opening that must be widened — to build stronger alliances, challenge censorship, and bring Palestinian voices deeper into European civil society. The Irish experience offers a clear lesson: when truth is spoken plainly, people choose justice.
The fury raging through pro-occupation circles today is the clearest evidence of all. One only fears what truly threatens.
A message to the world
Ireland has sent a message — to Europe, to Palestine, and to every nation watching: the era in which colonial violence enjoyed moral immunity is ending. Connolly’s office may be ceremonial, but her victory is not. History does not side with the coloniser. It sides with those who speak, resist, and refuse to kneel.
And today, Ireland has chosen to stand.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251026-catherine-connollys-victory-europes-moral-rebellion-against-the-israeli-occupation/
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High Hopes, Unresolved Questions: Weak Optimism Over Israeli Politics, Gaza Ceasefire
By Susan Hattis Rolef
October 27, 2025
The last two weeks have given rise to joy in Israel upon the return of the remaining 20 live hostages, and to hope that at long last we might be on the way to some sort of reasonable settlement regarding the Gaza Strip that will ensure peace and quiet, at least for the foreseeable future.
However, the events of the last week have prevented these feelings from being complete and free of concerns.
On the internal Israeli front, the opening of the 25th Knesset’s winter session last Monday provided too many farcical elements due to the childish audacity of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who refused to greet Supreme Court Chief Justice Isaac Amit by his official title, and throughout the sitting threw out at least a dozen opposition MKs for alleged misconduct. Ohana also warned opposition leader Yair Lapid that if he would continue to refer to him as “speaker of only half the Knesset,” he would be removed from the speaker’s podium.
Knesset opening session
One of the positive highlights of the opening session was the short impromptu speech delivered by President Isaac Herzog, in which he admonished Ohana for his callous opening address, which was “disrespectful,” “a slight to human dignity,” and “a blow to the dignity of other state authorities” – especially the judicial authority, and finally welcomed the presence of Amit with his full official title.
Another highlight were parts of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, in which he admitted that Amit is the president of the Supreme Court and called for the “preservation of our unity” in order to achieve our goals. However, he continued by blaming the opposition for the absence of unity through violence and threats on the lives of himself and his family and other elected representatives and their families.
In fact, the only prime minister ever assassinated on political grounds in Israel was Labor prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, almost 30 years ago to the day, while Netanyahu, as leader of the opposition at the time, had not acted strongly enough to condemn calls for his assassination arising from right-wing circles.
In addition, Netanyahu accused the opposition of not recognizing the fact that he is prime minister and that his ministers are Israel’s government. Again, the reality is different. The opposition recognizes these facts but adds that Netanyahu and his ministers constitute the worst government and prime minister that Israel has ever had.
It also points out that they do not accept any responsibility for the catastrophe of October 7, when they were Israel’s official, legally elected leaders, and some 1,200 innocent people in the Gaza border communities were butchered by Hamas terrorists, as the defense forces were slow to come to the rescue.
In fact, it was the opposition during the term of the 24th Knesset, headed by Netanyahu, that refused to recognize the legitimacy of the “government of change” and its two prime ministers – Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid – on the basis of false arguments. The Knesset record is full of statements to this effect.
One of the most frustrating actions taken by Netanyahu in the course of the last week was to officially change the name of the Israel-Hamas War to “Milhemet HaTkumah,” which may be translated as the War of Revival/Redemption/Rebirth or Resurrection, none of which accurately describes the war that ended in a ceasefire on October 9, 2025, along with the exchange of Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
US emissaries in Israel
However, the last week has also seen a succession of senior US emissaries, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, followed by Vice President JD Vance and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arriving in Israel.
Formally, these visits were designed to coordinate with Israel the American activities toward the establishment of an international body to administer the Gaza Strip and its Palestinian population until a permanent governing body will be set up, and to inaugurate a special American military headquarters in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat to initiate the process.
However, cynics in Israel described the arrivals as glorified babysitters whose job was to watch over Netanyahu and his coalition in order to prevent them from adopting any measures that might interfere with the implementation of the next stage in President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip.
For example, the government was reprimanded, by both Vance and Rubio, for allowing the Knesset last Wednesday to pass two private members’ bills in preliminary reading, calling for annexations of territories in “the West Bank” (the term used by Vance).
Those of us who believed that the Israel-Hamas War should have ended long ago – in order to hasten the return of all the hostages and because the goal of the total destruction and banishment of Hamas seemed illusive – were naturally delighted with Trump’s commitment to force the reluctant Netanyahu to put an end to the war, and the procession of senior US emissaries was therefore welcomed.
Unfortunately, while all the emissaries expressed optimism and confidence that Trump’s peace plan can be implemented successfully, so far nothing that has been said or done in the field of organization suggests that this is the case.
Perhaps the general outline of the plan is more realistic than Trump’s previous idea of establishing a modern Riviera in a Gaza Strip denuded of its Palestinian population, which would be encouraged to migrate elsewhere, but there seem to be too many issues in the new plan that have not been thought out to the end.
For example, the plan speaks of the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, which in its current state is certainly an urgent necessity. Yet, who is to decide what the reconstruction should consist of or look like? Should the refugee camps be reconstructed, or should the reconstruction involve the final resolution of the refugee problem?
Furthermore, to what extent will Israel’s interests and concerns be taken into account?
Were such questions raised in the talks between the American visitors and Netanyahu? If they were not, when will they be?
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-871653
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A Narrow Set Of Choices For Gaza: What’s The Future For Hamas?
By Neville Teller
October 27, 2025
The US and most of the Middle East now want to get on with disempowering Hamas, installing effective governance in Gaza, and starting to rebuild the Strip. There is no evading the fact, though, that many of the Arab nations that supported US President Donald Trump’s peace initiative did so relying on point 20 of his 20-point plan:
“…as Gaza redevelopment advances and Palestinian Authority reforms are carried out, the conditions may be established for a credible pathway toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
The Iranian regime has no interest in any version of the two-state solution; nor do its pawns – Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to name its main protagonists. Their raison d’etre remains what it always has been: the destruction of the State of Israel.
In Iran’s case, that undisguised intention extends to the annihilation of democracy itself, as exemplified by the US, to be followed by the dissemination of its version of Shi’ite Islam across the whole world. Trump’s offer of an olive branch to the Iranian regime, made during his speech to the Knesset on October 13, was rejected out of hand.
Hamas's strategic choices
Following the Gaza ceasefire and the completion of the hostage-prisoner exchange, Hamas faces a narrow set of strategic choices, with its options greatly reduced because of its weakened position and the upsurge of armed clan opposition.
First, despite the peace plan, Hamas is likely to attempt to rehabilitate its military capacity. Boosted by the return of around 2,000 prisoners and detainees, it will surely seek every opportunity to re-entrench itself within Gaza.
Regarding disarmament, the relevant point in the Trump plan reads: “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure (including tunnels and weapons manufacturing) will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization under independent monitors…”
Yet demilitarization has yet to be defined. Hamas may reluctantly agree to hand over its heavy weaponry, but it is most unlikely to denude its personnel of their sidearms.
Hamas will surely aim to preserve its resistance credentials and its continued military presence in Gaza. Confidential Hamas strategy documents, some captured on the computer of deceased Hamas leader Yayha Sinwar, and some from elsewhere, suggest its leadership has always been focused on survival, reconstitution, and the maintenance of leverage over Israel and the Palestinian public. The loss of the hostages as its major bargaining chip largely reduces its leverage, but not entirely.
Hamas's propaganda machine
There is, for example, Hamas’s formidable propaganda machine, highly structured and technologically well-equipped, with at least 1,000 specialists operating out of Gaza and beyond. It exploits every available media channel, from TV and radio to encrypted social network platforms, blending true, exaggerated, and manipulated content in a coordinated campaign to promote its strategic goals. The widespread dissemination of anti-Israel propaganda has been Hamas’s major success in the post-October 7 period.
The network was developed over several years and was, until recently, overseen by Abu Obeida (Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout), the masked spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, who was killed in August 2025. Propaganda operatives were embedded within combat units throughout Gaza, and their roles included filming, editing, distributing content, and monitoring Israeli media.
Hamas will undoubtedly attempt to retain control over its propaganda operation and the personnel running it, hoping to continue influencing global opinion by way of traditional as well as its social media.
Its principal broadcast outlets are Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio, through which it targets both local and broader Arab audiences. In addition, the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera network, particularly its Arabic service, consistently promotes a pro-Hamas line.
As for social media, Hamas posts on platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and, in some operations, Instagram, in order to spread messages internationally and interact with constituencies in the West Bank, diaspora communities, and even Israeli society through psychological operations.
In addition, Hamas disseminates its propaganda via several websites in Arabic, English, French, and Hebrew, and has attempted cyber operations using social engineering apps to target Israeli soldiers.
The Trump peace plan makes no mention of this major asset operated by Hamas. The organization will certainly make every attempt to retain control of it. If it succeeds, this sophisticated propaganda operation will continue to provide Hamas with a highly effective soft-power base that could ensure its continued influence within Gaza, despite its loss of support among Gaza’s population.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a respected polling organization, carries out regular surveys of Palestinian opinion. Its Poll No. 95, undertaken in May 2025, records a sharp decline in public confidence in Hamas.
The poll it carried out a year earlier, in May 2024, showed 71% of the Gazan population approving Hamas’s onslaught on Israel on October 7, 2023. By May 2025, that support had shrunk to 38%. In fact, overall support for armed struggle itself fell, and the survey revealed increased openness to negotiation.
Hamas's attempts to rebuild
Given Hamas's priorities, its battered and depleted infrastructure, and its declining but still resilient base, Hamas will most likely attempt to undertake a period of calm under the ceasefire terms.
Without openly accepting disarmament or exclusion from Gaza’s future governance, it will probably use the time to probe for any ambiguity in the ceasefire’s terms, attempt to rebuild its organization covertly, and seek to rehabilitate itself. It will most likely resist efforts to install Arab or Palestinian Authority governance in Gaza unless it is involved in some way.
In this period, Hamas probably sees itself walking a fine line – attempting to maintain its militant identity intact without provoking Israel into renewed conflict. Unlikely to accept voluntary exile, the Hamas leadership will hope to survive the transitional period and remain relevant within Gaza.
As for the future, several Palestinian spokesmen, while declaring an undying commitment to the anti-Israel struggle, have suggested the organization might agree to a cessation of hostilities for up to 10 years – an unattractive prospect that would enable the total refurbishment of its military capacity in preparation for its next onslaught on Israel.
Trump’s plan specifically excludes Hamas from any role in the future governance of Gaza. That is not likely to deter the organization from seeking involvement in its administration, either directly or covertly by way of influence, subterfuge, or corruption. Indeed, rumors are circulating about the idea of Hamas launching a political party, under some new innocuous name, ahead of the elections envisaged in the Trump plan.
According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Hamas insiders have confirmed that discussions are ongoing about establishing a “civil movement” as a vehicle for participation in future Palestinian elections.
The dragon is wounded, not slain.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-871664
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