Middle East Press On: Israeli Doctors, Egypt, Netanyahu's test, Hamas, Humanitarian Aid, Arab States, Palestine, Gazans' New Year Gaza, New Age Islam's Selection, 2 January 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
2 January 2026
Israel’s Doctors Without Borders decision is overdue, security comes first
Deterrence or illusion? The Egypt gas deal is Netanyahu’s test
Hamas uses “Humanitarian Aid” mask in Italy to fund its terror
Arab States grow increasingly suspicious of Israeli policies
The Body as the Final Weapon: Palestine Action and the Spirit of Bobby Sands
Gazans’ New Year Wishes: A Life of Dignity after Annihilation
White Coats amid Rubble: A Moment of Hope in Gaza
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Israel’s Doctors Without Borders decision is overdue, security comes first
By JPOST EDITORIAL
JANUARY 2, 2026
Israel has moved to bar Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), from operating in Gaza under an updated registration and licensing framework that requires humanitarian groups to submit documentation and staff lists for security vetting.
The policy applies across Israel, including east Jerusalem, and it comes with deadlines that turn paperwork into an operational decision: comply and continue, or refuse and leave.
The government has a clear stance. Gaza is a war zone run by Hamas, and humanitarian access can be exploited.
Oversight designed to protect security and civilians
Israel’s coordination authority, COGAT, has described the registration process as a tool to prevent Hamas from exploiting humanitarian aid, and Israeli officials have argued that oversight protects both civilians and Israeli security.
Officials have also said the organizations affected represent a small fraction of total aid activity, while aid continues through approved groups.
The Jerusalem Post defence correspondent, Yonah Jeremy Bob, reported that Israel has approved 24 NGOs to operate in Gaza under the new framework and that MSF is among several organizations that will not be authorized.
Other reports said dozens of international nonprofits were notified that their licenses would lapse on January 1, 2026, if they did not complete registration introduced in March, with an appeals process available, according to a report by the Post’s Mathilda Heller.
MSF has warned that the policy will damage healthcare delivery.
In statements carried by international wire coverage, the organization said the new rules risk preventing it from providing lifesaving medical care. It also rejected claims about staff affiliations, saying, “MSF would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity.”
MSF representatives emphasized the scale of their work in Gaza during the war and argued that the humanitarian response cannot absorb another shock.
Israel’s government has heard these arguments for years, and Israelis have lived with the consequences for longer.
A serious state regulates access to an active combat theatre. A serious state conducts vetting when the theatre is governed by a terror organization that uses civilian space as a tactic.
Hamas embeds itself in hospitals, schools, and aid environments because this strategy complicates military action and fuels international pressure.
Hamas benefits from blurred responsibility inside Gaza. Hamas benefits when the world treats Gaza like a natural disaster with paperwork in the way.
Israel has facilitated aid throughout this war under fire and under scrutiny. Israel has coordinated crossings, managed inspections, and handled the diplomatic heat when shipments were delayed or categories of goods were restricted.
Israel has then been blamed when convoys were looted inside Gaza, when distribution networks collapsed, and when armed actors interfered after trucks passed the border.
Staff vetting is at the centre of the dispute because it is at the centre of the risk. Hamas has every incentive to penetrate aid ecosystems, whether through direct recruitment, intimidation, or quiet leverage over local hires and contractors.
Israel cannot outsource that risk. Israel’s security services cannot sign off on “trust us” while Hamas runs the territory and treats humanitarian space as part of its battlefield.
The government’s approach also sends a message to partners abroad. Israel welcomes humanitarian work that is professional, accountable, and insulated from terror exploitation.
Israel rejects humanitarian cover that enables diversion, intimidation, or infiltration. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli captured that distinction in a public statement that said humanitarian assistance is welcome, while exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for terrorist purposes is unacceptable.
Approval should be efficient for organizations that comply. Rejection should be grounded in clear standards and documented deficiencies. Information handling should be professional and secure, especially when sensitive staff data is involved.
A process that looks arbitrary will weaken Israel’s case abroad and complicate coordination on the ground. A process that looks rigorous and predictable will strengthen it.
MSF has a powerful brand, and its absence will draw attention. Israel should meet that attention with confidence. The government is enforcing oversight in a territory ruled by a terror army, not denying Gazans access to medicine.
The war in Gaza has already taught one lesson: Hamas exploits every opening. Israel’s policy reflects that lesson and translates it into governance. Oversight of NGOs in Gaza belongs in the category of basic national security, and the decision to enforce it now fits the moment.
Israel’s responsibility includes protection for its citizens and compassion for Gaza’s civilians. The government can deliver both through a clear regulatory framework that keeps aid moving and keeps Hamas from turning humanitarian access into an operational advantage.
That is what this step represents, and it is about time.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-882088
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Deterrence or illusion? The Egypt gas deal is Netanyahu’s test
By AVI ABELOW
JANUARY 1, 2026
Israel’s newly announced $35 billion natural gas deal with Egypt is being hailed as a diplomatic and economic triumph, proof, we are told, that Israel has secured its place as a regional energy superpower. Once an energy-dependent country, now an exporter of energy. A huge shift for the small Jewish state of Israel, which had no natural resources.
But this deal is not primarily an economic story. It is a test of leadership.
The real question facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not whether the gas deal strengthens Israel’s balance sheet, but whether it will be used to strengthen Israel’s deterrence, or whether it will become yet another excuse for Israel to ignore blatant violations of the Camp David Accords and Egypt’s direct role in empowering Hamas.
Will Netanyahu leverage this deal to force Egypt to honour its peace commitments, or will he allow the deal to shield Egypt from accountability?
Egypt has already broken the peace
Yes, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty. But peace on paper is meaningless when it is violated in practice.
Egypt has openly and massively breached the Camp David Accords, deploying tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and heavy military equipment into the Sinai, far beyond what the treaty allows. This is not speculation. It is documented reality. And Israel has chosen, for years, to look the other way in the name of “stability.”
That tolerance has come at a catastrophic price.
For years, Egypt enabled Hamas’s military build-up by allowing, at best, massive smuggling operations through Sinai, and at worst, active cooperation with the terror tunnel network feeding Gaza with weapons, explosives, and materials. Those weapons were later used to butcher Israeli civilians on October 7.
And now, after all this, Israel signs a multibillion-dollar gas deal with Egypt and projects optimism regarding foreign relations with Egypt.
This is not realism.
It is self-deception.
The core illusion: Economics overcomes ideology
At the heart of this deal lies a familiar and dangerous Israeli fantasy: economic incentives can take an enemy whose hostility is ideological. But there is no placating a 1,400-year-old Islamic worldview that sees Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East as a historical mistake, and gas revenue will not neutralize jihadist theology. Israel has already paid dearly for this illusion in Gaza: Just days before Oct. 7, 2023, IDF and Shin Bet leadership actually advised the government that Hamas preferred jobs and economic development over jihad.
Like sand in the wind
Even if one generously assumes that President el-Sisi currently seeks stability, that argument collapses under the most basic understanding of the Middle East: regimes in the region do not last. Had Israel surrendered the Golan Heights to Assad as so many demanded for decades, for example, ISIS-linked forces under Jolani would today be overlooking the Kinneret with weapons aimed at Tiberias.
“Every deal with the Arab Muslim Middle East is like sand in the wind,” Dr. Mordechai Kedar once told me, words that should be engraved in the halls of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “Everything can change in an instant.” This is Middle Eastern literacy.
Deterrence is built on consequences, not contracts
The gas deal itself is not the problem. How Israel uses it is. The agreement should have been conditioned on Egypt paying for violating its treaty with Israel, specifically:
Full withdrawal of unauthorized military forces from Sinai
Accountability for enabling Hamas’s military build-up
Clear consequences for future breaches of the peace treaty
Instead, Israel has sent a dangerous message: that massive violations, strategic threats, and even indirect responsibility for Israeli deaths can be washed away with economic cooperation. This will not be lost on Egypt, or on other regional actors who are watching.
The Middle East does not respect paper agreements. It respects power, land, sovereignty, and irreversible consequences.
Every Israeli withdrawal has been interpreted as weakness. Every concession has been banked as an opportunity for future attack. And every attempt to replace deterrence with economics has cost us dearly with Jewish blood.
If Egypt, or any regional actor, harbours long-term ambitions against Israel, this gas deal will not stop them. It will merely help finance their patience.
This is Netanyahu’s moment
Israel doesn’t need applause from international markets. It needs clarity.
Prime Minister Netanyahu stands at a crossroads. He can either use this deal as leverage to enforce the Camp David Accords and restore Israeli deterrence, or allow it to become another illusion, proof that Israel still believes money and economic cooperation can buy security in a region governed by ideology and force.
Jewish survival in the Middle East has always rested on one foundation alone: a strong, expanding, unapologetic Jewish state, rooted in land, sovereignty, and the willingness to impose permanent consequences on those who seek our destruction.
Anything less is just sand in the wind.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-882046
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Hamas uses “Humanitarian Aid” mask in Italy to fund its terror
By DANIEL CITONE
JANUARY 1, 2026
Over the past two years, we have seen in Italy sustained attacks on Israel’s right to exist, alongside antisemitic incidents targeting Israeli tourists, Italian Jews, and even those who dared challenge the prevailing narrative about the Palestinians. There have been ongoing protests against an alleged “genocide,” Palestinian flags displayed on public and private buildings, and the public glorification of the antisemitic UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, exemplified by granting her honorary citizenships. Now, a ray of light has appeared: on December 27 – coinciding with the anniversary of a deadly Palestinian terrorist attack at Rome’s airport 40 years ago - Italian authorities uncovered what few were willing to imagine, despite repeated warnings. Funds raised by known anti-Israel operatives in Italy for supposed “humanitarian purposes” were instead used to finance Hamas terrorism - not to feed allegedly starving Palestinian children, but to buy weapons, pay terrorists’ salaries, and to fuel the ongoing cycle of terror.
How the Suspects Gained Political and Media Influence in Italy
In addition, several individuals have been arrested who maintained close ties with prominent left‑wing politicians, appeared with them in photos, were hosted in Parliament alongside the UN Special Rapporteur, attended conferences, and organized rallies joined by high‑profile figures and mayors of major Italian cities. One member of Parliament, together with another former member of Parliament, even took part in several trips organized by one of the suspects and publicly urged people to donate to the organizations now under investigation.
Another significant detail is that among the suspects is reportedly an Italian journalist accused of promoting Hamas propaganda in Italy: the director of the news agency InfoPal, who is said to have received monthly payments from the organization at the centre of the investigation. This raise hopes that the inquiry will also extend to the propaganda machinery shaping public opinion in favour of radical Islam, against Israel, and ultimately against Europe and the West.
Prior Warnings from Israel and Political Inaction Across Europe
Yet this information has been hiding in plain sight for quite some time. Several journalistic investigations - until now given far too little attention - have repeatedly reported on these connections; Israel has flagged these individuals for years, and investigations have already been carried out, both in Italy and abroad. Still, parts of Italian politics and society, as well as segments of the international community, chose not to look, allowing the system to be sustained through political support and financial contributions. It remains to be seen whether this “sudden” discovery will lead to further revelations in other European countries. Prosecutors describe some of those arrested as leaders of a European network operating beyond Italy’s borders, suggesting that similar structures may exist elsewhere and that the total funds involved could far exceed the approximately 7 million euros identified so far.
An Opportunity to Right the Wrongs of European Civil Society
Most of all, there is hope that this case will open the eyes of large segments of European civil society that have legitimized violence of Palestinian organizations against Israeli civilians and fuelled the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe and beyond. This hypocrisy has allowed terrorist organizations to hide behind humanitarian causes, giving them freedom to operate while enabling their supporters to pose as champions of noble causes. Now that it is clear that behind humanitarian causes there can be very different, non‑humanitarian goals - goals no longer acceptable to European civil society - there is hope that all, or at least much, of this support will be reassessed. It is time to track where the massive flow of money ending up in Hamas’s coffers actually goes - money that does nothing to improve Palestinian lives, but instead keeps these organizations in power and prolongs the conflict with Israel, presumably the very opposite of what many donors and much of the Italian and European left claim to want
Daniel Citone is the former president of B’nai B’rith Europe and Vice President of Solomon – Observatory on Discrimination, an Italian-based NGO combating antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-882020
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Arab States grow increasingly suspicious of Israeli policies
January 1, 2026
By Dr Sania Faisal El-Husseini
Perhaps the most consequential outcome of the events of 7 October 2023, has been the unmasking of Israeli plans, the collapse of a façade it maintained in the Middle East region for decades. Israel is no longer seen merely as an occupying power in Palestine, an occupation that distorts history, manipulates geography, and commits grave crimes against civilians. It has also emerged, with increasing clarity, as a disruptive regional actor, one that works deliberately to weaken the region’s centres of power in pursuit of its own dominance and control over the Middle East.
For years, especially in the past decade, the United States and Israel have invested heavily in portraying Iran as the region’s principal strategic adversary. This narrative has delivered tangible gains for Israel. It has helped isolate and constrain Iran as a competing regional power, while simultaneously diverting the attention of influential Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, away from Israel itself. In doing so, it has drawn these states into a prolonged confrontation with a historic rival, reshaping regional priorities in ways that ultimately serve Israel’s long-term strategic interests.
Significant and telling developments in recent days point to a growing Arab awareness of the dangers posed by Israel’s deepening penetration of the region. The Saudi strike against forces backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Yemen came as a clear expression of this shift. Despite the overlap between Saudi and Emirati objectives in Yemen, most notably their shared opposition to the Houthis, Riyadh appears to have made a deliberate decision to contain and isolate the Emirati presence there.
The relationship between Israel and the UAE is no longer concealed. It predates the 2020 normalisation agreement between the two countries, but since that moment it has moved decisively public and official. The UAE has increasingly assisted Israel in advancing its strategic objectives across the region in return of Israeli favours, even when doing so has come at the expense of Arab allies. Against this backdrop, Saudi Arabia has opted to block what it views as a dangerous Emirati footprint in Yemen, even if that choice carries costs for the broader campaign against the Houthis and Iran.
This recalibration raises a question that would have seemed implausible not long ago: have the UAE, and Israel behind it, come to be perceived as a greater threat to Saudi Arabia and the Arab world than Iran itself, particularly at a moment when Riyadh is engaged in negotiations with the Houthis and Iran aimed at de-escalating the conflict in Yemen?
These developments are also directly linked to the war in the Sudan, which erupted in 2023. From a strategic standpoint, Sudan commands a long and consequential stretch of the Red Sea coastline, alongside other critical considerations. That presence on the Red Sea carries particular weight for Israel, which is keen to ensure that this corridor does not fall under the control of a hostile power.
In Sudan, the UAE has backed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the country’s official state institutions, the army, whose legitimacy is recognised and supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the broader Arab world, and the international community, as Sudan’s lawful representative. The situation resembles a proxy confrontation, between the UAE and Arab states.
Notably, the Abdel Fattah al-Burhan government severed ties with the UAE, citing Abu Dhabi’s provision of advanced weaponry to the RSF. This allegation has also been raised by lawmakers in the United States Congress, and it has gone so far as to prompt Sudan to file a case against the UAE before the International Court of Justice.
Added to this, the UAE’s financial support for Ethiopia during the Egyptian–Ethiopian dispute over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, at the expense of the vital interests of Egypt and Sudan. Furthermore, since 2016, the UAE has ranked among the largest investors underpinning the Ethiopian economy. That relationship subsequently evolved into a strategic partnership, becoming particularly visible in the dam file from 2020 onward, the same year the UAE normalised relations with Israel.
Israeli–Ethiopian ties are among Israel’s most significant relationships in Africa. They date back to the 1950s and have expanded across security, political, and technological domains, positioning Ethiopia as a longstanding strategic ally for Israel on the continent. Ethiopia’s geography, adjacent to the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab, and the Horn of Africa, helps explain the exceptional depth of this partnership, given the area’s acute strategic importance to Israel.
Israel has established a strategic surveillance platform in Ethiopia and maintains a security presence alongside intelligence and military cooperation, so extensive that Ethiopia has at times been described as Israel’s security gateway to Africa. Israel also provides Ethiopia with technical support in the management of water resources, a role that lends weight to assessments pointing to Israeli involvement in the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
This brings us to the latest development, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, a move that has sparked widespread controversy. Israel is, to date, the only state in the world to extend recognition to this secessionist entity. Ethiopia, however, preceded Israel by signing a memorandum of understanding granting it maritime access to Somaliland’s coastline. The memorandum, yet to be implemented, provides for the lease of roughly 20 kilometers of Somaliland’s coast to Ethiopia for a period of fifty years.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland appears to be a calculated strategic escalation, closely tied to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, and carefully timed to coincide with shifts in the regional security and political landscape. In the aftermath of the Gaza war, and amid escalating confrontations with the Houthis in the Red Sea, Israel has increasingly sought coastal partners, particularly near the southern reaches of the Red Sea, an area it now treats as a matter of national security.
Somaliland has existed as a de facto entity separate from Somalia since 1991, but no state has formally recognised it. Crucially, Somaliland possesses a long coastline facing the Bab al-Mandab, one of the world’s most sensitive maritime outpost, underscoring the strategic logic behind Israel’s unprecedented move.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland opens the door to normalisation within the framework of the Abraham Accords and to maritime-security cooperation in the Red Sea. Through this move, Israel is not positioning itself solely for a confrontation with the Houthis and Iran in their own backyards along the Red Sea, it is also challenging the Turkish presence there, Turkey being Somalia’s closest ally in the region.
This helps explain the timing and urgency behind Israel’s decision to proceed with recognition of the Somaliland. The relationship between Turkey and Somalia is Ankara’s deepest partnership in Africa and can be described as a comprehensive strategic alliance. Turkey has positioned itself as Somalia’s foremost international patron. For Ankara, Somalia serves as a gateway to a sustained presence in the Horn of Africa. It hosts Camp TURKSOM, Turkey’s largest overseas military base, where the modern Somali army has been organised and trained.
Turkey also maintains a presence at the Port of Mogadishu, giving Ankara a maritime foothold opposite to the Gulf of Aden. Against this backdrop, an Israeli presence in Somaliland, near the Bab al-Mandab, constitutes a direct challenge to Turkish influence in Somalia, painstakingly built over the past fourteen years. It represents an intrusion into a zone Ankara regards as a natural extension of its maritime reach beyond the Mediterranean.
This brings us back to the question of timing, why Israel chose this precise moment to recognise Somaliland. The decision may also be linked to moves Israel initiated last week to form a trilateral military force with Greece and Cyprus, aimed at countering Turkey in the northern and eastern Mediterranean. In both cases, Turkey appears to be the primary target of Israeli strategy.
Should such a trilateral force materialise, it would alter the strategic balance in a theatre that currently tilts in Turkey’s favour. This comes amid an intensifying struggle over maritime competition for gas in the Mediterranean Sea. The dynamic is further intertwined with the Turkish- Libyan relationship and the maritime boundary delimitation agreement governing offshore gas exploration, an accord opposed by Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, and symbolising of the broader contest over spheres of influence in the Mediterranean.
These overlapping developments may also shed light on unresolved questions surrounding the recent explosion of an aircraft carrying Libyan military officials. The officials were on an official visit to Turkey and reportedly played a key role in coordinating bilateral relations between Libya and Turkey.
The trajectory of the current confrontation in Syria between Israel and Turkey appears to have entered a more complex phase, one that helps explain Israel’s efforts to contain Turkey across sensitive theatres in both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Turkey has recently deployed an integrated array of radar systems and air-defence missiles in northern Syria, a move Israel has interpreted as a direct threat to the freedom of operation of its military aviation.
The Israeli-Turkish clash in Syria is thus intensifying against the backdrop of an expanding Israeli military and security footprint inside the country. Israel has also provided military backing to Kurdish and Druze minorities, a policy framed as leverage to fragment and weaken the Syrian state. This approach stands in clear contradiction to the positions of both Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which support the preservation of a cohesive Syrian state.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the United States and Israel, have refused to comply with an agreement reached eight months ago that would have required their integration into Syria’s official armed forces and under state authority. Turkey rejects any continued SDF military presence in northern Syria, viewing it as a direct challenge to Turkish national security.
Against this backdrop in Syria, and amid the escalating confrontation between Israel and Turkey, Israel’s initiatives in the Mediterranean Sea alongside Greece and Cyprus, as well as its normalisation with Somaliland, appear as calibrated instruments of pressure on Turkey. Together, these moves reflect an Israeli attempt to impose new power equations across the region and to reshape the strategic environment in ways that constrain Turkish influence.
The reality that regional states ignored for decades was that Israel exists as a hostile entity toward all of them, one that operates to weaken its surroundings precisely because doing so ensures its own dominance. Israel has neither forgotten nor will it ever forget that it is encircled by enmity. That perception lies at the core of its security and military doctrine toward neighbouring states. What appears to be changing today is not Israel’s outlook, but these states which seem to be increasingly apprehensive of Israel’s role and the strategic designs it is pursuing.
Ultimately, it becomes clear that the disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Lebanon’s internal divisions, serve Israel’s interests at Lebanon’s expense. Likewise, the Israeli insistence on the disarmament of Palestinian factions, while Israel continues its occupation, territorial expansion, and assaults on Palestinian land, and persists in denying Palestinian rights, ultimately benefits Israel at the expense of the future of the Palestinian cause.
The same logic applies in Syria. Strengthening the position of armed minorities backed by Israel comes at the cost of Syria’s unity and stability, and works against the interests of the Syrian state itself.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260101-arab-states-grow-increasingly-suspicious-of-israeli-policies/
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The Body as the Final Weapon: Palestine Action and the Spirit of Bobby Sands
January 2, 2026
By Michael Leonardi
When the machinery of the state is totally dedicated to the protection of genocide; when the courts act as private security for arms dealers and weapons manufacturers; and when the political class—from Labour to Tory—competes to see who can bow lower to the Zionist lobby, the only territory left to reclaim is the body itself.
In the United Kingdom, a group of political prisoners from Palestine Action has entered the very dangerous phase of a hunger strike. They are currently locked in British prisons not for violence against people, but for the “crime” of dismantling the supply chain of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms dealer.
They are using their starving bodies to scream a truth that the BBC refuses to whisper: Britain is an active participant in the slaughter of Gaza.
The Criminalization of Conscience
Palestine Action has done what no government in the West has the moral spine to do: they have physically intervened to stop the flow of weaponry to a genocidal regime. For years, they have scaled factory roofs, smashed machinery, and blocked shipment gates. They have exposed Elbit Systems not as a legitimate business, but as a merchant of death that markets its drones as “battle-tested” on Palestinian children.
The British state’s response has been draconian. Abandoning all pretense of impartiality, the legal system has utilized counter-terrorism powers and restrictive bail conditions to crush this movement. We have seen the absurd spectacle of Greta Thunberg being arrested—like hundreds before her—simply for the “crime” of holding a placard.
Her global celebrity offered no shield against a state desperate to protect Israeli profits, revealing that even peaceful dissent is now treated as a “terrorist” threat to public order.
But the treatment of the core activists—the ones currently refusing food—marks a descent into authoritarian darkness. Kamran Ahmed, Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha, and Lewie Chiaramello remain steadfast on their hunger strike, despite grave medical warnings. Ahmed, just 28 years old, has been hospitalized for the third time as his body begins to shut down. Chiaramello, who suffers from diabetes, is refusing food every other day, yet is already experiencing severe confusion and weakness.
Two other young activists, Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib, were forced to pause their strikes after reaching the brink of death. Zuhrah, just 20 years old, endured 48 days without food and was denied an ambulance for 18 hours while in excruciating pain—a level of state sadism that MP Zarah Sultana rightly called “cruelty.” Yet, even in her weakened state, Zuhrah issued a warning to the government: “We will certainly return to battle you with our empty stomachs in the new year.”
A Global Architecture of Repression
The cruelty of the British state is not an isolated phenomenon. It is one front in a coordinated, transnational war on dissent being waged across the West.
• In the United States, we are witnessing a McCarthyite purge of academia. Police forces have laid siege to university campuses, brutalizing students and firing professors, while Congress moves to codify definitions of antisemitism that equate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. This atmosphere of terror reached a tragic crescendo with the self-immolation of active-duty airman Aaron Bushnell. Standing before the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, he declared he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” before setting himself on fire.
• In Germany, the state’s guilt over the Holocaust has metastasized into a totalitarian “Staatsräson” that mandates unconditional support for Israel. The German police have raided peaceful conferences, banned the Keffiyeh in schools, and unleashed shocking violence against Jewish anti-Zionist protestors in the streets, beating them bloody for daring to say “Not in Our Name.”
• In Italy, the Meloni government has spearheaded a judicial persecution of the Palestinian diaspora, detaining activists like Anan Yaeesh and witch-hunting students who occupy their schools. Simultaneously, there is a constant, defamatory campaign against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, who is slandered daily by the establishment press for daring to expose the legal reality of the genocide.
The West has constructed an “Iron Dome” of repression over its own citizens, dismantling civil liberties to protect the Zionist colony.
Demands for Justice
The demands of the prisoners are simple, yet they strike at the heart of British complicity. They are calling for immediate bail, the right to a fair trial, and the de-proscription of Palestine Action, which the UK government absurdly outlawed as a “terror” group in July to protect Israeli interests. Crucially, they demand the closure of all Elbit Systems sites in the UK.
They are also fighting for basic human dignity within the prison system: an end to censorship of their communications, the lifting of non-association orders that isolate them from one another, and for Heba Muraisi to be transferred closer to her support network in London.
Their lawyers have now launched legal action against the government, demanding a meeting with Justice Secretary David Lammy to address these inhumane conditions.
The Shadow of the H-Blocks
In this context, the hunger strike by Palestine Action inevitably summons the ghosts of Long Kesh and the H-Blocks. In 1981, Bobby Sands and his comrades starved themselves to death to assert their status as political prisoners against the criminalization policies of Margaret Thatcher. Sands famously wrote, “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” He understood that the British state could imprison the man, but it could not imprison the cause.
The parallels today are haunting. Like the Irish Republicans of the 80s, the activists of Palestine Action are facing a British establishment that is pathologically incapable of recognizing its own colonial violence.
Thatcher called Sands a terrorist; Keir Starmer calls Palestine Action terrorists. But history has a way of clarifying these distinctions. The “terrorists” are not the ones smashing the drone components; the terrorists are the ones building them, and the politicians protecting them.
The Ultimate Resistance
A hunger strike is a terrifying, desperate, and sacred act. It is the weapon of the dispossessed. It turns the prisoner’s frailty into an indictment of the jailer. As Kamran, Heba, Teuta, and Lewie weaken physically, their moral power grows, casting a long shadow over the judges and politicians who put them there.
They are starving because they refuse to feed the war machine. They are withering away so that the truth might survive. In a world where “civilized” nations have enabled and allowed the annihilation of a people, the only sanity is found in resistance. Palestine Action has drawn a line in the sand—or rather, a line on the factory floor. They are telling us that if we want to stop a genocide, we must be willing to put our bodies on the gears of the machine.
The British state may think it can break them, just as it thought it could break the men in the H-Blocks. But they forget the lesson of 1981: you can kill the striker, but you cannot kill the strike. The hunger of these prisoners is the hunger of millions who demand a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-body-as-the-final-weapon-palestine-action-and-the-spirit-of-bobby-sands/
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Gazans’ New Year Wishes: A Life of Dignity after Annihilation
January 1, 2026
By Shaimaa Eid
At the start of a new year, the people of Gaza were not seeking grand dreams or deferred luxuries. Their wishes may have appeared simple on the surface, yet they were weighed down by loss, destruction, and a long, painful wait.
After years of devastating war that pushed the Gaza Strip decades backward, Gazans stood at the threshold of a new year burdened by unanswered questions: Would the wars truly end? Would life ever return to what it once was? And would they finally be allowed to live like the rest of humanity?
Bisan Zuhd, a 29-year-old woman from Gaza City, told The Palestine Chronicle that her first wish was “for the Strip to return to how it was before the war — or at the very least, for life to start moving forward again.”
Bisan’s words, like those of many others, captured the aspirations of an entire generation that grew up under bombardment and displacement, deprived of life’s most basic necessities. The war did not only destroy buildings; it disrupted education and placed the dreams of thousands of young men and women on hold.
For Maryam Salem, 36, her only wish was to reunite her family. She told The Palestine Chronicle that the new year would not truly begin until her brother — stranded in Egypt since the war began — was able to return.
“When the bombing started, my brother, his wife, and their daughter left through the Rafah crossing after paying a large sum for coordination,” Maryam explained. “He did it out of fear for his family’s safety, but the separation has been heartbreaking.”
She added, “Since that day, we have lived in a constant state of waiting — longing, worry, and fear. We followed the news every day, hoping the crossing would open and they would return to our arms. We wanted nothing more than to be together.”
For Maryam, as for thousands of other families, the war was not merely a series of numbers in news bulletins. It was the tearing apart of families and a forced separation that stretched on for months.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Mohammad Qudeih, an elderly farmer, told The Palestine Chronicle that he had placed his hopes for the beginning of 2026 on the second phase of the ceasefire — one that might allow him to return to his land east of Khan Younis, classified as a “yellow zone.”
“The war has not truly ended,” he said. “We are still prevented from returning, and our land and farms remain buried beneath the rubble.”
Mohammad said he hoped that “American pressure would force Israel to withdraw from our areas so that we could finally breathe again.”
For him, returning was not simply about going back to a house; it was about reclaiming a deep and intimate connection to the land.
“I wanted to clear the rubble with my own hands and cultivate my land again,” he said. “This is the life I know.”
His words echoed the suffering of thousands of farmers who had lost both their land and their livelihoods.
On a personal level, my wishes were inseparable from this bleak reality. At the start of the new year, all I hoped for was that the Rafah land crossing would be opened permanently, and that patients would be allowed to leave Gaza to receive medical treatment.
My father, like so many others, needed care that was unavailable inside the Strip due to Israeli restrictions on patient exit and the blockade on medicine entry — especially cancer medications. I wished for relief from their pain, and for an end to the daily anxiety caused by medicine shortages and the fear that treatment would come too late.
Despite the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza on October 10, the humanitarian situation remained catastrophic.
The population continued to suffer from a severe shortage of potable water, an almost complete electricity blackout, and the collapse of health services, while hundreds of thousands remained displaced — living in shelters or amid the rubble of their destroyed homes.
Iman Al-Masri, a 43-year-old mother of three, told us about this daily struggle as she carried two gallons of water in her hands.
“We were not asking for the impossible,” she said. “We only wanted a decent life — basic services to be restored, and to feel that we were human beings.”
She added in a weary voice, “As women, our dignity has been stripped away under the weight of war and endless responsibilities. We wanted to live without humiliation — without water queues, and without constant fear for our children.”
In Gaza, the new year was not measured by celebrations or fireworks, but by how close it brought people to a life that resembled normalcy. The wishes of Gazans were not political demands; they were deeply human ones — safety, reunion, medical care, education, and water.
As the new year began, one question remained: would the world hear these simple wishes, or would it leave them hanging for yet another year?
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/gazans-new-year-wishes-a-life-of-dignity-after-annihilation/
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White Coats amid Rubble: A Moment of Hope in Gaza
January 1, 2026
By Kathy Kelly
On Thursday, December 25, 2025, during Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, 168 students graduated from medical school in Gaza. Wearing their white coats, they stood in front of the ruined façade of what was formerly Gaza’s largest hospital, the Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
As a backdrop, the destroyed building realistically conveys the perils the graduates faced while earning their medical degrees. Throughout the last two years of their studies, they risked assassination, injury, arrest, imprisonment, and torture, as well as attacks on their own family members.
Israel has waged a systematic campaign to destroy Gaza’s health care delivery and to kill or imprison health care professionals. From October 2023 to October 2025, the World Health Organization documented 687 Israeli attacks on Gazan health care facilities and 211 attacks on ambulances. These attacks killed 985 people. In the same time period, Israel detained over 306 healthcare workers.
Health Care Workers Watch – Palestine, a nongovernmental organization, reports that 95 Palestinian health care workers are still in prison, eighty of whom are from Gaza. Prisoners who have been released from detention report that doctors are singled out for particularly brutal treatment.
Among the 80 Gaza health care workers who are still detained is the former director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. On December 27, 2025, Dr. Abu Safiya began his second year of imprisonment.
For over a year, prior to his incarceration, the Israeli military had subjected the Kamal Adwan hospital to repeated sieges and attacks. Dr. Abu Safiya and his staff, refusing to desert their patients, managed to increase the number of available beds in the hospital as theirs became one of the few hospitals still operating in northern Gaza.
On October 25, 2024, Israel raided the hospital, bombing its buildings, detaining many patients, and arresting all hospital staff, including Dr. Abu Safiya, who was interrogated and released. On that same day, an Israeli drone attacked one of the hospital buildings and killed Dr. Abu Safiya’s twenty-year-old son, Ibrahim. Dr. Abu Safiya buried his son on the hospital grounds and still refused to abandon the patients.
“The Israeli army does not know what it wants,” Dr. Abu Safiya told a reporter with The Electronic Intifada.
“They detained me for a few hours and interrogated me about whether there were fighters inside the hospital, and demanded that I evacuate the hospital completely, but I refused and assured them that there were only patients inside the hospital. But fifty-seven of the hospital’s medical staff were arrested, (…) So we are suffering from a severe shortage of doctors, especially surgeons. Right now, we only have paediatricians — it is a huge challenge to work under these circumstances. I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice my patients, so the army punished me by killing my son. I saw him die at the entrance gate — it was a great shock. I found a grave for him near one of the hospital’s walls, so that he could stay close to me.”
On December 27, 2024, when Israeli forces threatened to level the whole facility, Dr. Abu Safiya agreed to leave the hospital, which was, by then, largely inoperable. An iconic video shows him, clad in his white coat, walking through the rubble toward two Israeli tanks.
He was held incommunicado and then taken to the Sde Teiman prison in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where he was interrogated and beaten before being transferred to the Ofer prison. There, he is held in solitary confinement. Only his lawyer has been allowed to visit him. She expresses rising alarm over his weight loss, inadequate health care, and frequent beatings.
Amnesty International says he has been forcibly disappeared and arbitrarily held without charge. Even though no charges have been brought against him, an Israeli court has extended his detention multiple times. On October 16, 2025, Israel’s Be’er Sheva District Court added an additional six months to his detention.
Who are the criminals? Israel and its partner, the United States, egregiously flaunt international law, committing numerous war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Dr. Abu Safiya endures daily punishments in return for his courageous dedication to serving victims of war.
In a better world, in a better future, we can hope that Palestinians graduating from medical school could assemble for an address delivered by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Together, they could uphold “the Humanity Cohort,” as the Gazan doctors who graduated in December 2025 call themselves, and safely commemorate the courageous health care workers who risked and lost their lives to care for patients during an Israeli genocide that is still ongoing.
Confident that health care is never a crime, they could cite their fallen colleagues’ historic and extraordinary adherence to the UN’s core mission, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/white-coats-amid-rubble-a-moment-of-hope-in-gaza/
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URL: https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/israeli-doctors-gazans-new-year-palestine/d/138278
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