Middle East Press On: Pop-Psychologization in Turkey, Peace Between Israel-Lebanon, US-Iran Talks, Amal Movement, Gaza, Abu Sitta’s Atlas, New Age Islam's Selection, 15 April 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
15 April 2026
Lost in translation: Pop-psychologization in Türkiye
Peace between Israel and Lebanon: On whose terms?
US-Iran talks: Calibrated sanctions relief could boost regional stability
Resistance as Memory, Resistance as Life: Reading Baroud’s Before the Flood
PROFILE: What Is the Amal Movement? Lebanon’s Other Shia Power Center
Gaza Forces Press Shath to Enter Strip, He Deflects: ‘Contact Mladenov’
Mapping the Crime: Abu Sitta’s Atlas Exposes Geography of Dispossession
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Lost in translation: Pop-psychologization in Türkiye
BY EMRE BARCA
APR 15, 2026
Afew years ago, I was caught off guard when my 19-old daughter returned home and announced that one of her friends had been “traumatized.” The incident itself was banal – a simple spider bite followed by a moment of fear and pain. What was truly unsettling was not the bite, but the term “trauma” had entered our living room not as a metaphor, but as a concept, complete, authoritative and even moralized. Soon after, she began speaking of “anxiety,” “panic attack” and other clinical terms with the ease of an adult. This was not a case of early maturation, as children have always mimicked adult idioms. The problem was the swift migration of psychological and psychotherapeutic language from clinical contexts into the fabric of ordinary life.
The rise of therapeutic culture and the emergence of the “psychological man” is a global phenomenon, but the Turkish experience has its own character – born in the translation room and embraced first and foremost by urban, educated classes. Accelerated by compressed modernization and the rapid diffusion of global media, the language of psychotherapy has turned into a cultural script increasingly shaping various segments of society. Today, Türkiye’s overall level of psychologization is comparable to many Western societies: career development and parenting self-help books, TV series based on therapeutic culture, motivational quotes, pop-psychology tips and bite-sized therapy advice in social media or conversations peppered with terms like “attachment style” or “childhood trauma.”
Globally speaking, psychologization is not just a free-floating fashion but a profound response to modernity. The weakening of traditional authorities, the privatization of risk and the heavy demand placed on individuals to make sense of life without stable communal bonds. Famously described by Philip Rieff, “the psychological man” has been formed by the erosion of traditional authority and the elevation of the self as the primary object of governmentality. Where we once evaluated conduct through the lenses of ethics, religion or politics, we now translate experience into therapeutic categories such as self-realization or emotional resilience.
In this new setting, the self must be reinvented with a new language and grammar, not only reconsidering how we talk about ourselves but also how we interpret the world. The self has become a project to be monitored and optimized. This is why what might seem like an innocent expansion of vocabulary is, in fact, a fundamental reorganization of how life is experienced: a shift in which the language, logic and techniques of psychology have moved beyond clinical settings to become the dominant framework for daily existence. It is not simply that people learn new words; it is that these words begin to do new work. At their most intense, they do not merely describe reality but they reorganize it.
Turkish psychologization
The late 20th century set the stage for Türkiye’s psychologization of daily life by establishing an indigenous self-help culture heavily inspired by Western psychology. Türkiye’s experience from the 1980s onward can be viewed as part of a global diffusion of psychological culture, albeit on a slight time delay and mediated through translation. The heavy import of American and European psychologization trends into Türkiye illustrates this one-way flow of ideas. As Turkish society opened to global media and consumer culture, psychological solutions to personal problems gained prominence.
By the early 21st century, Türkiye had its own self-help gurus, psychology-themed talk shows and advice columns, marking the normalization of psychological discourse beyond the clinic and classroom. Today, that ecosystem includes not only books but also magazines, websites, television programs and social media content dedicated to psychology and personal development. It became a sector now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Nevertheless, Türkiye has a rich tradition of community-based problem-solving with family meetings, counsel from elders or guidance from religious figures like imams. The rise of psychology does not mean those traditional systems vanished overnight; rather, many people in Türkiye navigate between old and new frameworks. The psychologization of Turkish life, while heavily influenced by Western-origin ideas, is being adapted to Türkiye’s social context. Yet pop psychologization dovetails with the idea that individuals must cultivate their own “soft skills” and mental toughness to thrive in a precarious world. This shifts the onus onto individuals to fix themselves, rather than addressing the communal capacity to support its members.
Psychologization, then, does not merely add sensitivity to the culture, it also redistributes authority. The “good person” becomes the self-aware person, and the “healthy relationship” becomes the one managed correctly, with the right boundaries, language and rituals. Social life becomes more legible but also more surveilled, more calibrated and more anxious about correctness. A new form of moral pressure emerges: the obligation to narrate and manage the self in therapeutic terms. Personal achievement is seen not just as a matter of structure or social bond but as something deeply tied to one’s psychological state. This is a considerable burden and it falls disproportionately on the urban, educated classes who have most fully embraced therapeutic culture. Rural and traditionally minded segments took longer to be drawn in, but they, too, are now reached by mass media narratives about mental health.
None of this is an argument against psychology, or against the genuine relief that therapy can bring to those in need. It is, rather, a call for lucidity about what is being lost in translation. When a spider bite becomes trauma, and a difficult week becomes a “trigger,” something more than vocabulary is at stake. We are quietly narrowing the range of experience we are willing to call ordinary. My daughter’s generation will grow up fluent in a language that did not exist for their grandparents. The question worth asking is not whether that language is sophisticated but whether it is making them, making all of us, more capable of living, or merely more capable of narrating our inability to do so.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/lost-in-translation-pop-psychologization-in-turkiye
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Peace between Israel and Lebanon: On whose terms?
OSAMA AL-SHARIF
April 14, 2026
Lebanon did not start this war. It may not survive the peace. That was the bitter paradox facing Beirut as Israeli and Lebanese envoys prepared to meet in Washington on Tuesday for the first direct talks between the two countries in more than four decades. The meeting — convened under American auspices in the shadow of the 40-day US-Israeli war on Iran — was billed by Benjamin Netanyahu as the opening of a full peace negotiation. In Beirut, it looked more like an ultimatum than an opportunity.
The sequence of events that brought Lebanon to this point was not of its choosing. When a US-Israeli raid on Tehran killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior officials, Hezbollah — the pro-Iran militia — fired rockets at Israel in solidarity with its patron. Israel’s response was swift and severe: strikes on Beirut’s southern district and villages across southern Lebanon, with orders for residents to evacuate north of the Litani River. More than a million Lebanese have since been displaced and 2,000-plus have been killed.
Israel sought to use the fighting to establish a buffer zone extending to the Litani, but it met fierce resistance that blunted its armored advance. Its forces have managed to hold only a narrow strip 8km to 10km north of the border. As of Monday, they were still battling for Bint Jbeil, a traditional Hezbollah stronghold. This stands in contrast to last June’s 12-day war, when Israel inflicted heavier damage on Hezbollah in far less time, securing five positions inside Lebanese territory and destroying border villages.
Iran and Pakistan both claimed that the ceasefire brokered between Tehran and Washington covered Lebanon. Israel rejected that interpretation and Washington backed Netanyahu — until Iran threatened to walk away from the Islamabad negotiations entirely. Only then did Donald Trump press Netanyahu to stop bombing Beirut and limit ground operations to the south.
The war has exposed and aggravated Lebanon’s internal fractures. President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have publicly accused Hezbollah of endangering Lebanese sovereignty and acting outside the law — a remarkable stance that would have been politically unthinkable just a year ago. After last June’s war, both men moved to expand army deployments south of the Litani and begin the process of disarming Hezbollah. Netanyahu dismissed those efforts as insufficient and declared that Israel would finish the job itself.
Salam’s expulsion of the Iranian ambassador last month and his categorical rejection of any Iranian role in Lebanese affairs opened the door to indirect contacts with Israel. Netanyahu seized on this, announcing not merely a ceasefire but a full peace treaty as his objective — while making clear he had no intention of halting the bombardment in the meantime.
The announcement stunned Hezbollah. Secretary-General Naim Qassem called the talks futile and urged officials to abandon them. A Hezbollah parliamentary representative described the negotiations as a violation of the constitution and a threat to civil peace — a thinly veiled warning of what the party might do if the government pressed forward.
The core problem is this: Israel’s central demand — the full disarmament of Hezbollah — is something the Lebanese state cannot deliver. The army lacks the capacity to impose it by force. More dangerously, Hezbollah has the street muscle and the armed cadres to make any government that tried to enforce disarmament pay a severe political price. The specter of civil war is not rhetorical. It is a live possibility that haunts every calculation in Beirut.
Israel and Lebanon have been here before. They reached a peace agreement in May 1983. It was ratified by the Lebanese parliament but killed off before implementation by Syrian pressure and threats. Subsequent direct contacts were limited to narrower issues: maritime boundaries and the mandate of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Lebanon. The distance between those technical arrangements and a full peace treaty is enormous and Tuesday’s meeting does not change that.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is facing pressure from his own far-right flank to make the occupation permanent — to hold the south all the way to the Litani, and beyond, and finish Hezbollah once and for all. That he has chosen the language of peace talks rather than annexation is, at this stage, a tactical posture more than a strategic commitment.
What is unfolding in Lebanon increasingly echoes what happened in Gaza. Defense Minister Israel Katz has threatened to turn Lebanese villages into another Beit Hanoun — a reference to the complete destruction of towns in the Strip. Beirut and human rights organizations have not been slow to draw that parallel.
Netanyahu’s calculation appears to be this: use the cover of negotiations to continue razing towns in the south, consolidate a buffer zone as a physical fact, and ensure that the hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese cannot return. That buffer zone has effectively already been created. Whether Lebanon can ever reclaim that territory is, at this point, doubtful.
With Trump’s full backing behind Israel, Beirut entered Tuesday’s talks from a position of near-total weakness. The choice on offer is not between war and a just peace. It is between continued bombardment and a peace settlement whose terms — including Hezbollah’s disarmament, a permanent buffer zone and a bilateral treaty that isolates Lebanon from its regional patrons — no Lebanese government could ever accept and survive.
Lebanon did not start this war. It may not survive peace on Netanyahu’s terms.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2639902
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US-Iran talks: Calibrated sanctions relief could boost regional stability
DR. MOHAMMED AL-SULAMI
April 14, 2026
As the fragile ceasefire holds in the wake of the 40-day Iran-US/Israel conflict, negotiators meeting in Islamabad, alongside parallel exchanges through Swiss and other intermediary channels, are once again confronting a central and enduring fault line in US-Iran relations: the potential release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen under years of American sanctions. With Tehran conditioning the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a reduction in proxy activities on sanctions relief, Washington faces a familiar strategic dilemma.
The question of unfrozen assets is not new. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran regained access to previously restricted funds, often cited at up to $150 billion. These resources provided Tehran with significant financial latitude. Rather than translating into broad-based domestic recovery, however, a portion of these funds appears to have supported Iran’s regional posture, including its network of proxies.
Survey data from 2018 indicates that 75 percent of Iranians believed that socioeconomic conditions had not improved as a result of the JCPOA, while many perceived that the available funds disproportionately benefited well-connected elites or were diverted abroad to support proxy networks, military activities and broader belligerent ambitions.
This experience has shaped enduring skepticism in US policy circles, particularly during the presidency of Donald Trump, who has consistently argued that sanctions relief strengthened Iran’s missile capabilities, proxy networks and regional influence.
In the current context, the risk is that unconditional sanctions relief could once again reinforce Iran’s external projection of power rather than stabilize its domestic economy. This concern is particularly acute given the continued volatility of Gulf security and the lingering effects of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz on global energy markets.
At the same time, Iran’s framing of the issue has evolved. What initially appeared to be a request for access to approximately $6 billion in restricted funds has expanded significantly, with Iranian sources now suggesting that as much as $27 billion remains frozen across multiple jurisdictions. The scale of these demands has elevated the issue from a secondary bargaining tool to a central pillar of negotiations.
A more prudent approach would be to structure sanctions relief in a conditional and incremental manner. Rather than granting immediate and comprehensive access to frozen assets, financial releases could be phased and explicitly linked to verifiable de-escalation measures. Initial tranches might be conditioned on concrete steps such as reducing material support to regional proxies or refraining from actions that threaten maritime security. Subsequent phases could depend on sustained behavioral changes, monitored through strengthened international mechanisms. In parallel, credible and automatic “snapback” provisions would be essential to ensure that any breach of commitments triggers the rapid reimposition of sanctions.
Such an approach would directly address one of the principal criticisms of the JCPOA: the imbalance between front-loaded economic benefits and delayed or uncertain enforcement of behavioral constraints. By contrast, a phased framework would preserve leverage over time and reduce the risk of unintended strategic consequences. It would also resonate with elements of the “maximum pressure” policy, which previously constrained Iran’s economic capacity and, by extension, its regional activities prior to this year’s escalation.
The role of international partners will be critical in determining whether such a framework can be implemented effectively. European actors, particularly France, Germany and the UK, have historically sought to preserve diplomatic engagement with Iran while maintaining the core structure of the nuclear agreement. In the current negotiations, they are well positioned to advocate for a more conditional model of sanctions relief. By aligning their financial channels and regulatory frameworks with measurable benchmarks of Iranian behavior, European governments could reinforce US leverage while maintaining diplomatic cohesion.
Beyond Europe, major Asian energy importers, including China, India and South Korea, also have a direct stake in the outcome. China, which maintained limited Iranian oil flows during the crisis, could play a constructive role by endorsing a phased approach to sanctions relief tied to clear behavioral conditions. A broader alignment among G7 and Gulf Cooperation Council states, supported by transparent benchmarks and multilateral oversight, would strengthen the credibility of this strategy.
Ultimately, the issue of frozen assets extends well beyond Iran’s immediate economic needs. Unconditional access to these funds risks rewarding the very forms of hybrid warfare that contributed to the recent crisis, including disruptions to critical shipping lanes and sharp increases in global oil prices. It could also reinforce hard-line factions within Iran’s political system that interpret economic concessions as evidence of external weakness rather than as incentives for policy adjustment.
Conversely, a calibrated, behavior-linked framework offers a more sustainable path forward. By maintaining financial leverage while providing a clear pathway for incremental relief, such an approach could help reduce tensions without sacrificing strategic objectives. For Washington, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Having long emphasized the risks associated with unconditional sanctions relief, the current US administration now faces the task of translating that critique into a workable diplomatic framework.
The broader lesson is clear: sanctions relief is not an end in itself but a policy instrument that must be carefully designed and rigorously enforced. If structured without sufficient safeguards, it risks exacerbating the very dynamics it seeks to mitigate. If, however, it is embedded within a conditional and verifiable framework, it may contribute to a more stable regional equilibrium.
The outcome of the current negotiations will therefore not only shape the trajectory of US-Iran relations but also signal whether the international community has effectively internalized the lessons of the past decade.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2639870
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Resistance as Memory, Resistance as Life: Reading Baroud’s Before the Flood
April 15, 2026
By Ron Jacobs
Ramzy Baroud, editor of the Palestine Chronicle, which has been the most reliable English-language news source regarding the conflict in Palestine since before October 7, 2023, and even more so since that date, writes history from the heart.
His stories of families (including his own) and their lives as refugees, freedom fighters, doctors and more remind the reader that the political history of a people is ultimately the history of people.
In the case of a people under fire, under occupation and under constant pressure to deny their culture and therefore their lives by colonial powers convinced that their oppression and repression will defeat those they oppress, Baroud’s words are in themselves weapons of the struggle. His most recent book, titled Before the Flood: A Gaza Family Memoir Across Three Generations of Colonial Invasion, Occupation, and War in Palestine, continues this tradition.
Baroud’s description of the first days and weeks of the genocide brings everything back: the horror, the anger, the frustration and hopelessness. One can feel the fear and despair, the disbelief, followed by a nagging voice in your head reminding you that this has always been the Zionists’ true vision and Washington’s secret hope—decimate the Palestinian population, destroy the idea of a free Palestine and move on to the business of making the land that is Palestine into a colonialist utopia.
Then, the reader is taken back in time to the genesis of the story being told in these pages. It’s a tale of resistance to colonialism that moves from one generation to the next; one historical moment to the one that follows in the context of a world where the colonizers are primarily of European descent and distinctly related to a perception of the world to its south as something to be dominated.
Baroud’s text begins by locating its origins in Beit Daras, a town in Palestine that was overtaken and destroyed by Zionist militias during the Nakba. The reader is introduced to Madallah, a matriarch whose life is representative of the stories being told; whose abilities include being able to communicate that transcends this dimension. From that beginning, the reader finds themselves in refugee camps and on battlefronts; battlefronts which are all too often the places where people live, work, worship and celebrate.
The profiles Baroud constructs are of real people, people as real as the reader and their friends and family; the circumstances are considerably harsher and more tenuous because of the occupation and its enforcers. In his portrayal of these lives, one meets a young man who becomes a petty criminal and a young woman who dies a freedom fighter, killed by a future prime minister of the Israeli government. The conflict between the occupied and the occupier is not just the common thread that provides a context for all the people and events relayed by the author, it is a fact of life and a reason for living for many, if not most, of those who appear in these pages.
More than just a part of the setting of the history being told, the resistance is a living and genuine protagonist in Before the Flood. From the early battles in the 1930s before the Nakba and the never-ending struggle afterwards, the reader finds instruction on the Intifadas, the wars between Tel Aviv and its neighbors and the recent phase that became an internationally condemned genocide (that continues today hidden behind a fraudulent ceasefire).
Inside the resistance itself, one reads of class differences that have defined approaches taken by the organizations of the resistance—one ultimately favoring accommodation and potential surrender, the other accepting a history that makes it clear that colonizers do not relinquish the lands that they have conquered without a long and often violent struggle. Baroud’s depiction discusses the transition from a mostly secular liberation struggle to one with its foundations in what is ultimately a struggle informed by Islam that originated in the previously existing Muslim Brotherhood. The character of the resistance is a reflection of the Palestinians, from Arafat and Fatah to the PFLP to Hamas. Its continuation through generations is testament to its necessity and the commitment of its supporters; it is also a reason for its changing tactics and internal struggles.
The current situation in Palestine may be its most difficult yet. The brazenly illegal and colonialist slaughter and destruction of Gaza led by Tel Aviv and Washington continues as it intensifies in the West Bank; the Nakba seems never-ending. Banks and corporations intent on theft and profiteering hover around Donald Trump and his Gaza designs like flies around manure, hoping for a piece of the real estate fantasy he and his son-in-law are hustling to the world.
Netanyahu and his government of homicidal sociopaths demand a world where all Palestinians are either dead or enslaved, living in medium security prisons disguised as residential zones. Washington and Wall Street eagerly accommodate this desire, lining up investors and corporations whose pursuit of profits determines their morality.
Ramzy Baroud’s Before the Flood reminds us that humanity comes first; that it is this priority that in the most fundamental way possible is what drives the Palestinian resistance. It remains for us to remember and repeat this truth.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/resistance-as-memory-resistance-as-life-reading-barouds-before-the-flood/
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PROFILE: What Is the Amal Movement? Lebanon’s Other Shia Power Center
April 15, 2026
A recent statement by the Amal Movement rejecting any direct negotiations with Israel has once again placed the group at the center of Lebanon’s political landscape.
The declaration, aligned with the position of Hezbollah, reinforces a long-standing axis of unity within Lebanon’s Shia political sphere, particularly at a time of ongoing Israeli attacks and heightened regional tension.
That makes this a useful moment to step back and ask a broader question: what exactly is the Amal Movement, and how does it differ from Hezbollah?
Why revisit Amal now?
Amal’s latest rejection of direct negotiations with Israel matters not only because of the statement itself, but because of what it signals politically inside Lebanon.
With Hezbollah already denouncing direct talks, Amal’s position reinforces a familiar but important reality: in moments of war and external pressure, Lebanon’s two main Shia forces still tend to close ranks on core strategic questions.
Where did Amal come from?
Amal predates Hezbollah. Its roots lie in the political and social awakening led by Imam Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Lebanese cleric who transformed Shia political life in Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1974, al-Sadr co-founded the Movement of the Deprived, a mass movement aimed at confronting the chronic political and economic marginalization of Lebanon’s Shia community.
mal later emerged as its military and political arm; the name also served as an acronym for the Lebanese Resistance Detachments.
That origin matters. Amal was born less as an ideological Islamist project than as a movement for representation, dignity, and state inclusion for a historically neglected constituency.
Its early language was social and national as much as religious. Even when it took up arms during the civil war, its center of gravity remained Lebanese and communal rather than explicitly revolutionary in the Iranian sense.
Who founded it, and who shaped it?
Musa al-Sadr remains Amal’s foundational figure. His disappearance in Libya in 1978 turned him into a lasting moral symbol for many Lebanese Shia.
After that rupture, Amal evolved under new leadership and eventually came under the control of Nabih Berri, who has led the movement since 1980 and turned it into one of the key pillars of Lebanon’s post-civil war political order.
Under Berri, Amal became deeply embedded in the state. That is one of the clearest differences between Amal and Hezbollah: Amal is not simply influential in Lebanese institutions; it is one of the movements most associated with operating through them. Berri’s long tenure as speaker of parliament is the clearest expression of that role.
So how did Hezbollah emerge in relation to Amal?
Hezbollah emerged later, in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Many of its early cadres came out of the same Shia political awakening that Musa al-Sadr had helped create, and some had earlier passed through Amal’s ranks.
But Hezbollah was not simply a splinter in the narrow organizational sense. It was a different political formation shaped by the Iranian Revolution, by clerical networks closer to Ayatollah Khomeini’s line, and by the idea that armed resistance to Israel should be the core organizing principle of a new Shia Islamist movement.
Unlike Amal, Hezbollah embraced Wilayat al-Faqih, the doctrine associated with the Iranian revolutionary model.
That ideological distinction is crucial. Amal’s tradition is more Lebanese-statist, more embedded in confessional and parliamentary politics, and less explicitly doctrinal. Hezbollah, by contrast, developed as a more overtly Islamist and resistance-centered movement with a stronger transnational ideological connection to Iran.
Were Amal and Hezbollah always allies?
No. Their relationship included bitter rivalry, especially in the 1980s. They competed for leadership of Lebanon’s Shia community, clashed over political direction, and fought violent battles between 1985 and 1990.
Those conflicts were not only about power. They also reflected genuine disagreement over identity, ideology, and strategy: whether the Shia political project in Lebanon should be primarily statist and communal, or Islamist and revolutionary.
Over time, however, the two movements settled into a durable division of labor. Amal became more firmly anchored in formal state politics and patronage networks, while Hezbollah consolidated its role as the leading armed resistance force and a major political actor in its own right.
That did not erase differences, but it created a stable partnership.
What unites them today?
Today, Amal and Hezbollah are best understood as allied but not identical. They share a Shia social base, coordinate closely on major national questions, and generally align against Israeli aggression and external pressure on Lebanon.
At moments like this one, Amal’s rejection of direct talks with Israel matters because it shows that this alignment remains intact. That is politically significant not only for Lebanon’s internal balance, but also for the wider resistance camp.
Why does Amal still matter?
Because Amal is not simply “Hezbollah’s partner.” It is a historical movement in its own right: older than Hezbollah, rooted in the foundational mobilization of Lebanese Shia, and still central to the way that community is represented in the state.
To understand modern Lebanon, one has to understand both movements — and to understand that their unity today rests not on sameness, but on a relationship forged through shared history, conflict, adaptation, and ultimately strategic convergence.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/profile-what-is-the-amal-movement-lebanons-other-shia-power-center/
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Gaza Forces Press Shath to Enter Strip, He Deflects: ‘Contact Mladenov’
April 14, 2026
Direct Pressure
Palestinian national and Islamic forces in Gaza have sharply escalated pressure on Ali Shath, demanding that he and his committee enter the Strip and begin carrying out their mandate.
According to sources cited by Quds News Network, the Follow-Up Committee of the National and Islamic Forces sent a direct message urging Shath and his team to take a position that would “impose their arrival in the Gaza Strip” as soon as possible.
The factions said they are fully prepared, in coordination with Gaza’s governmental emergency structures, to provide “all means necessary” to transfer administration of the Strip to the committee “without any obstacles.”
The committee was formed nearly 100 days ago as part of the ceasefire framework, with a mandate focused on managing humanitarian and administrative affairs during a transitional phase.
‘Deepens People’s Suffering’
In a strongly worded message, the factions warned that the committee’s delay in entering Gaza “deepens people’s suffering and allows the occupation to entrench crises.”
They described the delay as “unjustified and incomprehensible,” saying it has triggered “widespread dissatisfaction” among residents awaiting tangible steps to alleviate worsening conditions.
According to the sources, the factions argued that linking the committee’s return and the reopening of crossings to new conditions—absent from the original ceasefire agreement—has effectively turned the committee into a “hostage” to external actors.
They added that these justifications for delay are “in harmony with the occupation,” accusing Israel of attempting to impose new conditions not included in the original ceasefire formula.
Shath Deflects Responsibility
Despite the mounting pressure, Shath reportedly distanced himself from the issue.
“We are a professional committee,” he said, QNN reported, “and have nothing to do with the political issues being discussed between the Palestinian factions and the High Representative Mladenov.”
The response was widely seen by sources as dismissive, redirecting responsibility to Nikolay Mladenov rather than addressing the committee’s continued absence from Gaza.
Sources said Mladenov had presented resistance factions with a five-stage plan linking each humanitarian phase to what he described as “collecting weapons,” effectively tying relief and administrative steps to the disarmament of Palestinian factions.
They stressed that this contradicts the original ceasefire agreement, which limited the committee’s role to humanitarian and administrative functions.
According to the sources, Shath and the committee have not publicly challenged this shift, nor rejected linking their mandate to the weapons file.
The factions also outlined what they described as ongoing Israeli violations, including “continued field escalation,” “systematic killing and assassination operations,” and attacks on shelters and police facilities.
They pointed to restrictions on trade, pressure on vital sectors—particularly healthcare—expansion of buffer zones, and refusal to withdraw from areas occupied during recent operations.
The factions further warned of Israeli support for armed groups operating outside official structures, contributing to internal instability.
‘Gaza Cannot Be Administered Remotely’
Sources said the factions emphasized that Gaza “cannot be administered remotely,” especially after enduring years of genocide and blockade.
They warned against prioritizing security arrangements while urgent sectors such as health, relief, infrastructure, and education remain in crisis.
The factions said they had urged the committee to press mediators to secure its immediate return, rather than remain outside Gaza under the pretext of logistical constraints.
Humanitarian Crisis Deepens
The pressure comes as humanitarian conditions in Gaza remain severe despite months of ceasefire.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, aid delivery continues to face major constraints due to insecurity, restricted access, fuel shortages, and supply chain disruptions, with crossings operating below needed capacity.
Food insecurity remains critical. The World Food Programme has warned that Gaza still faces “catastrophic conditions,” with more than 100,000 children and tens of thousands of women at risk of acute malnutrition.
Health services are also under extreme strain. According to the World Health Organization and Palestinian data cited by WAFA, 94 percent of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, while the overall number of Palestinians wounded since October 7, 2023, has climbed to 172,213.
Meanwhile, the death toll continues to rise. WAFA reported on April 14 that 72,336 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the genocide, while 757 have been killed and 2,111 wounded since the ceasefire took effect on October 11, 2025; the same report said 760 bodies had also been recovered.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/gaza-forces-press-shath-to-enter-strip-he-deflects-contact-mladenov/
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Mapping the Crime: Abu Sitta’s Atlas Exposes Geography of Dispossession
April 14, 2026
By Annie O’Gara
Dr. Salman Abu Sitta is a magisterial figure in the Palestinian cause, not least because his life’s work illustrates the fact that resistance to Zionism takes many forms.
Arguably among his greatest works are the Atlases of Palestine. Two Atlases, ‘Atlas of Palestine, 1871- 1877 and ‘Atlas of Palestine 1917-1967’,map Palestine before the inception of the Zionist project to ethnically cleanse that land and trace changes after the Nakba up to the Naksa. Most importantly, villages, towns and cities are placed geographically, are given their correct Arabic name, and restored to their rightful position on the land of Palestine.
More recently, the ‘Atlas of Palestine: Land Theft by the Jewish National Fund’ raises the central issues of agency (who stole that land and how did the JNF come to “own” it?) and rightful possession (which villages do those lands belong to, who lived there, and where are the scattered owners now?)
This Atlas will be of special relevance to Palestinian refugees displaced from the 372 villages whose land was allocated to the JNF/KKL in a fictitious land “sale” and subsequently covered in parks and forests, hiding demolished villages and preventing any return. For Palestinians, the names of their villages are resurrected and recorded on the map.
The myriad devices used in the early years of the state of Israel to “legitimize” what was plainly illegitimate are charted in this Atlas with great clarity. Illuminating templates accompany the map of each JNF park, delving into detail: its territorial imposition on Palestinian land, how much land of each affected village was stolen, some of the names of large families and which refugee camps many of them now inhabit.
Were Dr Abu Sitta a forensic scientist, this Atlas would be a record of JNF crime scenes and of the victims of those crimes, the Palestinian Refugees; of course, as long as the parks continue to exist, they signify ongoing crimes, the thieves still profiting from their loot. The Israeli state has gone to enormous lengths, in particular through JNF greenwashing, to cover up the crime that lies at the heart of the foundation of the state, a crime which constitutes the most fundamental challenge to its founding myth, namely that Palestine was an empty or neglected land.
These maps are a tool for Palestinians to use at some point to reclaim their patrimony. For non-Palestinians, the maps of JNF parks from which some friends and comrades were expelled, offer much: captivating detail, the musicality of the Arabic names of the villages, admiration for meticulous forensic detail and not least the very act of naming stolen identities – a form of political resistance of greater significance than might at first be apparent.
Western societies tend to see cartography as a precise, scientific and politically neutral act of correctly charting a land’s contours, rivers, mountains, plains, roads and, of course, place names to find one’s way. But a colonized people know that map-making (like historiography) can be anything but a neutral act, in particular, when the native language is supplanted by that of the colonizer, as in Palestine and Ireland.
Dr. Salman’s latest work triggered many thoughts for this writer on the bonds between Ireland and Palestine. In 1883, Lord Salisbury said that “the most disagreeable part of the three kingdoms is Ireland and therefore Ireland has a splendid map.” The Spring Rice Report of 1824 had given rise to this “splendid” map by identifying the need for a “general survey of Ireland” which would be “proof of the disposition of the legislature to adopt all measures calculated to advance the interests of Ireland.” Carried out by the Royal Engineers, the mapping exercise has not been perceived by everyone as such a benign exercise.
In 1980, at the height of the Troubles, the political significance of the mapping of Ireland by the colonial power was dramatized memorably by the Field Day Theatre Company in Brian Friel’s play “Translations.” The play is fictive, but uses the 19th-century mapping of Ireland by the English crown as a launch pad to explore issues related to colonization: cultural dispossession, land, identity and, of course, language, the vehicle of power which secures the ascendancy of the colonizer over the colonized: “Language has always been the perfect instrument of Empire.”
The mapping of Ireland involved standardising or regularising the naming of places by the translation or transliteration of Gaelic names into English. A central character in the play, a local man involved in the process, Owen, describes his job as to “translate the quaint archaic tongue you people persist in speaking into the King’s good English.” Thus, in the play, we see many examples of the deracination of place names through this process of anglicization: Bun na hAbhann becomes Burnfoot and Baile Beag becomes Bally Beg.
The process, as dramatized by Friel, involves a metaphorical erasure of memory and tradition, neatly encapsulated in one anecdote, that of Tobair Vree (“tobair” is Gaelic for a well). Characters discuss the word “Vree”; what does it mean? “Vree,” one of them explains, is a corruption over time of Bhriain (Brian), so the original name meant “Brian’s Well”.
But the name is attached to a crossroads, not a well; the puzzle deepens. Intergenerational oral history supplies the answer to the riddle. Decades before, an elderly local man, the eponymous Brhiain, suffered from a disfiguring facial growth which he believed might be cured by the magical waters of the then-existing well. Daily bathing did not cure him, but he tragically drowned in the same well – hence the name.
Friel’s point is clear: names are more than denotational, they are preservatives of memory and, as such, their surface irregularity means nothing, they hold a deeper significance and potency. The act of supplanting a Gaelic name with an anglicized transliteration or translation is “an eviction of sorts,” an act of cultural imperialism, erasing local history and identity and replacing it with a new, imposed reality.
Dr Salman’s latest Atlas strikes another blow at the cultural tyranny of Israel’s mapping of Palestine. His assertion of the true names of Palestinian towns and villages, his insistence that JNF Parks and Forests are a shadowy (but massively damaging) overlay on the authentic Arabic identity of Palestine, their borders demarcating the extent of their theft, is of great significance to Palestinians. It is also a gift to all colonized peoples who need an Abu Sitta champion and to all of us who work to see Palestine restored and its people given the Right of Return.
However hard the JNF and Zionism work, they will not defeat the assertion of Arabic truth embodied in names, just as in Ireland today Doire/Derry trumps “Londonderry”. And in the words of Seamus Heaney:
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/mapping-the-crime-abu-sittas-atlas-exposes-geography-of-dispossession/
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