Greater Middle East
Golan Heights

Israel to expand illegal settlement of Golan Heights

Human Rights Watch protested the Israeli government’s plan for increased settler transfers into the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, calling the decision a “clear statement of intent to commit war crimes.” The $334 million plan, announced by the Finance Ministry, seeks to make the small town of Katzrin the Golan’s “first city,” by bringing in 3,000 new Israeli settler families. Funds are allocated for infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer by an occupying power of any of its own civilian population into territory it occupies. Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), defines such transfers as war crimes. Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Golan Heights has since been declared unilaterally annexed. (Photo: Freedom’s Falcon via Wikimedia Commons)

Palestine
Mansoura

Israel ‘weaponizing thirst’ in Gaza

Two Palestinian water delivery truck drivers were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip, prompting aid groups to halt activities in the area. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that the attack threatens vital humanitarian operations supplying clean water to hundreds of thousands of people. UN experts have said that Israel uses “thirst as a weapon to kill Palestinians.” The experts noted that since October 2023, Israel’s military operations have repeatedly targeted water facilities, wells, pipelines, desalination units, and sewage systems. (Photo: Mohammed Nateel/UNICEF via UN News)

Planet Watch
EZLN

Zapatistas: ‘nation-state under attack’

Mexico’s Zapatista rebels—who have observed a long ceasefire but still have a zone of control in the back-country of Chiapas state—held an international gathering in the highland city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Featured speaker was a ski-masked “Captain Marcos,” presumably the same charismatic spokesman once known as “Subcommander Marcos.” He delivered an exegesis entitled “A Peephole into the Storm in the World: Nation-States Under Attack” (Una mirilla a la Tormenta en el Mundo: Los Estados-Nación bajo ataque). Marcos portrayed a supra-national imperialism under Donald Trump, in which “the nation-state has no decision-making power.” Marcos decried the “kidnapping” of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, and the US oil blockade on Cuba, noting that Mexico has been effectively barred from shipping oil to the Caribbean island nation. He also asserted that in the US-Israeli war against Iran, the big oil companies are the ones who benefit, as the price of oil rises. “That’s what needs to be discussed: who is profiting from these wars?” (Image: Enlace Zapatista)

Greater Middle East
Iran

UN rights office decries escalating repression across Middle East

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk warned that repression of freedom of expression across the Middle East has deepened significantly since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran commenced at the end of February. In Iran, approximately 2,345 people have been arrested on charges related to national security. Many of these, as well as more arbitrarily arrested during the January protests, are being held in harsh conditions and incommunicado detention. The state has also cut internet access to prevent external sharing of information. Three protestors were publicly hanged in March after being convicted of “waging war against God” based on “confessions” obtained under torture. Many more are at imminent risk of execution. But hundreds of arbitrary arrests for online anti-war dissent have also taken place in the Gulf states that Iran has been targeting with missile strikes, with Türk warning of a “sharp securitization of civic space across the region.” (Image: Pixabay)

Palestine
Jerusalem

Discriminatory Israel death penalty bill denounced

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians joined with other Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups to denounce Israel’s new death penalty bill, saying it represents “an extreme escalation in Israel’s genocidal policies against Palestinians.” The bill, which imposes a mandatory death penalty on West Bank Palestinians for vaguely defined “terrorism” offenses, was passed by the Knesset above international protests. (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)

Palestine
West Bank

UN report sees ‘ethnic cleansing’ on West Bank

A report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that over one year—from Nov. 1, 2024 to Oct. 31, 2025—Israel’s government accelerated unlawful settlement expansion and “annexation” of large parts of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This has led to the forced displacement of over 36,000 Palestinians, amid increasing violence by both Israeli security forces and settlers. The report stated: “The displacement in the occupied West Bank…at the hands of the Israeli military appears to indicate a concerted Israeli policy of mass forcible transfer throughout the occupied territory, aimed at permanent displacement, raising concerns of ethnic cleansing.” (Photo: B’Tselem)

Greater Middle East
Lebanon

UN sees potential Israeli ‘war crimes’ in Lebanon

The UN Human Rights Office stated that Israeli strikes on homes and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon may constitute war crimes. The statement came as Israel intensifies its military campaign on the territory of its northern neighbor amid the broader conflict spreading across the Middle East. Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed hundreds, including children, and destroyed homes and healthcare facilities, while Hezbollah rockets have injured civilians in Israel. Mass displacement has forced families into overcrowded areas, with access to healthcare, food and education severely disrupted. (Image via Flickr)

Palestine
ICJ

More countries intervene in genocide case against Israel

Hungary, Namibia, Fiji and the United States each filed  declarations of intervention to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case against Israel in relation to the situation in the Gaza Strip. The interventions illuminate the legal issues the court will be facing at trial. One key issue is what constitutes the mens rea, or the mental threshold, of the crime of genocide. According to Namibia, the court may infer the required genocidal intent based on the scale, systematic nature, intensity, duration, and repetition of acts listed in the Genocide Convention. On the other hand, Hungary, Fiji and the US asked the court to maintain a high threshold in inferring genocidal intent from a “pattern of conduct.” (Photo: ICJ)

Palestine
Jerusalem

UN report: Gaza genocide ‘spills into West Bank’

A group of UN experts warned that the genocide in Gaza is spilling into the West Bank as a wider war engulfs the region. The experts argue that Israeli policy is designed to coerce Palestinians to leave in both territories. The report also covered occupied East Jerusalem, finding: “Israel is accelerating measures that alter Jerusalem’s demographic composition, religious character and legal status, destroying the remnants of the pluralistic fabric that Jerusalem has represented for centuries, for Muslims, Christians and Jews… What is being done to this world symbol of spiritual coexistence and shared heritage is irreversible.” (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)

Palestine
Gaza Strip

Amnesty International pressures EU on ‘Board of Peace’

EU foreign ministers must use their upcoming meeting with Nikolai Mladenov, director-general of the “Board of Peace” and “High Representative” for Gaza, to ensure that Palestinians’ rights are among the board’s highest priorities, Amnesty International urged in a statement—while assailing the legitimacy of new Trump-led body itself. “The ‘Board of Peace’ is a dangerous assault on international law, a mechanism designed to bypass the UN, weaken international justice institutions, and entrench the power dynamics that have long enabled Israel’s unlawful occupation, apartheid, and ongoing genocide in Gaza,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, senior director for research and advocacy at Amnesty International. (Photo: WAFA via WikimediaCommons)

Planet Watch
Board of Peace

Trump’s global imperial court

When US President Donald Trump first proposed establishing a so-called “Board of Peace” to oversee governance of the Gaza Strip for a transitional period back in September, the idea was quickly likened to a form of colonial takeover. The UN nonetheless adopted a Security Council resolution in November giving its blessing to the board’s creation—a vote some member states may now regret. The board was just officially inaugurated in a ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, where Trump was attending the World Economic Forum. But Gaza seems almost incidental to its true mission, which appears to be creating a global strongmen’s club—led by Trump, potentially for life—to rival, if not replace, the UN itself. (Image via Wikipedia)

Palestine
Jerusalem

UN rights chief urges Israel to drop death penalty bill

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk urged the Israeli government to abandon proposed legislation that would mandate death sentences exclusively for Palestinians in specific cases—for crimes committed both in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Türk stated that the legislation is “inconsistent with Israel’s obligations'” under the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights. He also raised concerns over the “introduction of mandatory death sentences, which leave no discretion to the courts, and violate the right to life.” The rights chief asserted that Israel has frequently violated the fair trial protections enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention for Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, adding that this “amounts to a war crime.” (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)