Iranian film-maker won Cannes film festival’s Palme D’Or prize earlier this year for It Was Just an Accident
Iran has sentenced the Palme d’Or-winning film-maker Jafar Panahi in absentia to one year in prison and a travel ban over “propaganda activities” against the country.
The sentence includes a two-year ban on leaving Iran and prohibition of Panahi from membership of any political or social groups, his lawyer Mostafa Nili said, adding that they would file an appeal.
Continue reading...Group beaten in early hours of morning in village where they volunteered to help protect Palestinians from settler violence
Italy and Canada have raised concerns about the treatment of their citizens who were beaten and robbed by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Three Italians and a Canadian were attacked early on Sunday morning in the village of Ein al-Duyuk, near Jericho, where they had volunteered to help protect the Palestinian population from intensifying settler violence.
Continue reading...Pontiff tells politicians and religious heads they must persevere with peace efforts despite facing ‘highly complex, conflictual’ situation
Pope Leo has urged political leaders in Lebanon to make peace their highest priority in a forceful appeal as he is visiting the country, which remains a target of Israeli airstrikes, on the second leg of his first overseas trip as Catholic leader.
Leo, the first US pope, arrived in Beirut on Sunday from a four-day visit to Turkey where he said that humanity’s future was at risk because of the world’s unusual number of bloody conflicts, and condemned violence in the name of religion.
Continue reading...Request is submitted weeks after Donald Trump called on Isaac Herzog to pardon Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Israel’s president for a pardon for bribery and fraud charges and an end to a five-year corruption trial, arguing that it would be in the “public interest”.
Isaac Herzog’s office acknowledged receipt of the 111-page submission from the prime minister’s lawyer, and said it had been passed on to the pardons department in the ministry of justice. The president’s legal adviser would also formulate an opinion before Herzog made a decision, it added.
Continue reading...Two Palestinian children reportedly killed on Saturday as Israel continues its strikes after latest ceasefire
The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 70,000 since the Israel-Gaza war began, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday, while a hospital reported Israeli fire killed two Palestinian children in the territory’s south.
The toll has continued to rise after the latest ceasefire took effect on 10 October. Israel still carries out strikes in response to what it has called violations of the truce, and bodies from earlier in the war are being recovered from the rubble.
Continue reading...Committee highlights allegations including dog attacks and sexual violence, raising concern about impunity for war crimes
Israel has “a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture”, according to a UN report covering the past two years, which also raised concerns about the impunity of Israeli security forces for war crimes.
The UN committee on torture expressed “deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence”.
Continue reading...Account of visit to Gaza by French professor describes Israeli military attacks on security personnel protecting convoys
A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the turn of the year says he saw “utterly convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, entered Gaza in December where he was hosted by an international humanitarian organisation in the southern coastal zone of al-Mawasi.
Continue reading...Locked away in prison for decades, Marwan Barghouti is a longstanding advocate for a two-state solution
A global campaign is being launched to secure the release of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian prisoner seen by many as the best hope of leading a future Palestinian state, as negotiations continue in the context of the current Gaza ceasefire.
The campaign, being led by Barghouti’s West Bank-based family with UK civil society support, is seeking to put the 66-year-old’s fate at the centre of the next stage of the ceasefire.
Continue reading...Far-right minister defends killing of two men who appeared to have given themselves up, saying ‘terrorists must die’
Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.
The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.
Continue reading...The NGO’s chief says last month’s ceasefire ‘risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal’
Amnesty International has said Israel is “still committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire agreed last month.
The fragile, US-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October, after two years of war.
Continue reading...Rahmeh Aladwan barred from practising for 15 months pending inquiry amid claims she ‘celebrated terrorist acts’
An NHS doctor accused of antisemitism has been suspended for 15 months pending an investigation, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) in the UK has ruled.
The General Medical Council (GMC) is investigating Dr Rahmeh Aladwan over posts and comments made across various social media platforms after several complaints, including from the Jewish Medical Association UK and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Continue reading...Israeli military and security service say ‘broad counter-terrorism operation’ in Tubas to continue for several days
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers supported by armoured vehicles have conducted raids in the Palestinian town of Tubas near Nablus in the biggest such military deployment by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza last month.
Palestinian media reported that a curfew was imposed on Tuesday night on Tubas and some neighbouring communities, roads were closed by earthen barriers and families forced from their homes to allow Israeli forces to use the buildings.
Continue reading...Gulf nation is accused of placing monitoring software on computers of two dissidents living in London
Bahrain is to tell the UK’s supreme court that it enjoys sovereign immunity from claims it placed surveillance software on the computers of two dissidents when they were living in London.
The Gulf country has lost the sovereign immunity claim both in the high court and court of appeal, and a decision to take the case further to the supreme court shows how important it is to the country’s reputation.
Continue reading...Report says Israel’s operations ‘significantly undermined every pillar of survival’ and reduced the economy by 87%
Israel’s war in Gaza has created a “human-made abyss”, and reconstruction is likely to cost more than $70bn (£53bn) over several decades, the United Nations has said.
The UN’s trade and development agency (Unctad) said in a report that Israel’s military operations had “significantly undermined every pillar of survival” and that the entire population of 2.3 million people faced “extreme, multidimensional impoverishment”.
Continue reading...Four main food distribution sites operated by the opaque company had been flashpoints of deadly violence
A controversial and secretive private company backed by the US and Israel that distributed food in Gaza has announced the end of its operations in the devastated territory.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which had four food distribution sites that became flashpoints of chaos and deadly violence between May and October, said in a statement that it would shut down permanently, having “successfully completed its emergency mission”.
Continue reading...Militant group confirms Haytham Ali Tabatabai was killed in attack that dramatically escalates tensions in the region
Israel targeted one of Hezbollah’s most senior military commanders in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, dramatically escalating tensions with the group almost exactly a year after a ceasefire ended 14 months of clashes.
The Israeli military said several hours after the attack that Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, was killed in the strike in Lebanese capital.
Continue reading...‘Severe lack’ in territory where Israeli strikes have killed more than 50 people and injured over 100 in recent days
Hospitals in Gaza are running out of essential supplies, with new waves of Israeli airstrikes killing more than 50 people and injuring more than 100 in recent days, medical and aid workers in the devastated Palestinian territory have said.
Medics told the Guardian on Sunday that stocks of gauze, antiseptics, thermometers and antibiotics were running low.
Continue reading...Pageantry and trillion-dollar promises reveal how Washington’s loyalties may be tilting toward the Gulf
The White House welcome bestowed on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was the most lavish of the Trump presidency, and a gaudily clear statement of its foreign policy priorities.
It was billed as a mere working visit, but it was more extravagant than any previous state visit. The president greeted the prince on the south lawn, the White House’s biggest stage. There were uniformed men on horses bearing flags and a flypast of fighter jets.
Continue reading...Medical officials say 17 people killed in Khan Younis area and 16 in strikes on Gaza City
Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month.
Officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said they received the bodies of 17 people, including five women and five children, after four Israeli airstrikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people. In Gaza City, medical officials said two airstrikes killed 16 people, including seven children and three women.
Continue reading...Saad Almadi’s family thanks Trump and state department as announcement comes after meeting with crown prince
Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.
Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.
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