Israel still committing genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International says

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.

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Hundreds of Israeli soldiers raid Palestinian town in West Bank

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.

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Rebuilding ‘human-made abyss’ in Gaza will cost at least $70bn, UN says

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”.

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US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to end operations in territory

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”.

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Hezbollah chief of staff killed in Beirut airstrike, Israeli military says

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.

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Gaza hospitals running out of supplies as airstrikes continue, medics say

‘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.

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Why Trump’s lavish Saudi courtship leaves Israel on the back foot

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.

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Israeli airstrikes kill 33 people in Gaza in escalation of post-ceasefire attacks

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.

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Rabih Alameddine wins National book award for fiction with darkly comic epic spanning six decades

True to his irreverent style, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) thanks his psychiatrist, his gastrointestinal doctors and his drug dealers

Rabih Alameddine has won the National book award for fiction for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), a darkly comic saga spanning six decades in the life of a Lebanese family.

The novel, which traverses a sprawling history of Lebanon including its civil war and economic collapse, is told through the eyes of its titular protagonist: a gay 63-year-old philosophy teacher confronting his past and his relationship with his mother and his homeland.

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Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in Lebanon, photos of remnants suggest

Exclusive: Images are first indication that Israel has used cluster munitions in nearly 20 years

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war in Lebanon, photos of munition remnants in south Lebanon seen by the Guardian suggest.

The images, which have been examined by six different arms experts, appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions found in three different locations: south of the Litani River in the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz and Wadi Deir Siryan.

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One of the oddest UN resolutions in history seeks to solidify shaky Gaza ceasefire into an enduring peace

The hazy UN resolution dictates that Trump’s ‘board of peace’ will supervise an International Stabilisation Force, whose membership is as yet undetermined

The resolution passed by the UN security council on Tuesday evening, aimed at turning the precarious Gaza ceasefire into a real peace plan, is one of the oddest in United Nations history.

It puts Donald Trump in supreme control of Gaza, perhaps with Tony Blair as his immediate subordinate in a “board of peace”, which will oversee multinational peacekeeping troops, a committee of Palestinian technocrats and a local police force, for a period of two years.

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‘They have total impunity’: West Bank settler violence surges after Gaza ceasefire

UN logs 260 attacks in October alone, its highest monthly tally, as settlers attack farmers and burn olive trees

Violence has increased across the occupied West Bank as Palestinian farmers try to harvest their olive trees before the end of the season, in the face of a concerted campaign of harassment by groups of armed and aggressive Israeli settlers.

Dozens of new incidents have occurred in recent days across much of the occupied territory as settlers step up a broader effort to intimidate and harm Palestinian communities.

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UN security council votes to endorse Donald Trump’s Gaza plan

The resolution, which includes references to an independent Palestine, was passed by a vote of 13-0 with China and Russia abstaining

The UN security council has endorsed proposals put forward by Donald Trump for a lasting peace in Gaza, including the deployment of an international stabilisation force and a possible path to a sovereign Palestinian state.

The resolution, passed by a vote of 13-0 with abstentions by China and Russia, charted “a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the region alike”, the US envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, told the council chamber.

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Iran says it could rejoin US nuclear talks if treated with ‘dignity and respect’

Iran’s foreign minister says it has had requests to reopen negotiations, which collapsed after nuclear site bombings

Tehran is willing to restart nuclear talks with Washington as long as it is treated with “dignity and respect”, Iran’s foreign minister has told the Guardian.

Abbas Araghchi said only diplomacy worked, and disclosed fresh requests had come from intermediaries to reopen negotiations with the Trump administration. He said Iran did not have any undeclared nuclear sites, and Tehran could not yet allow the UN nuclear inspectorate to visit bombed nuclear sites for security reasons.

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Israel breaching international law by limiting Gaza aid, says Unrwa official

Natalie Boucly says supplies are ready but only about half of what is needed is getting into territory

Israel is breaching international law by continuing to impose restrictions on aid flows into Gaza, where the population remains critically short of food and life-saving goods as winter sets in, a senior official at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.

In an interview during a recent visit to Brussels, Natalie Boucly, an Unrwa deputy commissioner general, said the whole world – including the EU and US – needed to increase the pressure on Israel’s government to ensure the unrestricted flow of aid into Gaza.

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US military planning for divided Gaza with ‘green zone’ secured by international and Israeli troops

Exclusive: Almost all Palestinians have been displaced to ‘red zone’ where no reconstruction is planned

The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a “red zone” to be left in ruins.

Foreign forces will initially deploy alongside Israeli soldiers in the east of Gaza, leaving the devastated strip divided by the current Israeli-controlled “yellow line”, according to US military planning documents seen by the Guardian and sources briefed on American plans.

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Tenured professor sues University of Kentucky for banning him from law school over comments on Israel

Exclusive: Ramsi Woodcock, who calls for an ‘end’ to Israel and military intervention against it, says the university violated his first amendment rights

A tenured law professor sued the University of Kentucky on Thursday after he was banned from teaching and from the law school for comments he made about Israel, including characterizations of the state as a “colonization project” and calls for the world to wage war against it.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Ramsi Woodcock, an antitrust law scholar, argued that the public university violated his first amendment and due process rights when it abruptly placed him under investigation in July, just days after he was promoted to full professor, over allegations that he violated university policy – including anti-discrimination rules that incorporate a widely disputed definition of antisemitism.

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Israeli president condemns ‘serious’ attack by settlers on West Bank villages

Isaac Herzog makes rare statement on often-ignored violence as settlers injure Palestinians and attack soldiers

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, injuring four Palestinians and attacking Israeli soldiers in the latest incident of rising settler violence.

The settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf, setting vehicles on fire and damaging property belonging to a Bedouin community, with charred remains of cars left behind the next day.

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Trump writes to Israeli president calling for Netanyahu pardon

Isaac Herzog can pardon convicted criminals in some circumstances, but cases against Israeli PM are ongoing

Donald Trump has repeated a request to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial in three separate corruption cases.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing court cases. No rulings have been delivered, and his supporters have dismissed the trials as politically motivated.

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Israel attacked Palestinian water sources over 250 times in five years, data reveals

Armed forces and settlers used bombs, dogs, poison and machinery to attack people and infrastructure at key sites

Israeli armed forces and settlers have attacked Palestinian water sources more than 250 times in the past five years, amounting to the most sustained assault on civilian water supplies in recent years, new research reveals.

Bombs, dogs, poison and heavy machinery were among the weapons used to attack Palestinians and their infrastructure at drinking water, irrigation and sanitation sites in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on at least 90 occasions between January 2024 and mid-2025, according to the Pacific Institute, a California-based nonpartisan thinktank tracking water conflicts.

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