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Palestinians held a solidarity demonstration with the participation of national and Islamic groups and local community leaders in support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees on November 4, 2025, in Khan Yunis, Gaza. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
The UN General Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution to renew the mandate of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Anadolu reports.
During a vote held at the General Assembly, the resolution received 151 votes in favor, 10 against, and 14 abstentions.
Welcoming the decision to renew its mandate, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on US social media company X that the decision “reflects the broad solidarity of people across the world with Palestine Refugees.”
“It is also an acknowledgement of the international community’s responsibility to support the humanitarian + human development needs of Palestinian refugees pending a just & lasting solution to their decades-long plight,” he said.
Lazzarini also urged that the decision “be translated into a genuine commitment & matching resources to ensure the mandate is fulfilled.”
UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly more than 70 years ago to assist Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their land.
The UN agency has been facing severe financial difficulties since Israel launched a defamation campaign against UNRWA, claiming that staff members were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Despite UNRWA’s requests that the Israeli government provide information and evidence to back up the allegations, the agency has received no response. Following Israel’s accusations, several key donor nations, including the US, suspended or paused funding.
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Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Young Palestinian men create channels in the sand to direct the rain at a makeshift camp housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, Palestine, on November 25, 2025. (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“The design of these proposed cities mirrors the historical model of ghettos,” said the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, which said the US plans to cram 25,000 people into areas smaller than a square kilometer.
A prominent international human rights organization is warning that the United States’ plan for postwar Gaza will impose “unlawful collective imprisonment” on the Palestinian civilians who have survived two years of genocide.
In November, several news outlets reported on the Trump administration’s plan to carve Gaza in two: a so-called “green zone” controlled by Israel and a “red zone” controlled by the militant group Hamas.
The US would construct what it called “Alternative Safe Communities” for Palestinians to live in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza, which is over half of the territory under the current “ceasefire” agreement.
The New York Timesdescribed these communities as “compounds” of 20,000 to 25,000 people, where Israeli officials reportedly argued they should not be allowed to leave.
The initial reporting raised fears that the US and Israel were constructing what would amount to a “concentration camp,” where Palestinians would be forced to live in squalid conditions without freedom of movement.
On Wednesday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released new details on how Palestinians, currently facing mass displacement from their homes in the portion of the strip not occupied by Israel, would be corralled into the green zone under the US proposal.
The Geneva-based group issued a stark warning about the plan, which it said carried “grave risks, including the effective displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the transformation of large parts of Gaza into closed military zones under the direct control of the Israeli army.”
“Entry and exit would be permitted only through security screening, effectively converting these sites into overcrowded detention camps that impose severe restrictions on residents’ freedom of movement and daily life.”
Euro-Med’s report explains that the transfer of Palestinians would be carried out using “various pressure tactics.”
“This is done by creating a coercive environment in the red zone and making access to relative protection and basic services conditional on relocating to designated areas within the green zone, following extensive security screening and vetting,” the report says. “This removes any genuine element of consent and places the process squarely within the scope of forced displacement prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
It also provides new details on the conditions Palestinians would be subject to once they’ve arrived: “The plan includes the establishment of ‘cities’ of prefabricated container homes (caravans) in the green zone, each housing around 25,000 people within an area of no more than one square kilometer and enclosed by walls and checkpoints.”
This means these Palestinian cantons would be over three times as densely populated as the Tel Aviv District, the most crowded in Israel, which has about 8,130 people per square kilometer.
“Entry and exit would be permitted only through security screening, effectively converting these sites into overcrowded detention camps that impose severe restrictions on residents’ freedom of movement and daily life,” the report continues.
This is not the first proposal to use the promise of safety to lure Palestinians into an enclosed space without the right to leave.
Earlier this year, following US President Donald Trump’s call for the people of Palestine to be forcibly removed from the Gaza Strip, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz proposed the creation of a massive “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah that would be used as part of an “emigration plan” for hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Under that plan, Palestinians would have been given “security screenings” and once inside would not be allowed to leave. Humanitarian organizations, including those inside Israel, roundly condemned the plan as essentially a “concentration camp.”
Euro-Med said that the design laid out in the new US plan “mirrors the historical model of ghettos, in which colonial and racist regimes confined specific groups to sealed areas surrounded by walls and guard posts, with movement and resources controlled externally, as seen in Europe during World War II and in other colonial contexts.”
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Vote Labour for Genocide.
CLAMPDOWN: People take part in a demonstration at Parliament Square
THE Palestine Action hunger strike is on track to become the largest since the 1981 Irish republican protest led by Bobby Sands, yet campaigners say it has faced a “mainstream media blackout.”
So far, seven prisoners have refused food — some for as long as four weeks — with more expected to join.
They are among 33 prisoners who are locked away without trial, over alleged involvement in non-violent actions aimed at blockading arms supply to Israel.
The hunger strikers’ demands are clear. They want Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, to cease operating in Britain for good.
They want the ban on Palestine Action, currently designated a terror group, to be lifted. And they are demanding immediate bail and a fair trial — basic democratic rights that should already be guaranteed.
Francesca Nadin, a spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine, spoke to the Morning Star about their struggle.
Nadin herself was in prison on remand last year, over actions at a Teledyne weapons factory and a Barclays branch in Leeds.
“The fact is that for the charges that they have, which is property damage, people are never usually kept on remand,” she says.
“It’s clear to me that the process is the punishment.”
Four of the strikers — Qesser Zuhrah, Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha and Kamran Ahmed — have been held on remand since last November, far exceeding the six-month pre-trial custody limit.
They are part of the “Filton 24” — inmates held in connection to an action in which activists reportedly drove a repurposed prison van into an Elbit manufacturing hub and dismantled equipment inside.
Qesser, who hasn’t eaten for over four weeks, now feels close to collapse, campaigners report, while Heba, who has also gone more than a month without food is severely fatigued and is finding it increasingly difficult to hold water down.
Teuta and Kamran, who haven’t eaten for 26 and 25 days, were both recently hospitalised.
“As you can imagine now, they’re all very weak”, Nadin says.
“It’s getting to the point of serious deterioration. We are just prepared for something very serious to happen any moment now.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.
Justice secretary David Lammy has announced one of the most significant changes to criminal justice in England and Wales in decades, by scrapping the use of jury trials for most offences that carry a likely jail sentence of less than three years.
Under the proposals, only the most serious offences such as murder, robbery and rape would continue to be tried by a jury. Most other cases would be heard by a judge alone. The reforms will also include creating new “swift courts” within the crown court division.
The government says judge-alone trials will take 20% less time than jury trials. Currently, cases can take an average of 332 days from charge to completion.
Yet the right to be tried by one’s peers has deep roots in the legal tradition of England and Wales. Its origins trace back to Magna Carta in 1215, which promised that no one would lose their liberty or property without “the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land”.
The judge and legal philosopher Lord Devlin described trial by jury as “the lamp that shows that freedom lives”. It is a symbolic cornerstone of justice in England and Wales.
These proposals go far beyond the recommendations put forward in Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts, published in July 2025. Leveson proposed trial by judge alone where the defendant requested it, or in particularly lengthy and complex trials. But Lammy’s proposals appear to be a watering down of leaked MoJ plans to restrict the use of jury trials to only “public interest” cases with sentences of over five years.
In practical terms, jury trials already form only a small part of the system, accounting for around 2% of all criminal cases. Ministry of Justice data shows that most criminal cases are resolved in the magistrates’ courts, in which three magistrates (who are volunteer lay people rather than professional judges), determine guilt as well as sentence.
Although magistrates deal with less serious offending, they currently have the power to imprison offenders for up to 12 months for a single offence, a power which, Lammy announced, would be increased to 18 months. Of those cases which are dealt with by the crown court, around 60% of defendants plead guilty, removing the need for a trial.
Some might therefore regard juries as symbolically important, but an unnecessary burden on a struggling court system. While there are valid concerns about aspects of jury decision making, research has found that juries do generally make fair decisions.
There is limited research on judge-only trials, in part because they are relatively rare. Even in jurisdictions where juries are not used, judges more often sit in panels of three or more. There are concerns that judge-only trials risk exacerbating judicial bias.
Perhaps just as importantly, juries provide a form of lay participation that helps ensure public confidence in the fairness of verdicts.
Juries can act as a democratic check on official power. There have been cases, for example in protest-related trials, where juries have interpreted the law in ways that reflect broader community standards. Such instances are a reminder that the legitimacy of criminal justice depends on public consent.
The court backlog
The evidence suggests that jury trials are not the primary cause of the current backlog. Crown court backlogs began rising sharply in 2017, driven by years of budget reductions, court closures, maintenance backlogs and limits on the number of days courts were permitted to sit. However, the backlog has not fallen below 35,000 since 2000.
The pandemic brought unprecedented disruption into an already fragile system as many hearings were postponed and the transition to remote hearings caused delays. By late 2023, there were around 68,000 outstanding crown court cases, already the highest on record, and experts consistently identified lack of capacity as the central issue.
Given that jury trials make up such a small proportion of criminal cases, reducing them cannot, on basic numerical grounds, meaningfully reduce a backlog of this scale. The government has stated that restricting jury trials would save £31 million, just 0.2% of the MoJ budget.
It could, however, create new problems, including increased appeals, challenges on grounds of judicial bias and reduced public confidence in the outcome of trials.
The Institute for Government has warned that such changes could increase the risk of wrongful convictions and further erode trust in the justice system.
There is no doubt that long waits can be profoundly distressing for victims as well as defendants and witnesses. But victims’ interests also include trust in the process and confidence that decisions about guilt reflect a broad social judgement, not just the view of a single official.
This does not mean that the jury system is perfect or that reform is unnecessary. Leveson’s review of the courts suggested targeted changes, such as judge-only trials in highly complex fraud cases, or hybrid panels of judges and magistrates for certain intermediate offences. It also called for significant improvements in digital case management and infrastructure – investments that could address underlying inefficiencies more directly.
Restricting jury trials might appear to offer a fast route to clearing backlogs, but the data suggests that delays stem from wider capacity constraints, not the workings of juries themselves. England and Wales already rely overwhelmingly on magistrates’ courts and guilty pleas to handle most cases.
If the government is serious about improving outcomes for both victims and defendants, it should invest in the capacity of the courts, rather than remove one of the few remaining avenues for public participation in the criminal justice system.
CLAMPDOWN: People take part in a demonstration at Parliament Square
