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A view of a civilian vehicle caught fire as people gather around it after the Israeli army, violating the ceasefire, targeted it on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, on April 04, 2026. [Screengrab – Anadolu Agency]
One person was killed and three others injured after the Israeli army targeted a civilian vehicle on Salah al-Din Street in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday, Anadolu reports.
The attack comes amid ongoing Israeli violations of a ceasefire in effect since Oct. 10, 2025.
These breaches have resulted in the deaths of 713 Palestinians and injuries to 1,940 others since the agreement took effect.
Israel launched its genocide in Gaza in October 2023 that lasted two years, killing more than 72,000 people and injuring over 172,000 while causing widespread destruction affecting around 90% of the territory’s infrastructure.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
A view of a civilian vehicle caught fire as people gather around it after the Israeli army, violating the ceasefire, targeted it on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, on April 04, 2026. [Screengrab – Anadolu Agency]
Around 20 boats preparing to join the Global Sumud Flotilla’s “Spring Mission 2026” are set to depart from the southern port city of Marseille, France, as part of an initiative aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenging the ongoing Israeli policy, with vessels readied for weeks at L’Estaque Port by the France Campaign coalition, including the Thousand Madleens to Gaza movement and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, on April 03, 2026. [Esra Taşkın – Anadolu Agency]
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A Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) doctor takes care of patients at Nasser Hospital as patients face difficulties accessing care due to inadequate health services in Khan Yunis, Gaza on January 15, 2026. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
Restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities on the entry of medical supplies into Gaza have led to critical shortages, severely impacting health care services, according to a statement released on Friday by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Anadolu reports.
Dr. Randa Abu El-Khair Masoud, a medical adviser with MSF, said the organization has been unable to bring any medical supplies into Gaza since Jan. 1, despite significant humanitarian needs in the enclave.
“Every day, in our hospitals and clinics, we see the impacts of the restrictions on the entry of medical supplies into Gaza, Palestine. The needs in Gaza are massive, yet not enough aid is entering because Israeli authorities are blocking it,” Masoud said.
She warned that nearly 50% of essential medications for non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, thyroid disorders, and respiratory illnesses, are at critically low levels.
Due to the shortages, MSF has stopped admitting new patients to its non-communicable diseases programs, limiting treatment to existing patients only.
“This shortage in proper care will inevitably lead to preventable deaths among patients suffering from chronic diseases,” she said.
The organization is also facing a lack of basic medical supplies such as gauze and compresses, affecting wound care services, particularly for postoperative patients and burn victims.
During a previous blockade between August and Sept. 2025, MSF teams were forced to use non-sterile gauze sterilized in batches, a measure considered a last resort due to infection risks.
“Now, we are close to this point again,” she warned.
Medical equipment shortages are further straining health care services. Masoud said no new equipment or spare parts have entered Gaza this year, leading to frequent malfunctions.
“Our teams are working hard to continue providing care, but they are under immense strain,” she said, stressing that emergency measures cannot substitute for consistent access to medical supplies.
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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.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
Palestinians barred from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque due to restrictions imposed by Israeli forces citing Iran’s retaliatory attacks perform Friday prayers on the streets surrounding the mosque in Jerusalem on April 03, 2026. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]
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Palestinians stage a protest against Knesset’s approval of the law that imposes death penalty on Palestinian prisoners in Gaza, Palestine on April 01, 2026. [Abdalhkem Abu Riash – Anadolu Agency]
The approval by the Knesset of a law instituting the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners marks a historic rupture in Israeli penal policy—and a dangerous escalation in the institutionalization of state violence.
For the first time in decades, the Zionist state has formalized execution as a regular instrument of punishment, establishing death, including by hanging, as a standard sentence for Palestinians accused of attacks classified as “terrorism.”
The law, approved by 62 votes to 48, stipulates that executions must be carried out within 90 days of conviction, with severe restrictions on the right to defense, no requirement for judicial unanimity, and virtually no possibility of appeal or clemency.
In practice, this is a legal mechanism designed to target Palestinians exclusively. These cases are tried in military courts, while Jewish settlers—even those involved in acts of violence—and Israeli citizens remain under civil jurisdiction, where such punishment is rarely, if ever, applied.
The racial selectivity of the measure has been widely recognized by experts and international bodies. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has already classified it as a violation of international law and warned of its discriminatory character.
But this law did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the culmination of a broader process of hardening Israeli prison policies, particularly under the direct influence of Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Ben Gvir, a fascist politician and a central figure of Israel’s far right, has built his political trajectory by openly advocating extreme punitive measures against Palestinians. In recent years, he has pushed the government toward increasingly harsh policies, including severe restrictions on prison conditions and even the direct execution of detainees.
His role goes beyond rhetoric. He was one of the main architects of the death penalty law and used his political leverage to pressure Prime Minister and war crimes suspect Benjamin Netanyahu into advancing it.
This dynamic reveals a pattern of political coercion within the Israeli government itself. Dependent on a fragile coalition and under pressure from internal crises and legal accusations, Netanyahu has repeatedly yielded to far-right demands. The result is a continuous escalation of repression, in which Palestinian prisoners have become direct targets.
Today, around 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, including women and hundreds of children.
Reports by human rights organizations indicate a dramatic deterioration in detention conditions, including documented cases of torture, medical neglect, prolonged solitary confinement, and severe restrictions on family visits. Since October 2023, dozens of prisoners have died in Israeli custody, many as a result of abuse or medical neglect.
In this context, the introduction of the death penalty does not merely represent a new punitive measure—it fundamentally redefines the role of the prison system. Prison ceases to function as a mechanism of containment and becomes a potential space of elimination.
This marks a qualitative shift—from repression to a politics of death.
The Israeli government attempts to justify this escalation in the name of security. However, the evidence tells a different story. Decades of mass incarceration, blockades, and military offensives have failed to eliminate Palestinian resistance.
On the contrary, the persistence of struggle—both inside and outside prisons—reveals the limits of a model based solely on force.
Rather than neutralizing resistance, prisons have become spaces of political organization and consciousness-building. Hunger strikes, internal mobilizations, and the central role of prisoners in political negotiations demonstrate that incarceration has failed to fulfill its intended function.
Faced with this failure, the death penalty emerges as an attempt to reconfigure the repressive system. When imprisonment is no longer sufficient, death becomes the next option.
But this logic carries a fundamental contradiction.
History shows that regimes which rely on extreme violence as a central instrument of governance tend to accelerate their own decline. Repression may impose temporary silence, but it does not eliminate the structural causes of conflict. On the contrary, it often intensifies them.
In the Palestinian case, this reality is unavoidable. Resistance is not a circumstantial phenomenon, but a historical response to a system of occupation and denial of rights. As long as these conditions persist, no policy of punishment—no matter how brutal—will be capable of producing stability.
The death penalty law, therefore, is not a sign of strength.
It is a symptom of crisis—the unfolding collapse of the Zionist regime, already visible across multiple dimensions.
By transforming the prison system into a space of execution, the Zionist “state” not only violates international law. It exposes, unmistakably, the limits of a model that can no longer sustain its own legitimacy.
The politics of death does not resolve the conflict.
It only reveals that the system producing it has run out of alternatives for survival.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/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.
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
Deputy Leader of the Green Party, Mothin Ali, said:
“These military courts are conducted without proper legal representation or juries. This is unconscionable – the government must immediately suspend Israel’s UK ambassador.
“Introducing the death penalty into Israel’s civil legal system, in a way that rights groups say will de facto only apply to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, will result in Palestinians being killed without a fair trial.
“Palestinian citizens of Israel already lack certain rights granted to Israeli citizens, and their second-class status was made explicit with the passing of the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law.
“It’s time for the Labour government to stand for truth: Israel is an apartheid state which is conducting a genocide in Gaza. Just like apartheid South Africa, it must be treated as a pariah state until the genocide is stopped, apartheid is ended, and Palestinians are granted the same rights as Israelis.
Ali repeated a call for the government to ban the sale of all weapons and weapon components to Israel:
“The government must make clear that it will not continue to sell any military weapons or weapons components to Israel. The Green Party calls for Britain to impose sanctions on Israel, as most of the world community did to South Africa, when it was also operating an apartheid state.”
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
People taking part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025
TWO pro-Palestine campaigners being found guilty of breaching protest conditions yesterday is “a huge setback for civil liberties,” supporters said.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal and Stop the War vice-chair Chris Nineham made clear they will be appealing the verdicts as they criticised the “absurdity” of the case.
Jeremy Corbyn called the verdicts “a dark day for civil liberties in this country.”
District judge Daniel Sternberg found both Mr Jamal and Mr Nineham guilty of failing to comply with conditions imposed on the January 18 2025 Whitehall protest.
Mr Jamal was in addition found guilty of inciting others to fail to comply following the trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
A key part of the defence was that the conditions imposed on the protest, which prevented a march to the BBC, were unlawful.
Defence barrister, Mark Summers KC, submitted a detailed legal argument outlining this case, including that the Court of Appeal had already ruled in a previous case that imposing conditions on the basis of “more than minor” disruption was unlawful.
But Mr Sternberg told the court he was not obliged to give any reasons for his decision, instead handing it down in a 54-page written judgment, with a short summary for the media.
He gave both men conditional discharges of 18 and 12 months respectively and ordered them each to pay £7,500 in costs.
Speaking outside the court, Mr Nineham said: “We think this is an extraordinary and shocking decision and a huge setback for civil liberties in this country.
“It is clearly part of an ongoing criminalisation of the Palestine movement in which people protesting against a genocide are being targeted by a British Establishment that is colluding with it.
“It is an attempt to send a chilling message across society that people shouldn’t risk protesting. It is an attempt that will not stop us.”
Mr Jamal said: “We will be appealing. We will be appealing because of concerns about how this trial has been conducted.
“The judge did not see fit to deliver his judgment in open court.
“I have always been of the view that in a court, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
People taking part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025