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The Israeli army, which launched large-scale attacks, continues its raids for a second day in the city of Tubas in the northern part of the West Bank on November 27, 2025. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been displaced by an ongoing Israeli offensive in refugee camps in the northern West Bank, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Thursday, Anadolu reports.
The Israeli army launched a large-scale military offensive in the Jenin refugee camp on Jan. 21, which later spread to the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps and other areas in the northern West Bank.
Rolan Friedrich, Director of UNRWA Affairs for the West Bank, said the Israeli assault emptied the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps, displacing some 32,000 residents.
“And yet, even in these ghost towns that were once vibrant camps, Israeli forces still see the need to order demolitions for the sake of so-called ‘military purposes,” Friedrich added in a statement.
He noted that the Israeli authorities issued two mass demolition orders for over 190 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp, while 12 more buildings will be demolished in the upcoming days, which marks “the newest episode in continued efforts to re-engineer the topography of refugee camps in the northern West Bank.”
The UNRWA official said Israel’s systematic destruction violates the basic principles of international law and expands the army’s control over the refugee camps in the long term.
Friedrich called for the rebuilding of the refugee camps and the return of the displaced residents.
“They must not be trapped in interminable displacement,” he added.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army began another military campaign in the Tubas governorate in the northern West Bank, arresting over 60 Palestinians and injuring 10 others.
Alongside the two-year war in Gaza, where nearly 70,000 people have been killed, assaults by the army and illegal settlers in the West Bank have killed at least 1,083 Palestinians and injured about 11,000, while more than 20,500 have been detained, according to official Palestinian figures.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas 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.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The bodies of 14 Palestinians, handed over by Israel whose identities could not be determined, are being buried in a mass grave in the city of Deir al-Balah, Gaza on November 23, 2025. [Mohammed Nassar – Anadolu Agency]
A devastating new study has found that more than 112,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its assault in October 2023. This figure, drawn from the most extensive demographic analysis conducted to date, far exceeds the official death toll and reveals a pattern of killing that researchers say mirrors past genocides documented by the United Nations.
The study, carried out by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Centre for Demographic Studies Spain, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Population Health Metrics. The researchers estimate that between 99,997 and 125,915 Palestinians died in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 6 October 2025, with a median estimate of 112,069.
The findings are based on a wide range of data sources, including hospital records, household surveys and public death notices, and take into account the thousands of unregistered deaths caused by families being buried under rubble or unable to reach medical care.
The researchers found that the overwhelming majority of deaths are among civilians. Children under the age of 15 account for an estimated 27 per cent of the dead, while women make up 24 per cent. Elderly people, particularly those over 60, are also heavily undercounted in official figures.
This distribution of deaths across women, children and the elderly, rather than combat-aged men, is not typical of warfare. It is, the authors note, consistent with what the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation has observed in previous genocides. The study states explicitly that the age-sex pattern of deaths in Gaza closely resembles those seen during genocidal violence, not battlefield engagements between military forces.
In addition to the sheer scale of the killing, the study found that Gaza’s life expectancy has collapsed. Before Israel’s onslaught, Palestinian women in Gaza could expect to live to the age of 77 and men to 74. By the end of 2024, these numbers had plunged to 46 for women and just 36 for men.
According to the researchers, this represents one of the most dramatic drops in life expectancy ever recorded, and reflects the unprecedented threat to life facing the entire population.
Crucially, the study’s findings contradict claims by Israeli officials and their allies that Palestinian health authorities have inflated casualty figures. While the Gaza Health Ministry had reported around 67,000 deaths during the same period, the Max Planck research indicates that this figure likely captures only a portion of the actual death toll.
Unlike the Ministry, which counts only confirmed deaths, the study incorporates those who were unrecorded due to the collapse of Gaza’s medical infrastructure or the total destruction of family units in Israeli airstrikes. Researchers stress that rather than being exaggerated, official numbers from Gaza are more likely conservative and incomplete.
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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.Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Police make an arrest outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday at the start of a legal challenge to the ban on Palestine Action. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
Co-founder’s lawyer says group is part of an ‘honourable tradition’ of direct action and civil disobedience
The proscription of Palestine Action is a repugnant, unprecedented and disproportionate interference with the right to protest, the high court has heard.
On the first day of a legal challenge to the ban brought by co-founder Huda Ammori, her lawyer said the group had been engaged in an “honourable tradition” of direct action and civil disobedience prior to proscription.
Raza Husain KC told the court in London on Wednesday: “There are reasons of profound importance as to why, in the 32 executive orders that have been made adding organisations to proscribed lists, no direct action civil disobedience organisation appears.
“Such proscription is repugnant to the tradition of the common law and contrary to the European convention on human rights.”
Husain said the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, had alleged that some of Palestine Action’s activities crossed the threshold for terrorism but that these were few in number and were disputed.
Displaced Palestinians warm up by the fire after their homes were destroyed following heavy rain in Gaza City, on November 25, 2025. (Photo by Omar al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)
After previous plans by Israel for the mass expulsion of Palestinians, onlookers fear the proposal to house some displaced Palestinians in “compounds” they may not be allowed to leave.
A new Trump administration plan to put Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied parts of Gaza into “residential compounds” is raising eyebrows among international observers, who fear it could more closely resemble a system of “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”
Under the current “ceasefire” agreement—which remains technically intact despite hundreds of alleged violations by Israel that have resulted in the deaths of over 300 Palestinians—Israel still occupies the eastern portion of Gaza, an area greater than 50% of the entire strip. The vast majority of the territory’s nearly 2 million inhabitants are crammed onto the other side of the yellow line into an area of roughly 60 square miles—around the size of St Louis, Missouri, or Akron, Ohio.
As Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, explained Monday at a briefing to the UN Security Council: “Two years of fighting has left almost 80% of Gaza’s 250,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Over 1.7 million people remain displaced, many in overcrowded shelters without adequate access to water, food, or medical care.”
The New York Timesreported Tuesday that the new US proposal would seek to resettle some of those Palestinians in what the Trump administration calls “Alternative Safe Communities,”on the Israeli-controlled side of the yellow line.
Based on information from US officials and European diplomats, the Timessaid these “model compounds” are envisioned as a housing option “more permanent than tent villages, but still made up of structures meant to be temporary. Each could provide housing for as many as 20,000 or 25,000 people alongside medical clinics and schools.”
The project is being led by Trump official Aryeh Lightstone, who previously served as an aide to Trump’s first envoy to Jerusalem. According to the Times: “His team includes an eclectic, fluctuating group of American diplomats, Israeli magnates and officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—the sweeping Washington cost-cutting effort overseen earlier this year by Elon Musk.”
The source of funding for the project remains unclear, though the cost of just one compound is estimated to run into the tens of millions. Meanwhile, the newspaper noted that even if ten of these compounds were constructed, it would be just a fraction of what is needed to provide safety and shelter to all of Gaza’s displaced people. It’s unlikely that the first structures would be complete for months.
While the Times said that “the plan could offer relief for thousands of Palestinians who have endured two years of war,” it also pointed to criticisms that it “could entrench a de facto partition of Gaza into Israeli- and Hamas-controlled zones.” Others raised concerns about whether the people of Gaza will even want to move from their homes after years or decades of resisting Israel’s occupation.
The US is moving forward with building "model compounds" for Palestinians to live in on the IDF-held side of the Yellow Line in Gaza, but the structures will only be temporary, residents would be vetted by Israeli intelligence, and those moving in would never be allowed to leave. pic.twitter.com/tdWe0AwOVC
But digging deeper into the report, critics have noted troubling language. For one thing, Israeli officials have the final say over which Palestinians are allowed to enter the “compounds” and will heavily scrutinize the backgrounds of applicants, likely leading many to be blacklisted.
In one section, titled “Freedom of Movement,” the Times report noted that “some Israeli officials have argued that, for security reasons, Palestinians should only be able to move into the new compounds, not to leave them, according to officials.”
This language harkens back to a proposal earlier this year by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who called for 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 Palestinians in Gaza.
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.”
Prior to that, Trump called for the people of Gaza—“all of them”—to be permanently expelled and for the US to “take over” the strip, demolish the remaining buildings, and construct what he described as the “Riviera of the Middle East.” That plan was widely described as one of ethnic cleansing.
The new plan to move Palestinians to “compounds” is raising similar concerns.
“What is it called when a military force concentrates an ethnic or religious group into compounds without the ability to leave?” asked Assal Rad, a PhD in Middle Eastern history and a fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC.
Sana Saeed, a senior producer for AJ+, put it more plainly: “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”
The Times added that “supporters insist that this would be a short-term arrangement until Hamas is disarmed and Gaza comes under one unified government.” Lightstone has said that reconstruction of the other parts of Gaza, where the vast majority of the population still lives, will not happen unless Hamas, the militant group that currently governs the strip, is removed from power.
But while Hamas has indicated a potential willingness to step down from ruling Gaza, it has rejected the proposal that it unilaterally disarm and make way for an “International Stabilization Force” to govern the strip, instead insisting that post-war governance should be left to Palestinians. That plan, however, was authorized last week by the UN Security Council.
In addition to raising concerns that “those moving in would never be allowed to leave,” the Beirut-based independent journalist Séamus Malekafzali pointed to other ideas Lightstone and his group want to implement. According to the Times, “It has kicked around ideas ranging from a new Gaza cryptocurrency to how to rebuild the territory in such a way that it has no traffic.”
Malekafzali said, “Former DOGE personnel are attempting to make Gaza into yet another dumb tech experiment.”
Like Katz’s plan months ago, the new Trump proposal calls for a large compound to be built in Rafah, which Egyptian officials warned, in comments to the Wall Street Journal, could be a prelude to a renewed effort to push Palestinians across the border into the Sinai Peninsula.
But even if not, Jonathan Whittall, the former head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Palestine, said it hardly serves the humanitarian role the Trump administration and its Israeli co-administrators seek to portray.
“If plans for these ‘safe communities’ proceed, they would cement a deadly fragmentation of Gaza,” he wrote in Al Jazeera. “The purpose of creating these camps is not to provide humanitarian relief but to create zones of managed dispossession where Palestinians would be screened and vetted to enter in order to receive basic services, but would be explicitly barred from returning to the off-limits and blockaded ‘red zone.’”
He noted that there is a conspicuous lack of any clear plan for what happens to those Palestinians who continue to live outside the safe communities, warning that Israel’s security clearances could serve as a way of marking them as fair targets for even more escalated military attacks.
“Those who remain outside of the alternative communities, in the ‘red zone,’” he said, “risk being labelled ‘Hamas supporters’ and therefore ineligible for protection under Israel’s warped interpretation of international law and subject to ongoing military operations, as already seen in past days.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.
Palestinians mourn after identifying corpses of relatives killed in overnight Israeli bombardment on the southern Gaza Strip at Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah on February 8, 2024. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)
“All those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability,” said one campaigner in response to the new figures, “starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime.”
Israel’s two-year assault on Gaza has left a catastrophic death toll that is even worse than most official estimates, according to research from European researchers.
A study released on Tuesday by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Center for Demographic Studies in Spain found that “the current violent death toll” in Gaza “likely exceeds 100,000” since the start of the war in October 2023.
In fact, the researchers estimate that the total death toll from the war among Palestinians in Gaza is between 99,997 and 125,915, with a median estimate of over 112,000 killed. Even the lowest death toll estimate in the study is significantly higher than the death toll estimates in most media reports, which as of this week totaled roughly 70,000 Palestinians killed.
The researchers said that the wide range of death toll estimates is a reflection of “distorted and incomplete data from conflict zones” that make precise estimates difficult.
Researcher Irena Chen, who co-led the project, told Turkish publication AA that “we will never know the exact number of dead” and added that “we are only trying to estimate as accurately as possible what a realistic order of magnitude might be.”
The study also found that the two-year Israeli assault led to a precipitous plunge in life expectancy. According to researcher Ana Gómez-Ugarte, life expectancy in Gaza “fell by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war—equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively.”
The study’s final estimates were based on data from multiple public sources, including including the Gaza Ministry of Health (GMoH), the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME), and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that the new study was “further evidence of genocide” being carried out by the Israeli government.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director for CAIR, called the study “only the latest reason why our government must stop sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel and why international courts must hold Israel accountable for its crimes.” Mitchell added that “all those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability, starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime.”
A report released by UN Conference on Trade and Development earlier this week found that Israel’s genocidal assault has had a devastating impact on Gaza’s economy, finding that its entire population is now living below the poverty line, with per-capita gross domestic product falling to just $161, one of the lowest figures in the world.
Additionally, the report found that the unemployment rate in Gaza was as high as 80%, while inflation in the exclave surged to nearly 240%, as the Israeli military blockade caused a widespread famine by preventing basic necessities from reaching Gaza residents.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.
