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Palestinian prisoners are transported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for medical examinations after months-long detention by Israeli army, on September 2, 2025, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. [Mohammed Nassar – Anadolu Agency]a
Two Palestinian organisations said Sunday that a Palestinian detainee was subjected to a “liquidation operation” while in Israeli custody before being released in critical condition.
In a joint statement, the Palestinian Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club accused Israeli authorities of carrying out an assassination inside interrogation cells against Mahmoud al-Wardian, 48, from Bethlehem. The groups said he was released only after his health deteriorated severely.
According to the statement, Israeli forces arrested al-Wardian on 18 August at his home in Bethlehem and transferred him to Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah, for interrogation, while denying him access to his lawyer.
On 25 August, he was moved from Ofer Prison to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem in critical condition. The statement added that he arrived unconscious and was admitted to intensive care, despite having had no prior health issues before his arrest.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Reporters follow Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani’s address at the media centre, during the opening of the 2025 ArabIslamic emergency summit in Doha on September 15, 2025. [Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images]
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani called Monday for “concrete steps” to confront the Israeli government’s “bloodlust,” urging a united regional stance, Anadolu reports.
Addressing an Arab-Islamic summit in Doha, Tamim said Israel’s strike in the Qatari capital last week that killed five Hamas members and a Qatari officer “proved that freeing hostages is not a priority for the Israeli government.”
He said Israel’s “extremist settlers’ government wants sending aircraft to the region to become routine, as it dreams of making the Arab region its sphere of influence.”
The Qatari leader said Israel is working to divide Syria, “but its plans will not succeed.”
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UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese attends a press conference at the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome, Italy, on July 29, 2025. [Riccardo De Luca – Anadolu Agency]
Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza City aims to render the area uninhabitable as part of a broader plan of ethnic cleansing, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese warned Monday, Anadolu reports.
Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, Albanese said Israel’s offensive on Gaza’s largest urban center amounts to “full destruction.”
“The ongoing assault to take the last remnant of Gaza will not only devastate the Palestinians but also endanger the remaining Israeli hostages,” she said.
Albanese said the attack on Gaza City is already displacing hundreds of thousands. “Israel is bombing using unconventional weapons… trying to forcibly evacuate the 800,000 Palestinians who were seeking refuge there. Why? Because this is the last piece of Gaza that needs to be rendered unlivable before advancing the ethnic cleansing of that piece of land. And then probably they will move to the West Bank,” she said.
She stressed the offensive is not about securing territory but about erasing its viability for residents. “It’s happening already. It’s not that this is a future and uncertain event … destroying entire neighborhoods, remnants of buildings where people were seeking shelter,” she said.
Calling the operation “unlawful,” the rapporteur said Israel has no legal grounds to continue its military presence in Gaza. She cited the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion requiring Israel to dismantle settlements, withdraw troops, stop exploiting Palestinian resources, pay reparations, and facilitate the return of displaced Palestinians.
Albanese warned that some states are attempting to shift focus away from these legal obligations, without specifying which countries.
The Israeli army has continued a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
The Green Parties across the UK, the Scottish Greens, the Green Party of Northern Ireland, the Green Party of England and Wales, and the Welsh Green Party have today issued a rare joint call on the BBC to withdraw from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest coverage if Israel’s state broadcaster is permitted to participate.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
In a letter to BBC Director-General Tim Davie, the four Green Parties warn that Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 2023 has left more than 64,000 Palestinians dead, over 160,000 injured, and entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble. UN officials have repeatedly said Israel’s actions bear the hallmarks of genocide. British Green Parties have repeatedly called on the British state to act in line with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The leaders also highlighted Gaza as the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded, with more reporters killed there in the last two years than worldwide in the three years before combined.
Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Zack Polanski, Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, said:
“Eurovision is supposed to stand for peace, shared humanity and a lot of fun. Those values cannot coexist with complicity in genocide. By standing alongside Israel’s state broadcaster, the BBC would not just be ignoring the mass killing of civilians, it would also be turning its back on journalists being silenced and murdered for telling the truth. That is indefensible.”
Broadcasters across Europe are already taking action. Ireland’s RTÉ and Slovenia’s RTVSLO have pledged to withdraw if Israel participates, while Spain’s Culture Minister has raised the same, and Iceland is consulting the public. The BBC cannot stay neutral in genocide.”
Ross Greer, Co-Leader of the Scottish Greens, said:
“We’ve been here before. In the fight against apartheid South Africa, cultural boycotts were vital in telling oppressive regimes they would not be normalised. The same principle applies today. Israel must not be allowed to use Eurovision as a platform to launder its reputation while committing atrocities.”
Malachai O’Hara, Leader of the Green Party of Northern Ireland, said:
“This is a moment for moral clarity. Either the BBC stands on the side of peace, justice and international law – or it lends legitimacy to a state committing mass human rights abuses. The choice could not be starker.”
Anthony Slaughter, Leader of the Welsh Green Party added:
“The UK cannot look away while children starve, while families are bombed from their homes, while an entire people are brutalised. The BBC has a responsibility to act, and the time to act is now.”
The joint letter concludes:
“The Eurovision Song Contest is supposed to celebrate peace, unity, and shared humanity. Those values cannot coexist whilst arming a genocide. We therefore call on the BBC, in the strongest possible terms, to withdraw from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel’s state broadcaster is permitted to participate. In the face of genocide, we urge you to act.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during the American Compass Fifth Anniversary Gala at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, on June 3, 2025. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP)
“Marco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,” said one free speech advocate.
Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about a bill in the US House of Representatives that they fear could allow Secretary of State Marco Rubio to strip US citizens of their passports based purely on political speech.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), will come up for a hearing on Wednesday. According to The Intercept:
Mast’s new bill claims to target a narrow set of people. One section grants the secretary of state the power to revoke or refuse to issue passports for people who have been convicted—or merely charged—of material support for terrorism…
The other section sidesteps the legal process entirely. Rather, the secretary of state would be able to deny passports to people whom they determine “has knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”
Rubio has previously boasted of stripping the visas and green cards from several immigrants based purely on their peaceful expression of pro-Palestine views, describing them as “Hamas supporters.”
These include Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after Rubio voided his green card; and Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts student whose visa Rubio revoked after she co-wrote an op-ed calling for her school to divest from Israel.
Mast—a former soldier for the Israel Defense Forces who once stated that babies were “not innocent Palestinian civilians”—has previously called for “kicking terrorist sympathizers out of our country,” speaking about the Trump administration’s attempts to deport Khalil, who was never convicted or even charged with support for a terrorist group.
Critics have argued that the bill has little reason to exist other than to allow the Secretary of State to unilaterally strip passports from people without them actually having been convicted of a crime.
As Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, noted in The Intercept, there is little reason to restrict people convicted of terrorism or material support for terrorism, since—if they were guilty—they’d likely be serving a long prison sentence and incapable of traveling anyway.
“I can’t imagine that if somebody actually provided material support for terrorism, there would be an instance where it wouldn’t be prosecuted—it just doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Journalist Zaid Jilani noted on X that “judges can already remove a passport over material support for terrorism, but the difference is you get due process. This bill would essentially make Marco Rubio judge, jury, and executioner.”
The bill does contain a clause allowing those stripped of their passports to appeal to Rubio. But, as Hamadanchy notes, the decision is up to the secretary alone, “who has already made this determination.” He said that for determining who is liable to have their visa stripped, “There’s no standard set. There’s nothing.”
As Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, noted in The Intercept, the language in Mast’s bill is strikingly similar to that found in the so-called “nonprofit killer” provision that Republicans attempted to pass in July’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. That provision, which was ultimately struck from the bill, would have allowed the Treasury Secretary to unilaterally strip nonprofit status from anything he deemed to be a “terrorist-supporting organization.”
Stern said Mast’s bill would allow for “thought policing at the hands of one individual.”
“Marco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,” he said, “even if what they say doesn’t include a word about a terrorist organization or terrorism.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
dizzy: There are similarities to what’s happening in UK with showing support for Palestine Action currently being a terrorist offence. Disagreeing with the dominant Neo-Liberal/Capitalist ideology is becoming terrorism.
![Palestinian prisoners are transported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for medical examinations after months-long detention by Israeli army, on September 2, 2025, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. [Mohammed Nassar - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AA-20250902-39000355-39000346-PALESTINIAN_PRISONERS_RELEASED_AFTER_BEING_HELD_FOR_MONTHS_BY_ISRAEL.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
![Reporters follow Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani's address at the media centre, during the opening of the 2025 ArabIslamic emergency summit in Doha on September 15, 2025. [Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2235059760-1-1.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
![UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese attends a press conference at the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome, Italy, on July 29, 2025. [Riccardo De Luca - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AA-20250729-38697333-38697297-FRANCESCA_ALBANESE_MEETS_THE_PRESS_IN_ROME.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
