U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands during a news conference at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Israel, February 16, 2025
ISRAEL received a shipment of heavy MK-84 bombs from the United States after President Donald Trump lifted a block imposed by his predecessor, the Defence Ministry said yesterday.
The unguided 2,000-pound bombs can tear through concrete and metal, creating a wide blast radius.
Exports of these munitions were held up by the Biden administration over concerns about their impact on densely populated areas in Gaza.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said the new munitions shipment was a “significant asset” for the Israeli Air Force and demonstrated the “strong alliance” between Israel and the US.
The delivery comes amid concerns over whether the ceasefire for Israel’s war on Gaza will hold.
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Thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration expressing support for Palestinian rights in London on February 15, 2025. (Photo: Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
An 87-year-old Holocaust survivor called the U.S. president’s plan to permanently force Palestinians out of Gaza “completely immoral and illegal, and also impractical and absurd.”
Thousands of people marched to the United States Embassy in London on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for the Gaza Strip, a proposal that has been roundly condemned as unlawful and monstrous by the U.N., international human rights organizations, and Palestinians living in the enclave decimated by relentless Israeli bombing.
The march came after Trump doubled down on his proposal for the U.S. to “take over” Gaza after forcibly and permanently displacing Palestinians from the territory.
“Think of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it and we’ll slowly—very slowly, we’re in no rush—develop it,” Trump told reporters last weekend.
Marchers carried signs Sunday expressing contempt for the president’s proposal, which Amnesty Internationaldenounced as “inflammatory, outrageous, and shameful.”
Protesters march to the U.S. Embassy in London on February 15, 2025. (Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, toldAFP on Saturday that Trump’s proposal is “completely immoral and illegal, and also impractical and absurd.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Kapos added, “but it does a lot of damage simply stating that as an endgame.”
The mass demonstration in London, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other organizations, followed news that Hamas freed three additional Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for the release of more than 360 Palestinians who were held in Israeli prisons.
The exchange was part of a tenuous cease-fire deal reached in January after 15 months of incessant U.S.-backed Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
The assault’s impact on Palestinians in Gaza was, and continues to be, catastrophic. According to an article published in The Lancet earlier this month, Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip “generated a life expectancy loss of more than 30 years during the first 12 months of the war, nearly halving prewar levels.”
“Actual losses are likely to be higher,” the researchers noted, stressing that their estimate was conservative and “did not account for the indirect effect of the war.”
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Despite international pressure to free Hiba, Jordanian authorities held her for her full sentence in a “huge setback for press freedoms.
Jordanian authorities released journalist Hiba Abu Taha on Thursday, February 13, upon completing her prison sentence.
In June, 2024, Hiba was sentenced to one year in prison for violating Jordan’s controversial Cybercrime Law by allegedly “spreading false news, slandering, insulting or defaming a governmental authority or an official body,” and “inciting discord and strife among members of society, targeting community peace, and inciting violence.”
One of those charges was reportedly imposed on Abu Taha for an article she wrote, in which she criticized Jordan’s interception of Iranian drones and rockets launched against Israel in April, 2024.
Meanwhile, she faced the other charge for writing an investigative report, exposing Jordanian companies, which were transporting goods to Israel through the Jordanian territory during Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza.
The imprisonment of Abu Taha and the enactment of the Cybercrime Law were widely criticized by international human rights and press freedom organizations. These organizations described Hiba’s imprisonment as a “huge setback for press freedom” in Jordan. They labelled the Cybercrime Law “draconian.”
In October 2024, an online campaign titled “We stand in solidarity with Hiba Abu Taha” was also launched by 24 media platforms, including Peoples Dispatch. However, the Jordanian authorities ignored the widespread opposition from organizations and grassroots campaigns, and continued Hiba’s incarceration until the last day of her prison sentence.
A protest outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, February 13, 2025Photo: Jennie Walsh
Hundreds protest outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court as Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists attend court
HUNDREDS rallied outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court today to demand the government stop criminalising protest.
The large and noisy protest was held outside the court in support of Palestine marches chief steward Chris Nineham, who had his first court appearance today.
Mr Nineham, also long-standing vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, was violently arrested by police at the end of an entirely peaceful protest for Palestine in London last month.
He has been charged, together with Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal, with breaches of the Public Order Act.
Mr Jamal’s own hearing is next week. His was among 77 arrests made by police at the demonstration.
Demonstrators heard speeches linking the state attack on the right to protest with the overriding issue of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
People take part in a national march for Palestine, supported by more than 150 Irish civil society groups, in Dublin, January 25, 2025
TENS of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators are set to flood the streets of London on Saturday to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
The march and rally comes as the current ceasefire teeters on the brink of collapse, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to resume bombing and US president Donald Trump declaring “let all hell break loose” after Hamas delayed the release of more hostages, citing Israeli violations of the deal.
Protesters will gather at midday on Saturday at Whitehall before marching to the US embassy.
