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This picture shows a general view of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) during a meeting, in Jerusalem on 30 June, 2022 [MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images]
An Israeli Knesset committee advanced a bill on Sunday to allow the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners accused by Tel Aviv of carrying out attacks, Anadolu reports.
By 4-1 votes, the Knesset National Security Committee approved the bill authored by the far-right Jewish Power Party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for the first reading, the public broadcaster KAN reported.
The move came despite a request by Gal Hirsch, the coordinator for prisoners and missing in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, to postpone discussing the bill at this time so as not to endanger the lives of Israeli captives held in Gaza.
The bill must be approved in three readings to become law.
The Israeli bill was denounced by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society as an “unprecedented savagery,” warning that it would entrench what they described as “systematic crimes” against detainees through legislation.
Israel is acting “above the law and beyond accountability,” the two groups said, citing the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, where more than 66,000 people have been killed since October 2023.
The bill was originally part of coalition agreements between Netanyahu’s Likud Party and Ben-Gvir’s party. A preliminary version passed its first reading in March 2023.
If enacted, the law would allow the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis under what Israel defines as “racist or hate-motivated crimes.”
According to Palestinian figures, Israel currently holds about 11,100 Palestinians in its prisons, including 53 women, around 400 children, 3,577 administrative detainees, and more than 2,600 from Gaza classified as “unlawful combatants.”
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.Vote Labour for Genocide.
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Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu in Athens, Greece on 2 January 2020 [Yiannis Liakos/Anadolu Agency]
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has accused Athens of “violating International Law to aid and abet the Netanyahu government’s genocidal project” after a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla was attacked by drones off southern Crete, Anadolu reports.
Varoufakis, a prominent author, opposition politician, and commentator, said on the US social media company X that he had spoken to the crew of the Family, the main vessel of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was struck on the night of Sept. 23 by “a swarm of drones with explosives and CS (tear) gas.”
The flotilla, he said, had requested urgent help from the Greek Coast Guard to repair damage and provide protection while sailing through Greece’s Search and Rescue area.
“Remarkably, nauseatingly to be precise, the Greek Coastguard turned both requests down!” he said.
“Such is the determination of the Greek government to aid and abet Israel’s genocide in Gaza and, more generally, its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, that the Greek authorities took the step of refusing assistance that the Law of the Sea obliges them to provide.”
According to Varoufakis, the refusal highlights how “readily, in a bid to satisfy (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu, the Greek government has forfeited not only its responsibilities but also its sovereignty.”
Under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he added, “a long process by which Greece has become a satellite of the last Apartheid State is now complete,” referring to Israel’s policies of discriminating against and oppressing Palestinians.
He also pointed to wider evidence of complicity. On the night of the flotilla attack, Varoufakis claimed, a Beechcraft King Air 350 spy plane took off from the US Air Force base at Souda in northwestern Crete and flew south.
The aircraft, he said, belongs to the US leasing company Metrea Special Aerospace ISR and had previously been used to monitor Gaza from a British base in the Greek Cypriot Administration.
“One thing is clear from all of the above,” Varoufakis added.
“Through a mixture of omission and commission, the Greek government is violating International Law to aid and abet the Netanyahu government. Our party, MeRA25, will fight this government on the streets, in the workplaces, across a country – Greece – which refuses to be counted as complicit with Israel’s genocide.”
Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave all but uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
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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.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/O74hZCKKdpAVote Labour for Genocide.
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Israeli tank and armored vehicle are seen from Israel – Gaza border on September 21, 2025. [Tsafrir Abayov – Anadolu Agency]
Israel is seeking permanent control of the Gaza Strip while ensuring a Jewish majority in the occupied West Bank and inside Israel, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel said in a new report Tuesday, Anadolu reports.
The commission found Israeli policies since October 2023 show “clear and consistent” intent to “forcibly transfer Palestinians, expand Israeli Jewish civilian presence and annex the entirety of the West Bank,” blocking Palestinian self-determination.
It warned that these measures are part of a broader strategy to prevent any future Palestinian state.
“I am particularly appalled by the Israeli Finance Minister (Bezalel) Smotrich’s recently announced plan of annexing 82 percent of the occupied West Bank, and by the approval of a plan cementing the E1 settlement expansion, with Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu asserting that this will ensure there will be no Palestinian State,” said Navi Pillay, the commission chair.
“Israeli encroachment into the entirety of the West Bank and the dispossession and relocation of multiple Palestinian communities are now explicit goals, which Israeli officials proudly boast about,” she stressed, adding that these measures are “abhorrent and must be condemned widely.”
The report said Israeli military operations in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps since early 2025 destroyed buildings, displaced residents, and amounted to collective punishment. Some demolished structures were labeled “terrorist homes” by the army, but the commission found the actions were not militarily justified.
In Gaza, the inquiry found that Israeli authorities “extensively and systematically” demolished civilian infrastructure in corridors and buffer zones, expanding control over 75% of the territory by July.
It said such actions have “substantially reduced the territory available for Palestinians, with significant implications for their ability to exercise their right to self-determination.”
The report also accused Israeli authorities of systematically reducing Gaza’s territory and resources, saying actions inflicted conditions of life calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, “which is an underlying act of genocide.”
“Israel must immediately end and reverse its confiscation and use of Palestinian land in Gaza, including for the creation and expansion of the buffer zone and corridors. It must return all confiscated land to its Palestinian owners,” Pillay said.
“Israeli confiscation and control of land ostensibly carried out for security purposes have not achieved more security for anyone but have deepened the misery of the Palestinian people and deprived them of resources indispensable for their survival, including the capacity to produce food.”
The report also noted that inside Israel, successive governments have implemented laws and policies confining Palestinian localities and hindering integration. It said similarities with measures in the West Bank point to a broader policy “intended to secure a Jewish majority in all areas under Israeli control, reducing the possibility of geographical self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
The commission named Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, current Defense Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Settlements and National Projects Orit Strock, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as bearing the greatest responsibility for international crimes linked to land and housing, with Netanyahu and Gallant also found responsible for incitement to genocide.
The report will be presented to the UN General Assembly’s 80th session on Oct. 28 in New York.
Last week, the commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza by committing “four of the five” genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.Vote Labour for Genocide.
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Israeli forces raid the el-Amari Refugee Camp, located south of the city of Ramallah in the West Bank on September 14, 2025. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
While the genocide and destruction in Gaza have reached unprecedented levels, Israel now appears to be moving towards its next bold step — a West Bank version of the Gaza endgame scenario. Tension is mounting regionally and globally over a possible imminent Israeli declaration to annex the occupied West Bank. If it happens, the move would mark a major turning point in the timeline of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the land of Palestine. “There are serious and real concerns that Israel may, in the coming days, announce the annexation of the West Bank. The annexation of the West Bank to Israel is a central part of the political project of two main parties allied with Likud in this extremist government led by Netanyahu,” said Qadura Fares, the former Palestinian minister and member of the Legislative Council, in a phone conversation from Ramallah in the West Bank.
At the same time, we are witnessing a historic shift as Western nations long supportive of Israel begin to take a different stance, recognising the State of Palestine one after another. These strong Western voices are also warning Israel, in real time, against any unilateral annexation of the West Bank in response to this global wave of recognition.
“This government in Israel has two options now on the table. It can either respond diplomatically to each of the countries recognising Palestine, or it can declare the annexation of the West Bank as a collective punishment against those nations,” Ambassador Alon Liel, retired senior Israeli diplomat, told me in a short conversation.
For many Israelis, this is seen as the moment to change realities on the ground — taking advantage of Western recognition of Palestine as a pretext to move deeper into the West Bank. While everything they have done in Gaza so far has been approved by the Trump administration, they foresee that this golden era in Washington will not return anytime soon. With the unprecedented support President Trump is granting Israel, taking full sovereignty of the land is exactly what the Israeli far right needs now. As Jason Shvili wrote in the far-right Israeli newspaper Israel HaYom: “No other US administration, Democrat or Republican, has been more receptive to the idea of Israel extending its sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, so annexation must happen as soon as possible.”
Retired Israeli ambassador and senior diplomat Alon Liel agrees that the chances are high the USA will back Israel in such a step. But he adds: “The real fear inside the government now is the threat annexation may pose to the Abraham Accords. The achievement of the Accords and relations with the UAE and Bahrain are attributed to PM Netanyahu. Taking over the West Bank may threaten the future of these agreements. These accords are seen as Netanyahu’s biggest diplomatic achievement.”
Annexing the West Bank has long been a central vision for the future of the Jewish state according to the Israeli agenda, but timing is critical. As we see day by day on the ground in Gaza, Israel has pushed much of Gaza’s population southward, concentrating residents into a narrow strip of land and effectively emptying large areas of Palestinians. These actions appear aimed at displacement, potentially forcing Gaza’s Palestinians to leave for Egypt as part of a broader strategy for a Greater Israel, another vision repeatedly mentioned in the narrative of several ministers in the coalition currently running Israel and leading the ongoing war we are witnessing right now.
Bringing the West Bank formally under Israeli sovereignty would therefore complete the picture — unifying the lands of historic Palestine under the authority of the self-styled Jewish state “The annexation of the West Bank is linked to other plan in the Israeli agenda, linked to the displacement of the Palestinians, the transfer of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem into Jordan” said former Palestinian minister and member of the Legislative Council, Qadura Fares “This harms the Jordanian sovereignty, a decisive stance must be taken by all Arab countries to respond to Israel,” Mr. Fares added.
Israeli opposition, represented by Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, expressed its disapproval of the possible move to annex the West Bank. Lapid’s concern was not a fundamental objection to the idea of annexation itself, but rather the timing and the heavy diplomatic cost.
“What are they trying to do? Further damage our international relations? All we’ll get out of this is more serious international backlash for something that has no viability,” Lapid said earlier this month. He described calls for taking over the West Bank as “another provocation toward a world that is already turning its back on us.”
Former ambassador Alon Liel believes the opinion of the other segment of Israeli society is completely different. “The religious part of the population in Israel does not care about the world — if we lose the support of the world or not, they see the world as antisemitic anyhow. Israel is sharply divided,” Liel said.
Former Palestinian minister Qadura Fares emphasized that the West Bank is occupied — and will remain so regardless of any possible annexation order. Palestinians therefore have the right to resist the occupation, and any annexation would be illegal, adding yet another entry to a long list of Israeli actions deemed violations under international law.
Both the measures Israel is taking in Gaza — pushing the population outward and crushing resistance — and its actions in the West Bank, from the destruction of refugee camps like Nour Shams and Jenin to expanding illegal settlements and cutting the region’s geographical integrity, follow a single prescription. They make a Palestinian state on the land occupied in 1967 impossible. They kill all chances of a two-state solution and pave the way for uprooting the Palestinian people entirely, leaving the land to the Jewish state.
Israel is seizing what it sees as the best use of the remaining three years of the current US administration. In this window, the impossible becomes possible — a season unlikely to return under any future administration. But the true end of eight-decade Palestinian struggle will take far longer than these three years.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.Vote Labour for Genocide.
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Relatives of Palestinians, who lost their lives after the Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians waiting for aid in the Shakus area west of Rafah, mourn as the bodies are taken from Nasser Hospital for funeral process in Khan Yunis, Gaza on September 21, 2025. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
At least 65,283 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, the enclave’s Health Ministry said on Sunday, Anadolu reports.
A ministry statement said that 75 bodies, including four retrieved from under the rubble, were brought to hospitals in the last 24 hours, while 304 people were injured, taking the number of injuries to 166,575 in the Israeli onslaught.
“Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.
The ministry also noted that five Palestinians were killed and 24 others injured by Israeli army fire while trying to get humanitarian aid in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed while seeking aid to 2,523, with more than 18,473 others wounded since Oct. 7.
Since March 18, the Israeli army has resumed its attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 12,724 people and injuring 54,534 others, shattering a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold in January, according to the ministry.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its war on the enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.Vote Labour for Genocide.
