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Palestinian residents flee the conflict zones by car, on donkey carts, and on foot, carrying their belongings to safer areas following intense Israeli military attacks on the Jabalia Refugee Camp in northern Gaza on May 21, 2025. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency
The Israeli army controls over 77% of the Gaza Strip, local authorities said on Sunday, Anadolu reports.
“Field data and verified analysis indicate that the Israeli occupation forces now effectively control approximately 77% of Gaza’s total geographic area,” Gaza’s government media office said in a statement.
The Israeli army gained control through “direct ground offensives, the deployment of its forces in residential and civilian areas, or preventing Palestinians from accessing their areas, lands, and properties via intensified fire, or forced evacuation,” it added.
The office strongly condemned the Israeli plans of mass displacement, ethnic cleansing, systematic genocide, and settler colonialism by force, “under the cover of a siege and an open war targeting both people and infrastructure.”
It held Israel and its supporters, including the US, UK, Germany, and France, fully responsible for the crime of genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday, Israel Hayom newspaper said that the army plans to control 70-75% of Gaza within nearly three months as part of an expanded military campaign in the enclave.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing more than 53,900 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his 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 for its war crimes against defenseless civilians in the enclave.
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UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘‘not a genocide’‘ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dust
The BBC has stopped Evan Davis, one of its senior presenters, from hosting a personal podcast informing the public about heat pumps, a flagship clean heating solution.
Speaking on the final episode of the show, launched in January, Davis said that the BBC had become “concerned” that the podcast was “somehow treading on areas of public controversy”.
He added: “I take their shilling; they dictate the rules. They know they have to try and keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial so they’ve asked me not to be involved.”
Heat pumps, powered by electricity, are currently set to play a key role in decarbonising heating and replacing gas boilers, which heat around 85 percent of Britain’s homes and account for 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide. The government has set a target of 600,000 heat pump installations every year by 2028, up from just 55,000 in 2022.
The Happy Heat Pump podcast co-hosted by Davis attempted to educate listeners about how to use a heat pump, how much they cost, and which properties are best suited to a heat pump.
Heat pumps can be more expensive to install than alternatives, though experts have blamed the government for not matching the incentives offered by its European counterparts. Heat pump uptake in the UK is among the lowest in Europe, with more than 500,000 heat pumps sold in France last year, and more than 400,000 in both Italy and Germany.
However, gas industry lobbyists and sections of the right-wing media have attempted to stoke a “culture war” around the uptake of heat pumps in the UK. DeSmog revealed in July 2023 that a barrage of negative press about heat pumps had been funded by a gas lobby group.
Davis’s podcast co-host, Bean Beanland, criticised the BBC’s decision. Beanland, the director for growth and external affairs for the Heat Pump Federation, said the corporation’s judgement was “extraordinary”.
“It does seem to me that somehow the technologies we espouse have fallen victim to some sort of culture war,” he added.
Davis said that he believes the BBC’s decision was “more about net zero than this particular form of heating”. The legally-binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 has also been weaponised by campaigners and conservative media outlets, despite a broad public consensus for reducing emissions and building new green infrastructure.
“Cars are controversial, they kill and maim thousands every year, but that hasn’t stopped the BBC glamorising car use in its decades broadcasting hundreds of episodes of Top Gear,” said Andrew Simms, co-director of the New Weather Institute.
“Heat pumps, on the other hand, don’t kill or maim, they just cheaply and safely warm homes. It’s been estimated that swapping all 23 million gas boilers in the UK to heat pumps could save roughly £11 billion in wholesale gas costs.
“The technology is already hugely successful in some of the coldest countries in Europe. In those with the longest, harshest winters like Norway, Finland and Sweden, heat pumps dominate. Already by 2022 around 41 percent of Finnish households had a heat pump installed, with two-thirds in Norway and nearly half in Sweden. Try telling them that their heating systems are controversial.”
A number of commentators have expressed their dismay on social media at the BBC’s decision. Financial Times associate editor Stephen Bush accused the BBC of “muzzling one of its best presenters from making an excellent, wholly factual programme”. Bush added that the broadcaster was an “organisation badly in need of new leadership.”
A BBC spokesperson told DeSmog: “The BBC editorial guidelines are clear that anyone working for the BBC who does an external public speaking or writing engagement should not compromise the impartiality or integrity of the BBC or its content, or suggest that any part of the BBC endorses a third-party organisation, product, service or campaign.”
As previously revealed by DeSmog, the BBC’s commercial content arm, BBC StoryWorks, has been paid to promote oil and gas companies, agricultural giants, fossil fuel states, and high-emission transport firms.
Experts have also highlighted that Davis’s podcast was simply reflecting basic facts about heat pumps.
Energy policy expert Jan Rosenow said: “Heat pumps are a mature technology that has been around for more than 100 years. All authoritative analyses indicate that we need to deploy millions of them to reach net zero. Public controversy stems from poor reporting – Evan tried to change that.”
These sentiments were reflected by fellow climate expert Andrew Sissons, who said: “I’ve said this before but… heat pumps are really quite boring, and it says quite a lot about the state of debate in Britain that we’ve managed to make them controversial. Credit to Evan for trying to make them not controversial.”
Armed state policeman in Bremen, Germany. Photo: Wikicommons
The German state has unleashed a fierce and sweeping crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement in the country.
Germany’s policy of harsh repression of any expression of solidarity with Palestine and the struggle of the Palestinian people has continued unabated. In their attempt to silence all mentions of Palestine, German authorities have canceled events, censored activists and academics, violently repressed protests, and passed new legislation to further undermine support for Palestine solidarity.
However, despite their best efforts, people in Germany continue to defy what they see as illegitimate bans on speech and activity, and continue to express support for the Palestinian cause.
2024 ends with new attacks
In November 2024, the German parliament had passed a so-called “antisemitism resolution,” which though non-binding, sought to stifle any domestic activity to discourage participation in pro-Palestine movements.
At the beginning of December, Ramsis Kilani was expelled from the Left Party (Die Linke). The young Palestinian, who lost his father, stepmother and five siblings–ages four through twelve–in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip in 2014, was accused of “relativizing Hamas terror, selectively criticizing violence against women as a weapon of war, and rejecting Israel’s right to exist.”
Two weeks later, an “anti-colonial and peace Christmas market” in the west German city of Darmstadt provided the opportunity for several well-known politicians, the media, the local chapter of the “Central Council of Jews in Germany” and “concerned” evangelicals to file criminal charges and even make death threats towards the local Palestine group and church congregation that were jointly responsible for the Christmas market.
A raid to ban a no-longer-existing solidarity group
Less than a week later, on January 22, the police stormed several apartments in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. The reason given was to secure evidence to help ban the association “Palästina e.V.” However, the group had already dissolved in November 2024 and no longer existed.
Hitting children costs 800 euros
On January 24, a court dropped a case against a teacher who had punched a 16-year-old student in the face at a school in the Neukölln borough of Berlin on October 9, 2023. The teenager was attacked for bringing a Palestinian flag to school and displaying it in the playground. The fine for a teacher physically assaulting a minor in public was set by the court at just 800 euros. While the teacher has been on sick leave ever since–i.e. presumably on vacation–the student had to change schools. It is still unclear whether legal action will be taken against the student, for responding to the teacher’s assault by kicking him.
Further professional bans are being prepared
In line with the above court decision, the following week the German parliament passed a resolution that was ostensibly directed against “antisemitism and hostility towards Israel in schools and universities.” In reality, it was an addition to–and tightening of–the previous antisemitism resolution of November 2024. However, unlike the earlier resolution, this parliamentary motion received hardly any public attention and so the relatively broad criticism that had been voiced in October and November, which had extended into bourgeois circles, failed to materialize.
The new resolution is a massive attack on the freedom of research and science in Germany. It promotes the cooperation of teaching institutions with repressive and surveillance authorities, and new professional bans (Berufsverbote), which have a long and dark anti-communist tradition in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Arabic? Forbidden!
At the beginning of February, the Berlin police issued language restrictions for Palestine demonstrations: speeches, posters, slogans and music are only allowed in the German or English language. This is, therefore, a de facto ban on Arabic. This measure is not entirely new: in the last two years there have already been such bans imposed on Palestine demonstrations in various cities. In the summer of 2024, at the Palestine camp in front of Berlin’s Reichstag, Hebrew was banned alongside Arabic. What is new is that the Berlin authorities have declared that this ban applies to all gatherings in the German capital “until further notice.”
Palestinians to be deported
On the evening of February 12, two Palestinians from Gaza were arrested and detained in Berlin: the young men were to be deported to Greece the next day. After protests in Berlin, numerous angry calls to the Greek airline that was to carry out the deportation, and legal intervention, the deportation was apparently postponed. With its “asylum compromise” in 1993 (the de facto removal of the basic right to asylum from the German constitution) and the Dublin II Regulation of the European Union in 2003, the Federal Republic of Germany created the legal basis for deporting almost all asylum seekers to “safe third countries.” As an EU member state, Greece is considered a “safe third country,” however Greek camps are notorious for their inhumane living conditions, which is why a suspension of deportation seems realistic.
The two victims are said to come from Khan Younis and to be well-known for their activism against the Gaza genocide. The right-wing Springer press called them “conductors of the Palestinian protests” in Berlin and in its usual racist manner, described them as “clan” members. They are not the first Palestinians to be affected by deportations since October 7, 2023. The German state appears to be using its racist policies not only to divert attention from grievances and to divide the population, but also to get rid of political opponents who are standing up against racism, war, and genocide.
Another “scandal” at the Berlinale
This year’s Berlinale, which took place in Berlin from February 13 to 23, made headlines in the German mainstream media due to alleged “antisemitism scandals.” The Chinese director Jun Li read out a speech by Iranian actor Erfan Shekarriz, in which he said that millions of Palestinians were suffocating under Israel’s brutal settler colonialism. He accused the Federal Republic of Germany of supporting the genocide of the Palestinians. The Scottish actress Tilda Swinton, who was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear for her life’s work, declared her respect for the BDS movement at the press conference. Once again, the German media handled these statements in a scandalous manner, while the Central Council of Jews in Germany ranted about the voicing of “Hamas slogans”.
Preparations for further ban on solidarity group
At the same time, a newspaper article revealed that the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) in the east German state of Saxony is apparently monitoring the Leipzig-based “Handala” solidarity group. Although this group has appeared in the intelligence service’s regional report since 2023, the state of Saxony’s Ministry of Science is now also keeping an eye on it, as some of its members allegedly work at Leipzig University. The domestic intelligence service categorizes Handala’s solidarity work as a form of “secular foreigner extremism,” claiming it’s “particularly opposed to the idea of international understanding” (Völkerverständigung) and shows solidarity with Hamas.
The last two accusations are alarming because last summer, the group “Palestine Solidarity Duisburg” (PDSU) was banned by North Rhine-Westphalia state’s Ministry of the Interior on the basis of exactly the same unfounded allegations. The repressive Saxony authorities thus appear to be preparing for a ban on Handala by first creating a favorable mood in the ministries and the bourgeois media.
No stage for the UN Special Rapporteur
Most recently, two events of the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, in Munich and Berlin were canceled due to political pressure. Albanese was supposed to speak at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich on February 16 and at the Freie Universität (“Free University”) of Berlin on February 18. After the second venue was canceled on short notice, the event was still able to take place in the editorial offices of the left-wing daily newspaper Junge Welt. Though the event was not shut down, as was the Palestine Congress last year, the police followed the example set in Duisburg in December 2023. There, authorities had declared a discussion featuring Zaid Abdulnasser and myself a “closed-door meeting,” surrounded the venue with police cars, and insisted that the state security forces had to attend in order to be able to “intervene.” This is what happened this time in Berlin, too.
Austria: An impending party ban and a “Hamas journalist”
In Germany’s neighboring countries, things are also looking anything but good when it comes to freedom of expression in connection with Palestine.
In Austria, for example, the right-wing FPÖ and the conservative ÖVP are apparently planning to ban the “Gaza List,” which was founded last year and took part in the National Council elections in September 2024. In addition, the British journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested in Vienna at the beginning of February: according to his report, he was summoned by the Austrian immigration authorities, but was confronted on the spot by secret service agents who showed him a search warrant and then drove him to his apartment and confiscated his technological devices. The accusation against the journalist, who has lived in Austria for years, was “membership of Hamas,” or the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. He was threatened with ten years in prison.
Switzerland: Journalist arrested and deported
Ali Abunimah, the journalist and managing director of the internationally renowned online independent news media outlet The Electronic Intifada, was arrested in Switzerland on January 25 and subsequently deported after two nights in custody. Abunimah had been invited to give a lecture. He had already been questioned for an hour by the authorities when he arrived at Zurich airport the day before his arrest. During his detention, he was questioned in the absence of a lawyer and was denied the right to call his family, as he reported after his release. It later became known that the Zurich cantonal police had submitted an application to the Swiss national authorities to ban the journalist from entering the country. However, they had rejected the request. Apparently, massive pressure was then exerted to get the ban passed on the second attempt–this time successfully. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, Mario Fehr was also involved. The right-wing Social Democrat and law-and-order hardliner is a well-known supporter of Israel. He publicly described Abunimah as an “Islamist Jew-hater” and accused him of inciting violence.
France: ban on solidarity group and life imprisonment
French courts dealt the Palestine solidarity movement two blows at once on February 20. First, the ban on the “Collectif Palestine Vaincra,” which was issued in March 2022 and provisionally suspended in April of the same year, has now been upheld. The organization thus meets the same fate as “Samidoun” and Palestine Solidarity Duisburg in Germany, which were banned in November 2023 and May 2024 respectively. Secondly, on February 20, it was decided to postpone the appeal hearing on the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah until June, because France’s “National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office” lodged an objection. The Lebanese communist and pro-Palestinian freedom fighter has been in a French prison for 40 years and was originally due to be released on December 6, 2024.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
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Thousands of people carrying Palestinian flags and banners march as they protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Germany’s arms support to Israel in Unter den Linden Street, Berlin, Germany on April 13, 2024 [Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images]
The German federal ministry has dismissed a lawyer in Berlin due to her opposition to the Israeli assault on Gaza, the Palestinian Information Centre reported.
On Saturday lawyer Melanie Schweizer posted a video on X stating: “Yesterday I got fired as a civil servant working at the Federal Ministry in Germany. Why? In a nutshell because I was speaking out against the genocide in Palestine committed by Israel, against the German support thereof, against the violence and crimes happening there.” Highlighting the German government and police’s efforts to silence pro-Palestine voices, she added: “This is where we’re at in Germany. This is a blatant attack on our constitutional rights to freedom.”
She called on supporters of Gaza to make their stance clear and “keep speaking up, keep using your voice, losing your job is not the worst that can happen to you, losing your life is. Losing your freedom right is.”
Yesterday I got fired as a civil servant in Germany. Why? In a nutshell because I was criticizing Israel for its ongoing genocide in Palestine and Germany‘s complicity. pic.twitter.com/z3mYVabBtn
— Melanie Schweizer | MERA25 🇩🇪 (@Melaniebelizi) March 1, 2025
Many European and American companies have previously dismissed employees over their stance on the war on Gaza and their opposition to genocide.
In October 2024, Microsoft dismissed two employees after they organised a sit-in at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., in solidarity with the victims of the Israeli assault on Gaza.
On 22 January, the Washington Post reported that Google had dismissed more than 50 employees last year after they protested against the “Nimbus” contract, citing concerns that the technology could support military and intelligence programmes used by the Israeli occupation army in its war on Palestinians in Gaza.
In September 2024, the Noguchi Museum in New York announced the dismissal of three employees for allegedly violating the dress code by wearing keffiyehs, which have become a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Friedrich Merz says he is eager to re-engage with international partners
Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting didn’t wait for the final results of his country’s election on Sunday to herald a new era in Europe.
Declaring the US indifferent to this continent’s fate, Friedrich Merz questioned the future of Nato and demanded Europe boost its own defences. Quickly.
This tone from the close US ally – and from Friedrich Merz who is known to be a passionate Atlanticist – would have been unimaginable even a couple of months ago.
It’s a seismic shift. That may read like hyperbole, but what we are now experiencing in terms of transatlantic relations is unprecedented in the 80 years since the end of World War Two.
Big European powers have been shocked to the core by the Trump administration, which suggests it could revoke the security guarantees to Europe in place since 1945.
“I would never have thought that I would have to say something like this in a TV show but, after Donald Trump’s remarks last week… it is clear that this government does not care much about the fate of Europe,” Friedrich Merz said during a post-election debate on Sunday.
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” he added.
