What the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire means for Palestinian civilians

Israel has resumed airstrikes and ground operations compounding an already severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza. (AFP)
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Updated 26 March 2025
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What the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire means for Palestinian civilians

  • Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, ending the fragile ceasefire that had been in place since late January
  • Arab League-led framework deemed the only meaningful way to save Palestinian lives, return hostages, and tame Hamas

LONDON: On March 18, Gaza’s deadliest day since October 2023, Israel shattered the fragile ceasefire that had been in place since late January with a renewed wave of strikes, killing at least 400 people and injuring more than 560 in mere hours, according to local health authorities.

The raids, which Israeli officials claim are intended to pressure the Palestinian militant group Hamas to release its remaining hostages held in Gaza, targeted northern, central, and southern areas, in the wake of a three-week aid embargo during the holy month of Ramadan.

In a statement issued on Telegram, Hamas accused Israel of attacking “defenseless civilians,” adding that fuel shortages, blocked roads, and the worsening humanitarian situation had resulted in many of the wounded succumbing to their injuries before reaching hospitals.

The militant group urged US, Egyptian, and Qatari mediators to hold Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “fully responsible” for “violating and overturning” the ceasefire.

In a post on X, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz insisted his country was fighting against Hamas and not Gaza’s civilians.




“Most Israelis oppose resuming the war, many at least supporting a continued ceasefire to save the hostages,” Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, told Arab News. (AFP/File)

“But when Hamas fights in civilian dress, from civilian homes, and from behind civilians, it puts civilians in danger and they pay a horrible price. That is why we are urging Gazans to evacuate combat zones,” he said.

Analysts and humanitarian agencies have condemned Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza. Amjad Iraqi, an Israel-Palestine expert at the International Crisis Group, told Arab News: “Palestinian civilians in Gaza are being collectively punished.”

“Israel has cut off virtually all aid, electricity, and water to 2.3 million people since early March, and is now relaunching devastating airstrikes and evacuation orders in hopes of either pressuring Hamas into further concessions or inducing Gazans’ forced expulsion,” he said.

“The weaponization of humanitarian aid and basic necessities knowingly threatens the civilian population’s very survival and its ability to recover after a year and a half of a brutal war.”

This assessment was echoed by Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency, who likewise described the aid ban as “collective punishment” against a population largely composed of “children, women and ordinary men.”

The renewed blockade, in place since March 4, has left residents facing severe food insecurity, with prices for essentials at least tripling, according to residents of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.

The closure of all border crossings for humanitarian and commercial supplies has prevented the UN World Food Programme from delivering any supplies into Gaza since early March.

“No food, no medicines, no water, no fuel,” Lazzarini wrote in a post on X on March 23. “Every day without food inches Gaza closer to an acute hunger crisis.”

In October, prior to the ceasefire, the UN warned that 1.84 million people across Gaza were experiencing crisis-level food insecurity, including nearly 133,000 facing catastrophic levels and 664,000 at emergency levels.




Aid workers, hospitals, homes, and schools serving as shelters have all suffered war damage. (AFP/File)

Aid workers, hospitals, homes, and schools serving as shelters have all suffered war damage. Airstrikes and artillery fire have also hit tents housing displaced people, a pattern the UN Human Rights Office, or OHCHR, says it has extensively documented since October 2023.

The Geneva-headquartered Medecins Sans Frontieres said in a statement that its teams were “horrified” by the resumption of air attacks.

On March 21, the MSF announced the death of one of its staff members, Alaa Abd-Elsalam Ali Okal, who was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike on his apartment building in Deir Al-Balah.

The organization said it was “shocked and saddened” by the loss, which brings the total number of MSF staff killed since October 2023 to 10.

The US-based MedGlobal also voiced concern for its staff and international volunteers in the Gaza Strip. It said on Sunday night that Israel had bombed Nasser Hospital — one of the last operational facilities where its teams were working — without warning or an evacuation order.

The hospital, located in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, was reportedly hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing at least five people and injuring several others. Among the dead was Hamas political bureau member Ismail Barhoum, who was receiving treatment at the facility.

The attacks “appear to be the prelude to a broader Israeli ground campaign in Gaza, and not just a shock-and-awe tactic to scare Hamas into accepting Israel’s unilateral revision of the agreed ceasefire terms,” Max Rodenbeck, Israel-Palestine project director at the International Crisis Group, told Arab News.




“The weaponization of humanitarian aid and basic necessities knowingly threatens the civilian population’s very survival and its ability to recover after a year and a half of a brutal war,” Amjad Iraqi, an Israel-Palestine expert at the International Crisis Group, told Arab News. (AFP/File)

“The Netanyahu government wants the optics of victory more than it wants to retrieve hostages. The price for this is hundreds more Palestinian civilians killed.”

Indeed, Netanyahu has said the latest airstrikes are “only the beginning,” vowing to continue the offensive until Israel destroys Hamas and frees all hostages held by the militant group.

Prior to March 18, Netanyahu accused Hamas of repeatedly refusing to release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are thought to be alive — taken on Oct. 7, 2023, during the militant group’s unprecedented attack in southern Israel that triggered the war on Gaza.

However, Hamas has denied rejecting a proposal from US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, instead accusing Israel of breaking the truce by reneging on its commitment to enter the second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The militant group said the US “bears full responsibility for the massacres” in Gaza, after the White House confirmed Israel consulted the Donald Trump administration before resuming airstrikes.

Alongside Barhoum, the recent airstrikes have killed several senior Hamas officials, including Gaza’s top political leader and ministers. On Sunday, Hamas confirmed lawmaker Salah Al-Bardawil was killed in an Israeli strike on western Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Israel’s defense minister, Katz, warned on March 19 that Gaza would face “significantly worse” strikes if the remaining hostages were not released and Hamas was not expelled. Katz also suggested that Palestinians should consider “relocating to other parts of the world.”




Israel’s defense minister, Katz, warned on March 19 that Gaza would face “significantly worse” strikes if the remaining hostages were not released and Hamas was not expelled. (AFP/File)

“The alternative is utter destruction and devastation,” he added.

The Israeli military has already mounted “limited” ground operations in northern Gaza. It said on Saturday that troops had begun operating in the Beit Hanoun area “to target Hamas’ terror infrastructure sites in order to expand the security zone in northern Gaza.”

Katz announced plans to “seize additional areas in Gaza, evacuate the population, and expand security zones around Gaza to protect Israeli communities and soldiers.”

The escalating military campaign has raised concerns about the safety of the hostages.

Hamas has accused Israel of endangering the captives’ lives, a view echoed by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel. The forum expressed “shock and anger” at what it called “the deliberate disruption” of efforts to return loved ones from Hamas captivity.

This criticism aligns with broader skepticism about Israel’s strategy in Gaza.

Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, argued that Israel’s operation in Gaza “will not achieve either of its war goals: to defeat Hamas and to bring the hostages home.”

“Most Israelis oppose resuming the war, many at least supporting a continued ceasefire to save the hostages,” she told Arab News.

“The idea that military strikes will pressure Hamas to release hostages without an end to the war is unrealistic at best, and disingenuous at worst.”

Public frustration with Netanyahu’s decision to resume the war was evident on Saturday night when more than 100,000 Israelis staged protests in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities.

“All of this is happening as Netanyahu moves to fire his general security chief amid an investigation into advisers in his office, on top of his ongoing corruption trial and the looming deadline to pass the budget by the end of March,” Zonszein added.




“The Netanyahu government wants the optics of victory more than it wants to retrieve hostages. The price for this is hundreds more Palestinian civilians killed.” (AFP/File)

The greatest toll, however, has fallen on Gazans, who have endured nearly 18 months of violence and displacement.

“Children and families in Gaza have barely caught their breath and are now being plunged back into a horrifically familiar world of harm that they cannot escape,” said Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director, in a statement on March 18.

“This latest slaughter was on starved, besieged, defenseless families,” he added.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli airstrikes and ground operations have killed at least 50,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 113,000 others in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health authority.

Some 1.9 million Gazans — 90 percent of the population — have been displaced multiple times. When the fragile ceasefire began in January, hundreds of thousands returned to the rubble of their homes and neighborhoods.

However, the resumption of hostilities has forced war-weary Gazans back into a cycle of displacement, fleeing one danger zone only to be thrust into another.

“There is no resilience,” an aid official in Gaza told The Guardian newspaper. “People … are in a very weak state, physically and psychologically.”

The OHCHR warned that Israel’s continued block of humanitarian aid, Gaza’s catastrophic shelter crisis, and limited access to life-saving services will likely worsen the impact of mass displacement.

Shocked by the resumption of strikes, Gazans have turned to social media to share their stories of renewed upheaval.

“Children’s bodies line morgue refrigerator floors; there’s no more room for the dead,” Anees Ghanima posted. “Has the world really gotten too small to hold us?”

Another Gazan, Khaled Safi, wrote: “The war on Gaza has returned while they are fasting, hungry, asleep, and haunted by death at every moment.”




Children sit on a couch amid the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. (AFP/File)

With the situation deteriorating, a return to diplomatic solutions seems more urgent than ever.

“The parameters of the January ceasefire must be restored and linked to the Arab League’s ‘day after’ framework presented on March 4,” Iraqi of the International Crisis Group said.

“This framework is the only basis for a meaningful way to save Palestinian lives, return the hostages, tame Hamas under national and regional oversight, and restore a measure of stability.

“Diplomacy and leverage from Arab states — particularly vis-a-vis the US as the main actor to influence and press Israel — will be critical in determining whether this can be achieved.”

 


Israel leader meets visiting US homeland security secretary: PM’s office

Updated 7 sec ago
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Israel leader meets visiting US homeland security secretary: PM’s office

  • The visit comes as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with visiting US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Jerusalem on Sunday, his office said.
US and Israeli media reported that Trump had sent Noem to Jerusalem following the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington last week.
Noem was accompanied at her meeting with Netanyahu by US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Netanyahu’s office said in a brief statement Sunday night.
The office added that during the meeting Noem “expressed her unreserved support for the prime minister and the State of Israel.”
The visit comes as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip in what it says is a renewed effort to destroy Hamas.
Earlier in the evening, Noem and Huckabee had visited the city’s Western Wall, where early celebrations for Monday’s “Jerusalem Day” holiday were taking place.
The holiday commemorates what Israel considers Jerusalem’s reunification under its authority after the city’s eastern sector was captured by its forces in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.


’Death is sometimes kinder’: Relatives recount Gaza strike that devastated family

Updated 56 min 19 sec ago
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’Death is sometimes kinder’: Relatives recount Gaza strike that devastated family

  • The paediatrician, with no means of transport, ran from the Nasser Hospital to the family house in the city of Khan Yunis, a relative told AFP, only to be met with every parent’s worst nightmare

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Alaa Al-Najjar was tending to wounded children at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip when the news came through: the home where her own 10 children were staying had been bombed in an Israeli air strike.
The paediatrician, with no means of transport, ran from the Nasser Hospital to the family house in the city of Khan Yunis, a relative told AFP, only to be met with every parent’s worst nightmare.
“When she saw the charred bodies, she started screaming and crying,” said Ali Al-Najjar, the brother of Alaa’s husband.
Nine of her children were killed, their bodies burned beyond recognition, according to relatives.
The tenth, 10-year-old Adam, survived the strike but remains in critical condition, as does his father, Hamdi Al-Najjar, also a doctor, who was also at home when the strike hit.
Both are in intensive care at Nasser Hospital.
When the body of her daughter Nibal was pulled from the rubble, Alaa screamed her name, her brother-in-law recounted.
The following day, under a tent set up near the destroyed home, the well-respected paediatric specialist sat in stunned silence, still in shock.
Around her, women wept as the sounds of explosions echoed across the Palestinian territory, battered by more than a year and a half of war.

The air strike on Friday afternoon was carried out without warning, relatives said.
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said it had “struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure” near its troops, adding that claims of civilian harm were under review.
“I couldn’t recognize the children in the shrouds,” Alaa’s sister, Sahar Al-Najjar, said through tears. “Their features were gone.”
“It’s a huge loss. Alaa is broken,” said Mohammed, another close family member.
According to medical sources, Hamdi Al-Najjar underwent several operations at the Jordanian field hospital.
Doctors had to remove a large portion of his right lung and gave him 17 blood transfusions.
Adam had one hand amputated and suffers from severe burns across his body.
“I found my brother’s house like a broken biscuit, reduced to ruins, and my loved ones were underneath,” Ali Al-Najjar said, recalling how he dug through the rubble with his bare hands alongside paramedics to recover the children’s bodies.
Now, he dreads the moment his brother regains consciousness.
“I don’t know how to tell him. Should I tell him his children are dead? I buried them in two graves.”
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” he added with a weary sigh. “Death is sometimes kinder than this torture.”
 

 


Israel’s US ambassador called home over interview remarks

Updated 25 May 2025
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Israel’s US ambassador called home over interview remarks

  • Ambassador Yechiel Leiter accuses opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of levelling “blood libels” at the Israeli leader

JERUSALEM: Israel’s ambassador to Washington is being summoned home on the instructions of a government disciplinary body to discuss comments he made in a podcast interview, the foreign ministry said Sunday.
Ambassador Yechiel Leiter had made an appearance on a podcast run by the right-wing US online media platform PragerU, in which he accused opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of levelling “blood libels” at the Israeli leader.
“The Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eden Bar-Tal, will summon the ambassador in Washington, Dr. Yechiel Leiter, for a hearing regarding statements he made during a media interview,” a ministry spokesman said in a statement.
The spokesman said the summons was “in accordance with the instructions of the Discipline Department at the Civil Service Commission.”
Although the role of Israeli ambassador to the United States is a political appointment and Leiter was selected by Netanyahu, Israeli diplomats are typically expected to refrain from making political statements.
In the interview with PragerU, Leiter accused “extremists on the left” and the Israeli media of trying to topple Netanyahu’s government.
“It’s the extremists, and there is nothing they won’t do to bring Netanyahu down, and it’s a calumny that needs to be called out,” he said, accusing Netanyahu’s detractors of levelling “blood libels against your own PM.”
Leiter also dismissed as “insanity” claims that the premier was prolonging the war in Gaza to remain in power, adding: “How dare they say something as malicious as that?“
A poll published by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Saturday showed that 55 percent of the public believes Netanyahu is more interested in remaining in power than ending the war or freeing the hostages still held in Gaza.
A former adviser to Netanyahu, Leiter is originally from the United States and lived in a settlement in the occupied West Bank.
His son, Moshe Leiter, was killed in combat in November 2023 in the Gaza Strip.


Why fury over Israeli actions in Gaza and West Bank may lead to EU sanctions

Updated 44 min 52 sec ago
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Why fury over Israeli actions in Gaza and West Bank may lead to EU sanctions

  • Calls rise for arms embargo, ICC referrals and greater aid access after Israeli military fire in Jenin forces foreign ministers to scatter
  • Trade deal with Israel under review amid alarm over Gaza famine warnings, West Bank settler violence, international law violations

LONDON: Watching the widely circulated footage of Israeli soldiers firing “warning shots” in the direction of a delegation of foreign diplomats visiting a refugee camp in the Palestinian city of Jenin on Wednesday, it was hard to resist the conclusion that the Israeli military had lost its collective mind.

Luckily, no one was injured in the incident. But in a manner of speaking, Israel shot itself in the foot.

The extraordinary provocation took place as Israel was already facing a rising wave of condemnation — internally and externally — and the threat of international sanctions for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

International support for Israel, so unified in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militant groups, in which 1,200 Israelis and others were killed and 251 more were taken hostage, has steadily crumbled in the face of outrage after outrage, which collectively have left more than 50,000 Palestinians dead and much of Gaza reduced to uninhabitable rubble.

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Last Tuesday, the day before the shooting incident in Jenin, the European Union announced that it was reviewing its political and economic relations with Israel – no hollow threat from a bloc that is Israel’s biggest trading partner.

“The situation in Gaza is catastrophic,” Kaja Kallas, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission, said on Tuesday.

Earlier that same day, the UN had raised the specter of thousands of babies dying of starvation “in the next 48 hours” if Israel did not allow aid trucks to enter the territory immediately.

Israeli soldiers fired ‘warning shots’ in the direction of European diplomats visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, in the West Bank, on May 21, forcing them to scatter and sparking diplomatic outrage. (AFP)

Israel, while rejecting the suggestion that mass starvation was imminent, responded by allowing what critics condemned as a wholly insufficient token amount of aid into Gaza.

“The aid that Israel has allowed in is of course welcomed, but it’s a drop in the ocean,” said Kallas. “Aid must flow immediately without obstruction and at scale.”

She had, she added, "made these points also with my talks with Israelis … and regional leaders as well. Pressure is necessary to change the situation.”

And pressure is building up. In an unprecedented move, the EU is now reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the legal basis for its trade relations with Israel, which entered into force in June 2000.

Illustration posted on the website of the European Coordination Committees and Associations for Palestine, along with a report saying 63 MEPs calling on EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. 

Pressure for this review has been mounting since May 7, when Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp urged the EU to act, saying “the situation in Gaza compels us to take this step.”

Disturbed by the nightmarish scenes in Gaza and reports of increasing settler violence in the West Bank, his government, he said, “will draw a line in the sand.”

Losing European trade would be a massive blow to Israel’s economy. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner – in 2024 34.2 percent of Israel’s imports came from the EU while 28.8 percent of Israel’s exports went to the EU. The total value of the trade in goods between the two in 2024 was o 42.6 billion euros.

“The review will specifically assess Israel’s adherence to the human rights provisions within the deal,” said Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute focused on defense, security and geopolitical landscapes.

The clause in the agreement that is now under legal scrutiny is Article 2. This states that “Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”

Other international measures are under consideration, said Rose, including “imposing a full arms embargo, referring Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as advocated by Pakistan, enforcing a ceasefire and humanitarian aid access, sanctioning Israeli officials, supporting recognition of a Palestinian state, dismantling illegal settlements, reforming the UN Security Council veto system, and coordinating global reconstruction aid.”

Rose cautions that “internal divisions within the bloc could stall progress. While 17 member states support the review, countries such as Germany, Hungary, Austria and Italy reportedly oppose it. Germany and Austria, in particular, have resisted punitive measures despite issuing public condemnations.”

Germany, bearing the moral weight of the Holocaust, has been a staunch supporter of Israel since its creation in 1948. But now, under new conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz, even Berlin is wavering.

Last week, out of concern for the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, Merz despatched his foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, on a fact-finding mission. Wadephul was among the diplomats scattered by the warning shots fired by the Israeli military on Wednesday, as were senior delegates from countries including France, Belgium, the UK, Italy, Canada, Russia and China. 

All the countries involved have lodged complaints with Israel about the episode, which the Palestinian Authority condemned as a “heinous crime” a “deliberate and unlawful act” which “constitutes a blatant and grave breach of international law.”

The day after the shooting in Jenin, during a visit to Lithuania the German chancellor said “we are very concerned about the situation in the Gaza Strip and also about the intensification of the Israeli army’s military operations there.

“We are urging, above all, that humanitarian aid finally reaches the Gaza Strip without delay, and also reaches the people there, because, as we hear from the United Nations, there is now a real threat of famine.”

On May 13 a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that over the past four years Germans had developed an increasingly negative view of Israel. In 2021 46 percent of Germans had a positive view of the country, compared with only 36 percent today, with 38 percent now viewing it negatively. Germany has seen many mass protests since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, which a majority of Germans oppose.

IN NUMBERS:

• 38% Germans who now view Israel negatively.

• 10% Drop in number of Germans who view Israel positively.

Source: Bertelsmann Foundation study

On May 19, two days before the Israeli military’s live-fire intimidation of international diplomats, the UK, France and Canada issued a joint statement condemning the situations in Gaza and the West Bank and strongly opposing the expansion of Israeli military operations in Gaza.

While also calling on Hamas to immediately release the remaining hostages, the statement denounced “the level of human suffering in Gaza” as “intolerable.”

The three nations added: “Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.”

Israel, warned the statement, “risks breaching international humanitarian law,” adding: “We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.”

Israel had a right to defend Israelis against terrorism, “but this escalation is wholly disproportionate.”

As a result, “We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”

In the West Bank, Israel must also “halt settlements which are illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and the security of both Israelis and Palestinians.

“We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.”

On May 20, as the death toll from Israeli air strikes over the previous week reached 500, the UK summoned Israel’s ambassador to London, paused talks on a new free-trade agreement, and announced further sanctions against West Bank settlers.

Israel’s operation in Gaza was "incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship,” David Lammy, the UK foreign minister, told parliament.

“It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

All these moves “clearly reflect growing discomfort with Israeli military actions in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” Sir John Jenkins, who served as British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria and as consul-general in Jerusalem, told Arab News.

“This has been crystallized by the issue of humanitarian aid. The UN has not handled this well itself. But it’s a real political problem for Western governments, with significant domestic implications, which is why the UK has also paused trade talks.”

However, he added, “none of this will affect the Israeli decision-making process in the short term, and Western governments will be very reluctant to do anything that helps Hamas.

“But they will be increasingly keen to see a proper plan for the endgame. The question is: How much does the Trump administration support them? The news last week of the shooting of the two Israeli diplomats in Washington will only complicate this calculation.”

Israel, increasingly isolated, nevertheless remains defiant. “The British Mandate ended exactly 77 years ago,” a spokesperson for its foreign ministry said in response to last week’s criticism from the UK. “External pressure will not divert Israel from its path in defending its existence and security against enemies who seek its destruction.”

Yet in Europe that external pressure is mounting. So much so that, after 20 years of campaigning virtually in the wilderness for “freedom, justice and equality” for Palestinians, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement finally finds its much-criticised methods on the cusp of becoming mainstream.

Founded in 2005, for two decades the Palestinian-led BDS and those who support it have endured international censure, based on an unquestioning acceptance of Israel’s accusation that the organization’s aims are merely a manifestation of antisemitism.

Now, however, as governments in Europe, shocked by Israel’s latest actions and the seemingly deliberate starvation of two million people in Gaza, begin to adopt stances for which BDS has been calling for 20 years, as it marks its 20th anniversary the organisation and its work is being vindicated.

“For the first time ever, even the world’s most complicit governments are being forced – due to people power and moral outrage – to publicly consider accountability measures against Israel,” the BDS said in a statement.

This was “another clear sign that our collective popular BDS pressure is working. The taboo is broken – sanctions are the way forward to end Israel’s atrocious crimes.”

Nevertheless, the organization continues to be critical of the UK, France and Canada, countries which had spent 19 months “enabling Israel’s genocide with intelligence gathering and other military means.” The statements by the three “are far too late and fall dangerously short of meeting these States’ legal obligations under international law, including the Genocide Convention and the Apartheid Convention.”

BDS says it is now stepping up its campaign to “transform tokenism and empty threats into tangible and effective accountability measures, starting with a two-way military embargo and full-scale trade and diplomatic sanctions.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, keenly aware as ever of his dependence upon the support of the right-wing extremists in his cabinet, went on the offensive last week.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he said, were siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers.” Astonishingly, he added, Starmer, Macron and Carney were “on the wrong side of humanity and … the wrong side of history.”

In fact, in the wake of the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, all three countries came out in unequivocal support of Israel, and its right to defend itself.

What Netanyahu is refusing to acknowledge is that in the eyes of the world, the events of that day do not give Israel a carte blanche.

His apparent determination to continue the war seemingly in order to keep himself in power, and to support the Zionist extremists in his cabinet who want to see Palestine ethnically cleansed, is facing growing criticism within Israel itself.

One of the staunchest critics is Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009, who recently told the BBC that what Israel was doing in Gaza was “close to a war crime.”

That earned him a rebuke from a current Israeli minister, but on Friday Olmert intensified his criticism. “A group of thugs … are running the state of Israel these days and the head of the gang is Netanyahu,” he told the BBC World Service.

He added: “Of course they are criticizing me, they are defaming me, I accept it, and it will not stop me from criticizing and opposing these atrocious policies.”

Speaking to Arab News, Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King’s College London’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, said: “You don’t have to be an expert on international humanitarian law to conclude that what the Israelis are doing in the Gaza Strip is carrying out terrible war crimes.

“European governments can’t ignore this any longer, as their publics are furious, and, at last, they have started to react.”

Ideally, he said, “it would be the UN Security Council that instructs Israel to stop the industrial killing in Gaza and the starving of the Gazans, but the Israelis seem confident that US President Donald Trump will not let such a resolution pass.

“But who knows? Sometimes, in war, there are moments which are turning points, moments that push nations of the world over the edge and make them take action to stop wars.”

Bregman believes only two courses of action “would make the Israeli government rethink and change its criminal behaviour in Gaza.”

The first is that European countries should block trade relations with Israel — a step now being seriously considered in the European Union — and impose sanctions on the state.

But his second suggestion, coming as it does from a man who served in the Israeli army for six years and took part in the 1982 Lebanon War, shows just how far the actions of the current Israeli government have strayed from what mainstream public opinion in the country now regards as acceptable.

“Young Israelis who fought in Gaza should be stopped when trying to cross into Europe,” he said.

“They should be investigated for their actions in Gaza and arrested if there’s any suspicion of war crimes.”

And, he added, “pilots, who caused most of the damage in Gaza, should be sent automatically for trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”
 

 


Man with US and German citizenship is charged with trying to attack US Embassy in Tel Aviv

The exterior of the US Embassy building in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, Israel. (AFP file photo)
Updated 25 May 2025
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Man with US and German citizenship is charged with trying to attack US Embassy in Tel Aviv

  • Israeli officials deported Neumeyer to New York on Saturday and he had an initial court appearance before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Sunday

NEW YORK: A dual US and German citizen has been arrested on charges that he traveled to Israel and attempted to firebomb the branch office of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, officials said Sunday.
Federal prosecutors in New York said the man, Joseph Neumeyer, walked up to the embassy building on May 19 with a backpack containing Molotov cocktails but got into a confrontation with a guard and eventually ran away, dropping his backpack as the guard tried to grab him.
Law enforcement then tracked Neumeyer down to a hotel a few blocks away from the embassy and arrested him, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York.
The attack took place against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza, now in its 19th month.
Neumeyer, 28, who is originally from Colorado and has dual US and German citizenship, had traveled from the US to Canada in early February and then arrived in Israel in late April, according to court records. He had made a series of threatening social media posts before attempting the attack, prosecutors said.
Israeli officials deported Neumeyer to New York on Saturday and he had an initial court appearance before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Sunday. His criminal complaint was unsealed Sunday.
Neumeyer’s court-appointed attorney, Jeff Dahlberg, declined to comment.
During his first term, President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital despite Palestinian objections and moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv.