Beyond the Headlines

The Knesset has voted to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, prompting much concern, even from Israel’s closest allies. Two bills were passed on Tuesday with overwhelming majorities: the first to halt the relief agency’s activities in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, and the second to ban the Israeli state from interacting with the organisation. The move would make it almost impo...

For weeks, the Israeli military has isolated the north of Gaza, conducting air strikes and ground attacks, including on residential areas and hospitals. In back-to-back attacks on Beit Lahia and the nearby Jabalia refugee camp last Friday and Saturday, more than 100 people were killed in a single day. Limited aid is entering the area and more eviction orders have been issued to families in the nor...

Over the past year of war in Gaza, several diplomatic and humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have repeatedly accused Israel of breaching rules of military conduct. These breaches have provoked regular condemnation by governments and high-ranking officials worldwide. But amid all the words, what has been missing is concrete action against Israel. If any authority has the power to influen...

Since the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah at the end of September, Israel has expanded its air strike campaign in Lebanon and launched a ground invasion. It has also struck Yemen and Syria in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has launched a series of rocket attacks towards Israel, which for the most part have been intercepted. At the same time, the war in Gaza is continuing as Israel...

Over the past year, reporters, photographers and even children have documented the atrocities in Gaza through their phones, using social media to show the world the horrors they endured. People all around the world erupted in protests against the war, demanding a ceasefire and later an arms embargo to Israel. But negotiations between the warring parties failed and failed again. UN Security Council...

The day after October 7, people in Gaza and all around the world woke up to a darker, more brutal reality as Israel began its military response. Within days, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced a total blockade of the strip, cutting off water, electricity, internet, food and aid. What happened next crossed the bounds of any of the four previous wars on Gaza.   Heavy, non-stop bombardme...

Around 6.30 on the morning of October 7, 2023 thousands of rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel. About an hour later, in daylight, Hamas’s armed wing and other armed groups broke through the wire fence along the northern border of the enclave, launching an attack that became the biggest security breach in Israel’s history. The scenes were violent, bloody, barbaric. People were running...

Thousands in Lebanon were injured and at least 32 people were killed this week in a double attack believed to have been conducted by Israel. On Tuesday, thousands of pagers in the possession of Hezbollah members simultaneously detonated across the country, causing serious injuries. At least two children were killed. What nobody expected is that it would happen again, the very next day. A second wa...

Ten years ago, on September 21, 2014, Yemen’s Houthi rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa from government rule. Months later, a Saudi-led coalition intervened to support the internationally recognised government and fight against the Houthis to restore territories taken over by the group.   In the years that followed, the country was essentially split into two: the Houthi-controlled north, a...

It is back to school for children all around the world, but not in Gaza. Eleven months of war in the strip have devastated lives, homes, hospitals and infrastructure. Education has been virtually erased for hundreds of thousands of pupils. The classrooms in which they once learnt and played are now being used as shelters for displaced families, turning them into spaces they fear. About 186 schools...

The cycle of Gaza ceasefire talks has started to become predictable. Headlines initially spark hope with announcements of progress, only for other regional incidents to derail negotiations, leading to yet another collapse. Last Sunday, Lebanon’s Hezbollah launched 320 drones and rockets towards Israel in response to the assassination of its commander Fouad Shukr. This was the group’s biggest escal...

Children’s lives in Gaza are riddled with uncertainty. They don’t know when the next bomb will fall, where their next meal will come from or even if their families and friends are still alive. Now, another variable poses a grave risk to Gaza’s children: polio. The first case was confirmed after a 10-month-old baby tested positive for the virus in mid-August. At least two others are suspected to ha...

In recent weeks, human rights organisations and media investigations have documented the worsening conditions in Israeli prisons over the past 10 months. They reveal beatings and other forms of brutal physical and psychological abuse of Palestinian detainees have become common practice since October 7. A UN report on the ill-treatment of detainees was published at the end of July, detailing patter...

Olympic fanfare has swept across Paris in recent weeks, but there is an elephant in the room that’s difficult to ignore – the glaring disparity between France hosting one of the most multicultural events in the world, while at the same time cracking down on diversity. Only weeks before the Games started, the far right gained huge momentum in a tense parliamentary election in France, reigniting xen...

On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier in the skies over Lebanon, a stunt timed to coincide with Hassan Nasrallah’s speech amid a series of threats by Hezbollah towards Israel and vice versa. In his address, Nasrallah mocked the intimidation attempt and said an uncomfortable wait for Hezbollah's retaliation is part of the punishment the group is inflicting on Israel for the assassin...

The anxiety in the Middle East has been palpable since Tuesday night. The killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran happened only hours after Israel struck a south Beirut suburb, claiming to have killed Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr. Mr Haniyeh was on a trip to Iran for the inauguration of president Masoud Pezeshkian when he was killed, provoking vows of punishment against Israe...

Residents in the Yemeni city of Hodeidah woke up last Sunday to plumes of black smoke filling the skies. Israel had just struck the port, a main artery for the city, killing nine people and injuring more than 80 others after hitting a fuel depot. The attack came a day after a Houthi drone hit Tel Aviv, killing one person. For months the international community has been cautioning against further s...

In the first weeks of July, the Israeli army ordered about 80,000 residents of Gaza city, in the north of the strip, to evacuate towards the south. At the same time, residents in large areas of Khan Younis were told to leave. But where to?   For nine months, Palestinians in Gaza have had to uproot and seek shelter in increasingly dangerous so-called safe zones, where conditions are dire, services...

Hundreds of rioters were arrested at the start of July after angry mobs in Turkey vandalised cars and shops belonging to Syrian refugees. Fuelled by reports that a Syrian man had assaulted a young girl, nationalist Turks violently protested about their government’s alleged inaction towards the Syrian refugee crisis in their country. But it’s part of a much wider story. Earlier this week, President...

The intense heatwaves sweeping across the Middle East this summer is taking a high toll on people. Temperatures have soared to unprecedented levels, causing widespread discomfort and significant challenges in many countries that might even be unequipped to face the impacts of climate change. During this year's Hajj season, which took place in mid-June, temperatures soared sometimes to almost 52°C...

The eight-month war in Gaza has caused a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale. Over 37 thousand Palestinians have been killed in this period, and over 80 thousand have been injured in the conflict.    A robust coordination between government bodies, international institutions and NGOs is needed to provide relief to the Palestinian people left in Gaza. However, with around 60% of Gaza's build...

Eight months into the war in Gaza, as two million people there struggle for survival and more than 36,600 have lost their lives, the fate of Israel and Hamas themselves also hangs in the balance. Israel has said it will not stop the war until it eradicates Hamas, but it is also struggling internally as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fights for power – and what his army can realistically achieve...

A series of deadly Israeli strikes launched on May 26 at a camp for displaced people in Rafah, targeting two senior Hamas members, caused a fire and killed 45 people. It came only days after global leaders urged Israel to adhere to a ruling by the International Court of Justice ordering it to halt its military operations in the city. This incident has prompted an international outcry and widesprea...

The sudden death of a president and his Foreign Minister could send any country into disarray and chaos. But that’s not exactly what happened in Iran after a helicopter crash killed President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on Sunday. Raisi, a 63-year-old ultraconservative cleric, had once been seen as a potential successor to current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei,...

Israel’s latest attacks on the city of Rafah have intensified criticism of its war on Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been forced to flee Rafah amid warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe if a full-scale assault goes ahead. So how has the world responded? Last week, the US suspended a shipment of bombs to Israel due to concerns about civilian casualties (although this week, the...