Israeli forces conduct overnight raids and arrests in the West Bank

According to local reports, Israeli forces conducted raids and arrests overnight in various Palestinian cities across the occupied West Bank, including Hebron, Jenin, and the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah.

📰 Israeli forces fired phosphorus shells and carried out air strikes and heavy artillery attacks across several areas of southern Lebanon overnight and early Saturday, Lebanese state media reported.

Heavy Israeli artillery fire targeted the town of Mansouri, the area around Bayt al-Sayyad and the outskirts of Majdal Zoun early on Saturday, Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Israeli forces also carried out extensive attacks overnight in Mansouri, Majdal Zoun and Bayt al-Sayyad, the agency said.

🔗 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-forces-reportedly-use-phosphorus-shells-indiscriminate-attacks-southern-lebanon

Israel threatens Gaza strikes over kites flown by Palestinian children

Israel has threatened to launch further strikes in Gaza over paper kites flown by Palestinian children.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the kites would be treated as drones and described them as an “act of war”, ordering Israeli forces to respond “forcefully”. Israeli officials said the measures could include targeting Hamas commanders they hold responsible for the launches.

Over the weekend, Israeli media reported that several kites, believed to have been launched from Gaza, had landed near Nahal Oz Kibbutz, an illegal Israeli settlement adjacent to Gaza.

Israeli military sources acknowledged that the kites were being flown by Palestinian children and said no suspicious materials had been found on them or that they posed any danger to the public.

The far right wants "to imitate the very thing that they hate" | Faisal Devji | UNAPOLOGETIC

"They want to imitate the very thing that they hate. It's a hatred born out of intimacy, in a sense, which is what most hatreds are."

Faisal Devji on why the far right imitates the very thing it claims to hate.

Full episode available on our channel
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

Mélenchon condemns Ben Gvir remarks on killing Palestinians in Gaza

Jean-Luc Mélenchon has condemned remarks by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir after he called for the killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaking at a rally in France, the France Unbowed (LFI) leader referred to comments he said Ben Gvir made calling for the killing of “30 to 40 Palestinians every night”.

Mélenchon accused France of failing to condemn what he described as genocide in Gaza, saying the government’s position had made the country “complicit in Israel’s crimes”.

He also said Israel’s actions in Gaza, as well as its military operations in Lebanon and Syria, were being encouraged by the failure of the international community to uphold international law.

Mélenchon is seeking to return to the French presidential race in 2027, with Gaza and France’s foreign policy among the issues he has made central to his campaign.

Sliman Mansour, one of the leading figures in contemporary Palestinian art, has died aged 79.

In a post to Mansour's Instagram account, his family announced his death, writing: “The final chapter has been written. With hearts heavy beyond words, we share that our beloved father has passed away.

“To the world, he leaves behind a life filled with beauty, memory, and a legacy that will continue to live through all those he touched. But to us, we lost a father, our source of love, strength and home,” they wrote.

Born in Birzeit, near Ramallah, in 1947, Mansour graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 1970, and became a prominent figure in Palestinian art for more than five decades.

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Syrian Druze chief says community ‘an integral part’ of Israel

Speaking in Syria’s Sweida on Monday, Druze spiritual leader Hikmat al-Hijri said his community is “an integral part of Israel”, which he says is a “state of knowledge and civilisation”. 

Back in July, al-Hijri had suggested that Syria’s Sweida province be integrated into Israel while speaking at an event marking the first anniversary of violent sectarian unrest in the southern province. 

Since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, there have been outbursts of violence between different sects and communities in the country, including in Sweida and the coastal Alawite heartland of Latakia.

Analyst says US lacks leverage to force global isolation of Iran

When US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out “Operation Economic Outcast”, he told the world, "You are either with us or against us.”
 
Every country has to cut ties with Iran, or the US says it will sanction them.
 
So is Trump’s D-Day an attack of historic proportions? Or an administration out of ideas?
 
MEE’s Mathilda Mallinson speaks to Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

Ben Gvir celebrates Israeli raid on Unrwa office in occupied West Bank

"On my shift there is no Unrwa, no management, they will not be here."

Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, posted a video of himself sitting at what he said was the director’s desk of Unrwa in Qalandiya Refugee Camp, celebrating the raid on the UN agency. 

On Tuesday, Israeli forces stormed Unrwa vocational centres in Qalandiya and Kufr Aqab that serve about 16,000 Palestinian refugees across the occupied West Bank.

Katz says Israel to remain in Syria-Lebanon border area

“When you wake up in the morning in your palace in Damascus, look up at Mount Hermon and see the Israeli military.”

Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that Israeli forces will continue occupying the Jabal al-Sheikh area (Mount Hermon) along the Syria-Lebanon border for “as long as there are threats” to “ensure our security”.

During a visit to the area, Katz said that the forces “look down on Damascus, 35 kilometres away; look down on the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and Hezbollah’s stronghold; and, of course, watch over and protect the communities of the Golan Heights and the Galilee."

Israeli forces raid Unrwa centres serving 16,000 Palestinian refugees

Israeli forces have stormed Unrwa vocational centres in Qalandiya and Kufr Aqab that serve about 16,000 Palestinian refugees across the occupied West Bank.
The raids follow Israel’s assault on Unrwa’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem several months ago, when forces expelled staff and demolished sections of the building.
Israel could intensify its attacks on the UN agency before October’s elections as far-right ministers press to dismantle Unrwa and other organisations serving Palestinians.

Leader of Syria's Kurdish-led SDF announces dissolution as part of integration with Damascus

The leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, announced on Tuesday the dissolution of the armed militant group under a deal with the government. 

“Following the agreement with President al-Sharaa and the completion of the integration of our forces into units of the Syrian army, we announce today the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces,” said Abdi, speaking after a meeting with President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus. 

The government and the group, which helped defeat the Islamic State with US backing and held parts of northern and eastern Syria, agreed in January to a phased integration of Kurdish fighters into the state.

Netanyahu vows to establish more settlements in the occupied West Bank

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue establishing settlements in the occupied West Bank despite mounting international pressure, while promising a major wave of Israeli immigration to the occupied Palestinian territory.

#BREAKING: The former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, who led the genocide at Srebrenica and the years-long siege of Sarajevo, has died aged 84.

Serbia’s public broadcaster RTS announced his death, while his lawyer separately confirmed it to Reuters.

Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces during their campaign to carve an ethnically homogeneous Serb territory from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.

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'Camel of Hardships' artist Sliman Mansour laid to rest in West Bank

Palestinian visual artist Sliman Mansour was laid to rest in east Jerusalem on Thursday. Mourners gathered to pay tribute to the 79-year-old painter and sculptor, whose 1973 work Camel of Hardships, depicting an elderly porter carrying Jerusalem on his back, became a defining symbol of Palestinian identity.

Fellow artists remembered him as a towering influence who devoted his life to preserving Palestinian heritage through his art. Mohammed Saleh Khalil said Mansour's passing is "a great loss for Palestinian culture," adding that "this man devoted his entire life to preserving Palestinian identity".

‘They're so disgusting': Former US diplomat responds to Biden officials on Gaza

‘They’re so disgusting.’ 
Former US State Department official Hala Rharrit responds to the Biden officials now claiming they should have done more on Gaza. 

Rharrit resigned from the Biden administration in 2024 in protest over the Gaza genocide. 
She recently sat down with Mohamed Hashem on Real Talk.

Watch the episode early by joining Middle East Eye's YouTube membership: https://youtu.be/UEJdz49l2WE

Displaced children in Gaza banned from flying kites amid threats of Israeli strikes

Kites flown by Palestinian children in Gaza are now being cited by the Israeli military as justification for potential further strikes and displacement across the Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Sunday that Hamas had been given three days to halt the kite launches, threatening a broad air assault and the evacuation of areas from which balloons, drones and paper kites are launched.

Israeli military sources reportedly acknowledged that the kites were being flown by Palestinian children, that no suspicious materials had been found on them and that they posed no danger to the public.
 
Despite this, an official on US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” told AFP on Tuesday that “all militant activity in Gaza must stop, including the flying of kites”.

Israel's investigtion into Hind Rajab's murder 'not a step forward'

This week Israel has announced it opened a criminal investigation into the killing of Hind Rajab, marking the first time it has admitted its soldiers fired on the car carrying the 6-year-old girl and her family.
Hind's mother has rejected Israel’s probe and demanded an independent, international inquiry.

Jake Romm, the US representative and a legal advisor for the Hind Rajab Foundation, called the investigation "not a step forward" as it is already known who the killers are, and he describes the process as "turning a heinous murder into a mere administrative error".

Inside Taybeh: Families are leaving the last fully Christian town in the West Bank

Taybeh is the last town in the occupied West Bank where every resident is Christian. It's also under attack.

Settlers have set fire to a 1,500-year-old church, taken over farmland, and now surround the town from nearly every side. On 9 August, Israel declared it a closed military zone, cutting off the tourism families rely on.

More than 15 families have left Taybeh in just the last few months. Across the West Bank, over 200 Christian families have left since the Gaza war began. Dr Mitri Raheb, founder of Bethlehem's Dar al-Kalima University, has warned Christians could disappear from Palestine entirely by 2050.

We followed Nora, who left Taybeh years ago but couldn't go back this year, to understand what's pushing this ancient community to disappear.

The Israeli government has instructed its military to expel Palestinians from areas of the Gaza Strip where children are flying kites and releasing balloons, Israel’s Channel 13 reported on Thursday.

According to the report, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz told army chief Eyal Zamir and other senior military officials that “the ultimatum we issued following the launching of balloons and kites from the Gaza Strip towards Negev communities [in southern Israel] has expired”.

“Every launching of balloons and kites from Gaza towards southern communities will be met with a severe response,” Katz said during a meeting with the military’s top command.

From Israel’s perspective, Katz reportedly said, “every launch is an act of terrorism”, referring to kites and balloons that the Israeli army itself deemed a week ago to pose no danger to Israeli civilians.

🔗 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-orders-gaza-expulsions-over-kites-flown-children