I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
Former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie
Johnson listens as former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks about
Chicago’s weekend of gun violence during a news conference at the
Chicago Police Department 6th District station August 6, 2018 in
Chicago, Illinois.
(Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)
The Democratic base is fed up with a system that gives inordinate power to the wealthy and to large corporations.
We’ve been hearing a lot of panicky
warnings lately after Democratic primary voters chose socialists and
other leftists instead of “moderates” in several major elections. The
alarm bells got louder this month after Michigan’s progressive Senate
candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens—who was, the New York Timesreported, “the moderate establishment-backed candidate.”
The soothing “moderate” label routinely
goes to candidates like Stevens who’ve supported continual arming of
Israel. She “benefited from about $62 million in advertising spending
from half a dozen outside groups,” the Times noted. “Over half of that
sum came from the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the country’s most influential pro-Israel group.”
The Democratic base is fed up with a
system that gives inordinate power to the wealthy and to large
corporations. In the real world, the so-called “moderates” are aligned
with a status quo that continues to inflict widespread suffering and
preventable death at home and abroad.
To hear timeworn party strategists like
James Carville and Paul Begala tell it, leftwing candidates are duping
the Democratic electorate. As this month began, Carville threatened to leave the party. Begala made headlines by declaring, “I don’t like the socialists. I can’t stand them.”
But last month, a CNN poll
found that “about a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults
identify as democratic socialists.” At a time when defeating the
fascistic Republican Party is imperative, any strategist’s prescription that would denigrate or seek to exclude them amounts to political malpractice.
Treating so many Democratic voters like
interlopers to be scolded might play well with corporate donors. But
it’s a feeble swim against the political current. Polling shows that the
younger Democratic voters are, the more favorable they’re apt to be
toward socialism.
“Younger adults are more likely to be in groups on the left, while
older adults tend to cluster in more conservative groups,” the Pew
Research Center noted.
Drawing on the results of its new public opinion survey, Global Strategy Group just reported that “socialist Democrats skew younger, with 57 percent of them being between the ages of 18 and 44.” Another poll, released
a month ago by Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research,
found that two-thirds of young people “said that their political views
have changed in some way in recent years”—and “youth whose views did
shift were almost twice as likely to become more liberal/progressive
instead of more conservative.”
As socialists and others on the left prevail in many high-profile races, the refrains of condemnation coming from some of the Democratic Party
establishment are potshots in a losing battle. By definition, young
voters are the future of the party. Its prospects for winning elections
are diminished to the extent that younger voters are made to feel
unwelcome, or even vilified.
To the ears of many young Democratic
voters, derision about how they cast their ballots is coming from
out-of-touch party elders who treat crucial problems as abstractions or
matters worthy only of lip service. Millions of Americans in early
adulthood are facing financial stress with bleak outlooks for jobs and
careers. College tuitions are often prohibitive, and college debt can be
debilitating. Rents and mortgages are high. Everyday expenses are worse
than a challenge. The climate crisis is real.
Such realities cast a shadow over the
future. The last thing those voters want is arrogant leadership that
refuses to grasp the urgency of this political moment.
Charcoal seller Elio Galvan, 44, shows his
hands as he waits for customers next to a sign advertising his product
on a road in Havana on February 6, 2026. Across Cuba, families are
scrambling to cope with relentless blackouts and shortages worsening
under economic pressure from US President Donald Trump.
(Photo by Adalberto Roque / AFP via Getty Images)
Life in Cuba is full of suffering not
because of socialism but because of a 67-year-long blockade by the
world’s largest superpower.
Recently, while listening to an NPRinterview
with Cuban-American musician Arturo Sandoval, I was reminded of the
late political scientist Michael Parenti’s classic text, “Inventing
Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media.”
In his 1986 book, Parenti described a
situation that is still relevant 40 years later—when the US fears that
another country’s non-capitalistic political model (and its attendant
advances in social justice and quality of life) could cause US citizens to question their own system, it regularly imposes an embargo and sanctions
against the country. Next, the news media reports on the suffering
caused by these policies while, at the same time, avoiding any mention
of the embargo and sanctions. Finally, when after years or decades of
suffering, the people of this blockaded country take out their anger on
the closest target and begin protesting against their government, the US
steps in. It places a puppet president in power and pours into the
country the money it had withheld throughout the embargo. Then, the
media reports on how well everyone is now doing without, once more,
acknowledging the oversized role the embargo played in the prior
devastation.
In the aforementioned NPR interview, host
Scott Simon perfectly perpetuated this model of media complicity by
announcing towards the interview’s conclusion, “Arturo Sandoval, I’ve
got to put you on the spot a little. You’ve been pretty quiet about
politics over the years, but obviously you fled Cuba.
When Fidel Castro died, you spoke out about your disdain for his
regime. It was ten years ago.” Then, with no historical or even recent
context, Simon concluded with, “Cuba seems to be almost worse than ever
now.”
With this final declaration in which he
erroneously implied a connection between Cuba’s current immiseration and
Fidel Castro’s rule, Simon led Sandoval into his response: “Sixty-seven
and a half years is way too long, man… The people in Cuba are desperate
and hopeless.”
Citizens who are not given the context of the news cannot be engaged participants in the democratic process.
Simon allowed his guest to say this
unchallenged as if these decades of desperation and hopelessness are the
result of Cuba’s 1959 revolution. To the contrary, in addition to
footing the bill for Sandoval’s musical education (he attended the free
Cuban National Art School, founded by Fidel Castro), the Cuban
Revolution redefined human rights as access for all to free education, free healthcare, low-cost daycare centers, and highly subsidized housing.
The desperation Sandoval referred to is the direct result of the 67-year-old embargo against Cuba imposed by the United States,
the longest embargo in the history of the world. Combined with its
multitude of supplementary sanctions (more than 200 of which were
enacted during Trump’s first term in office), these punitive measures
prohibit Cuba from purchasing products, including medicine, manufactured
abroad if they contain more than 10% of US-origin components. They
restrict US residents’ ability to travel to Cuba. They hinder Cubans
residing in the US from wiring money to their families, a common way for
immigrants from all parts of the world to supplement the income of
relatives back home.
The Cuban embargo has received worldwide
condemnation. For more than three decades now, the UN General Assembly
has annually presented its members with a resolution to denounce the
embargo. Year after year, its 193 member states cast a near-unanimous
vote affirming the resolution. The only two countries that consistently
vote against it—and in favor of the embargo— are, unsurprisingly, the US
and Israel.
Unfortunately, the UN resolution, while a significant show of solidarity, has no authority to end the embargo. As codified by US law, only the US Congress has this power.
In addition and sadly, the suffering
caused by the embargo is not a mere result of the blockade but the
explicit objective of it as stated in a declassified 1960 government document
posted on the National Security Archive’s website and abstracted as
follows: “This memo, written by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs Lestor Mallory, provides the original,
unvarnished, policy rationale for imposing trade
restrictions on Cuba. Fidel Castro’s revolution is quite popular in
Cuba, Mallory points out; since there is no effective opposition against
him, the only way to undercut Castro’s support is ‘through
disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and
hardship.’ Mallory advocates a set of punitive economic actions designed
to deny ‘money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real
wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of [the]
government.’”
Beyond the embargo and its sanctions, the
US designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT)
contributes to what Sandoval referred to as the Cuban people’s
hopelessness and desperation. The partisan political boomerang of the
SSOT was initiated by President Ronald Reagan
in 1982 for Cuba’s support of Latin American leftist groups. It was
removed by Obama in 2015, reinstated by Trump in 2021, symbolically
removed by Biden on January 14th, 2025, at the end of his presidency,
and again reinstated by Trump on January 20th, 2025, at the start of his
second term.
Along with other restrictions, the
sponsor-of-terrorism status forbids US international aid organizations,
including Food for Peace and the Peace Corps, from offering humanitarian
assistance to Cuba. It prohibits Cuba from receiving loans from the World Bank
and other international financial institutions. These are loans which
could be used for much-needed projects such as an overhaul of the
island’s aging electrical grid, which has caused multiple nationwide
blackouts over the past two years.
Furthermore, as described by the Washington Office on Latin America,
the SSOT “has a chilling effect on businesses, including banking or
telecommunications investments that are crucial to promoting the type of
transformation essential to expanding freedom on the island.”
Ironically, this freedom (ie: the opening of business and economic
opportunities) is precisely what the US purports to desire for the Cuban
people. And it is this lack of this freedom, which Sandoval said in the
somber closing statement of his NPR interview, that prevents him from
returning to Cuba and will leave him to “die dreaming” of a homecoming.
At this point in the interview, what Scott
Simon didn’t say becomes as, if not more, significant than what he did.
It is that, in Fidel Castro’s final two years of life, a sense of hope
and a feeling of, yes, freedom pervaded Cuba.
Hope came to Cubans with Obama’s 2014
détente, which, while not a revocation of the embargo [only able to be
repealed by Congress], still enabled the US Embassy in Cuba and the
Cuban Embassy in the US to reopen for the first time in 50 years.
Washington’s rapprochement permitted commercial and direct mail flights
between the two countries to be reinstated and for restrictions on
remittances to be loosened. This, in turn, allowed Cuban-Americans, like
immigrants from other countries, to now easily send money to their
families on the island.
Freedom came from an opening of the Cuban
economy, from the government’s expanded opportunities for private
businesses. Cubans responded enthusiastically, opening record numbers of
cafés and restaurants and music and art venues, among other enterprises
to which their new American friends, now able to travel freely to Cuba,
flocked in record numbers.
It was a boon for both sides—and evidence
that another way of engaging with Cuba was possible. Until, that is,
Trump was elected at the end of 2016 and, soon thereafter, began
systematically shutting everything down once more.
If not for the very real damage it
inflicts on the country, the SSOT designation could be considered
laughable, as, during all these decades as a supposed sponsor of
terrorism, Cuba has remained steadfast in its commitment to a peaceful
coexistence with its neighbors near and far. For the past quarter of a
century, Cuba’s Latin American Medical School, esteemed for both its
size (enrollment-wise, it is considered the largest medical school in
the world) and its focus on preventative healthcare, has offered a
full-ride, plus a monthly living stipend, for students from low-income
communities around the world, including the US.
Additionally, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Cuba offered aid workers to the US, although President Bush rebuffed this overture. In the early days of COVID-19,
Cuba sent medical brigades to help Italy contain its outbreak. And this
was in addition to the doctors Cuba regularly sent to countries in need
from Algeria to Honduras
to Sri Lanka. Until, that is, in 2025 the US began threatening to deny
visas to the leaders of countries accepting assistance from Cuban
doctors; and the targeted countries, fearing retribution, terminated
their contracts with Cuba.
This past March, as Jamaica’s Cuban
doctors headed home following one such termination, hundreds of
Jamaicans took to the streets for what they called a “Gratitude Walk.”
For three miles, they marched wearing t-shirts reading, “Thank you Cuba
for 50 years of medical service” and chanting, “We love Cuba” and “Bring
back the doctors.”
Walk participant Rupert Walters, President
of the Jamaica-Cuba Friendship Association’s St. Catherine’s chapter
and a beneficiary of Cuban care for his prostate cancer, called his
government’s decision to cave to US pressure “crazy.” Walters told the
Jamaica Observer that he wished the government had “allowed the Cubans
to support and give their services to the hundreds of thousands of
Jamaicans who can’t afford it,” and warned that, as a result of the
medical program termination, Jamaicans would die.
Rather than supporting terrorism, Cuba has
long been the target of terrorist attacks by the US government. There
was the CIA’s half-century of documented assassination attempts against
Fidel Castro, involving everything from poison pens to exploding cigars.
Less comical and more lethal were terrorist attacks led by Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile and CIA
operative. In 1976, 35 years before September 11th, Posada Carriles
masterminded the Western Hemisphere’s first act of political terrorism
against a civilian flight. His bombing of a Cubana de Aviación airplane
killed all 73 passengers, 24 of whom comprised the entirety of the
Juvenile Cuban National Fencing team. In the summer of 1997, Posada
Carrilles began another bombing campaign, this time targeting Havana
hotels, restaurants, and discotheques—and killing an Italian tourist.
Finally arrested in Panama in 2000 for attempting to assassinate Fidel
Castro at a conference he was attending there, Posada Carrilles later
fled to the US, where he was detained for illegal entry and then
pardoned by President Bush. In 2018, he died a free man in Miami.
Although Scott Simon didn’t say this in
his interview with Arturo Sandoval, the current “worse-than-ever”
situation he referenced is due to the US’s oil
blockade, initiated by an Executive Order from Trump in January. Under
this latest act of economic warfare, tankers trying to deliver petroleum
to the island are threatened with tariffs and, if they still attempt to do so, they are chased away by US Coast Guard vessels.
Like the embargo, like the sanctions, like
the SSOT status, the fuel blockade has caused widespread suffering for
the Cuban people. It impedes access to electricity and also to water,
which arrives at most houses in Cuba via an electric pump. It prevents
the preservation of not just food but also of medicines that need
refrigeration.
Many Cubans now sleep outside, on rooftops
or on the Malecón seawall, to escape the sweltering summer heat, made
all the more unbearable without the electricity to run their fans.
Because electricity (which has been prioritized for hospitals and
schools) is now available in most houses for just two hours per day,
Cubans must wake up whenever it arrives (even if it is at 3 AM) to do
all they couldn’t without it—wash clothes and dishes, cook and bathe.
And collect water for the next outage. So, sleep too, has become a
casualty of this US-provoked humanitarian crisis, referred to by a group
of US Representatives who visited the island in July as a “silent
Gaza.”
By engaging in de-contextualized reporting
rather than shedding light on the reasons why the current situation is
as it is, mainstream US media outlets like NPR do their listeners a
grave and dangerous disservice. For, as The Washington Post’s motto
warns us, albeit a little more ironically after Jeff Bezos’ purchase of
it, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Citizens who are not given the context of
the news cannot be engaged participants in the democratic process.
Without the full story as to why what is happening in our world is
happening, we are rendered powerless to change it. Without our consent,
we become cogs in the bulldozer of US interventionism and imperialism.
Life in Cuba is full of suffering not because of socialism
but because of a 67-year-long blockade by the world’s largest
superpower. In a government now absent of checks and balances, we need
to call out the offending media. We need to let them know that we’re
paying attention, that we hold them accountable for their lies of
omission— and that we demand better.
Human Rights Watch calls for sanctions
and the suspension of military aid to Israel, as dozens of Palestinian
communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure.
Share
Israeli
settlers put up Israeli flags on a Palestinian structure on the
outskirts of Beit Sahour, on August 14, 2026 [File: Mahmoud Illean/AP]
Dozens of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure due to escalating attacks by Israeli settlers, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
Increased settler attacks, along with the
rapid expansion of Israeli settlements illegal under international law,
are driving a wave of forced displacement of Palestinians, the US-based
rights group said in a report released on Thursday.
The report accuses Israeli authorities of arming, funding and granting impunity to settlers to carry out the attacks.
Israeli settler violence has been growing since the current government took office in December 2022.
But attacks spiked in the first two months
of the US and Israel’s war on Iran, with killings including those of
children, assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse,
arbitrary detention, arson, property demolition and theft among the
reported abuses, the report adds.
Maximum land and minimum Palestinians
“The Israeli government and the settlers
share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the
authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively
enabling it,” Sarah Sanbar, the acting Israel and Palestine researcher
at Human Rights Watch, said.
“Settlers shoot, attack, and expel
Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the
legal cover, and the budget to do it,” she added.
HRW investigated settler attacks in seven
Palestinian West Bank communities in April and May, including
Al-Mughayyir, Mikhmas and Taybeh, in Ramallah governorate; Jalud and
Qaryut, in Nablus governorate; and Khirbet Hamsa and Muarrajat East, in
the Jordan Valley.
The report found that, sometimes, armed
settlers acted alongside Israeli military units or with soldiers
standing by yet failing to intervene, during raids on Palestinian
residents and property, contributing to a pattern of forced
displacement.
Rising forced displacement
It said the UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) research found more Palestinians were
forcibly displaced by settler attacks, demolitions and evictions in the
first four months of this year than in the whole of 2025.
OCHA found that 107 communities,
comprising 5,900 Palestinians, had been completely or partially
displaced as a result of settler violence since January 2023. It also
found that the Israeli military expelled another 32,000 Palestinians
from their homes in the occupied West Bank since January 2025,
essentially emptying the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.
Human Rights Watch says the attacks and
lack of state protection have created a coercive environment that leaves
many Palestinians saying they have no choice but to leave their homes.
Targeted sanctions
The report recommended targeted sanctions
on those implicated in ongoing abuses, the suspension of weapons
transfers to Israel and a trade ban with illegal settlements, and urged
countries to consider suspending preferential trade agreements with
Israel.
“The impunity Israeli authorities accord
settlers stems directly from the free pass Israel’s allies and donors
have granted it,” Sanbar said.
“Israel and the governments that give it a blank check share responsibility and should be held to account,” she said.
Israel has created a fictitious think tank
as part of a digital influence campaign designed to feed pro-Israel
narratives into artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, Responsible Statecraft (RS) reported on 17 August.
US public relations firm Piro, Inc.
received $900,000 from the Israeli Government Advertising Agency to
create the Hanover Institute, which uses AI to write reports painting
Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and colonization of the West
Bank in a positive light.
Since 6 August, the Hanover Institute has
issued over 100 reports, which are deliberately crafted to influence AI
chatbots to use its content when drafting answers for users.
“At first glance, the Hanover Institute
for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to
Israel/Palestine … But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank,”
RS wrote.
Hanover issues think-tank-style reports on
questions such as “Does AIPAC Use Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is
Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”
However, the reports do not list any
authors and include a small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage that
notes the institute was created on behalf of the Israeli government.
The reports include footnotes and are
written in a neutral tone, making them attractive as content used by AI
chatbots such as Claude or Gemini, a practice known as “LLM poisoning.”
Piro’s website openly states that it
creates “content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” a method
it describes as “AI Story Optimization.”
Many of the reports have titles that mimic
neutral questions that chatbot users might ask about Israel and
Palestine, such as “What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in
1948?” or “What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”
The articles then use Israeli sources to present a pro-Israel perspective in answering the question.
An article entitled “Is the IDF the
World’s Most Moral Army?” cites a 2022 poll that found that 47 percent
of Israeli Jews believed that statement.
Another report tries to refute the
findings of a UNICEF report stating that 90 percent of water and other
infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed in Gaza.
Many reports link to articles claiming
that anti-Semitism is on the rise, a tactic meant to deflect from
Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
RS used GPTZero software to analyze 12
Hanover Institute articles and determine if the were written by a human
author or by AI. GPTZero flagged 11 of the articles as AI-written with
“high confidence.” It flagged the final article as AI-written with
“moderate confidence.”
Piro co-founder Daniel Rosenberg boasted on LinkedIn about his firm’s ability to influence chatbots:
“When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or
Perplexity about your category, an answer comes back in one confident
paragraph. Most brands have no idea how that paragraph gets built. So we
spent months reverse-engineering it … At Piro, we already knew how to
build stories that move people. The question was: how do you make sure
AI knows how to tell them?”
Public opinion in the US has grown
increasingly negative toward Israel, which relies on US military aid to
wage its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing campaign
in south Lebanon.
According
to a recent Pew Research Poll, 60 percent of people in the US have a
very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up nearly 20 points since
2022.
Israeli forces have killed at least 73,000
Palestinians since the genocide began in 2023, with some estimates
suggesting over 200,000 Palestinians have been killed.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes
opening statement during an event at the US Department of State on July
16, 2026, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“When you are shameless, contemptuous of
international law, and morally bankrupt, you boast of disgrace as though
it were an achievement,” said one critic.
In announcing the sanctions, Rubio described the ICC as “a corrupt and fatally politicized” institution that has supposedly “abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”
Rubio said the ICC “has repeatedly attempt to assert authority over… the United States and other countries that have not consented to its jurisdiction,” which he said “sets a dangerous precedent for all nations.”
In addition to sanctioning Akane, Rubio said the US would also be sanctioning ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Saye.
While Rubio did not mention what specific
actions the ICC has taken to warrant such sanctions, a Tuesday report in
The Guardian noted that Saye was charged with investigating war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza.
The Trump administration had previouslysanctioned then-ICC prosecutor Karim Khan—who obtained arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—and an additional eight ICC officials.
The social media account of Drop Site News accused
Rubio of attacking the court solely to protect Netanyahu from war
crimes prosecution, pointing out that “there is currently not a single
American citizen under indictment, investigation, or facing an arrest
warrant” from the ICC.
The sanctions earned the praise of the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which accused the ICC of conducting “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions targeting America and Israel.”
Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque said the ICC sanctions showed the US was acting like a “rogue government” and engaged in “deranged behavior.”
Michael Karanicolas, law professor at
Dalhousie University, didn’t just point fingers at the US over the
sanctions, but at US allies who have sat back as international
institutions have come under assault.
“I’m no longer surprised by the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy the ICC,” wrote Karanicolas. “What I keep waiting for is any response from Canada or the European governments who ostensibly still believe in international law to defend these institutions.”
War correspondent and international political analyst Elijah Magnier delivered a withering rebuke of Rubio’s announcement.
“When you are shameless, contemptuous of
international law, and morally bankrupt,” wrote Magnier, “you boast of
disgrace as though it were an achievement.”
It’s
been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late
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serve the public good, not corporate profits.
It was clear to us
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Many people said we wouldn’t last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong.
Together
with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an
independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and
corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To
inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
Building Common
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destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent
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Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
President Trump’s so-called “Board of
Peace” is considering altering its framework for a Hamas disarmament
deal due to pushback from Israel, The Times of Israel reported on Tuesday.
Under the initial plan announced by
President Trump, Hamas would begin “decommissioning” its weapons in
phases, which would correspond with Israeli withdrawals from certain
areas where demilitarization is confirmed. But Israel has rejected the
proposal and wants Hamas to hand over all of its weapons before any
Israeli pullback.
People
walk at a site destroyed during the Israeli offensive, in Beit Lahiya,
in the northern Gaza Strip, August 18, 2026. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
A source told the Times that the
Board of Peace is considering the changes, but the dispute over the
deal’s terms was not settled during a meeting on Monday between
President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, which ended with an agreement that Israel would continue strikes in Gaza.
The Board of Peace previously suggested
it was making changes to the disarmament plan after an earlier meeting
of its officials with Netanyahu on August 3. After those talks, the
board said that the IDF would withdraw from Gaza only after Hamas
disarmed, contradicting its previous statements that said the
disarmament and withdrawal would happen “in lockstep.”
The report acknowledged that making the
change to the disarmament framework would risk losing Hamas’s support,
as the Palestinian group agreed to the US proposal after months of
negotiations. Hamas also has no reason to trust that Israel would
withdraw after it disarmed, since Israel has blatantly violated the
October 2025 ceasefire deal with daily attacks.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has also said
that the IDF won’t withdraw from Gaza, even if Hamas disarms, and that
the ultimate goal was to establish Jewish settlements in the Palestinian
territory.
A meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a long-time family friend of the Israeli leader, ended with an agreement that Israel will continue so-called “targeted strikes” in Gaza, Haaretz reported on Monday.
The reported agreement to allow Israel to
continue attacks in Gaza comes despite Kushner holding a meeting a day
earlier with Hamas officials, who said they were committed to the
disarmament plan announced by President Trump and the so-called “Board
of Peace.”
Later in the day, Kushner told Fox News
that the US wouldn’t “restrict Israel’s right to defend itself” and
that one purpose of the meeting was to “clarify what that means.” He
also described the disarmament deal as a “win-win” for Israel because
either Hamas disarms, or Hamas doesn’t “follow through” and then Israel
would have “a lot more support from the US and others to go and finish
the job.”
Also on Monday, President Trump said that Israel should “stop striking Gaza” because Hamas agreed to “lay down their weapons,” comments that Hamas welcomed,
though the results of the Kushner-Netanyahu meeting suggest Trump isn’t
serious about putting pressure on Israel to halt all of its attacks.
Kushner and Netanyahu were joined by the
Board of Peace’s top Gaza envoy, Bulgarian politician Nikolay Mladenov,
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and US Ambassador to Israel
Mike Huckabee.
Kushner and Netanyahu speaking at the White House on September 29, 2025 (White House photo)
The Haaretz report said the
officials agreed to allow work to begin in Gaza on sanitation
infrastructure to prevent disease outbreaks and contamination of
groundwater and coastal waters, but broader reconstruction will still
not be allowed.
They also discussed a preliminary plan
that would involve Hamas handing over its weapons to a force led by
Jasper Jeffires, a US Army general who’s been designated as the
commander of the “International Stabilization Force,” which is supposed
to deploy to Gaza under President Trump’s plan.
But the Haaretz report said
Israeli officials expressed skepticism about the disarmament plan, and
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected the
overall proposal. An Israeli official told The Guardian that there had been no breakthrough in the meeting and that Israel would continue to carry out operations in Gaza.
Israel’s attacks in Gaza since the
so-called ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025 have killed at least
1,265 Palestinians and wounded 4,198, according to the latest numbers released by Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry said that over the previous 48 hours, Israeli attacks have killed at least two Palestinians and injured 15.
(Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson page Facebook)
