Oslo Accords at 33: Anatomy of an ongoing Palestinian disaster

MEM, September 3, 2026 at 8:00 am

 

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (C) signs the historic Israel-PLO Oslo Accords on Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories on September 13, 1993 in a ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C. [J. DAVID AKE/AFP via Getty Images]

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According to the popular narrative surrounding the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), some sort of fully functioning, internationally recognized Palestinian state should have been established over two decades ago. The Declaration of Principles signed in 1993 explicitly mandated a transitional “interim period” not to exceed five years, setting May 1999 as the strict deadline for a permanent-status agreement covering Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders. Yet a meticulous examination of the text reveals a structural paradox at the very heart of Oslo: while the diplomatic marketing and global expectations framed the process as a march toward eventual Palestinian statehood, the word “state” does not appear once in the agreements—substituting sovereign independence with vague language about “interim self-government.” 33 years later we ended up with much bloodier, brutal and wider occupation than it was when Oslo was signed. 

Instead of a bridge to incremental steps toward full independence, Oslo established a permanent interim administration, the Palestinian Authority (PA), whose powers were systematically eroded by Israel until making it an empty shell. Now The PA has evolved into a third hand of the Israeli occupation it was supposed to gradually end.

It functions as a security subcontractor tasked with suppressing local Palestinian resistance to protect the very forces colonising its land. Rather than fostering democratic statehood or focusing on ending the occupation—at least within its own administered areas—the PA’s administrative structure, with the direct or indirect help of the occupation, mutated into an authoritarian regime marked by deep-seated corruption, arbitrary detentions, and violent suppression of civilian dissent, typified by the fatal  beating of activist Nizar Banat in June 2021. Clinging desperately to power in Ramallah, the PA leadership remains headed by Mahmoud Abbas—the very  architect who signed the Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993—ensuring that the same hands that sealed the initial structural trap continue to enforce its endless, destructive survival. 

READ: Palestinian commission records 2,030 Israeli army and settler attacks in West Bank in August

Turning to the Gaza Strip, the contrast between Oslo’s promises and today’s grim reality is staggering. It is worth recalling that Gaza, alongside Jericho, was the very first territory transferred to the emerging PA under the 1994 Cairo Agreement—another Oslo based deal. Yet today, the situation in the Gaza Strip is more tragic than words can convey. After nearly two decades of a crippling Israeli blockade that transformed the enclave into an open-air prison, the occupying forces have escalated their campaign into unrestrained brutality.

Israeli officials have openly declared policies of total siege and starvation, forced mass displacement, and engaged in a military campaign that the highest international courts are investigating as genocide.

All of this is happening in the exact same Gaza that Oslo envisioned as Palestine’s gateway to the world—a blueprint not only for independence but for economic development and state-building. Instead, those promises have evaporated. Today, the Oslo Accords are nothing more than a bitter memory for Palestinians, whether they are enduring the occupied West Bank, surviving a devastated Gaza, or living the harsh realities of the global Diaspora.

WATCH: Is Evidence of Genocide in Gaza Being Erased? | Palestine This Week

Thirty-three years on, international lip service to a “two-state solution” functions not as a pathway to peace, but as a convenient diplomatic shield. By maintaining the fiction that a sovereign Palestinian state remains just around the corner, global powers have effectively bought time for Israel to finalize its violent territorial absorption of the West Bank and reduce Gaza to rubble. Even as the genocidal war in Gaza generated unprecedented pro Palestinian political momentum—prompting European nations like Norway, Ireland, Spain, UK and Slovenia to formally recognise Palestinian statehood—such recognition remains nearly meaningless without sovereign control on the ground.

Declarative statehood without borders, airspace control, or protection from Israeli military aggression only reinforces the Oslo apparatus, where process eclipsed substance and endless negotiations served to cover the physical erasure of Palestinian geography.

What Oslo Accords envisioned as an incremental peace process meant to culminate in Palestinian independence has instead been crushed under Israeli apartheid policies and reduced to empty rhetoric. At no point in the history of the conflict has the denial of Palestinian statehood been more explicit, driven by daily, aggressive raids by illegal settlers against Palestinian villages. State-backed settler violence is actively encouraged by far-right cabinet ministers—themselves illegal settlers—such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who openly call for the total annexation of the West Bank. This official Israeli backing directly fuels the surge of armed settler invasions of Palestinian homes, illustrated starkly by the village of Qusra near Nablus. There, violent settler attacks unfold under the direct protection of Israeli occupation forces, who either stand passively by or actively assist settlers in trapping and forcing Palestinian families from their land. Far from restraining this theft the Israeli government, last July, allocated  $434 million this year alone to build and expand illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematically severing any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. 

To speak of Oslo today as a “failed peace process” is to misunderstand its function: it succeeded entirely in eradicating international accountability while establishing a permanent infrastructure of Israeli control, shifting the argument away from an illegal occupation that must end and toward a mere dispute over land. The major powers, particularly through the UN Security Council, must directly reassess and formally rewrite the Oslo framework, which can no longer serve as the basis for any legitimate conflict settlement. Continuing to frame the conflict through a traditional “balance of power” dynamic is a pure distraction—it ignores Israel’s long-term strategic objective of permanently burying the Palestinian people’s rights to freedom and independence. Moving forward requires discarding the hollow machinery of 1993 and confronting the reality on the ground: a single, entrenched apartheid occupation that cannot be reformed through “interim” illusions, but must be dismantled through direct international accountability.

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The West Bank’s Ultra-Apartheid (and the Collusive International Silence)

Gaza showed the genocidal face of Israel’s expulsive strategy. In the West Bank, the same objective is realized with incremental escalation. The ultimate goal is the same – the final expulsion of the Palestinians.

by Dan Steinbock | Sep 3, 2026

Today, the West Bank is a nightmare of vicious settlement expansion, land seizure, economic strangulation, settler violence and forced displacement.

With the collusion of the Israeli military and police, the Israeli-occupied territories are effectively ruled by the Messianic far-right settlers who see their mob-like racist pogroms of Palestinians as a divine step to Final Redemption.

The ongoing year has accelerated the process from settlement expansion toward territorial consolidation and displacement. The scale is stark.

Displacement becomes systematic

By August 10, the UN reported 76 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, including 18 children; about 3,800 Palestinians had been displaced during 2026 through settler violence, demolitions and evictions, nearly half children.

More than 1,430 settler incidents had been recorded, affecting roughly 260 Palestinian communities.

The crucial point is not simply Jewish settler violence but its geographical and economic function. Settler attacks increasingly target homes, agricultural land, livestock, water and electricity infrastructure.

In a recent podcast, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right extremist who believes in Jewish racial supremacy, urged Israelis to kill “30 to 40” Palestinians in Gaza every night. He also supports aggressive, lethal actions against Palestinians in the West Bank, applying a similarly hardline approach through legislative, judicial, and security policies.

These statements no longer reflect a “lunatic fringe,” as often portrayed by the media in the West. They reflect the brutal repression of Palestinians that’s now the new normal. OCHA reports that displacement caused by demolitions, settler violence and access restrictions has averaged 17 Palestinians a day in 2026; twice the average of the preceding three years.

Since 2023, 127 communities have experienced full or partial displacement; 47 have been completely emptied.

The economic damage compounds the demographic pressure. UNCTAD estimates that West Bank GDP contracted 17% in 2024, while cumulative unrealized Palestinian GDP from occupation-related restrictions between 2000–24 reached $170.8 billion – about 17 times 2024 West Bank GDP.

The settlement economy in Area C and East Jerusalem, by contrast, generated an estimated $53 billion in 2024.

Great conjuncture

Right before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, I warned about an impending war, as the status quo was approaching a boiling point in Gaza. After all, it was the 50-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.

In The Fall of Israel (2024), I used the term great conjuncture to refer to structural forces that account for a series of cumulative disasters in the Middle East, starting with the waves of Palestinian expulsions since the 1940s.

Second, it refers to the aggressive expansion of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. The rise of the Messianic far-right has fostered settler militarization accelerating anti-Arab pogroms in the West Bank, which is being annexed into Israel.

Third, the great conjuncture is fueled by a half century of failed American diplomacy in the Middle East. The Fall of Israel showed how the US-Israeli ties moved from hedging and choosing sides to partnership and eventually a symbiosis. These are not ties that bind, but ties that blind. They account for 50 years of military destabilization in the region and U.S. complicity to genocidal atrocities, even ecocide – both in Gaza and Lebanon.

Finally, instead of fostering peace in the region, America’s massive military aid to Israel has amplified Israel’s parallel securitization degrading its economy, politics and military. Washington has provided at least $22 billion in direct military aid to Israel, alongside up to $12 billion spent on related U.S. military operations in the region, since October 7, 2023. From Gaza and beyond, Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinians and Palestinian children.

These four structural forces feed on each other forming a vicious cycle, thereby intensifying and broadening regional escalation. When I extended the argument into a book, these views were still seen largely as marginal. Today, things have dramatically changed. Even the bipartisan consensus over the U.S.-Israel ties has collapsed.

But this erosion came only after Gaza has been obliterated and ethnic cleansing escalates in the West Bank with the tacit blessing of the international community.

Ethnic cleansing from Gaza to the West Bank

In the Israeli occupied territories, ethnic expulsion has not been an accidental by-product but a recurring political mechanism. From Labor’s post-1967 Allon Plan through the Likud era and the Messianic far right, its logic has been cumulative as it has sought to

• acquire territory;
• fragment Palestinian space;
• make Palestinian economic and social life increasingly unviable;
• if massacres don’t suffice, use genocidal atrocities;
• expand Jewish civilian presence;
• and eventually convert temporary occupation into permanent sovereignty.

The objective is not simply “security,” nor even the exploitation of Palestinian labor, but the Judaization of territory and prevention of a sovereign Palestine.

The Palestinian expulsions are intimately linked to both ideology and political economy. Land, subsidized settlements, real estate and state resources create constituencies that benefit materially from Palestinian dispossession.

Gaza became the extreme version: bombardment, destruction of housing and infrastructure, displacement and proposals for population “transfer” created conditions in which Palestinians were physically removed and territory becomes available for redevelopment or settlement.

In the West Bank, the mechanism used to be more incremental: settlement outposts, land seizures, demolition orders, restrictions on building and movement, settler violence and pressure on herding communities.

In the absence of international penalties, sanctions and blockades, settlers have been dramatically emboldened. They avoid one spectacular expulsion but seek to make the remaining Palestinian communities progressively untenable.

Their goal is the “Judaization” of Palestine – death by a thousands cuts.

Apartheid and “ultra-apartheid”

Not only has Israel evolved into an apartheid state. It is practicing ultra-apartheid.

Classical South African apartheid was brutally exploitative but effectively accommodationist. White minority rule sought to preserve racial hierarchy, segregate the black majority, deny political rights and extract cheap labor. The system needed the black population to remain economically useful. As a result, black South Africans’ income relative to whites actually rose during apartheid, from 8.6% to 13.5% between 1948 and 1994.

Israel’s system goes “beyond” apartheid. Palestinians are subjected to differentiated legal systems, military rule, checkpoints, territorial fragmentation, restricted mobility and unequal access to land and resources, while Jewish settlers in the occupied territory fall under Israeli civilian law.

The occupied territories consequently resemble South African Bantustans: fragmented enclaves, walls, restricted mobility and economic dependence.

But the decisive difference is the end-state. Israeli apartheid is not designed indefinitely to contain and exploit a Palestinian population. It is an interim instrument for displacement and dispossession. Segregation reduces Palestinian territorial, economic and political viability while expanding Jewish settlement.

That distinction also explains why the West Bank is strategically more important than it may appear. Fragmentation is not merely a condition; it is the mechanism by which territorial annexation becomes politically and physically irreversible. Hence the Israeli “ultra-apartheid”: that is, apartheid plus an expulsive logic.

What makes Israeli ultra-apartheid different is its ultimate purpose: ethnic expulsions, even genocidal atrocities. It sees Palestinian labor as a redundant surplus that will eventually have to be expunged or decimated.

And it is ultra-apartheid – first in Gaza and now in the West Bank – that the international community is witnessing yet trying to ignore.

Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” for Gaza

Meanwhile, the political machinery has moved toward annexation. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s control over the Civil Administration, land declarations and settlement approvals institutionalize de facto annexation.

As documented by The Fall of Israel two years ago, Smotrich is executing a decade-old plan. In 2017, when he was still a young Knesset member, he presented his “Decisive Plan” in closed religious Zionist circles. It represented an endgame of sorts for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The plan portrayed the conflict as devoid of any reconciliation. It rejected partition. It shunned any idea of a Palestinian state, or even Palestinian presence. Smotrich envisioned a singular state from the sea to the river, for one nation only: the Jewish people. True to his beliefs, he built on biblical allegories, which to him were no allegories at all:

When Joshua entered the land, he sent three letters to its inhabitants: Those who want to accept [our rule] will accept; those who want to leave, will leave; those who want to fight, will fight…

When they have no hope and no outlook, they will leave, just as they left in 1948.

Since October 7, Smotrich has championed his not-so-voluntary population transfer. The logic is simple: Eliminate the adversary, resolve the dilemma.

The approaching October 2026 Israeli election sharpens the incentive. The Knesset has dissolved and campaigning is underway. Today, four in ten Jewish Israelis favor full West Bank annexation and 55% want all settlements retained under Israeli sovereignty. That’s Netanyahu’s legacy.

As Israel approaches its October 2026 election, the question is no longer whether the occupation is becoming permanent, but whether the West Bank is being progressively emptied of Palestinians to make annexation irreversible.

The electoral center of gravity is not moving toward Palestinian statehood. It is moving further away from any reconciliation – with longstanding U.S. support.

Three West Bank scenarios

In the current status quo, there are three plausible future trajectories.

Accelerated annexation and “silent transfer” (most likely).
The present trajectory continues settlements expand, outposts become normalized, Area C is progressively absorbed into Israel, Palestinian construction remains restricted, and settler violence – mostly tolerated and inadequately restrained by the state – pushes vulnerable Bedouin and farming communities out.

There need be no formal annexation declaration. Facts on the ground accomplish the same result.

The UN’s 2026 reports verify the mechanism operating. Violence, demolition, restricted access, economic strangulation and displacement reinforce one another. The October election could strengthen this trajectory if Netanyahu requires the far right to construct another governing coalition.

Scenario II – Managed containment, not peace. A centrist or more pragmatic coalition emerges after the election and faces heavy U.S., European and Arab pressure. It slows settlement expansion, restrains the most provocative settler actions and restores some Palestinian economic access – but avoids dismantling the settlement architecture or recognizing full Palestinian sovereignty.

This would resemble a renovated Allon-plan/Bantustan model: Palestinian enclaves with limited autonomy surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory.

This could stabilize the system but only temporarily without resolving its underlying contradiction. But it would also set the stage for annexation by a subsequent conservative cabinet.

Scenario III – Rupture and international reversal. A major escalation – mass displacement, annexation, renewed Palestinian uprising, regional war, or a severe Israeli political crisis – could finally make the status quo untenable.

International recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, sanctions against settlement activity, economic pressure and an externally imposed political framework could halt territorial consolidation.

This is the least likely short-term scenario, but potentially the only route to reversing the trajectory.

The conflict can no longer be solved by Israeli-Palestinian bargaining alone. The asymmetry of power has made meaningful external intervention indispensable.

Bottom line: Gaza shows what happens when the expulsive logic is pursued through overwhelming military force. The West Bank is demonstrating a presumably more subdued version: settlement, fragmentation, coercion, economic pressure and incremental displacement.

The decisive question after the October election is therefore less whether Israel will “annex” the West Bank formally than how much of it can be absorbed – and how many Palestinians can be induced or forced to leave or decimated in new genocidal atrocities – before the process becomes irreversible. 

The original commentary was published by Informed Comment (US) on Aug 30, 2026

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Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized visionary of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net 

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Israel Is Cementing its Control Over The West Bank And East Jerusalem While The World Is Distracted

 September 1, 2026

Martin Kear, University of Sydney

 

With the world’s attention focused on the ongoing US-Iran conflict and the delicate negotiations over the fate of Gaza, it’s easy to overlook what’s happening in the other occupied Palestinian territories.

In recent days, the Israeli government has given final approval to a plan to build a new settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E1, east of Jerusalem. The government has opened up tenders for the construction of some 1,200 housing units.

Settlements in E1 would effectively split the West Bank into two parts, cutting off the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the north from Bethlehem in the south. It would also separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Palestinians consider East Jerusalem an indispensable part of any future Palestinian state.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, indicated this was precisely the point. He said every new settlement in the West Bank puts “another nail in the coffin” of a Palestinian state.

Israel has held off on approving settlements in E1 for decades due to international pressure, particularly from previous US administrations that have tried to maintain the possibility of a future Palestinian state, however remote.

A joint statement by nearly two dozen Western nations condemned the move to develop E1 last week and called “for its immediate reversal in the strongest terms”.

However, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political fortunes waning in the lead-up to elections in October, it appears he is willing to risk international opposition to shore up votes at home, with the belief the Trump administration will shield Israel diplomatically.

The move comes amid rising violence from Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has led to at least 80 deaths this year.https://flo.uri.sh/story/3801560/embed

Earlier this month, settlers laid siege to the homes of Palestinian families in the village of Qusra. They cut off water and electricity supplies, damaged orchards and prevented the families from leaving their homes.

The international reaction was swift. Even the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a longtime supporter of Israeli settlements, denounced what he called the “inexcusable and repugnant” actions of the settlers in Qusra.

The Israeli police, however, didn’t make any arrests. And the Israeli soldiers sent to the area threw clothing belonging to a families out of the window of their homes.

Expanded settlements in West Bank

The situation in Qusra is emblematic of a rapidly deteriorating security situation for Palestinians across the West Bank since the October 2023 attacks by Hamas and Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The United Nations estimates thousands of Palestinian homes have been demolished, seized or sealed by Israeli soldiers or settlers. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced.

In June, Amnesty International published a report arguing settler attacks are not being conducted by rogue extremists, but are instead an integral part of an organised state policy. The report concludes the Israeli government is actively engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Since October 2023, Israel has also expropriated more Palestinian land and expanded the construction of settlements that are considered illegal by many states under international law.

In 2024, Peace Now, an Israeli activist group that tracks settlement expansion, revealed that Israel had declared 23 square kilometres of the West Bank as state land. This was the largest transfer of land to Israeli control in decades. Such declarations mean Palestinians cannot own the land; instead, the government can lease it to Israelis.

And earlier this year, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved 34 new settlements in the West Bank. This brings the total number of settlements established since Netanyahu’s right-wing government came to power in 2022 to more than 100.

Steady incursions at East Jerusalem holy site

In addition to the proposed building of settlements in the E1 area, Israel is also seeking to assert its sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Western Wall. The site in the Old City of Jerusalem is sacred for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967. In their 1994 peace agreement, Israel agreed that Jordan would retain custodianship of the site.

Under the agreement, only Muslims have the right to pray in the compound that contains the al-Aqsa Mosque. Jews are permitted to pray at the Western Wall.

The issue of access to the compound is so sensitive that Palestinians consider any entry by Israelis to be extremely provocative. It’s seen as an assertion of Israeli sovereignty over the third-holiest site in Islam and an essential part of any future Palestinian state. https://www.youtube.com/embed/aWWt_tH7lZs?wmode=transparent&start=0 Right-wing Israeli rabbi accused of provocation at Jerusalem holy site.

For example, when then-Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon visited the compound in 2000 accompanied by hundreds of police, it was considered one of the sparks of the Second Intifada (2000–05).

In 2021, when Israeli security forces prevented thousands of Palestinians from praying at the compound during Ramadan, it triggered a brief, deadly conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

And last month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, accompanied by armed police and more than 4,000 supporters, entered the Temple Mount site to pray and wave Israeli flags. Ben-Gvir said “everywhere, people understand that the State of Israel is the sovereign authority” at the site.

Jordan has been very concerned by these persistent Israeli incursions. On August 5, it convened an emergency meeting of Arab and Muslim foreign ministers to discuss what it called the “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the site.

Jordan’s foreign minister also warned that any attempt by Israel to alter the status quo at the site “could trigger a religious conflict that could reverberate beyond Palestine and Jordan into the whole Muslim world”.

What all of this means

This pattern of events shows the Israeli government is trying to change the “facts on the ground” in the the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It is doing this by expelling Palestinians from what little territory they still inhabit and asserting sovereignty over Palestinian lands and religious sites. This would make any future Palestinian state impossible.

If these actions continue, they will be the death knell for any chance at peace between Israel and the broader Muslim world.

Martin Kear, Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ron Paul: The Definition of Insanity and Iran War

by Ron Paul | Sep 2, 2026

Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Whether he actually said it or not, the definition stands.

This definition also very well describes the Trump Administration’s war with Iran. According to media reports, President Trump was cajoled by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that this would be an “easy war,” like Venezuela. Just assassinate the Iranian leadership, he promised, and the regime change would bring in a pro-America regime in Iran.

The CIA disagreed with the assessment, but Trump went with Netanyahu and the rest is history.

The “decapitation strikes” did not change leadership in Iran. As was the case in the US after the 9/11 attacks, the people rallied around the flag. The new leadership was less interested in a compromise than their murdered predecessors.

So the bombing began. Weeks of bombing. But that didn’t work – it only depleted our already-low weapons supplies.

Then “diplomacy” was substituted for bombs and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by both sides. The US side immediately broke the agreement by attempting to open a new ship corridor by force and the bombs started flying again.

For the past month, the bombs stopped only to start up last weekend, with a US strike on an Iranian island. This was followed again by multiple Iranian strikes on US bases in the region.

Bombs then diplomacy, bombs then diplomacy. President Trump has told us dozens of times that us the war is over, and we have won, but no one believes it any longer. He claims that the US completely controls the Strait of Hormuz while the shipping corridors are empty.

The US military has been stretched to the breaking point. US sailors and Marines endured a record-breaking deployment with terrible conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships at sea. But this past weekend we saw the most telling sign of a military pushing back against orders that make no sense. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned his position, reportedly due to disagreements with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the toll the war is taking on military readiness. Driscoll follows several high-ranking US Army officials who have resigned. It seems clear that US Military leadership does not believe in the mission.

Maybe President Trump should listen to them instead of his “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth?

Doing the same thing and expecting different results may be the definition of insanity, but another definition might be starting a war halfway across the globe against a country that has neither attacked nor threatened you. Insanity might be starting a war based on the self-serving lies of a foreign leader who just happens to benefit from the fighting. Insanity might be further depleting the US arsenal of missiles and other weapons after years of proxy war against Russia through Ukraine. Insanity might be burdening future generations with a national debt of $40 trillion and climbing.

It is time for some very difficult decisions to be made. This war will not be won with more bombing, and the Iranians no longer trust us as negotiating partners after broken agreements and false claims. The only course of action is to pack up and come home. Let the people of the region solve their own problems.

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Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president

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Netanyahu Boasts of Efforts To Convince US To Launch War Against Iran

The Israeli leader credited his frequent appearances on US television networks and his 'intimate knowledge' of US leaders

 

by Dave DeCamp | August 31, 2026 at 5:49 pm ET | Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted of his efforts to convince the US to launch a war against Iran, crediting his frequent appearances on US television networks and his “intimate knowledge” of US leaders.

Netanyahu made the comments Sunday night on Israel’s Channel 14, and a clip of his appearance was posted on X by the account Clash Report, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later shared.

The Israeli leader said that he had been against Iran for “nearly 40 years” and that it took him a long time to get the Israeli security establishment and the US on board.

“It took a long time to bring the US in,” he said, according to Channel 14. “I was able to do this because I had close to a thousand hours on American television, influence in the United States, and intimate knowledge of all its leaders – both those who support us and those who do not.”

The New York Times reported in April that 17 days before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, Netanyahu presented President Trump with an intelligence briefing at the White House and made a “hard sell” for the war. The report said that Netanyahu had been “pressing for months” for the US to agree to a major attack on the Islamic Republic.

Sources told the Times that during the briefing, Netanyahu made a series of predictions about the potential war that proved to be wrong, including the idea that Iran was ripe for regime change, that its ballistic missile program could be destroyed within weeks, that it would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran’s missile strikes on US interests in regional countries would be minimal.

Responding to Netanyahu’s comments about his influence on the US, Aragchi said that the Israeli leader was openly bragging about how he “suckered” the US into the war.

“In Hebrew, Netanyahu openly crows that he suckered the US Administration into a war on Iran on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu explicitly laughs about how he ‘influenced’ America through 1,000 hours of airtime on US networks,” the Iranian diplomat wrote on X. “In English, he praises POTUS’ leadership. Serpent.”

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Israel’s Ben-Gvir lauds harsh conditions for Palestinian female prisoners

Palestinian groups condemn prison footage as humiliation and intimidation.

 

 

Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir visits the site of a rocket attack on March 1, 2026 in Tel Aviv, Israe[Erik Marmor/Getty Images]

By Al Jazeera Staff and Anadolu

Published On 30 Aug 202630 Aug 2026

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has posted footage from a prison holding Palestinian women on social media, boasting that he is responsible for the harsh conditions imposed on them.

The video, posted on Ben-Gvir’s X account on Sunday, shows him entering a section holding female prisoners and confronting them about their complaints regarding detention conditions.

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One prisoner tells him: “This is our third day without showering. We are not receiving medical treatment, and our clothes are not clean.”

Ben-Gvir responds: “The good conditions in the prisons are over. This is the current situation, and I am directly responsible for everything. I am pleased with these conditions.”

In a post accompanying the video, the far-right minister wrote that the “whining” of prisoners over their conditions would not influence him, arguing that Israeli captives held in Gaza had not enjoyed adequate conditions.

“I’ll continue to lead a policy of the bare minimum of the minimum,” he said.

Palestinian groups condemn footage

Gaza’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit, saying the filming of female prisoners amounted to intimidation and humiliation.

It said his entry into the women’s section of the facility was “not an inspection visit”, but rather a “political spectacle and public incitement against the female prisoners” aimed at intimidating them and breaking their will in front of cameras.

The Palestinian agency said Ben-Gvir’s remarks showed that conditions inside Israeli prisons were part of what it described as a systematic policy of retaliation based on “humiliation, torture, starvation and deprivation”.

An Israeli police officer outside Ofer military prison near Jerusalem, October 13, 2025 [Mahmoud Illean/AP Photo]

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society also condemned the footage, telling Al Jazeera that Ben-Gvir’s filming and publication of the women constituted “an assault on their human dignity”.

It said hundreds of testimonies from released detainees and prisoners had documented serious abuses inside Israeli prisons and detention facilities.

Push for harsher conditions

Since becoming national security minister in late 2022, Ben-Gvir has pushed for tougher conditions for Palestinian prisoners, including reducing food and water supplies, restricting family visits, limiting shower times and removing privileges inside prison sections.

He has also overseen the transfer of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners between facilities.

Ben-Gvir has previously rejected efforts to improve conditions for prisoners. In 2025, he publicly opposed an Israeli court ruling requiring authorities to ensure Palestinian prisoners received adequate food, insisting that harsh conditions should continue.

According to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, about 9,400 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including 88 women and more than 350 children.

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South Africa submits evidence to ICJ showing Israel ignored Gaza genocide orders

 Pretoria says that Israel’s flouting of the ICJ’s orders undermines the court’s legitimacy and is paving the way for the destruction of the Palestinian people

News Desk, The Cradle, AUG 30, 2026

 

(Photo credit: REUTERS, Creator: THILO SCHMUELGEN)

South Africa submitted a detailed dossier to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 25 August, formally accusing Israel of defying legally binding provisional measures requiring it to prevent genocide and safeguard essential aid in Gaza.

“The Court’s orders are binding on Israel, and the international community also has an obligation to protect the Palestinian people from genocide, including to take all necessary action to prevent and punish genocide,” South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Pretoria says Israel has failed to comply with the ICJ’s three sets of legally binding provisional measures issued in January, March, and May 2024.

Those measures included requirements concerning the prevention of acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention, the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the halting of an offensive that destroyed the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, and the granting of access to the strip for UN investigators.

“Regrettably, Israel has not complied with the Orders. South Africa continues to pursue all avenues available to it to seek Israel’s full and immediate compliance with the Court’s Orders,” the statement added.

The dossier provided evidence of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, including the killing of at least 73,407 Palestinians and injuring of 174,335 more since October 2023.

The total dead and injured amounts to over 10 percent of Gaza’s entire population, the dossier noted.

Some estimates of the dead in Gaza are much higher, reaching the hundreds of thousands due to the indirect effects of Israel’s bombing and demolition campaign. 

Pretoria highlighted Israel’s ongoing atrocities against Palestinians, including arbitrary detentions, widespread torture, sexual violence, and a threefold spike in miscarriages among pregnant women due to Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s critical health and other infrastructure.

The dossier noted that despite the alleged ceasefire reached in October 2025 between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli military has continued to kill an average of one Palestinian child per day. 

South Africa says that Israel’s ongoing non-compliance directly threatens the court’s legitimacy while paving the way for the destruction of the Palestinian people.

“Israel’s failure to comply with the Provisional Measures Ordered by the Court undermines their protective function and entails further destruction of the Palestinian group,” the ministry’s statement warned.

Israeli leaders say they want to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its roughly 2 million inhabitants to make way for the annexation and Jewish settlement of the strip. To accomplish this, they say they wish to make life in Gaza so dangerous and unbearable that Palestinians “choose” to “voluntarily migrate” to third countries.

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