Keeponstalin

In its new ceasefire outline, Hamas reinserted language that Witkoff and Israel removed from the May 25 agreement that stated that Hamas would relinquish its governance of Gaza to an independent technical committee of Palestinians to administer all affairs in Gaza and to coordinate reconstruction. Hamas has consistently said it would give up power as part of a long term ceasefire deal. “An independent technocratic committee will immediately assume management of all affairs of the Gaza Strip upon the start of the agreement’s implementation, with full authority and responsibilities,” the proposal states.

Among the new terms Hamas proposed was that the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt be reopened and the free flow of people and commercial goods into Gaza would be permitted “without any restrictions.” The Rafah crossing represents the only gateway Gaza’s residents have to the outside world—as the rest of the Strip is encircled by Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he does not intend to allow the re-opening of the crossing and has bragged in recent days that the Witkoff “term sheet” Israel endorsed allows Israeli forces to retain control of the crossing.

Hamas also called for immediate reconstruction to begin on hospitals, clinics, schools, bakeries and other essential sites destroyed in Israel’s war, as well as the rehabilitation of electricity, water, sewage, telecommunications, and roads “in all areas of the Strip.”

Hamas proposed the commencement of immediate negotiations to achieve a long term truce, which it described as, “A cessation of mutual (hostile) military operations between the two parties for a long period of 5-7 years, guaranteed by the mediators (the United States, Egypt, and Qatar).” It also called for a massive 3-5 year reconstruction effort to rebuild Gaza that would “be implemented under the supervision of several countries and organizations, including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.”

Hamas’s proposal would result in the same number of Israeli captives released in the initial 60-day period outlined in the Witkoff-Israel proposal and the deal made between Witkoff and Hamas: ten living Israelis and the bodies of 18 deceased. But in its new draft, Hamas proposes the releases be staggered over the course of two months, rather than one week. Witkoff’s framework says that five living Israeli captives would be released on day one of a deal and the remaining five on day seven.

Hamas says it wants the releases spread out over two months to prevent Netanyahu from resuming the war after the first week of a deal: four on day one, two on day 30 and four on day 60. “The release of the living prisoners and bodies will take place simultaneously and according to an agreed-upon mechanism,” the document states. Hamas would also agree to return the bodies of 18 Israelis, the same number as Witkoff’s term sheet, though these would also be staggered over a 50-day period.

Yesterday, Drop Site published the full version of the “term sheet” crafted by Israel and the U.S. Today, we are publishing the May 25 version agreed to by Hamas, revealing the details of what Israel is trying to strongarm Hamas into agreeing to on the global stage.

The terms provisionally agreed to by Hamas largely return to the previous ceasefire deal signed on January 17 and violated by Israel in early March—meaning a major withdrawal of Israeli forces, the delivery of hundreds of trucks a day of food, medicine, fuel and other aid. The agreement would also mandate that Hamas give up governing power in Gaza, an independent Palestinian committee would be created to take charge, and reconstruction would begin immediately.

Most significantly, the U.S. would guarantee that a ceasefire would be held, and the delivery of aid uninterrupted, until a long term resolution to the war was in place. "The United States and the mediators commit to ensuring the continuation of negotiations, maintaining a cessation of hostilities and the entry of aid, until a permanent ceasefire agreement is reached," Hamas’s term sheet says. In the Israeli version, that guarantee is completely gone, replaced by a U.S.-backed ceasefire only during the 60-day period of the proposed agreement.

A senior Hamas official told Drop Site that the group received a direct commitment from Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, that two days after the release of U.S. citizen and Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the Trump administration would compel Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory. Witkoff, according to the official, also promised that Trump would make a public call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for negotiations aimed at achieving a “permanent ceasefire.”

“It was a deal,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau who has previously engaged in direct talks with U.S. officials. He said the pledge was made by “Witkoff, himself.” In an interview with Drop Site, Naim said the agreement was: “If we release [Alexander], Trump will speak out thanking Hamas for its gesture, obliging Israel on the second day to open the borders and allow aid to come into Gaza, and [Trump would] call for an immediate ceasefire and to go for negotiations to end the war.”

“He did nothing of this,” Naim added. “They didn't violate the deal. They threw it in the trash.”

While Witkoff, according to Hamas, had promised the U.S. would facilitate the lifting of Israel’s blockade on Gaza two days after Alexander’s release, the U.S. appeared to completely abandon the agreement. On May 13, the day after Hamas freed Alexander, Israel launched a massive series of air strikes on the European Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 28 Palestinians and wounding dozens of others. Israel claimed the target of the strike was Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of the late political leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar. Mohammed Sinwar assumed command of Al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, after Israel assassinated its previous commanders Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa.

Naim said he is not optimistic a deal will be reached unless Trump forces Israel’s hand “If [Netanyahu] still enjoys impunity from the Americans and the Western countries, and the feeling in the international community is that he can” violate agreements, Naim said, then negotiations are pointless. “As long as Israel has a free hand and behaves as a spoiled boy, as a rogue state, they can do it again and again.”

Their Rule 4:

No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don’t question the statehood of Israel.

Europe@feddit.org removed my comment for de-tangling the conflation of antisemitism and anti-zionism. A dangerous conflation that is genuinely antisemitic and fuels antisemitic hate as it conflates the actions of Israel and Zionism to all Jewish people and Judaism.

This prioritization of the German definition, the adopted IHRA definition, is promoting antisemtitism and is diametrically opposed to the 'No antisemitism' aspect of the rule. The definition has been condemned by the writer of the definition, a multitude of human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch (HRW), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), B’Tselem, Peace Now, and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and over 120 leading scholars of anti-semitism.

Palestinians awoke to bulldozers. Their village was destroyed by noon. Within hours, Israeli forces demolished homes, wells, and even caves in the West Bank hamlet of Khilet al-Dabe’, leaving families with nowhere to shelter.

In the early hours of Monday morning, two massive Hyundai excavators and two Caterpillar bulldozers roared out of the gates of the Ma’on settlement in the South Hebron Hills — illegally built on Palestinian land belonging to the village of At-Tuwani. For residents living in the area, the sight of these “yellow monsters,” as they call them, is an omen: the day will be filled with destruction, and families will lose homes they woke up in just hours earlier.

We asked if there was an official military order establishing the area as restricted. One soldier responded, “It will arrive in a few minutes.” But the demolition dragged on for hours, and no such order ever appeared. This wasn’t enforcement of a legal ruling, but rather an exercise of sheer military power. In truth, the soldiers didn’t even pretend to be upholding Israel’s own discriminatory laws. They simply threatened us with weapons and arrests.

She stood crying among dozens of others, watching her life’s work reduced to rubble. Despite the trauma and shock, she kept repeating: “I will never leave this village — not until my last day.” Her husband and others echoed the same sentiment, determined to defy and resist a system designed to erase them.

“They want to erase us”

What took place in Khilet al-Dabe’ was not merely a demolition — it was a sweeping erasure. In total, nine homes were destroyed, along with six caves, seven wells, four livestock shelters, 10 water tanks, and the village’s only solar energy system and internet infrastructure.

Khirbet Khilet al-Dabe’ is one of the main communities featured in our documentary “No Other Land.” The village is known for its natural greenery and agricultural life, and unlike many others in Masafer Yatta, its residents focus less on livestock and more on cultivating almond, grape, and olive trees. They maintain traditional stone terraces and till the land year-round. The village’s elevated position and lush vegetation make it one of the most visually stunning in the area.

Once the army withdrew, villagers returned to the site, digging through the rubble for anything salvageable: clothing, kitchenware, personal belongings. The scene resembled a natural disaster, as if an earthquake had flattened their homes, wells, and lives.

The goal of Monday’s demolition, locals believe, is part of a broader effort: to push Palestinian residents off their land and clear the way for further illegal settlement expansion. “They want to erase us — not just our homes, but our presence, our history, and our future,” Amer said. For the families of Khilet al-Dabe’, the rubble is not just debris — it is a reminder that they are standing in the way of an expanding occupation. And despite it all, they are refusing to leave.

In 2024, military censorship in Israel reached the most extreme levels since +972 Magazine began collecting data in 2011. Over the course of the year, the censor completely banned the publication of 1,635 articles and partially censored another 6,265. On average, the censor intervened in about 21 news reports per day last year — more than double the previous peak of about 10 daily interventions recorded during the last war in Gaza in 2014 (Operation Protective Edge), and over three times the non-war-time average of 6.2 per day.

Under Israeli law, any article dealing with the broadly-defined category of “security issues” must undergo military censorship review, and editorial teams are responsible for deciding which piece to submit based on their own judgement.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 168 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military during the war, more than in any other recorded violent conflict in recent decades. Other organizations place the number as high as 232. In collaborative investigations with Forbidden Stories, +972 revealed a pattern of Gazan journalists killed by the army merely for operating drones, or being attacked by army drones when clearly identified as press. Additionally, Israel treats journalists working for media outlets affiliated with Hamas as legitimate military targets, and on more than one occasion claimed that other journalists it killed were connected to Hamas, usually without presenting any evidence.

At the same time, Israel has been systematically arresting and imprisoning Palestinian journalists from both Gaza and the West Bank, often without charges, as a form of punishment for critical reporting. This repression has accelerated during the war, as seen in the banning of media outlets such as Al-Mayadeen and Al-Jazeera from operating in Israel

Last week, the streets of Brooklyn looked like those of the occupied West Bank, with pro-Israel extremists chasing, harassing, and even threatening to rape a woman they thought was part of a pro-Palestine protest, all under the watchful eye of the NYPD.

"A group of at least 100 Orthodox Jewish men encircled me. They threatened me with rape and hurled vile insults like, ‘you are a waste of semen’ and ‘you are failed abortion.’ I moved closer to the long line of police officers standing nearby, but they did nothing to intervene or protect me,” the victim’s statement read, a testimony that is eerily similar to what Palestinians living in the occupied territories regularly endure.

“We are witnessing the Israelization of the United States of America, brought to you by fanatics,” says Rula in response to the statement, adding that it won’t stop there. “This is the tip of the iceberg of what's coming to America and what's being normalized in the United States, which is fascism.” The two point out the hypocrisy in the state’s response to the attack, and how different it would’ve been had Arabs committed such a violent act, but Spencer takes it further.

A central figure in the conversation is Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose recent visit to the US served as an accelerant to the violence discussed in the video above. Spencer and Rula dive into Ben-Gvir’s extremist ideology and put into context the drivers behind the violence unfolding against Palestinians and those who support them, as well as the role of the media in keeping it all under the radar

Palestinian Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi has been released from ICE detention.

On Wednesday, a judge denied the government’s request to pause his release and ordered him to be freed on bail, pending a legal challenge to the government’s detention of the Palestinian Columbia student in the first place. The Trump administration is attempting to deport Mahdawi on spurious charges of compromising US foreign policy.

“I am saying it clear and loud,” Mahdawi said outside the courthouse. “To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”

The government had planned to send Mahdawi to Louisiana in the same fashion it has rushed off other people it has detained, including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk (whose court-ordered transfer to Vermont has been temporarily stalled), and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri (who is now being held in a Texas detention center), according to court documents. But a judge blocked the Trump administration from moving him before he could be transferred.

In Mahdawi’s case, Judge Crawford contextualized “the extraordinary setting” of the case.

“Legal residents–not charged with crimes or misconduct–are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day,” Crawford said, citing the Red Scare and McCarthy-era targeting of people for their political views. “The wheel of history has come around again, but as before these times of excess will pass.”

“He had been arrested while performing his humanitarian duty during the massacre of medical teams in the Tel Al-Sultan area of Rafah Governorate,” the PRCS said.

The PRCS reported last month that Israeli forces opened fire on the medics, who were driving in ambulances to assist wounded Palestinians at the site of an earlier Israeli attack.

When United Nations and Palestinian officials were able to reach the area a week later, they found a mass grave where bulldozed ambulances and bodies were buried.

Eight PRCS workers were killed along with six Palestinian Civil Defence team members and one UN employee, the PRCS said.

Al-Nassasra, 47, is one of two people who survived the attack.

The other survivor, Munther Abed, said at the time that he had seen al-Nassasra being captured, bound and taken away.

Israel has carried out an intensified campaign of arrests during the war. According to the Palestinian prisoner support network Addameer, at least 9,900 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli detention facilities, including 400 children

Reporting from the city, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the released detainees reported being tortured in “horrific ways” and were in a bad physical and psychological state

UNICEF spokesperson Kazem Abu Khalaf yesterday announced the closure of approximately 21 malnutrition treatment centres in Gaza due to the resumption of Israeli military aggression and the issuance of evacuation orders in operational areas.

He further emphasised that Israel continues to impose a blockade on Gaza, preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, medical supplies, nutritional supplements, and other essential materials for the 35th consecutive day.

UNICEF reported on Saturday that more than one million children in the Gaza Strip have been deprived of life-saving assistance for more than a month, warning that “the continued denial of aid entry into Gaza constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and has dire consequences for children.”

Israel has launched a massive wave of air strikes on Gaza, killing hundreds of people and shattering the fragile two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

Tuesday’s attack, which took place across Gaza, was its most intense since the ceasefire came into effect on January 19, with the Palestinian Health Ministry reporting at least 326 people killed.

Here is how the world is reacting to the deadly attacks:

Almost immediately after the Hamas attack on October 7, Weiss and the rest of the settler movement set their sights on Gaza. Against the backdrop of Israel’s massive bombardment and ethnic cleansing of the territory’s north, they ramped up their efforts to re-establish Jewish settlements there, broadcasting their intentions loudly and bluntly — and with the knowledge that they could count on significant support within the governing coalition.

This past December, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionism party and functions as the overlord of the West Bank, declared (not for the first time) on Israeli public radio, “We must occupy Gaza, maintain a military presence there, and establish settlements.” Many in Smotrich’s camp wanted to prolong the war, reasoning that the longer Israel continued to brutalize Gaza, the greater the likelihood that settlers would succeed in installing an outpost — the germ of a settlement — in the Strip.

The announcement of a ceasefire agreement, which went into effect on Jan. 19, has slowed the Gaza resettlement movement’s momentum, but it has not stalled it.

The ceasefire is fragile, dangerously so: there is no guarantee that it will last beyond the initial six-week phase, which involves only a partial Israeli withdrawal from the territory. And there have already been reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to keep his hard-right government together, has conceded to Smotrich’s demand that Israel restart the war after the first phase ends and gradually assert full Israeli control over the Gaza Strip. Whether that happens will depend largely on the Trump administration’s willingness to exert continuous pressure on Netanyahu to carry out the subsequent stages of the ceasefire agreement — which would very likely jeopardize the survival of Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Amid this uncertainty, the settler movement has continued to press its eliminationist vision of resettling Gaza. The night before the ceasefire went into effect, Nachala led several dozen activists back to the Black Arrow memorial to stage a protest against the agreement. The settlers are openly praying for its failure, while a handful of the more militant among them remain camped within sprinting distance of the separation barrier.

If and when the ceasefire collapses and Israeli ground troops return to the Strip in full force, the settlers will be prepared to renew their push, even more determined to establish new settlements there. In that scenario, there will be frighteningly little standing in their way.