Someday this War's gonna End

According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 1,727 Palestinians from 36 communities in the West Bank were displaced in the first three months of 2026 alone, due to settler violence and access restrictions – already exceeding the highest annual figure recorded in any of the previous three years.

But the northern Jordan Valley has been the location of some of the most brutal settler attacks lately, including the reported sexual assault of a father in front of his tied-up children in Khirbet Hamsa al-Fawqa, and the brutal beating of an elderly man in Tayasir. “The settlers have no mercy,” explained Muhammad. “[These settlers] don’t want to only attack able-bodied men. They specifically go after the ones they know can’t defend themselves. So they target the children and the elderly.


Al Jazeera

Bernie Sanders has promised to advance a resolution to block bombs and bulldozers to Israel, testing support for the US ally in Congress amid the war with Iran. Sanders said on Monday that he will “force the vote” on the measure later this week – a legislative process of bringing a bill to the floor of the Senate without the approval of the majority leader. “The extremist Netanyahu government that has committed genocide in Gaza does not need more military support from American taxpayers,” he said, referring to the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Gallup poll in February suggested that only 46 per cent of Americans have favourable views of Israel. Only 17 percent of Democratic respondents said they sympathise more with Israelis than Palestinians. The US provided Israel with more than $21bn in military aid in the first two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

On Monday, J Street – a prominent liberal Zionist group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace – called for the first time for phasing out US aid to the Israeli military. “The war in Gaza, rising extremist Jewish terror in the West Bank and the US-Israel war with Iran have highlighted the need for a fundamental reassessment of the US-Israel security relationship,” the group said in a statement. J Street also urged applying US laws, which restrict security assistance to foreign countries over rights abuses, consistently to Israel.

In news that should come as a shock to nobody...Israel escalates attacks and expands control in Gaza Strip, sidelining the new US-backed technocratic administration.
Ahmed al-Tanani, a political analyst in Gaza, said Israel is targeting police forces to eradicate any possibility of restoring stability and to push the enclave into internal chaos. “It wants to make it an unlivable environment, forcing residents to seek displacement, which serves the strategic goal of this war,” al-Tanani said.

Simultaneously, Israeli forces are advancing further into western Gaza and expanding the “yellow line” delineating areas under Israeli military control. Al-Tanani noted that Israel has added 37km (23 miles) to this eastern zone, meaning it now controls approximately 60 percent of the enclave, effectively partitioning Palestinian territory and severely restricting freedom of movement.

The military escalation coincides with the effective paralysis of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a body of Palestinian technocrats established under US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace“. While Washington framed the 12-member NCAG as a roadmap for “reconstruction and prosperity”, Iyad al-Qarra, a political analyst, argued that the committee has been “emptied of its role” and isolated in Cairo by Israel to prevent it from functioning on the ground.

“It is difficult to separate the committee’s work from providing services to citizens, and it is hard to separate serving citizens from the security apparatus and the presence of the occupation,” al-Qarra explained. He added that a real transition requires an Israeli withdrawal from the areas it controls, which has not happened. Academic and Israeli affairs expert Mohanad Mustafa noted that the ceasefire agreement was initially forced upon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the US. Now, Mustafa argued, Israel is deliberately blocking the entry of the NCAG to prevent the return of any political or civil life to Gaza, aiming to maintain a status quo of indefinite military occupation.

Palestinians maintain that Israel has manipulated the agreement since day one. While the ceasefire originally stipulated the entry of 600 aid trucks daily, current figures show only 150 to 190 trucks are crossing. Al-Qarra noted that the amount of aid entering does not exceed 20 percent of what was agreed upon, with essential equipment for clearing rubble and repairing hospitals remaining entirely blocked.

Al-Qarra argued that Israel has successfully used Trump’s overarching peace narrative as a cover to continue its military operations while demanding “disarmament” – a condition he described as “a vague and unrealistic excuse”. “Israel is now successfully taking this banner and legitimacy from the US, trading everything for the issue of disarmament,” al-Qarra said.

Meanwhile, al-Tanani revealed that Nickolay Mladenov, the representative linking the NCAG to the Board of Peace, privately acknowledges Israel’s daily violations and manipulation of aid during meetings with Palestinian factions, despite publicly adhering to the US and Israeli narratives.

Watching the news gives the impression of a ceasefire going awfully well - the truth is very different.