Israel is returning hundreds of Palestinians bodies to Gaza, but without names or identifying records. Rasmia Khalil is one of many inspecting the unrecognisable bodies—often showing signs of torture—in the hope of identifying loved ones.
Israel is using a policy of ‘no war, no peace’ in Gaza, similar to the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, where they continue to attack post agreement. Al Jazeera’s Justin Salhani explains.
Airlines in the United States have cancelled nearly 1,200 flights, marking the fifth consecutive day of mass delays and cancellations sparked by the country’s longest-ever government shutdown.
In addition to cancellations on Tuesday, passengers continued to face long wait times, as more than 1,300 domestic and international flights were delayed in the morning.
list of 4 itemsend of list
New York’s LaGuardia Airport, in particular, is seeing significant hold-ups, with average delays of one hour and 40 minutes, according to FlightAware — a platform that tracks flight disruptions worldwide.
On Monday, there were more than 2,400 cancelled flights to, from and within the US, along with over 9,500 delayed flights, according to the same tracker.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week instructed airlines to cut 4 percent of daily flights from Friday at 40 major airports due to air traffic control staffing shortages. Reductions rose to 6 percent on Tuesday, then 8 percent on Thursday, and are expected to reach 10 percent by November 14th.
Airlines and the FAA are in talks over whether these cuts will be eased as a record-setting 42-day government shutdown draws to a close.
An end to the shutdown appears to be in sight. On Monday, the Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government. It now heads to the House of Representatives and, if approved, will go to President Donald Trump’s desk for signing. Once signed, the bill would reopen the government.
Despite progress on Capitol Hill, the president has urged air traffic controllers across the country to return to work, warning that their pay could be “docked” if they do not comply. He also claimed that those who remained on duty during the shutdown would receive a $10,000 bonus.
On Wall Street, airline stocks are taking a hit amid persistent cancellations. As of 11am in New York (16:00 GMT), Delta Air Lines had fallen 1.26 percent since the market opened on Tuesday. United Airlines was down 1.7 percent, while American Airlines had tumbled more than 1.8 percent.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that if the United States tests nuclear weapons, “Russia will respond in kind.”
Lavrov cited on Tuesday previous statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin laying out Moscow’s policy.
list of 3 itemsend of list
His comments came less than two weeks after US President Donald Trump said he directed his administration to “immediately” resume nuclear testing.
“Putin outlined our position back in 2023, when he was asked about this issue during one of his speeches,” Lavrov told reporters, according to Russia’s state-owned news agency TASS.
“He stated that if any of the nuclear powers conducts a nuclear weapons test – not a carrier test or a subcritical experiment, but an actual nuclear weapons test – then Russia will respond in kind.”
Late in October, Trump claimed that other countries have testing programmes, saying that he instructed the Pentagon to start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis”.
But Russia’s last known nuclear test was in 1990; China’s was in 1996. The US has not tested a nuclear bomb since 1992.
Since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was signed in 1996, only India, Pakistan and North Korea have carried out known nuclear tests.
Russia tested a missile powered by nuclear energy in October, but not an actual nuclear bomb.
Earlier this month, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright – whose agency is responsible for the country’s nuclear programme – said the US will not carry out a nuclear explosion.
Rather, Wright told Fox News, the US will test components of nuclear weapons to simulate how they would work and ensure that the systems are operational.
“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions,” he said.
But on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had not received direct information from the US regarding the testing issue.
“So far, there have been no explanations from our US colleagues on this topic,” he was quoted as saying by TASS.
Peskov said last week that Putin instructed the Russian military to “study the advisability of beginning preparations” for nuclear testing.
For its part, China denied that Beijing is conducting nuclear testing and said it hoped that Washington would abide by the nuclear moratorium put in place by the CTBT.
“As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a responsible nuclear-weapon state, China is committed to peaceful development, follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and a nuclear strategy that focuses on self-defence, and adheres to its nuclear testing moratorium,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on November 3.
On Tuesday, Lavrov hit out at Pentagon nominee Robert Kadlec, who told US lawmakers last week that Washington “needs to have credible nuclear response options for a theatre conflict below the strategic-level”.
“Mr Kadlec, who is seeking the post of assistant to the secretary of war, stated that nuclear options should be developed to address certain potential regional conflicts,” Lavrov said.
“This is quite a remarkable statement. In other words, it directly indicates that this individual, as assistant to the secretary of war, intends to view the use of nuclear weapons as a tool for achieving the objectives the United States deems necessary in specific regions.”
The Israeli parliament has pushed forward an amendment proposing the death penalty for any Palestinian convicted of killing Jewish citizens. It must pass a second and third reading before becoming law.
About 30 minutes into a new documentary featuring testimonies of Israeli soldiers about being deployed to Gaza, a soldier reflects on the enclave after months of sustained Israeli war on it: “Terrible heat. Sand. Stench. And dogs wandering around in packs. They eat dead bodies … It’s horrifying … It’s a kind of zombie apocalypse. No trees. No bushes. No roads. There’s nothing.”
The documentary, Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, shown on UK network ITV on Monday, featured Israeli soldiers, some speaking of shame at having participated in what they concede is a genocide, others unflinchingly detailing the nature of that war.
list of 4 itemsend of list
Included are the details of a firing policy that takes little to no account of cause, the wholesale destruction of property and homes, the systematic use of human shields, drone warfare and indiscriminate killing tied to a weaponised system of aid.
“People don’t think about it,” one participant, credited as Eli, tells the camera. “Because if you do think about it, you’ll want to kill yourself.
“When you take a moment to try and think about it, you want to scream,” he says, his face blacked out to obscure his identity.
Through its two years of genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has killed more than 69,000 people and injured hundreds of thousands more. International agencies say it will be decades before the enclave recovers, if it ever does.
Israel’s own intelligence suggests that 83 percent of those it has killed in Gaza were civilians.
“‘There are no civilians in Gaza,’ you hear it all the time,” Daniel, a commander with an Israeli tank unit, said. Another contributor, Major Neta Caspin, described a conversation with her brigade’s rabbi.
“[He] sat down next to me and spent half an hour explaining why we must be just like they [Hamas] were on 7 October 2023. That we must take revenge on all of them, including civilians … that this is the only way,” she said.
Hamas’s armed wing led an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, during which 1,139 people died and about 250 were taken captive.
Armoured Corps Captain Yotam Vilk described the suspension of all rules for firing on civilians – that they must have the means, intention and ability to pose a threat to Israeli soldiers.
“There’s no such thing as means, intent and ability in Gaza,” Vilk explained. “It’s just ‘a suspicion of walking where it’s not allowed’,” he said, describing the overcrowded and chaotic interior of Gaza, where the precise limits on movement were known predominantly to Israeli troops alone.
“Anyone who crosses the line is automatically incriminated and can be put to death,” Vilk added.
Throughout its war, Israel has denied the growing number of accusations of war crimes from multiple bodies, claiming that it has investigated any credible allegations.
However, in August, a report by UK monitor Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) showed that, of the limited investigations into accusations of war crimes by military investigators, including the killing of 15 paramedics in April, few have resulted in any action.
Responding to Israeli denials that it did not use human shields, tank commander Daniel was clear that the army “is lying”.
“It’s called the ‘mosquito protocol’,” he said of the routine practice of seizing Palestinian civilians, strapping an iPhone to them and using them to explore suspected Hamas holdouts remotely.
“Every company has its own ‘mosquito’,” he said, referring to captured Palestinians as insects. “That’s three Palestinians per battalion, nine to 12 per brigade, then dozens, if not hundreds, per division.”
Some soldiers in his unit decided to release two teenage human shields they had captured out of concern they were breaking international law, Daniel recalled, adding that a senior officer said at the time: “Soldiers don’t need to know about international law, just the ‘[Israeli military] spirit’.”
Through its two years of war on Gaza, Israel has destroyed or damaged 92 percent of its housing stock and displaced at least 1.9 million people, according to the UN, many multiple times.
All the institutions, from universities to hospitals, that make up a society have been targeted for destruction. Social media videos uploaded by Israeli soldiers show an orgy of violence, with Palestinian homes and belongings ransacked and held up for ridicule by soldiers.
“You feel that every day could be your last and that you can do anything,” one conscript who only gave his name as “Yaakov” said. “Not out of revenge, but just because you can.”
Other participants talked of routinely burning Palestinian homes or celebrated their bulldozing.
Speaking from the illegal Israeli settlement of Beit El in the occupied West Bank, rabbinical judge Avraham Zarbiv – the subject of a war crimes complaint to the International Criminal Court – boasted of driving a bulldozer to destroy people’s homes and belongings during his time in Gaza.
“I post a lot of videos,” he says, before cutting to one showing him driving a bulldozer, destroying homes in clear contravention of international law.
“Until the end, until victory, until settlement. We will not give up until this village is wiped out,” he says in the video, telling the camera how his video “lift[s] soldiers’ spirits”.
Continuing his comments, Zarbiv claimed credit for pioneering the tactic of destroying entire homes that is now commonplace.
“We changed the conduct of an entire army,” he bragged. “Rafah is flattened. Jabalia is flattened. Beit Hanoon is flattened. Shujayea is flattened. And Khan Younis is flattened.”
Cheered on by a media and a public that a film participant, platoon sergeant Yaakov, described as neither knowing nor wanting to know what was happening in Gaza, another soldier described the experience of sitting in a basement, half-dressed, killing Palestinians remotely via drone.
Any life that was not Israeli meant little, Eli said, with Yaakov separately describing how soldiers at the private US-Israeli aid programme, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), would “open fire, even if they don’t see a concrete threat”.
Some of the participants acknowledged they had taken part in genocide; others accepted the pain they caused.
“All mosques, almost all hospitals, almost all universities, every cultural institution has been destroyed,” Yaakov told the camera.
“You’ve destroyed a society. You don’t have to kill them one by one to destroy every sign of the society that once existed there.