Category World News

At least 10 people were killed and dozens were hurt in a suicide car bombing outside a paramilitary headquarters in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to a video that shows the wreckage left behind.

According to analysts, the Palestinians’ long-hoped-for results might not be the results that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to see from the US president’s proposal for a ceasefire, according to Al Jazeera.

The 20-point Trump plan contains essentially nothing else beneficial for Palestinian people, according to analysts, while the people on the ground would be greatly relieved if Israel’s vicious bombardment stopped, killing at least 66, 055 people, and injuring 168, 346 people since October 2023.

According to Palestinian lawyer and analyst Diana Buttu, who served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team from 2000 to 2005, “Ending the genocide is tied to this very colonial approach where the US, the party that carried out the genocide, and the US, who has funded it, decide the fate of the people against whom they are committing genocide.”

There are no guarantees made to the Palestinians, she added, if you read the entire agreement in its entirety.

The Israelis receive all guarantees, according to the statement.

Gaza is the focus, but there is no clarity.

In exchange for hundreds of living Palestinians taken by Israel, as well as the remains of hundreds of dead, the plan would end fighting in Gaza, and Israeli prisoners held there would be freed.

The “Board of Peace,” an international transitional administration led by Trump and whose members include former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is then required to relinquish control of the Gaza Strip.

Amnesty for Hamas members who promise “peaceful coexistence” and “disarmament” will be granted. “All people who wish to leave Gaza will have safe passage to receiving nations,” said the statement.

According to reports, Israeli troops would resume aid deliveries after a set number of conditions were met, though it’s unclear who would impose their withdrawal, and an economic revitalization strategy would be developed by Middle Eastern experts who had developed “thriving modern miracle cities” (Middle Eastern).

Hamas has stated that the plan is being considered at the moment.

Trump warned that if Israel rejected his offer, it would have the right to take whatever course of action it saw fit in Gaza with the full support of the US. Israel’s actions in Gaza are already being compared to a genocide, according to human rights organizations and academics.

However, Muhannad Seloom, an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, stated for Al Jazeera that this leaves many questions unanswered.

For instance, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is mentioned in the plan, but it won’t have any immediate impact until a reform plan with various recommendations is finished. Trump both mentioned his 2020 peace plan and the Saudi-French proposal, but it’s unclear what he meant by specific reforms. In the past, the PA has been advised to overhaul its governance, address endemic corruption, alter the educational curricula, and overhaul the social welfare system to support Palestinian prisoners’ families.

According to the Times of Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not ignore the changes and criticize the PA for an outdated policy despite the fact that the PA has changed the prisoners’ families’ payment schedule.

Without any clear objectives, the PA will have to persuade Israel and the US that its reform efforts have been completed before it can rule Gaza. This could continue unabated.

The plan does not specify whether the notorious Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has resulted in more than 1, 000 Palestinians being killed waiting for aid, will be disbanded. Instead, it states that aid will be provided by the United Nations and the International Red Crescent.

According to Seloom, “It seems like a rushed agreement that will be refined as they go along.”

What state is Palestine located in?

The state of Palestine was recognized on September 21 by Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Soon after, more European nations, including France and Portugal, followed suit.

Despite analysts claiming that the act of recognition was primarily a face-saving exercise, global leaders praised the “two-state solution.”

The UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution that would reinstate a two-state solution on September 12. The international community has frequently discussed a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

However, some analysts contend that the phrase “two-state solution” is unrelated to the reality on the ground and that this proposal raises a more pressing issue: Even if Israel’s two-year-long genocidal campaign is halted, in what kind of state would Palestine be in reality?

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are frequently mentioned when discussing a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

But Israeli policy is splintering and isolating those areas. Additionally, with international cooperation, illegal Israeli settlements exploded in the occupied West Bank, further reducing any potential future Palestinian state.

Before October 2023, this was the case, but since then, things have gotten worse: movement restrictions, land grabs, settlement expansions, settler- and military violence, and home destructions.

Before Israel’s war on Gaza, there was no longer a single stretch of Palestinian land in the Gaza Strip, but Palestinians could not travel there because of Israeli restrictions on their travel.

Analysts worry that this strategy will further sever Gaza from East Jerusalem and the West Bank. There is only one brief mention of a potential “credible path to Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” which depends on how the ambiguous PA reform program is “faithfully carried out.”

What resources are left over to create a Palestinian state in light of recent recognitions, analysts questioned.

Buttu remarked, “This is the one-million-dollar question.” The problem is that “everyone recognizes the state of Palestine as it is being erased,” according to the statement.

According to the plan, Trump’s plan also imposes a burden on the Palestinians from outsiders, including having no recourse if Israel does not withdraw from Gaza.

Netanyahu has, for his part, pledged to halt any attempts to create a Palestinian state on numerous occasions. Netanyahu signed a settlement agreement to proceed with the occupation of the West Bank a day before a UNGA vote that approved a resolution supporting the two-state solution and declared, “There will not be a Palestinian state.”

Netanyahu’s goodwill and US assurances that Israel will adhere to the agreement are two things that have long been in short supply, according to analysts.

Analysts are unsure whether Netanyahu’s past efforts to undermine the peace process and enshrine the occupation will actually be put into practice.

According to Seloom, &nbsp, the agreement is “workable on paper,” but “from experience, there are so many details that are ambiguous.”

Palestinians negotiating the end of their own genocide

Palestinians have previously dealt with Israel.

What ought to have been the foundations for a future Palestinian state in the early to mid-’90s were laid by the Oslo Accords, a pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Since the second accord was signed in 1995, though, little has changed in that regard. Instead, according to experts, Israel has repeatedly thwarted the establishment of a state in Palestine. The current situation appears to be worse than it has ever been, with years of Israeli-led exploitation of Palestinian land and two years of the Gaza genocidal campaign.

According to Buttu, who was the PLO’s legal advisor at Oslo, “this is worse than Oslo.” There was a Palestinian voice at least in Oslo.

We’re back to the days when other people were speaking on our behalf because of this.

No Palestinian leaders were present when Trump met with Arab and Islamic leaders on September 23 to discuss his plan.

The Palestinians themselves bear the brunt of the blame for ending Israel’s occupation of Gaza, according to the US. Israel’s genocidal war will continue and possibly even grow if Hamas rejects a deal that offers few guarantees to the Palestinian people.

Dallas, United States – Melinda, a teacher at a Dallas high school, has an easy way to predict if her students will have a good day.

“If they show up and they’ve had breakfast, it’s a really good day,” said Melinda, who has worked as a Texas teacher for 13 years. Her students showing up fed, she added, “is rarer than you think”.

To help, Melinda spent about $45 per week on breakfast items and snacks during the last school year. While such practices are common among US teachers, she asked Al Jazeera not to use her real name. However, rising prices for groceries and school supplies may force her to stop, especially since Texas teachers’ salaries are not keeping up with inflation.

When Melinda went to the store in late August, the same items now cost her $56 per week. That means, over the course of a school year, she could spend $400 more for the food her students rely on.

“I’m trying to work out how to keep that in my budget, because prices are just crazy, and I like to keep it to where it’s [available to all students] so people aren’t singled out.”

Melinda’s worries are just one example of a broader problem brewing in the United States. After the administration of US President Donald Trump issued an onslaught of tariffs on countries around the world, Americans are seeing price increases creep into their lives. Rising costs of groceries, bills, rent and essential baby items are creating new burdens for people across the country, millions of whom work more than one job.

Pinching pennies

Tariffs are the rate that importers must pay to import their goods, and some economists have pointed out that it will take time for US consumers to bear the full brunt of Trump’s tariffs.

That’s no small comfort for Katie Ventre, a 37-year-old Long Island resident who oversees payroll, finances and HR for her father-in-law’s auto repair company. Her husband is the CEO of the company, and together, they’re trying to start a car rental service. Increases in grocery prices – especially the cost of fruit, eggs and milk – have been frustrating for their family, Ventre told Al Jazeera, but the auto business has been hit even harder.

“We just had the worst two months in the last eight years,” she said in early September. To pinch pennies, she said, customers are reducing the amount they spend, or delaying repairs altogether. Meanwhile, the Ventres raised their prices in an attempt to offset the cost of imported goods.

“It’s not just us,” Ventre added. “We have a towing company we work with that’s seeing a slowdown … and all our vendors are addressing [the tariffs] in their own way. Some are raising prices, some are trying to wait and see if things get better.”

Other companies aren’t waiting. The think tank Groundwork Collaborative has been tracking earnings calls and the remarks that C-suite executives have made about price increases, and in a new report, they detail how some companies are using the tariffs as cover to hike prices.

“The indirect effect of tariffs is that it gives steel producers and the mills and other fabricators … great cover for increased pricing in some cases,” Aaron Jagdfeld, CEO of the power generation products company Generac Power Systems, said on an earnings call this summer.

Among those raising prices are the security and digital products company Fortune Brands Innovations Inc, the footwear company Rocky Brands and the apparel company Hanesbrand, whose CEO, Stephen Bratspies, said the company is “seeing tariff-related disruptions creating incremental revenue opportunities in the market”.

Russell Diez-Canseco, the president and CEO of Vital Farms, put it more succinctly in a recent call to investors: “The price we’ve talked about, that is more than sufficient to cover the impact of the tariffs.”

Elsewhere, major brand names like Walmart and household goods titan Procter & Gamble are raising prices and attributing the move to the cost of tariffs. Several studies show such increases are already impacting customers’ wallets.

In a July 3 survey, nearly half of the likely voters interviewed told the Groundwork Collaborative and Data for Progress that Trump’s tariffs are having a negative impact on their monthly finances, with only 16 percent reporting a positive impact.

Back-to-school season exacerbated these issues, as prices rose on everything from shoes to essential items as simple as pencils.

“Parents are facing price increases across a number of categories when it comes to school supplies,” Sarah Dickerson, a research economist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told a local TV station. “If we look at pencils, for instance, we know the wooden pencils are imported from Brazil. We are anticipating price hikes there.”

Canary in the coal mine

Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, told Al Jazeera that fall 2025 will offer the strongest picture yet of how tariffs are affecting the US economy.

“We have long expected that some of the big price hits would drop in the fall,” said Owens, whose organisation researches how the economy impacts consumers and workers.

“Back to school season is kind of the canary in the coal mine, but we’re expecting high prices for Halloween items, for costumes, things like that that are coming in from China. We’re also expecting some of these impacts to flow through to Christmas, whether that’s price hikes on toys or even supply chain issues where there are just fewer toys available.”

Owens says rising prices and the cost of living have been the top economic issues for Americans since 2021. Now, tariffs are further influencing what Americans buy, where they buy it and, in some cases, the jobs they work or pursue.

According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), nearly 8.8 million Americans are working more than one job – down just slightly from the all-time high of 8.9 million in February.

Kay Alexander, a 30-year-old in Austin, is one of those Americans with multiple jobs.

Alexander lost his job in the tech industry during a round of layoffs at the beginning of 2025. He drastically cut his food spending and started looking for a cheaper apartment, which proved nearly impossible in Austin.

“Prices surge within a few months without any notice,” he said.

Shortly after the layoff, he noticed “daily essentials” such as groceries becoming more expensive. BLS data shows the cost of groceries has risen 29 percent since February 2020, while another study shows prices are up almost 3 percent from this time last year.

Alexander and his partner cut out snack foods and opted for the cheapest possible option for items like eggs and milk, which still weren’t that cheap. Plus, he added, “I can taste the difference.”

“It’s definitely shifted the way that we shop and the way that we eat,” he said of the tariffs. Even now that he has found a pair of part-time jobs and feels more comfortable dining out or going to a bar, he says he is still focused on saving “as much money as possible”.

“It’s hard to put in words the trauma of a job loss right now, when you know you might have to replace that one job with two others,” he said. “So I’m trying to save and do whatever I can to avoid that feeling.”

He has gotten used to buying lower-quality groceries, but now he feels as if his quality of life is worsening. For instance, he’s grown to like one of his part-time jobs even more than his project management work in the tech industry. But he feels drawn back to the volatile tech sector, if only to pay his higher bills.

“I really have to figure out, am I going to go to work and make sure that I can keep up with my bills, or am I going to show up for myself and make sure that I’m OK?” he said.

‘Food is discretionary’

Isabel Deniz, a 31-year-old living in Austin, Texas, agrees.

She worked in social media marketing until a layoff in late 2024, and any given month, she may be working up to six side gigs to keep up with rent and other bills.

When she was interviewed for this story, she was selling clothes on the online marketplace Poshmark, working as a theatre stagehand and cutting and stamping craft ice cubes for cocktail bars. Then, shortly after, she picked up yet another job: bail bond runner.

“I’m enjoying not being in front of a screen and actually talking to people face to face and moving my entire body around, but it’s also like, I need three of those jobs to survive,” she said, adding that all her friends are working more than one job.

“Going outside is expensive,” she said. “The second you step outside, it’s like, ‘That’ll be $20’.”

That means she is constantly examining what qualifies as a discretionary expense.

“Food is discretionary at this point, and it’s like, ‘Oh, sick, a disposable income of $42. What am I going to do with 42 bones?’” she said. “I’m worried the worst is on the way.”