Category World News

This might be the final letter I&nbsp write from Gaza City for those who still care.

We anticipate that Israel will soon formally enact its “evacuation orders.” Gaza, my beloved city, is in the midst of an Israeli army-permanent military occupation. In the southern portion of the Strip, they intend to force us to all leave our homes and relocate into tents. Who will resist will be punished for what reasons. In Gaza City, we might be living in our final days.

We’ve been told that Israel wants to occupy our city and establish its population as a settlement. We initially didn’t believe it because we believed that this type of news was psychological warfare. After all, there have been “evacuation orders” before, and people were permitted to return, even if it was in their homes.

The Israeli army instructed everyone in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to move south on October 13 shortly after the genocide began. Constant bombardment followed the orders. Sometimes, hundreds of people pass away in a single day. Numerous tens of thousands of people eluded the south in search of their lives.

We opted not to. We all stayed in because my father refused to let me leave. We endured months of indescribable suffering and fear in our home. Our neighborhood’s destruction was clearly visible to us.

Then the Israeli army cut off the south and north. The north was not reached by Aid. My family and I endured the war’s most oppressive years between January and April 2024. We spent our days looking for anything to quench our hunger because we were both starving. We were occasionally forced to consume animal feed.

People were permitted to return to the north in January of this year when a ceasefire was in effect. It was a moving experience that reflected how ensnared we Palestinians are in our land.

The atmosphere seems to change this time. The threat of permanent occupation, or loss, seems very real, in my opinion.

A large number of tents and shelter equipment will be allowed into [Gaza] in preparation for the transfer of civilians from the war zone to the south, according to Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee’s Facebook post.

Gazans read this news with hearty hearts. Where will we flee, in spite of the many questions and few answers? What time will this begin? Will anyone step in and stop this catastrophe?

People are so depressed that they can no longer endure suffering because of their emotional, mental, physical, and financial woes.

We have been observing one another with confused, frightened eyes since my family and I first learned this news.

My heart exploded into a million pieces when I saw pictures of tents and tarpaulins entering Gaza City on social media. I was terrified to consider my future being encased in a tent. How can I pack a small tent with all of my big dreams?

I told my father that I would not like to camp. My cheeks were rolling in pain. He said, “We have no other choice; the tent is becoming our new reality,” and he looked at me with helplessness in his eyes.

We don’t want to leave, but we think we have no other options. We don’t believe we will stand up to the constant bombardment and shelling. When they invade this time, the Israelis will likely be even more brutal. This time, there will be total erasure, not punishment.

People are eating their final meal of the day with their families while they are feeling the end of their city. They are capturing everything that might be lost as they wander through their neighborhoods, comparing themselves to places in their childhood memories.

As I type these words, I’m occupying a room with many students and writers trying to overcome the apprehension about what lies ahead for both studying and working. In the dreadful chaos, they are attempting to maintain their daily routines.

Even when life means living to the bare minimum, people in Gaza adore life. We always discover a way to experience joy, joy, and happiness even in the darkest times.

I want hope, but I’m also terrified of tents, forced displacement, and exile because of all of these. I’m terrified of being silenced and cut off from the world.

I believe that the south of Israel will be a concentration camp where we will be silenced, silenced, and wiped out of existence.

I want to use this opportunity to appeal because I am unsure of how long my words will stay outside.

Sara Awad, a Palestinian student, has a career as a journalist and a graduate of an English literature school.

Do not forget Gaza’s 2 million love, heartbreak, and perseverance-loving people.

Gaza, my city, is a historic metropolis rich in history and culture and filled with love.

Even when the world almost abandoned us, we fervenously resisted and held onto our homes and lands.

United States President Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks against mail-in voting, which he claims was rigged in the 2020 elections, and has pledged to get rid of the postal voting system.

“We are now the only country in the world that uses mail-in voting,” he posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday.

His post echoed grievances about mail-in voting he had aired days earlier in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.  After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska, Trump told Hannity that Putin said the 2020 US presidential election was “rigged” because of mail-in voting. It wasn’t. Trump lost that election. Officials in his own administration told him that.

Hours after his post, Trump slightly softened his language during a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“And do you know that we’re the only country in the world – I believe, I may be wrong – but just about the only country in the world that uses [mail-in voting]. Because of what’s happened, massive fraud all over the place,” Trump said.

Mail-in voting provides more opportunities for fraud than in-person voting, researchers said, but it’s still rare, and election officials have safeguards in place.

Trump said during Monday’s remarks at the White House that his administration is preparing an executive order “to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt”.

We asked the White House for evidence to support Trump’s statement about other countries and received no response.

Data compiled by a Sweden-based organisation that advocates for democracy globally found in an October report that 34 countries or territories allow mail-in voting, which it refers to as “postal voting”.

Dozens of countries allow at least some mail-in voting

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that of those 34 countries or territories, 12 allow all voters to vote by mail and 22 permit only some voters to vote this way.

“Europe has the largest number of countries that make in-country postal voting available to all or some voters,” the report said.

No two countries have exactly the same postal voting system, said Annika Silva-Leander, the organisation’s North America head.

Silva-Leander noted some differences:

• Ballot tracking: Ballot tracking allows voters and election officials to track ballots throughout the voting process to reduce fraud. Although that is common in the US, many countries don’t have it.
• Different state systems: Many countries have the same postal voting system for the entire nation. In the US, the system differs from state to state. The majority of states allow voting by mail, including primarily Republican-voting, Democratic-voting and battleground states.
• Mailing ballots to all voters is unusual: In most countries, postal voting supplements voting at polling stations, but some US states, such as Washington, rely largely on postal voting.
• Ballot curing: This is a US process that allows voters to fix a problem, such as forgetting to sign the envelope, after casting their ballots. This process is not available in most countries.

The US has had voting by mail since its 1861-1865 Civil War. Voting by mail also has a long history across the globe.

Australia introduced postal voting more than a century ago, Graeme Orr, an expert on international electoral law at the University of Queensland in Australia, previously told PolitiFact.

All Canadians are eligible to use mail-in voting, said York University Associate Professor Cary Wu, who cowrote a 2024 paper about the effect of Trump’s antimail-voting messaging on Canadians’ views of postal voting.

“Voting by mail has long been a vital component of the democratic process in Canada,” Wu said.

Although the option of submitting a ballot by mail was extended to all Canadian voters in 1993, it was not commonly used in general elections before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the United Kingdom, on-demand postal voting was part of a wider modernisation in electoral administration in the early 2000s, according to a 2021 paper by UK researchers. Postal voting’s expansion was driven largely by a desire to increase turnout. Using data from the 2019 British Election Study, researchers found older voters and people with disabilities were more likely to opt for postal voting’s convenience.

US states set mail-in voting laws

In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “The States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes” and must do what the president tells them.

Election law Professor Rick Hasen at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote on his blog that Trump’s statement is “wrong and dangerous”.

“The Constitution does not give the President any control over federal elections,” Hasen wrote, adding that federal courts have recognised those limits.

The US Constitution’s Article 1, Section 4 says the regulation of elections is a power of the states.

“The president plays literally no role in elections, and that’s by design of the founders,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Despite often criticising voting by mail, Trump himself occasionally cast a mail-in ballot, and in 2024, Trump invited Republicans to cast mail-in ballots.

We asked the White House for details about the forthcoming executive order he described, including whether it seeks to entirely ban mail-in voting. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields did not address that question but said Trump wants to require voter IDs and prevent “cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York.”

There is no evidence of widespread cheating in California and New York, two of the most populous states that consistently vote for Democrats for president. Most states require voter IDs although the rules vary.

Our ruling

Trump didn’t explain his evidence and hours later softened his language when he said he “may be wrong”.

In 2024, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that 34 countries or territories allow postal voting. For example, Australia has had mail-in voting for a century, and all Canadians are eligible to vote by mail.