Category World News

Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Ramallah on Monday to await the release of some 2,000 political prisoners and forcibly disappeared people who were taken by Israel from the West Bank, which it occupies, and Gaza, which it has waged war on for two years.

Palestinians welcomed back 96 political prisoners, as well as the vast majority of people Israel detained from Gaza during the war.

This comes as part of an exchange of 20 living and 28 deceased Israeli captives held in Gaza for the nearly 2,000 Palestinian captives.

Of the more than 200 Israeli captives taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023, a total of 114 were released during two captive swaps with Hamas in November 2023 and January 2025, respectively.

They were handed over in exchange for the freedom of a total of 1,240 Palestinians.

Despite the brief euphoria, Israel violated ceasefires that coincided with those captive releases, arresting Palestinians across Gaza and the occupied territory wholesale, usually without charge.

Here’s all you need to know about the Palestinians expected to be released as part of the ceasefire deal, as well as those who were not included in the deal and who will stay in captivity.

Who is being released?

A total of 250 Palestinian political prisoners who are either serving life sentences or long sentences are being released from Israeli jails.

According to data obtained by Al Jazeera, all but nine of these prisoners are from the West Bank, and 157 of them are members of Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority governing parts of the West Bank.

Sixty-five are from Hamas, and the rest are from smaller political factions.

In addition, Israel will free 1,718 Palestinians who were, according to the United Nations, forcefully disappeared by Israel over the last two years of its genocidal war on Gaza.

Five of them are children under the age of 18, and two are women, according to the prisoner list obtained by Al Jazeera.

Most of the disappeared from Gaza were held in military camps, where dehumanisation and torture were rampant, according to international and Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.

Palestinians were reportedly subjected to severe beatings, medical neglect, starvation and even rape.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, 77 prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 7.

How many Palestinians is Israel not releasing?

Thousands.

According to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organisation tracking political prisoners, the number of people taken captive by Israel increased from 5,200 to 11,100 since October 7, 2023.

The vast majority of these prisoners are from the occupied West Bank – 400 of them children.

Murad Jadallah, a human rights researcher with Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, told Al Jazeera: “Israel tries to destroy Palestinian society in different ways, and arresting children is one of the tools it uses to do so.”

Once a Palestinian captive is released, that’s it, right?

No.

Israel tends to re-arrest Palestinians shortly after they are freed in captive swaps, said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

In November 2023, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners in a swap for Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza as part of a temporary ceasefire deal.

Weeks later, Israel re-arrested 30 of those people.

“Israel has a long history of using incarceration and arrests as a political weapon, and sometimes that could be for bargaining purposes for a later date,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera.

“There’s also no guarantee [with this current deal] that those being released won’t be rearrested again,” she added.

Will all of these Palestinian detainees be able to go home today?

Most of them have already been released.

While 96 of the 250 high-level political prisoners are being released to the West Bank and Gaza, about 154 of them are being deported from Palestine to third countries that have not been announced yet.

According to WAFA, the 154 have been taken to Egypt, but that will not be the final destination for all of them.

Israel may decide not to release everyone until it also retrieves the bodies of 28 deceased Israeli captives, which are expected over the next 72 hours.

Hamas said that it may struggle to locate all the deceased captives in that timeframe, but that the group is actively searching for them.

Thousands of people gathered in Khan Younis, Gaza, to welcome Palestinians – mostly civilians, including medics – who were disappeared by Israel.

There must be thousands of happy families today?

Well, yes, but they’ve been threatened not to show it.

Families are ordered by Israel not to celebrate the release of their loved ones or raise Palestinian flags in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

And the families of prisoners who are being exiled today will likely be prevented from travelling abroad to meet them in their country of exile.

Jadallah, from Al-Haq, added that most Palestinians merely hope the captive swap represents a permanent end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

He added that Palestinians are unhappy that prominent Palestinian leaders such as Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat will not be released.

The former is arguably the most famous Palestinian political prisoner, traditionally aligned with Fatah, and the latter leads the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Renowned Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safia, who was abducted from Kamel Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza in December 2024, was not among the list of prisoners expected to be released.

Abu Safia has been subjected to severe torture and solitary confinement, according to human rights monitors.

While Israelis celebrated the return of captives from Gaza, Israel warned Palestinian families against holding celebrations over the return of prisoners – some who had been held for decades. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh explains.

United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count. A single protester undertook a brief outburst but was swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”

It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.

I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.

Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end – for the moment – to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.

Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter. To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.

As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”

There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.

But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.

In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin – and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.

During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.

Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.

To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” – which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US president himself.

This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it – and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.

Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.

Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.

I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.

When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”

And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.

Israeli air strikes on Gaza may have halted, and a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas is ongoing, but tucked behind the headlines, tensions are brewing in Gaza between Hamas and armed groups.

On Sunday, clashes erupted between an armed clan and Hamas security forces, killing at least 27 people, including eight members of Hamas, according to the Ministry of Interior in Gaza.

Caught in the crossfire was 28-year-old Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, who was covering clashes in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood between what security sources told Al Jazeera Arabic was an “armed militia” and Hamas.

Is that the only militia in Gaza? Who are these armed gangs? What are their goals? And are they really affiliated with Israel?

Here’s all you need to know:

Who fought Hamas on Sunday?

Media reports and sources said the clan that was fighting Hamas in Gaza City is the Doghmush clan.

The large family has members in various factions across the political spectrum in Gaza.

Momtaz Doghmush was involved in the group Jaish al-Islam’s capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2008. Other clan members have been in Hamas or groups affiliated with the Palestinian Authority.

Some reports claimed the Doghmush who fought Hamas on Sunday were affiliated with Israel, but other sources from Gaza deny the affiliation with Israel.

What happened?

The Sahem unit, an armed unit affiliated with the Interior Ministry, said the clashes started on Saturday when “an outlaw gang killed resistance fighters from the Qassam Brigades”, the armed wing of Hamas, near the Jordan Field Hospital in Gaza City.

Witnesses told the BBC that 300 Hamas fighters stormed a residential block where Doghmush gunmen were holed up, and a Palestinian security source told the Reuters news agency that Hamas launched a campaign in Gaza City that killed 32 members of “a gang”.

According to the Interior Ministry, eight Hamas members and 19 clan members were killed. Aljafarawi was also killed.

There was an outpouring of grief over Aljafarawi’s killing in the midst of which a video of him greeting his friend and colleague Anas al-Sharif circulated on social media.

Al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera correspondent, was killed by Israel on August 10. Aljafarawi, like al-Sharif, was reportedly threatened multiple times by the Israelis over his reporting.

Are the Doghmush really backed by Israel?

That’s still unclear.

There is conflicting information. Some reports from inside Gaza said the clan has an Israeli affiliation, but the group’s leaders have denied that.

In early October, Nizar Doghmush, head of the clan in Gaza City, told the Los Angeles Times he had been contacted by the Israeli military to manage a so-called humanitarian zone in Gaza City.

He told the newspaper he refused and added that the Israeli military then bombed his neighbourhood in Gaza City, invaded and systematically destroyed houses.

The Doghmush and Hamas have an animosity towards each other, which in the past has devolved into armed clashes.

But Israel does have a history of funding and supporting groups in an effort to foment internal tensions.

Israel does support militias in Gaza, right?

Yes.

Israel is widely recognised to be behind the Popular Forces, a militia led by Yasser Abu Shabab of Gaza’s Tarabin Bedouin tribe.

The Tarabin, however, have denounced Abu Shabab.

While Israel claimed Hamas was stealing aid from the people of Gaza, it was revealed that the Popular Forces was the one looting aid to resell to Gaza’s starving people. Hamas reportedly clashed with the Popular Forces on a few occasions since September 2024, accusing them of being Israeli collaborators.

Israel has also reportedly backed a group calling itself the Strike Force Against Terror, led by Hussam al-Astal, a member of the al-Majida clan. Al-Astal’s group also clashed with Hamas in early October before the ceasefire was announced, according to Israeli media.

Al-Astal is a former officer in the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) security forces but was accused by the PA and Hamas of collaborating with Israel in the 1990s. Israeli media reports said al-Astal was a member of Abu Shabab’s militia and continues to coordinate with the Popular Forces leader.

He reportedly controls a village called Qizan an-Najjar in the Khan Younis governorate in southern Gaza.

The ongoing activity of these groups against Hamas and against civilians has contributed to a sense of unrest, as several people in Gaza have told Al Jazeera.

What happens now?

The fighting has stopped, but further clashes could still erupt in a society devastated by two years of Israel’s genocidal war.

The security void could lead to confrontations between groups looking to gain influence or territory.

For its part, Hamas has denied deploying fighters to the streets.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are returning to what is left of their homes in northern Gaza, and desperately needed humanitarian aid has started to enter the Gaza Strip.

China has accused the United States of “double standards” after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose an additional 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods in response to Beijing’s curbs on exports of rare earth minerals.

China says its export control measures announced last week were in response to the US restrictions on its entities and targeting of Beijing’s maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries.

Trump’s tariff threats, which come weeks ahead of the likely meeting between the US president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, have the potential to reignite a trade war months after Washington lowered the China tariffs from 125 to 30 percent.

The actions by the world’s two largest economies threaten to ignite a new trade war, adding further uncertainty to global trade. So what’s the recent history of US trade measures against China, and will the two countries be able to resolve their differences?

Why did China tighten export controls on rare earths?

On October 9, China expanded export controls to cover 12 out of 17 rare-earth metals and certain refining equipment, effective December 1, after accusing Washington of harming China’s interests and undermining “the atmosphere of bilateral economic and trade talks”.

China also placed restrictions on the export of specialist technological equipment used to refine rare-earth metals on Thursday.

Beijing justified its measures, accusing Washington of imposing a series of trade curbs on Chinese entities despite the two sides being engaged in trade talks, with the last one taking place in Madrid, Spain last month.

Foreign companies now need Beijing’s approval to export products containing Chinese rare earths, and must disclose their intended use. China said the heightened restrictions come as a result of national security interests.

China has a near monopoly over rare earths, critical for the manufacture of technology such as electric cars, smartphones, semiconductors and weapons.

The US is a major consumer of Chinese rare earths, which are crucial for the US defence industry.

At the end of this month, Trump and Xi are expected to meet in South Korea, and experts speculate that Beijing’s move was to gain bargaining advantage in trade negotiations with Washington.

China’s tightening of restrictions on rare earths is “pre-meeting choreography” before Trump’s meeting with Xi, Kristin Vekasi, the Mansfield chair of Japan and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the University of Montana, told Al Jazeera.

How did Trump respond?

On October 10, Trump announced the imposition of a 100 percent tariff on China, effective from November 1.

“Based on the fact that China has taken this unprecedented position … the United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100 percent on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

He added that this would come into effect on November 1 or before that. Trump added that the US would also impose export controls on “any and all critical software”.

Earlier on October 10, Trump accused China of “trade hostility” and even said he might scrap his meeting with Xi. It is unclear at this point whether the meeting will take place.

“What the United States has is we have a lot of leverage, and my hope, and I know the president’s hope, is that we don’t have to use that leverage,” US Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Sunday.

How did China respond to that?

China deemed the US retaliation a “double standard”, according to remarks by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson on Sunday.

China said that Washington had “overstretched the concept of national security, abused export control measures” and “adopted discriminatory practices against China”.

“We are living in an era of deeper intertwining of security and economic policies. Both the US and China have expanded their conceptions of national security, encompassing a range of economic activities,” Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme at the Takshashila Institution in Bangalore, India, told Al Jazeera.

“Both have also weaponised economic interdependence with each other and third parties. There are, in other words, no saints in this game.”

Kewalramani said that China started expanding the idea of “national security” much earlier than others, especially with its “comprehensive national security concept” introduced in 2014.

Through this, China began to include many different areas, such as economics, technology, and society, under the term “national security”. This shows that China was ahead of other countries in broadening what counts as a national security issue.

China threatened additional measures if Trump went ahead with his pledge.

“Willful threats of high tariffs are not the right way to get along with China. China’s position on the trade war is consistent: we do not want it, but we are not afraid of it,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

“Should the US persist in its course, China will resolutely take corresponding measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” the statement said.

What trade measures has the US taken against China in recent history?

2025: Trump unleashes tariff war

A month after taking office for his second term, Trump signed an executive order imposing a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China, citing a trade deficit in favour of China. In this order, he also imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada. China levied countermeasures, imposing duties on US products in retaliation.

In March, the US president doubled the tariff on all Chinese products to 20 percent as of March 4. China imposed a 15 percent tariff on a range of US farm exports in retaliation; these took effect on March 10.

Trump announced his “reciprocal tariffs,” imposing a 34 percent tariff on Chinese products. China retaliated, also announcing a 34 percent tariff on US products. This was the first time China announced export controls on rare earths.

Hours after the reciprocal tariffs went into effect, Trump paused them for all his tariff targets except China. The US and China continued to hike tit-for-tat levies on each other.

Trump slapped 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports, prompting China to hit back with 125 percent tariffs. Washington and Beijing later cut tariffs to 30 percent and 10 percent, respectively, in May, then agreed to a 90-day truce in August for trade talks. The truce has been extended twice.

December 2024: The microchip controls are tightened

In December 2024, Trump’s predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, tightened controls on the sale of microchips first introduced on October 2022.

Under the new controls, 140 companies from China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore were added to a list of restricted entities. The US also banned more advanced chip-making equipment to certain countries. Even products manufactured abroad with US technology were restricted.

April 2024: Biden signs the TikTok ban

Biden signed a bill into law that would ban TikTok unless it was sold to a non-Chinese buyer within a year. The US government alleged that TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance was linked to the Chinese government, making the app a threat to national security.

ByteDance sued the US federal government over this bill in May 2024.

In September this year, Trump announced that a deal was finalised to find a new owner of TikTok.

October 2023: Biden introduces more restrictions on chips

In October 2023, Biden restricted US exports of advanced computer chips, especially those made by Nvidia, to China and other countries.

The goal of this measure was to limit China’s access to “advanced semiconductors that could fuel breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and sophisticated computers that are critical to [Chinese] military applications,” Gina Raimondo, who was secretary of the US Department of Commerce during the Biden administration, told reporters.

Prior to this, Biden signed an executive order in August 2023, creating a programme that limits US investments in certain high-tech areas, including semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence, in countries deemed to be a security risk, like China.

October 2022: Biden restricts Chinese access to semiconductors

Biden restricted China’s access to US semiconductors in October 2022. The rules further expanded restrictions on chipmaking tools to include industries that support the semiconductor supply chain, blocking both access to American expertise and the essential components used in manufacturing the tools that produce microchips.

Semiconductors are used in the manufacturing of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The US government placed these restrictions back then to limit China’s ability to acquire the ability to produce semiconductors and advance in the technological race.

The restrictions made it compulsory for entities within China to apply for licences to acquire American semiconductors. Analysis by the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace described these licences as “hard to get” back then.

Recently, some US lawmakers are calling for even more restrictions, warning that China could quickly reverse-engineer advanced semiconductor technologies on its own, outpace the US in the sector, and gain a military edge.

May 2020: Trump cracks down on Huawei

In May 2020, the US Bureau of Industry and Security intensified rules to stop Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, from using American technology and software to design and make semiconductors in other countries.

The new rules said that semiconductors are designed for Huawei using US technology or equipment, anywhere in the world, would need US government approval before being sent to Huawei.

May 2019: Trump bans Huawei

Trump signed an executive order blocking Chinese telecommunications companies like Huawei from selling equipment in the US. The Shenzhen-based Huawei is the world’s largest provider of 5G networks, according to analysis by the New York City-based think tank the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Under this order, Huawei and 114 related entities were added to a list that requires US companies to get special permission (a licence) before selling certain technologies to them.

The rationale behind this order was the allegation that Huawei threatened US national security, had stolen intellectual property and could commit cyber espionage. Some US lawmakers alleged that the Chinese government was using Huawei to spy on Americans. The US did not publicise any evidence to back these allegations.

Other Western countries had also cooperated with the US.

March 2018: Trump imposes tariffs on China

During his first administration, Trump imposed sweeping 25 percent tariffs on Chinese goods worth as much as $60bn. In June of 2018, Trump announced more tariffs.

China retaliated by imposing tariffs on US products. Beijing deemed Trump’s trade policies “trade bullyism practices”, according to an official white paper, as reported by Xinhua news agency.

In September 2018, Trump issued another round of 10 percent tariffs on Chinese products, which were hiked to 25 percent in May 2019.

During the Obama administration (2009-2017)

In 2011, during US President Barack Obama’s tenure, the US-China trade deficit reached an all-time high of $295.5bn, up from $273.1bn in the previous year.

In March 2012, the US, European Union, and Japan formally complained to China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) about China’s limits on selling rare earth metals to other countries. This move was deemed “rash and unfair” by China.

In its ruling, the world trade body said China’s export restraints were breaching the WTO rules.

In 2014, the US indicted five Chinese nationals with alleged ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army. They were charged with stealing trade technology from American companies.

What’s next for the US-China trade war?

Trump and Xi are expected to meet in South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which is set to begin on October 31.

But the latest trade dispute has clouded the Xi-Trump meeting.

On Sunday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, downplaying the threat: “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”

In an interview with Fox Business Network on Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “President Trump said that the tariffs would not go into effect until November 1. He will be meeting with [Communist] Party Chair Xi in [South] Korea. I believe that meeting will still be on.”

When it comes to which of the two players is more affected by the trade war, Kewalramani said that he thinks “what matters is who is willing to bear greater pain, endure greater cost”.

“This is the crucial question. I would wager that Beijing is probably better placed because Washington has alienated allies and partners with its policies since January. But then, China’s growing export controls are not simply aimed at the US. They impact every country. So Beijing has not also endeared itself to anyone,” Kewalramani said, pointing out how Trump’s tariffs and China’s rare earth restrictions target multiple countries.

“The ones affected the most are countries caught in the midst of great power competition.”

On Sunday, US VP Vance told Fox News about China: “If they respond in a highly aggressive manner, I guarantee you, the president of the United States has far more cards than the People’s Republic of China.”

Kewalramani said that so far, Beijing has been more organised, prepared and strategic than the US in its policies.

Last week, a ceasefire was announced after two years of genocide in Gaza. The bombs have stopped falling, but the devastation remains. The majority of homes, schools, hospitals, universities, factories, and commercial buildings have been reduced to rubble. From above, Gaza looks like a grey desert of rubble, its vibrant urban spaces reduced to ghost towns, its lush agricultural land and greenery wiped out.

The occupier’s aim was not only to render the Palestinians of Gaza homeless but also unable to provide for themselves. Uprooting the dispossessed and impoverished, those who have lost their connection to the land, is of course much easier.

This was the goal when Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered my family’s plot of land in the eastern part of Maghazi refugee camp and uprooted 55 olive trees, 10 palms and five fig trees.

This plot of land was offered to my refugee grandfather, Ali Alsaloul, by its original owner as a place to shelter in during the Nakba of 1948. Ali, his wife, Ghalia, and their children had just fled their village, al-Maghar, as Zionist forces advanced on it. Al-Maghar, like Gaza today, was reduced to rubble; the Zionists who perpetrated the crime completed the erasure by establishing a national park on its ruins – “Mrar Hills National Park”.

Ali was a farmer and so were his ancestors; his livelihood had always come from the land. So when he settled in the new location, he was quick to plant it with olive trees, palms, figs and prickly pears. He built his house there and raised my father, uncles and aunts. My grandfather eventually bought the land from its generous owner, by paying in installments over many years. Thus, my family came into the possession of 2,000 square metres (half an acre) of land.

Although my father and his siblings married and moved out of their family home, this plot of land remained a favourite place to go, especially for me.

It was just two kilometres away from our house in Maghazi refugee camp. I enjoyed doing the 30-minute walk, part of which went through a complete “jungle”: a stretch of green populated with clover, sycamore, jujube and olive trees, colourful birds, foxes, leashed and unleashed dogs and many beehives.

Every autumn, in October, when the olive picking season began, my cousins, friends and I would gather to collect the olives. It was an occasion that brought us closer together. We would get the olives pressed and get 500 litres (130 gallons) of olive oil from the harvest. The figs and dates were made into jams to have for breakfast or for suhoor during Ramadan.

The rest of the year, I would often meet my friends Ibrahim and Mohammed between the olive trees. We would light a small fire and make a kettle of tea to enjoy under the moonlight, while we talked.

When the war started in 2023, our land became a dangerous place to go. The farms and olive groves around it were often bombed. Our plot was also hit twice at the beginning of the war. As a result, we could not harvest the olives in 2023 and then again in 2024.

When the famine took hold of Gaza in the summer, we started sneaking into the plot to get some fruit and some firewood for cooking, since a kilo of that cost $2. We knew that Israeli tanks might storm in at any moment, but we took the risk anyway.

Seven families – we, friends and neighbours – benefited from the fruit and wood of that land.

One day in late August, a friend of mine called me with a terrible rumour he had heard: the Israeli tanks and bulldozers had advanced into the eastern part of Maghazi and levelled it all, uprooting trees and burying them. I gasped; our lifeline was gone.

Days later, the rumour was confirmed. The Israeli army had uprooted more than 600 trees in the area, mostly olive trees. Those who had fled from the area shared what they had seen. What was once a lush green stretch of land had been bulldozed into a yellow, lifeless desert.

Earlier in August, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that 98.5 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged or made inaccessible. I guess the destruction of our plot shrank that 1.5 percent remaining land even further.

As Israel was completing the erasure of Palestinian agricultural land, it started allowing commercial but not aid trucks into Gaza. The markets were flooded with products with packaging covered in Hebrew.

Israel was starving us, destroying our ability to grow our own food, and then making us buy their products at exorbitant prices.

Ninety percent of people in Gaza are unemployed and can’t afford to buy an Israeli egg for $5 or a kilo of dates for $13. It was yet another genocidal strategy that forced the two million starving Palestinians in Gaza to choose between two horrible options: dying from hunger or paying to support the Israeli economy.

Now, aid is finally supposed to start coming into Gaza under the ceasefire agreement. This may be a relief to many starving Palestinians, but it is not a solution. Israel has rendered us fully dependent on aid, and it is the sole power that determines if, when and how much of it enters Gaza. Per the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 100 percent of Palestinians in Gaza experience some level of food insecurity.

Much of Gaza’s agricultural land remains out of reach, as Israel has withdrawn from just a part of the Gaza Strip. My family will have to wait for the implementation of the third phase of the ceasefire deal – if Israel agrees to implement it at all – to see the Israeli army withdraw to the buffer zone and regain access our land.

We have now lost our land twice. Once in 1948 and now again in 2025. Israel wants to repeat history and dispossess us again. It must not be allowed to convert more Palestinian land into buffer zones and national parks.

Getting back our land, rehabilitating and planting it is crucial not just for our survival, but also for maintaining our connection to the land. We must resist uprooting.