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More than two years into Sudan’s devastating civil conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), diplomatic overtures are stirring tentative movement between the SAF-aligned transitional government and the United Arab Emirates, a major backer of the RSF. In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye, Burhan laid out clear preconditions for any formal dialogue with Abu Dhabi: the UAE must immediately end its military and logistical backing for the RSF, honor Sudan’s territorial sovereignty, and conduct all negotiations on terms set by Khartoum’s recognized military leadership.

MEE can exclusively confirm that Burhan’s high-profile visit to Bahrain last week was not a routine diplomatic stop: it formed the core of a deliberate mediation push by Manama, which leverages its long-standing close political ties to Abu Dhabi to act as a trusted intermediary between the Sudanese government and Emirati officials. Multiple sources, including a senior Sudanese intelligence official and four European diplomatic figures with direct knowledge of the talks, confirm that while efforts to open a sustained communication channel remain ongoing, they have yet to yield any tangible breakthrough.

Burhan’s recent Gulf tour, which also included stops in Oman and Saudi Arabia, comes amid growing cautious optimism among SAF leadership based in Port Sudan that the UAE could eventually be pressured to curb or end its support for the RSF, a force that has faced widespread international accusations of perpetrating genocide in the Darfur region. This tentative optimism has been fueled in large part by a wave of high-profile defections from the RSF in recent months, with every departing senior commander publicly corroborating claims of ongoing Emirati military and financial support for the paramilitary group.

Even as new mediation efforts get underway, however, veteran regional diplomats warn that there is little sign Abu Dhabi is prepared to alter its core stance in the near term. This comes after Burhan launched a rare public rebuke of both the UAE and Ethiopia in recent weeks over their ongoing backing of the RSF. MEE previously confirmed that the RSF operates from an Ethiopian army base, plunging already fraught relations between Khartoum and Addis Ababa to a new low, with the UAE also implicated in channeling weapons to the RSF through Ethiopian territory.

Abu Dhabi has repeatedly rejected all accusations of support for the RSF, dismissing claims from the Sudanese government as “unfounded accusations and deliberate propaganda.” In an official statement to MEE, the Emirati foreign ministry claimed the allegations were a deliberate deflection tactic by the SAF, designed to shift blame for the continuation of the war away from military leadership and obstruct genuine peace efforts.

This is not the first attempt to open direct dialogue between Burhan’s leadership and the UAE. Over the past three years, multiple initiatives have been launched to bridge the divide, with only rare limited successes. The most recent successful contact came in July 2024, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed mediated a direct phone call between Burhan and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. A separate effort was launched during indirect Quad mechanism talks between the SAF and RSF in Washington last year: the Quad, which includes the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, arranged a closed-door face-to-face meeting between Sudanese military delegates and senior Emirati officials to de-escalate tensions. But the talks collapsed within minutes, far ahead of the scheduled one-hour timeline.

According to three sources briefed on the collapsed meeting, the SAF delegation arrived with documented evidence of Emirati military and logistical support for the RSF, a set of accusations Abu Dhabi continues to publicly deny. Led by UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shakhboot bin Nahyan Al Nahyan, the Emirati delegation cut the discussion short after the Sudanese side focused exclusively on the support allegations. “The atmosphere became tense very quickly,” one participating diplomat recalled. “The Sudanese side focused almost entirely on accusations regarding Emirati support for the RSF, and the Emiratis saw no basis for continuing the discussion.”

Senior regional figures say the collapse of that meeting reflects a deeper, persistent rift: Abu Dhabi remains deeply distrustful of Burhan’s leadership, clinging to the perception that the SAF is heavily influenced by Islamist political networks and has grown increasingly aligned with Iran, a regional rival of the UAE. Burhan’s recent Gulf tour was in part designed to counter this narrative, with multiple stops in key Gulf Cooperation Council states intended to signal that his administration does not side with Tehran in regional tensions.

One senior regional diplomat explained that broader geopolitical alignments are the primary driver of the UAE’s intransigence, noting that meaningful change will only come if external powers pressure Abu Dhabi to alter its course. “Without a major change in the approach taken by Washington and Tel Aviv towards the region, there is unlikely to be enough pressure on Abu Dhabi to reconsider its current strategy in Sudan,” the source said. Both the U.S. and Israel maintain close strategic alliances with the UAE, even after a recent public disagreement when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office unilaterally revealed a “secret meeting” between Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed weeks after Israel launched its war on Iran.

Sudan’s April 2023 outbreak of conflict has long since evolved from an internal power struggle into a proxy battleground, with competing regional powers including Gulf states, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Turkey backing rival factions to advance their own strategic interests. Despite repeated public denials from Abu Dhabi, a growing body of open-source evidence – including testimony from defected RSF commanders, satellite imagery, flight tracking data, weapons serial numbers, and on-the-battlefield evidence – confirms ongoing Emirati support for the RSF. Emirati academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, who has close ties to Abu Dhabi’s leadership, has pushed back on international criticism, arguing that the RSF receives support from multiple regional states including Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chad, and that the UAE is being unfairly singled out.

The four diplomatic sources interviewed by MEE uniformly agree that there is currently no unified consensus among international and regional actors on a path to end the war, with deep divisions emerging within the Quad mediation framework that have left each member pursuing its own separate interests inside Sudan. “The problem is that everyone officially wants peace, but they all imagine a different Sudan after the war,” one European diplomat explained. “That makes coordinated pressure almost impossible.”

Another senior diplomatic source assessed the current fragmented diplomatic landscape as unlikely to produce any major breakthrough before the final quarter of 2025, an assessment that aligns with recent comments from U.S. Special Envoy for Africa and Arab countries Massad Boulos, who openly acknowledged the severe challenges of bringing Sudan’s warring factions to the negotiating table.

Parallel to Bahrain’s mediation efforts, Saudi Arabia has recently ramped up its own diplomatic engagement in Sudan, seeking to counter growing Emirati influence over both civilian and military actors in the country. According to a senior regional diplomat and a Sudanese political figure with direct knowledge of Riyadh’s recent outreach, Saudi officials have quietly expanded contacts with Sudanese civilian political groups over the past several months, hosting a series of closed-door meetings since Ramadan that included members of the Sumoud civilian coalition led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (currently based in the UAE) and delegates from the Democratic Bloc.

These meetings are part of a broader Saudi strategy to build political leverage inside Sudan comparable to the extensive influence the UAE has cultivated across sections of Sudan’s civilian political sphere since the war began. Riyadh is also working to build a broad civilian political coalition aligned with Burhan’s SAF-aligned administration. One Sudanese political figure familiar with the discussions said Saudi officials have privately expressed regret over their approach to Sudan following the 2019 popular uprising that toppled long-time ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir, acknowledging that Riyadh and other Gulf states overrelied on Emirati guidance when backing the country’s post-revolution transitional military leadership.

“The Saudis increasingly believe that their previous approach helped deepen instability rather than contain it,” the source said. Today, Saudi officials are prioritizing the formation of a civilian-led governing structure, a position that came to the fore during recent debates over Burhan’s appointment of a new civilian prime minister. Multiple sources confirm that Riyadh pushed Burhan aggressively to appoint a civilian premier before he ultimately named Kamil Idris to the role. That push created public tensions with Cairo, which favors a slower, more deliberate transition process and is cautious about rapid restructuring of Sudan’s wartime government. “The Egyptians opposed the idea,” one diplomat confirmed. “But the Saudis pushed hard for Burhan to move ahead with appointing a civilian prime minister.”

The competing approaches taken by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt underscore the growing zero-sum competition among regional powers for influence over Sudan’s war and its uncertain post-conflict future. While all Gulf states continue to publicly voice support for diplomatic initiatives to end the conflict, diplomats privately acknowledge that competing strategic interests are the primary driver of their engagement with Sudan’s military and civilian factions.

For the immediate future, diplomats broadly agree that Bahrain’s indirect mediation is unlikely to produce a quick breakthrough between the SAF and the UAE. Even so, the resumption of backchannel contacts signals that despite high-profile public hostility between the two sides, lines of communication remain open behind closed doors, as regional powers continue to jockey for position in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more across Sudan.

A controversial new decision by Israeli authorities to cancel entry permits for dozens of senior administrative and religious staff at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque has escalated long-running tensions over control of one of the world’s most contested religious sites, multiple sources familiar with the policy confirmed to Middle East Eye.

The revocation, set to take effect in June 2026, will impact approximately 30 long-tenured employees of the Jerusalem-based Islamic Waqf, the Jordanian-appointed body tasked with administering the holy site under decades-old international governance agreements. The affected staff include high-ranking Waqf officials such as senior treasurer Ayyash Abu Ayyash, as well as mosque-based teachers who are administratively affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Education. The move will bar these employees from accessing the site they have managed for years.

Palestinian religious and political leaders have condemned the decision as the latest step in a systematic campaign to consolidate Israeli control over Al-Aqsa, reduce Palestinian and Islamic institutional influence at the site, and dismantle the long-standing status quo arrangement that has governed the compound for generations.

Ekrima Sabri, imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque and head of the Higher Islamic Council, framed the permit revocation as part of a sharp escalation of “unprecedented actions” by Israeli authorities in recent months. “Every action taken by the occupation authorities is intended to change the status quo and pave the way for imposing Israeli sovereignty over the mosque, while stripping the Islamic Waqf of its authority,” Sabri told Middle East Eye. “In the past, we used to say Al-Aqsa was in danger, but now we say Al-Aqsa faces multiple dangers, not just one,” he added.

Omar Rajoub, director of the media office for the Jerusalem Governorate, traced the recent wave of restrictions to the outbreak of US-Israeli military operations against Iran in February. During that conflict, Israeli forces implemented an unprecedented 40-day full closure of Al-Aqsa, one of the holiest sites in Islam. While the mosque reopened following a ceasefire in April, Rajoub said many of the emergency restrictions imposed during the closure have been made permanent.

These ongoing restrictions include a ban on Waqf staff carrying out routine maintenance work across the mosque’s courtyards, from pruning overgrown trees to clearing vegetation. The permit revocations announced this month are not an isolated measure, Rajoub emphasized: already this year, at least 30 other Waqf employees, plus six additional sheikhs and imams, have been denied entry or had their permit applications rejected. Israeli authorities have also expanded restrictions on general worshippers, barring more than 600 Palestinian worshippers from accessing the compound in 2025 alone, he said. “The entire status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque is rapidly deteriorating in favour of Israeli violations,” Rajoub added.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, located in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, sits on a plateau that is revered as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. For decades, the site has operated under an internationally recognized “status quo” agreement that designates Al-Aqsa as an exclusively Islamic holy site, with exclusive responsibility for access, worship rights, maintenance and daily management held by the Islamic Waqf.

In recent years, however, Israeli authorities have systematically eroded this arrangement and the Waqf’s governing authority. Most notably, Israeli police have allowed near-daily incursions into the compound by ultranationalist Jewish groups, who conduct Jewish prayer and religious rituals under armed police protection, a direct violation of the status quo agreement.

The permit revocation announcement comes amid a string of escalating provocative actions targeting the site in recent weeks. Earlier this week, Israeli cabinet ministers advanced a plan to seize privately owned Palestinian land near the Chain Gate (Bab al-Sila), one of the main entry points to the Al-Aqsa compound, to advance long-standing plans to Judaising the area around the site. Just days before that vote, dozens of Israeli ministers and members of parliament led a mass incursion into the Al-Aqsa compound, during which Israeli flags were raised, Jewish religious rituals were conducted, and one far-right lawmaker publicly called for the mosque to be demolished and replaced with a Jewish temple.

International law does not recognize Israel’s claim of sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, and the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits occupying powers from making permanent territorial changes or asserting sovereignty over territory captured in conflict.

In January 2022, after 900 days of detention in an Egyptian correctional facility, Ramy Shaath stepped onto French soil at Paris’ Roissy Airport. To secure his release, the Palestinian academic and long-time political organizer was forced to renounce his Egyptian citizenship, and was greeted on arrival by his French wife Celine Lebrun-Shaath and crowds of cheering supporters. The release came after intensive diplomatic pressure from then-French President Emmanuel Macron, who personally lobbied Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to secure Shaath’s freedom. “I share the relief of his wife,” Macron wrote at the time. “Thank you to everyone who has played a positive role in this happy outcome.”

Four years later, that warm welcome has curdled into a formal deportation order, framing Shaath as a “serious threat to public order” in France. On Thursday, he is scheduled to appear before an advisory deportation committee in Nanterre, the western Paris suburb where he has resided since 2022, to review the government’s attempt to remove him from the country. While the committee’s ruling is non-binding and French authorities retain the power to act regardless of its outcome, the proceedings mark the latest escalation in a months-long campaign of administrative harassment targeting the prominent activist.

Born in the besieged Gaza Strip, Shaath argues that French and European law prohibit his deportation to any available destination. “They cannot send me back to Gaza; one, because it’s a war zone and because I am targeted by the Israelis,” he told Middle East Eye in an exclusive interview. “And in both cases, European law will not allow them to send me to Palestine. And of course, I know more Egyptians, but they cannot send me to Egypt.” While he acknowledges a remote possibility that authorities could resettle him in an unrelated third country – “so I could find myself in Liberia or Gambia” – he expects to instead be left in a permanent state of legal limbo, locked out from renewing his temporary residency, cut off from basic public services, and subjected to ongoing law enforcement surveillance.

The foundation for the deportation push is Shaath’s decades-long open advocacy for Palestinian rights and statehood. Before his detention in Egypt, he rose to prominence as a key organizer during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that ousted longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak, and served as the national coordinator for the Egyptian chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territory.

After arriving in France in 2022, Shaath was granted an initial one-year residence visa. When he applied for renewal in September 2023, shortly after Israel launched its large-scale military campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks, he received no official response. He has since filed 10 urgent legal appeals for residency renewal, all of which have gone unanswered. On April 30, he received formal notice at his Nanterre home that deportation proceedings had officially been opened against him.

Documents released by the Nanterre prefecture lay out the government’s justifications for the order, centered almost entirely on Shaath’s public comments and pro-Palestine organizing. The filing cites his long-standing connections to prominent Palestinian rights organizers in France, his public descriptions of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a “criminal occupation,” his open self-identification as an anti-Zionist, and his public support for a one-state solution that guarantees equal rights for all people living in historic Palestine.

Reacting to the prefecture’s claims, Shaath expressed sarcastic disbelief. “Oh my god, are you fucking serious? The French services cracked the biggest secret of my life! For 40 years I have not had one speech that I didn’t attack Zionism, and today you cracked my heart that I’ve been lying about – that I am anti-Zionist? Unbelievable.”

Other accusations in the filing, he says, are outright falsifications. Authorities cite one incident where he gave a “militaristic speech” while wearing military fatigues; Shaath notes that publicly available video of the event shows him sitting to deliver an academic lecture, wearing plain beige Uniqlo trousers. The filing also highlights a public comment where Shaath called on Iran to intervene to stop Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them women and children, and reduced most of the Gaza Strip to rubble. Shaath counters that he has also repeatedly called on France to deploy its military to intercept Israeli aircraft carrying out strikes on civilian targets in Gaza, a fact French officials have deliberately omitted from their filing.

“This is a McCarthyist attack that is racist, that is criminal, that is beyond the law to harass everybody who talks about Palestine,” he said.

Middle East Eye reached out to both the French Interior Ministry and the Nanterre prefecture for comment on the proceedings, but received no response ahead of publication.

Shaath’s case is far from isolated. Since the start of Israel’s Gaza war in October 2023, France has joined most other Western European nations in rolling out a widespread crackdown on pro-Palestine advocacy and protest. The crackdown has been particularly acute on university campuses, where student organizers, faculty, and labor unions have repeatedly warned of growing punitive pressure on anyone expressing public support for Palestinian rights. Peaceful demonstrations, public lectures, and campus occupations have been reclassified as illegal public disorder, leading to disciplinary proceedings, administrative fines, criminal charges, and in dozens of cases, permanent criminal records for participants.

Last month, the French parliament was scheduled to debate a controversial new bill that would introduce a range of new criminal penalties for public criticism of Israel, including criminalization of denials of Israel’s right to exist and criminal sanctions for public comparisons of Israeli policy to Nazi Germany. While the bill was ultimately pulled from the parliamentary calendar amid procedural disputes, the Macron administration has confirmed it intends to reintroduce identical legislation this summer. The proposed text would also expand the definition of terrorism-related offenses to include “implicit provocation,” a vague standard that legal experts warn would enable widespread crackdowns on anti-war and pro-Palestine speech.

Unlike many grassroots Palestinian rights organizers, Shaath comes from a prominent Palestinian political background: he is the son of Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian Authority prime minister and chief Palestinian negotiator, previously served as an advisor to iconic PLO leader Yasser Arafat, was a member of the Palestinian Authority’s official negotiation team with Israel, and has even been invited to deliver formal addresses to the French Senate and Foreign Ministry. Nanterre, his home city, named him an honorary citizen in 2021, before his release from Egyptian prison. None of these credentials have shielded him from the sweeping new crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.

In response to the deportation order, Shaath’s family, friends, and supporters announced a new public campaign last Sunday to block his removal, under the hashtag #FreeRamyShaath2. The name references the first international campaign that secured Shaath’s release from Egyptian prison between 2019 and 2022, when he was charged with “aiding a terrorist group in achieving its goals.” Crucially, the first campaign enjoyed formal support from the French political establishment; the second is a direct challenge to that same establishment’s current crackdown on Palestinian advocacy.

This is not the first time French authorities have targeted Shaath over his pro-Palestine speech. In November 2023, Laurent Nunez, then the prefect of Paris and now the French Interior Minister, referred Shaath to the French justice system on charges of “apology for terrorism,” based on a rally speech where he stated that “the Palestinian people, like all people under occupation, have the right to defend themselves and resist.” The case was ultimately dismissed by Paris prosecutors 11 months after it was opened.

Shaath, who explicitly says he opposes all forms of violence and racism, including antisemitism, argues that even when the baseless charges are thrown out, the administrative process itself is a form of punishment designed to force him to end his activism or leave the country voluntarily. “Yes, of course, if they continue this draconian decision against me and put me under house arrest… I will fight it, but I’m not going to spend my life in that condition. Eventually, probably, that might lead me to leave,” he said.

The deportation notice already includes a provision that would place Shaath under house arrest ahead of any final ruling, restrict his movement to his home municipality of Nanterre, and require him to check in “morning and evening” at the local police station. Shaath says he intends to exhaust every available legal avenue to fight the order, including taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

“I will not live under intimidation. If they insisted on being a banana republic, I will insist on taking the legal route,” he said. “They want to keep me, to stop talking about Gaza and Palestine. I’m not going to do that.”

Fresh firsthand accounts from serving Israeli military reservists have laid bare systemic widespread looting and deliberate destruction of civilian property by Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon, according to a new investigation published Wednesday by Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. One reservist, who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity, laid out the consistent pattern of operations his unit followed: after opening fire on residential homes to clear any suspected Hezbollah fighters and confirm the area was secure, the unofficial, and in many cases primary, mission of stealing civilian property would begin. The reservist described that stolen goods ranging from fine rugs and upholstered armchairs to motorbikes and household heaters were pulled from private homes, while local shops were completely stripped of high-value merchandise. Even basic supplies used at Israeli military outposts in the region, including hand soap, were stolen from Lebanese properties, he added. Stolen spoils were stockpiled at forward outposts to be carried back to Israel when soldiers completed their tours of duty, and troops frequently argued over who would claim the most valuable items. This new account comes amid a growing tide of public reports of large-scale looting that have emerged since Israel-Hezbollah fighting escalated in March, following the joint Israeli-U.S. military strike on Iran. The issue of rampant theft by Israeli troops is not new: just one month prior, Haaretz first reported that soldiers had stolen sofas, televisions, and motorbikes from southern Lebanese households, with senior army commanders largely ignoring the practice. Earlier this month, Israeli outlet Ynet also reported that top military leaders have been unable to curb the scale of the looting across southern Lebanon. In comments made to senior commanders at a military conference last month, Israeli Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir publicly condemned the practice, stating, “the phenomenon of looting, if it exists, is disgraceful and could stain the entire military.” He added, “If such incidents occurred, we will investigate them. I am not willing for us to become an army of looters.” Following Zamir’s remarks, Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 reported that the chief of staff had asked frontline commanders operating in Lebanon to sign a public letter pledging to crack down on looting. However, at least one senior commander refused to sign, telling the outlet that discipline problems within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) originate at the highest ranks of command. The reservist who spoke to Haaretz echoed this assessment, saying most senior commanders openly tolerated the looting. “The attitude was that there was no problem with looting as long as you didn’t get hurt. The higher command didn’t really try to stop us either,” he said. After initial reports of looting broke last month, the reservist said his own commanding officer ordered troops to halt theft – before entering local shops himself and smashing any remaining valuables so soldiers would have nothing left to steal. To date, no IDF soldiers have faced formal disciplinary action or punishment for participating in looting, the reservist confirmed. He added that some troops have even tried to justify the theft on religious grounds, while others argue that since most civilian properties were already slated for destruction, there was no reason to leave valuables intact. The reservist compared the IDF’s current approach to that of a historical Viking army, saying leadership allows widespread looting as a way to keep troops satisfied and willing to continue fighting. Israeli historian Adam Raz, who has extensively researched the looting of Palestinian property during the 1948 Nakba, noted last month that looting has been a consistent feature of every Israeli military campaign in the region. “What’s new is the total indifference,” Raz said. “The senior command turns a blind eye, the criminality continues, and the crime achieves its goals.” The findings from Haaretz’s latest investigation align with findings from international human rights groups. Last month, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on-the-ground reports from southern Lebanon confirm a clear, organized pattern of theft during Israeli military operations. The group documented that Israeli forces regularly raid civilian homes, rummage through personal belongings, and steal cash and private property, adding that the practice has become an official, unstated policy of the Israeli state and military. Euro-Med has also documented identical patterns of looting by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. In a separate incident from January, Israeli forces were reported to have stolen roughly 250 goats from Syrian territory and transferred the animals to Israeli settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank. Even after the United States-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was announced last month, cross-border clashes and military operations have continued uninterrupted. Data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that roughly 100,000 Lebanese civilians have fled their homes in recent weeks out of fear of incoming Israeli strikes. Official figures from the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health confirm that Israeli forces have killed at least 3,020 people since the latest military offensive began in March, including 824 civilian and combatant deaths that have occurred since the April 17 ceasefire was announced. For its part, Hezbollah has killed at least 21 Israeli soldiers since March, eight of whom have died since the ceasefire, the majority of them invading troops stationed inside Lebanese territory. The new Haaretz testimonies also reveal that targeting Hezbollah fighters was not always the primary mission for Israeli troops on the ground. A second reservist told the outlet that the IDF’s core objective in southern Lebanon is not countering militant activity, but the deliberate destruction of civilian homes. “There was no reason other than revenge,” the reservist stated. He described a pre-invasion speech delivered by a battalion commander as “a pagan ritual”, adding that he had heard identical inflammatory rhetoric during previous Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. “When we entered the village, there were no militants. The houses were empty,” he said. “There was no fighting there at all – only operations to flatten homes.” The reservist noted that this destructive mission has been the IDF’s core focus in the region for the past two years, joking that the Israel Defense Forces should be renamed the “Israel Defence Forces for house demolitions”. He confirmed that even in areas with no sign of militant activity, soldiers still entered empty civilian homes to search for valuables to steal. According to his account, residential homes, public schools, and local clinics are destroyed without any formal military justification. Much of the demolition work is carried out by private contractors, including extreme Israeli settlers, as well as Bedouin and Druze laborers. For religiously observant soldiers in his unit, the reservist added, destroying Lebanese civilian homes is viewed as a sacred, ultimate mission. He also recounted that whenever troops raised the prospect of returning to Israeli territory, the battalion commander would respond: “This is Israel too.”