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As the World Medical Association (WMA) prepares to convene its general assembly in Rotterdam, the Netherlands this October, mounting international pressure has emerged calling for the suspension of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) from the global medical body, driven by a grassroots petition that has gathered more than 1,300 signatures from medical professionals and health organizations worldwide.

Organized by a coalition of global health advocacy groups — including The People’s Health Movement, Dutch-based Doctors for Gaza (Artsen voor Gaza), and the health division of Jewish Voice for Peace — the petition accuses the IMA of failing to uphold fundamental medical ethical principles enshrined in the WMA’s own Geneva and Tokyo Declarations. The document further alleges that the IMA is complicit in what signatories call widespread violations of medical neutrality and international human rights carried out by the Israeli government and military.

Beyond its core accusations regarding ethical failures, the petition outlines multiple specific grievances against the IMA. It documents that Israeli military forces have launched targeted attacks on healthcare infrastructure across Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran, resulting in the death of health workers, arbitrary detention of medical staff, and systemic obstruction of care delivery. Signatories also argue that over the past three decades, Israeli medical professionals have been complicit in inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, through their consistent refusal to document or investigate documented violations of medical ethics in detention facilities. The petition adds that decades of Israeli occupation and what signatories term apartheid policies have left Palestinian populations with drastically inferior access to health services compared to Israeli citizens.

In a particularly pointed allegation, the petition argues that the IMA has not taken any public stance against the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, nor against the near-total destruction of Gaza’s already fragile healthcare system. In fact, the petition claims that by publicly endorsing a 2023 statement signed by 80 Israeli doctors that openly called for the bombing of Gaza’s hospitals, the IMA effectively gave institutional approval to actions that constitute genocide. Signatories point to two prominent national medical bodies — the South African Medical Association and the British Medical Association — that have already cut formal ties with the IMA, and call on the WMA to follow this same path ahead of its October general assembly.

The accusations gained broader visibility after the leading medical journal *The Lancet* published an analysis of the petition in recent days. The journal’s reporting confirmed that the IMA has failed to release any public statement that condemns Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health system, criticizes Israeli military conduct during the ongoing conflict, calls for an immediate ceasefire, or acknowledges United Nations reports warning of ongoing genocide against Palestinians.

In its official response to *The Lancet*, the IMA rejected all accusations, asserting that its members consistently adhere to global medical ethical standards. The organization characterized the claims against it as “at worst, lies and at best, highly contested allegations presented as fact.” It further argued that the call for expulsion incorrectly conflates the actions of a sovereign government with an independent national medical association, warning that this sets a “extremely dangerous precedent” for global medical collaboration.

For its part, the WMA has also pushed back against the suspension call, telling *The Lancet* that removing the IMA would not advance the goals of peace, improved access to healthcare, or the protection of human rights globally. Instead, the global body argued that suspension would undermine decades of cross-border scientific collaboration, weaken open international medical dialogue, and create a harmful precedent that allows political pressure campaigns to isolate health care workers solely on the basis of their nationality.

For 32-year-old Jamal Abu Sukran and his three young children, any sense of stability has remained out of reach amid the continuous cycle of upheaval that has defined their lives since the outbreak of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. The family’s latest forced displacement marked their 25th move, triggered by Israel’s June announcement that it would expand its so-called ‘yellow line’ zone of control, now swallowing 70 percent of the blockaded Palestinian enclave.

Even with a formal ceasefire nominally in effect since last October, Israel has steadily tightened its stranglehold over Gaza’s 1.8 million remaining civilian residents, squeezing them into a shrinking sliver of habitable territory. Abu Sukran first lost his original home in Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya neighborhood when an Israeli airstrike reduced the structure to rubble in the opening days of the war. He took shelter in a nearby makeshift tent, but has been forced to relocate again and again, moving from one overcrowded displacement camp to another as Israeli territorial expansion progresses.

The yellow line was originally framed as a temporary Israeli-held buffer zone under the first phase of the October ceasefire agreement. But Israel has refused to withdraw from the area, blocking implementation of the deal’s second phase that requires a full pullback. Abu Sukran told Middle East Eye that hostilities never actually ceased even after the truce was announced. ‘Even after the ceasefire, the shooting and shelling never stopped,’ he said. ‘Life [in the displaced camps] was unbearable. We used to wait for the gunfire to stop just to go to the toilet.’

Abu Sukran explained that gunfire breaks out as a rule each morning, coming both from Israeli military positions and from local Palestinian collaborator groups. Displaced civilian communities, he added, are often directly targeted by fire. Initially, his post-ceasefire temporary home sat outside the yellow line, but eventually Israel’s expansion pushed the new boundary, called the ‘orange line’, to include his plot of land. ‘It was terrifying,’ he recalled. ‘There were random shootings, stray dogs, rats and shells everywhere. Nothing was left but rubble.’

The same story of repeated displacement plays out across the enclave for 68-year-old Nabil Abu Armanah and his extended family. After Israeli bombardment destroyed their first home in Rafah, they set up a makeshift tent on the ruins of their second property. They were forced to flee once again amid ongoing gunfire, routine Israeli military harassment, and the advance of Israeli tanks that came within 700 meters of the yellow line. When Abu Armanah recently returned to survey his land, he found the newly expanded yellow line cuts directly through his property.

‘I was hoping to return home soon, but now we are homeless. The land means everything to me,’ Abu Armanah said in an interview. ‘It’s extremely dangerous there now. Everything is gone. Nothing remains.’ He added, his voice shaking: ‘These are barbaric actions. We are innocent people. All we want is to live with dignity. I have lived through countless Israeli wars, from the 1967 war until today. They have destroyed everything I built throughout my lifetime.’

Multiple on-the-ground and expert accounts point to a deliberate Israeli strategy of making all territory inside the yellow line permanently uninhabitable for Palestinian residents. Since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israeli bulldozers and demolition crews have worked continuously to raze standing structures to the ground, clearing entire neighborhoods. Senior Israeli government officials, including far-right Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have openly stated their goal of leveling Palestinian land to push residents to leave the enclave ‘voluntarily’.

Political analyst Abdel Nasser Abu Aoun told Middle East Eye that Israel is leveraging the yellow line framework as a deliberate media narrative to legitimize the reoccupation of large swathes of Gaza. While framing the expansion as a security measure, the Israeli government is implementing a scorched-earth policy designed to depopulate captured areas, demolish civilian infrastructure, and commit war crimes, Abu Aoun argued.

By incrementally expanding the yellow line and introducing the new orange line zone of control, Israel effectively annexes more Gaza territory piece by piece. Abu Aoun documented that Israeli forces have even built military observation towers on the site of ancient Palestinian cemeteries, positions that overlook the tents of displaced Palestinians who can see their destroyed ancestral lands from their makeshift shelters. ‘This is one of Israel’s methods of psychological warfare,’ he said. ‘The objective is to punish Palestinians.’

Abu Aoun added that Israel’s end goal appears to be forcing all displaced residents into the small al-Mawasi coastal zone, even though existing infrastructure there is already severely damaged and incapable of supporting a massive influx of people. The overcrowding, he warned, creates a high risk of long-term humanitarian and environmental collapse in the enclave. ‘Israel is proving to the world that it respects neither agreements, mediators nor international law,’ he said. ‘It only understands the law of the jungle.’

The territorial expansion has also triggered a crippling public health and infrastructure crisis across Gaza. Maher Salem, general director of planning and investment at Gaza municipality, told Middle East Eye that roughly 35 percent of Gaza City’s clean water sources have been lost after falling inside the expanded yellow line and being destroyed by Israeli forces. Israel has cut the volume of water entering Gaza from 20,000 cubic meters per day to just 12,000 cubic meters – water that is already paid for by the Palestinian Authority. The cuts have left the average Gaza resident with just 10 liters of clean water per person per day, far below the minimum international standard for basic needs.

Salem also confirmed that Israel destroyed the main desalination plant in the Sudaniya coastal area, which previously produced 10,000 cubic meters of clean drinking water daily. Approximately 150 kilometers of water distribution networks, along with sewage pumps and critical sanitation infrastructure across Gaza City, have also been destroyed in military operations. In addition, Israel has blocked access to Gaza’s main landfill sites, which are located inside the yellow line near the border, forcing municipal authorities to store mounting volumes of waste in residential neighborhoods. To date, an estimated 400,000 cubic meters of uncollected garbage have accumulated across Gaza City, creating what Salem called a major environmental and public health catastrophe.

United Nations data from April underscores the severity of the crisis: more than 80 percent of the 1,600 displacement camps across Gaza report frequent rodent and pest infestations, which have fueled widespread disease outbreaks and rising rates of skin infections and rashes among vulnerable displaced populations.

On a Monday morning just moments after departing the runway at Edwards Air Force Base, located in Southern California’s Mojave Desert roughly 100 miles north of Los Angeles, a U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber crashed and ignited a large blaze, killing all eight people on board, military officials confirmed. The crash occurred at approximately 11:20 a.m. during what was scheduled to be a routine test flight.

Aerial footage captured in the immediate aftermath of the incident shows the aircraft was almost completely destroyed in the impact and subsequent fire. Large plumes of thick black smoke rose from a wide stretch of charred desert terrain adjacent to the main runway, where dozens of emergency response vehicles gathered to contain the blaze. Among the eight victims were both uniformed U.S. military personnel and civilian government contractors working on the flight.

Colonel James Hayes, deputy commander of the base’s 412th Test Wing, confirmed during an official press briefing that after reviewing crash site footage, investigators confirmed there were no survivors. “We lost eight great Americans,” Hayes stated, noting that military teams were in the process of notifying next-of-kin for all those killed.

The cause of the crash remains undetermined as of the initial briefing, and Hayes confirmed that a full, thorough investigation could take as long as six months to reach a final conclusion. What is publicly confirmed is that the bomber was supporting a U.S. Air Force B-52 radar modernization initiative at the time of the flight. Back in 2025, the service announced Boeing had delivered a B-52 fitted with a new modernized Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar to Edwards for testing, replacing the bomber fleet’s decades-old outdated radar technology to improve operational efficacy. Test teams were scheduled to conduct an entire year of ground and flight assessments throughout 2026 to collect data that will inform a final production decision for the upgrade program. Military officials have not yet confirmed whether the crashed bomber was the same aircraft that received the new radar system in 2025.

Edwards Air Force Base, a historic facility carved into the Mojave Desert, is the primary hub for the U.S. Air Force’s aircraft and weapons system test and development operations. The 412th Test Wing, which oversees base operations, is responsible for developmental testing of all Air Force aircraft, weapons platforms, software and components both before they are acquired by the service and throughout their entire operational service life. The site holds landmark aviation history: it was at Edwards that legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947, reaching a speed of Mach 1.05.

In the hours after the crash, the base airfield was closed to all traffic, with all inbound flights diverted to alternate facilities. By late Monday afternoon, the airfield reopened to authorized base personnel, though non-essential public visitor access remained suspended while emergency crews completed extinguishing and cleanup operations.

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former crash investigator for both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, offered an early preliminary assessment of the crash. The fact that the bomber went down immediately after takeoff, without gaining altitude or traveling far from the runway, leads Guzzetti to suspect a critical flight control malfunction as a potential cause.

He outlined three plausible scenarios: controls that were improperly configured after recent maintenance, a catastrophic engine failure, or the failure of a new piece of equipment that was undergoing testing on the flight. “I think it was definitely a controllability issue. Now, whether that was tied to an engine failure, a flight control failure, or some new testing device failure, I’m not sure,” Guzzetti explained.

He added that flight test operations always carry greater inherent risk than standard operational flights, which is why such missions rely on specially trained test personnel and strict safety protocols. Even though the B-52 has been in continuous U.S. Air Force service for more than 70 years, integrating and testing new technology on the legacy airframe can introduce unforeseen challenges.

The report featured contributions from multiple AP journalists across the country, with Toropi reporting from Washington D.C., AP Transportation Writer Josh Funk contributing from Omaha, Nebraska, and AP reporter Hallie Golden adding reporting from Seattle.

An exclusive investigation by Middle East Eye (MEE) has uncovered new details confirming that multiple real estate firms openly advertised properties located in illegal Israeli settlements across occupied Palestinian territories during a major Israeli real estate expo held in London on Sunday. The event, hosted at Edgware United Synagogue, unfolded against a backdrop of growing political pressure, public controversy, and heated clashes between opposing demonstration groups outside the venue.

Weeks ahead of the expo, MEE first exposed the deep ties between participating firms and illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In the lead-up to Sunday’s gathering, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced Friday that he had conferred with the Metropolitan Police regarding the event, confirming that any claims of criminal activity linked to the potential unlawful sale of settlement property would be fully reviewed for formal investigation. Over 100 UK Members of Parliament also signed an open letter to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper last week urging the event’s immediate cancellation. The parliamentarians argued that permitting the expo to proceed would not only contradict existing UK government guidance on economic activity tied to illegal settlements, but also run counter to the UK’s binding obligations under international law. This call aligned with a recent UK government statement explicitly warning British businesses against engaging in any economic or financial activity connected to illegal Israeli settlements.

Despite organizers’ previous public claims to Jewish News that “all exhibitors, without exception, will provide information about properties and projects within the Green Line” — the de facto border of Israel pre-1967 — MEE’s on-site reporting from Sunday directly contradicts this denial. Multiple participating firms featured settlement properties in their promotional materials at the event. Jerusalem Real Estate (JRE) listed developments in French Hill and Ramat Eshkol, both illegal settlements established in occupied East Jerusalem, marketing the projects as “premium” offerings in Jerusalem’s most desirable “Anglo neighbourhoods” for international buyers. Another developer, Harey Zahav, promoted plots in Kfar Eldad, an illegal settlement located south of Bethlehem, and Teneh Omarim, a second unauthorized settlement near Hebron. Leading Israeli agency Tivuch Shelly advertised a new residential project in the large West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adunim, billing the development as just 10 minutes from central Jerusalem and highlighting its established Anglo community, top-tier schools, and even available resale units with private swimming pools. Israeli conglomerate Africa Israel, which has a long track record of developing projects in illegal settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, advertised its Soho Jerusalem development in West Jerusalem at the expo. Additionally, construction firm Shapir — which is explicitly named on the United Nations Human Rights Office’s official registry of companies operating in illegal Israeli settlements — was also promoted as a participant at the event.

Outside the synagogue venue, the event drew a large protest organized by a coalition of activist groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, who gathered to oppose the marketing of illegally occupied Palestinian land. Counter-protesters in support of Israel confronted the demonstrators, with footage capturing verbal harassment and threats against the pro-Palestinian activists. Counter-protesters were recorded chanting “there is no Palestine, we flattened it”, and even children among the pro-Israel crowd were heard shouting misogynistic slurs at pro-Palestinian campaigners. Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, a journalist and activist who documents Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, was present at the London protest and described the chaotic confrontation as eerily familiar to violence he has witnessed firsthand in occupied territory. “We are surrounded by a bunch of Zionists who are counter-protesting and attacking people. A bunch of Palestinian activists were attacked by the Zionists and then got arrested,” Khrzhanovskiy told MEE. “This is very reminiscent of everything that I’ve seen in the West Bank… I feel like I’ve been here before.”

MEE has now shared its full findings of illegal property advertising with the Mayor of London’s office and the Metropolitan Police, and has formally requested comment on the next steps for assessment. Outlets have also reached out to the event’s organizers for a response to the new evidence, who previously dismissed all prior allegations as “ridiculous” and claimed accusations were motivated by anti-Israeli sentiment and support for terrorism. MEE, an independent news outlet focused on coverage of the Middle East and North Africa, continues to await responses from relevant authorities and event organizers.