Hundreds of civilians trapped for months in the war-ravaged Russian-occupied southern Ukrainian city of Oleshky have successfully completed the first leg of their long-awaited evacuation, landing in the Belarusian city of Gomel on Saturday morning ahead of their scheduled return to Ukrainian territory later the same day, confirmed senior Ukrainian officials and Belarusian state media. The high-stakes evacuation operation unfolded under a localized humanitarian ceasefire that went into effect across the broader Kherson frontline region on Tuesday, marking the first sustained multi-day period of calm in the area since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with the truce set to hold through the end of Sunday, November 1. For months, residents of Oleshky have faced catastrophic living conditions: cut off from consistent supplies of food, potable water, and electricity, many were forced to forage for and cook garden weeds to avoid starvation. Escape routes out of the city had been heavily mined and targeted by regular drone attacks, making any attempt to flee a near-suicidal risk; one resident who escaped three weeks prior recounted trekking 24 kilometers directly through active minefields to reach safety. The temporary ceasefire allowed demining teams to clear a safe exit path from the city, and local authorities granted residents a four-hour window to register for departure before a 25-bus convoy — fitted with dedicated ambulances to accommodate people with limited mobility, with total capacity for 750 people — departed Oleshky on Friday. The complex evacuation route required evacuees to first travel through Russian-held territory, onward to the southern Russian city of Anapa for charter flights to Gomel, as all bridges spanning the nearby Dnipro River have been destroyed and the surrounding riverbanks remain heavily mined and impassable. Notably, Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets traveled directly into Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory alongside his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova, departing from the Russian-controlled Crimean city of Armiansk to oversee the operation, marking the first visit by a senior Ukrainian official to occupied Ukrainian land since the full-scale war began. Lubinets clarified that his unprecedented cooperation with the Russian official was undertaken exclusively to save civilian lives, though the move has drawn criticism from segments of the Ukrainian public who view engagement with representatives of the occupying force as inappropriate given the massive civilian casualties and widespread destruction inflicted by Russian forces across the country. While several hundred residents have opted to remain in Oleshky despite the total collapse of local utilities and widespread structural damage, both Ukrainian and Russian authorities have pledged to deliver full humanitarian support to those who stay: Kyiv has committed to delivering all required aid, while Moscow announced it has stockpiled dozens of tonnes of supplies including food, medicine, hygiene kits, and generator fuel for remaining residents. Prior to the 2022 invasion, Oleshky was home to 24,000 people, and Ukrainian military positions are currently stationed just 5 kilometers outside the city limits. As of Saturday morning, the final of four charter flights carrying evacuees touched down at Gomel airport, and local Belarusian state news agency Belta confirmed that the convoy of evacuated Ukrainian citizens had departed the airport and was heading directly for the Ukrainian border, where they are set to be reunited with family members and receive post-evacuation support from Ukrainian authorities.
分类： world
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Suited and booted: How Joseph Kabila went from president to rebel leader
The political landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo, long defined by fleeting alliances and the persistent threat of armed power grabs, has been upended by a dramatic twist in the country’s decades-long history of shifting leadership. At 55, Joseph Kabila, who first rose to prominence as a rebel commander in the 1997 uprising that installed his father Laurent as head of state, then served 18 years as the country’s president, has reemerged as the leader of the newly formed Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN) – a coalition that includes the M23 rebel group he once fought against during his time in office.
Most notably, the man Kabila has publicly vowed to oust is none other than Félix Tshisekedi, the very politician he handpicked as his successor following the disputed 2018 elections, with whom he formed a power-sharing coalition after stepping down. The long-rumored alignment between Kabila and M23, whose forces seized swathes of eastern DR Congo including key urban hubs Goma and Bukavu in 2024, sent shockwaves across the vast, mineral-rich nation that spans two-thirds the landmass of Western Europe. Home to vast reserves of gold, diamonds, and critical battery and electronics minerals essential to the global clean energy supply chain, the DRC’s political instability carries far-reaching regional and global ripple effects.
The partnership delivers tangible benefits to both parties: for Kabila, it offers a viable pathway to claw back the political clout he lost after splitting from Tshisekedi’s administration in 2020, when the president moved to dismantle Kabila’s parliamentary majority. For M23, a movement whose rapid military gains have never translated to broad national legitimacy, Kabila brings the institutional experience, high-level political networks, and national name recognition of a former head of state. The alliance comes as Kabila faces a litany of personal pressures: he was sentenced to death in absentia for treason, and faces U.S. sanctions over allegations of past support for M23. Independent DRC policy analyst Henry-Pacifique Mayala noted that Kabila almost certainly secured concrete assurances from his new rebel allies before committing to the high-stakes gambit, as the M23’s hardened military strength grants him far greater leverage in any future negotiations with Kinshasa.
While M23’s operations have until now been concentrated 1,500 kilometers from the capital in the country’s eastern provinces, Kabila’s national networks raise the untested possibility that the long-simmering eastern conflict could spread to the rest of the country. That outcome remains far from guaranteed, however: Kabila, who took power in 2001 following his father’s mysterious assassination, was long viewed as an outsider in Kinshasa political circles, far more fluent in Swahili (the lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region) than the Lingala widely spoken in the capital. His father’s 1996 rebel column marched on foot across the entire country from the east to oust longtime autocrat Mobutu Sese Seko after seven months of campaigning, but few analysts suggest Kabila’s FRN is planning to replicate that exact military campaign.
Kabila has framed his campaign against Tshisekedi as a fight to defend the national constitution, invoking Section 64 of the DRC’s legal framework that enshrines citizens’ right to resist leaders who violate constitutional provisions. He has accused Tshisekedi of acting as a tyrant similar to Mobutu, ending the longstanding moratorium on the death penalty that was in place during his own presidency to intimidate political opponents, civilians, and military personnel, and pushing to amend the constitution to allow a third term in office. Notably, the established C64 opposition coalition that also campaigns against Tshisekedi’s rumored third term bid has rejected Kabila’s armed rebellion, announcing it will instead push for inclusive, direct talks with both Kabila and Tshisekedi to resolve the country’s overlapping security and political crises through peaceful dialogue.
Tshisekedi retains significant structural advantages, according to Richard Moncrieff, Great Lakes regional analyst for the International Crisis Group: he has robust U.S. government backing, control over most state financial resources, and command of the formal national political and military systems. Tshisekedi publicly denounced his former ally last week, stating Kabila’s move to lead a rebel group was definitive proof he had never loved the DRC or its people.
The rift between the two former allies stretches back to the aftermath of the 2018 elections: leaked results from Catholic Church election observers widely indicate opposition candidate Martin Fayulu won the vote, but a pre-negotiated power-sharing deal brokered by Kabila installed Tshisekedi as president, with Kabila’s bloc retaining control of parliament. Former national electoral commission head Corneille Nangaa, who officially declared Tshisekedi the winner and now serves as one of Kabila’s top deputies in the FRN, confirmed he helped draft that 2018 power-sharing agreement, though Tshisekedi has consistently maintained he won the election legitimately. The arrangement collapsed in late 2020, prompting Kabila to enter self-imposed exile in South Africa, where his criticism of Tshisekedi’s administration steadily intensified. He returned to DRC territory earlier in 2025, appearing in rebel-held Goma shortly before the treason conviction was handed down.
The emerging alliance also reshapes longstanding regional dynamics, particularly between DRC and Rwanda. For years, Kabila’s presidency saw fluctuating ties with Rwandan President Paul Kagame: Rwanda has long justified its repeated military interventions in eastern DRC by citing the presence of ethnic Hutu militias responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide on Congolese soil, and has long been widely accused of backing the M23 movement – allegations Kigali continues to deny despite overwhelming documentary evidence. Analysts note that the current alignment between Kabila and Kagame is one of pure convenience, not deep mutual trust: Kabila is focused on regaining national political power in the DRC, while Kagame prioritizes securing Rwanda’s border security and preserving Kigali’s strategic influence over eastern DRC. The partnership also allows Rwanda to deflect longstanding international criticism that it is meddling in DRC’s internal affairs, by framing M23 as part of a homegrown Congolese political movement led by a former national president.
Even before Kabila’s official appointment as FRN leader, the eastern DRC conflict showed no signs of abating, despite a U.S.-brokered peace deal signed by Tshisekedi and Kagame in Washington D.C. in November 2025. The broader U.S. strategic interest in the DRC’s critical mineral reserves has led Washington to side firmly with Tshisekedi, imposing sweeping sanctions on Rwandan officials and entities accused of prolonging the eastern conflict. National elections are currently scheduled for 2028, but Tshisekedi has repeatedly warned that ongoing fighting in the east could force a delay to the vote. Kabila has openly questioned whether elections alone can resolve the DRC’s deep-rooted political crises, arguing the country needs a full overhaul of its executive and legislative institutions rather than just electoral cycles. Regional security analyst Ovigwe Eguegu notes that ordinary Congolese citizens stand to lose the most from the standoff, as neither Kabila’s rebel movement nor Tshisekedi’s administration has presented a credible, actionable plan to deliver broad economic transformation for the country’s population, or end decades of pervasive instability in eastern provinces.
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‘Machinery of death’: Dock workers worldwide protest against arms shipments to Israel
Dozens of pro-Palestine activists launched a coordinated caravan demonstration early Friday at New Jersey’s Port of Elizabeth, timed to coincide with the global International Day of Action of Dockworkers, to condemn alleged complicity by shipping and logistics firms in what they describe as the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Many participants displayed bold signs reading “Zim ships death,” a reference to Israel’s oldest and largest shipping corporation, which protesters claim transports weapons components bound for Israeli military forces.
Organized by Palestinian refugee advocacy group Pal-Awda alongside the collective Port Workers and Communities for Palestine, the action kicked off at 5 a.m. when demonstrators taped protest signage to their personal vehicles before forming a long, coordinated convoy that circled the port’s perimeter for hours. The procession drew waves of supportive honks from passing port truck drivers, but also drew a sustained police presence that tailed and flanked the caravan from early morning through late Friday before dispersals began. This marks the latest in a three-year series of targeted actions at the Port of Elizabeth, where activists have repeatedly protested purported arms shipments transiting the facility en route to Israel, including cargo they allege contains pallets of bullets, cartridge casings, and munition components.
Pal-Awda representatives confirmed to Middle East Eye that the New Jersey action is part of a coordinated global mobilization spanning over 100 ports across 22 countries, with organizers projecting the day could see the largest coordinated dockworker work stoppage in recorded history if a critical mass of labor unions opt to participate. The group’s spokesperson explained the campaign’s core goal is to empower rank-and-file dock and port workers to leverage their collective labor power, strikes, and work refusals to disrupt what they call the global “machinery of death” that fuels conflict not just in Gaza, but across Yemen, Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, and other regions targeted by Western military and economic pressure.
Dawood, a 29-year veteran Port of Elizabeth employee who drove his Palestine-decorated blue Subaru in the convoy, said he felt morally compelled to join the action even though port staff are typically not informed of the contents of sealed shipping containers. “We show up here just to earn a living, but that doesn’t excuse looking away from what is being shipped out from under our watch,” he shared. “Any person with a conscience has a duty to stand for what is right, even when it runs counter to their own immediate self-interest.”
The action is part of the broader #DontMoveZIM campaign launched by Port Workers and Communities for Palestine, which has spent years lobbying members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, including port truckers and longshore crews, to formally refuse to handle all Israeli-linked cargo. 77-year-old activist Linden Jenkins, who drove four hours to join Friday’s convoy, was among a group of demonstrators arrested earlier this year during a port entrance blockade where protesters chained themselves to vehicles to block access to the facility. She told Middle East Eye she has grown deeply frustrated with mainstream U.S. progressive movements that rely heavily on symbolic rallies, vigils and marches that rarely deliver concrete policy demands and are routinely ignored by elected officials. Jenkins emphasized that escalating to targeted, supply-chain-disrupting direct action is the only viable path to halt the flow of deadly weapons and surveillance technology that fuels human rights abuses, from occupied Palestine and war-torn Sudan to domestic U.S. agencies including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which she accuses of eroding remaining democratic norms in the country. -
Ambitions financed by China’s megabanks triggered Zambia crisis
In October 2025, 13-year Zambian small-scale organic farmer Kanangwa Newlove wandered the sun-scorched 10-acre plot she operates on the outskirts of Lusaka, watching her years of labor dissolve into withered, rotting produce. Crisp spinach, tender lettuce, and plump tomatoes that once commanded premium prices from discerning local clients shrivelled under unrelenting heat, leaving her no choice but to uproot entire rows of her staple crops and feed the spoiled organic yield to her herd of pigs. “The crops that kept our operation afloat were the first to die for lack of water,” she told investigators from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “We had no way to save them, because there was no electricity to run our borehole pumps.”
Newlove’s farm required nearly 8,000 gallons of pumped water every few days to sustain its operations, but starting in March 2024, Zambia’s national load-shedding rolling blackouts delivered a crippling blow to her livelihood. For days at a time, she had access to just four hours of grid power daily, with no consistent, pre-announced schedule from state-owned energy utility ZESCO to help her plan irrigation or harvest storage. The cascading knock-on effects of the power cuts rippled through every part of her business: she could not refrigerate the small share of crops she managed to salvage, halted livestock breeding and slaughter operations, lost access to her network of neighborhood mom-and-pop retail clients, was forced to shrink her cultivated acreage dramatically, and could no longer afford to hire seasonal farmhands. For the first time since she launched the farm as a side project while working at a local social enterprise more than a decade prior, she faced the unthinkable possibility of shuttering the business she had built from scratch. “Farmers are natural optimists, until harsh reality completely erases that hope,” she explained. “It is almost impossible to wrap your head around the idea that you might have to walk away from something you poured every part of yourself into for over 10 years.”
Newlove’s crisis was not an isolated incident. A groundbreaking ICIJ-led collaborative investigation titled *China Capital*, drawing on a cache of 4.8 million internal documents including loan agreements, due diligence reports, and internal bank communications, lays bare how a toxic confluence of decades of reckless borrowing, opaque Chinese lending practices, institutional corruption, and a historic 40-year drought pushed one of Africa’s most heavily indebted nations to the brink of total economic collapse. The documents trace how state-owned Chinese banking giant ICBC, alongside a network of Chinese contractors and financiers, piled high-risk, onerous loans on Zambia starting in the early 2010s, at a time when the country was riding a copper-fueled economic boom and hungry for infrastructure investment after completing international debt relief programs.
In 2011, at the height of Zambia’s growth spurt, ZESCO signed a $285 million loan agreement with ICBC to fund rural electrification projects across the country’s Northern and Eastern Provinces, arranged by Chinese power infrastructure firm TBEA, which was awarded the construction contract without competitive bidding. This “contractor-facilitated lending” model became institutionalized across Zambia’s public sector: Chinese firms seeking lucrative construction contracts pressured Zambian government entities to take on new high-risk debt, while Chinese lenders were willing to extend financing on terms that commercial Western banks would never approve, backed by the geostrategic priorities of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Though ICBC markets itself as a purely commercial financial institution, the leaked internal documents confirm that bank executives systematically weighed Chinese state foreign policy goals alongside profit considerations when approving African lending decisions.
By the mid-2010s, Zambian political leaders, eager to fund high-visibility infrastructure projects ahead of elections and with weak oversight capacity in the Ministry of Finance, accelerated borrowing to unsustainable levels, even as global copper prices – the country’s primary export revenue stream – began to plummet. Patronage networks and rent-seeking behavior among political elites saw billions in borrowed funds funneled into overpriced, low-priority projects including redundant airport expansions and poorly constructed roads that crumbled soon after completion. By 2020, Zambia became the first African nation to default on its sovereign debt during the Covid-19 pandemic, with ZESCO itself rendered insolvent, crippled by $1.5 billion in syndicated debt for the Kafue Gorge Lower Hydropower Station and other outstanding loans to Chinese creditors.
When a historic, decades-long drought hit the country in 2023, drying up the hydroelectric dams that supplied 90% of Zambia’s grid power, the already financially fragile utility had no reserve funds to mitigate the crisis, triggering the nationwide rolling blackouts that devastated thousands of small businesses across the country. Gerald Soko, who had built a thriving neighborhood butchery in Lusaka’s high-density Mtendere Compound starting in 2011, saw his customer base collapse, his refrigerators full of rotting meat during unannounced power cuts, and burglars repeatedly target his shop during blackout hours. His current sales volume is less than half of his pre-crisis revenue, and all his business expansion plans have been indefinitely suspended.
For years, debt restructuring negotiations were stalled by widespread confidentiality clauses written into Chinese loan agreements that hid the true scale of Zambia’s outstanding liabilities – later estimated at nearly $6.6 billion owed to Chinese financiers, almost double the figure previously disclosed by the Zambian government. Though early fears of aggressive “debt trap diplomacy” leading to Chinese seizure of national assets did not materialize, Chinese lenders initially refused to accept principal write-downs, dragging out recovery talks for years. By 2026, under the administration of President Hakainde Hichilema, Zambia had finally concluded most debt restructuring agreements with its creditors, but ordinary citizens continue to bear the scars of the crisis. Public opinion polling from Afrobarometer shows that positive views of China’s influence in Zambia plummeted from 72% in 2014 to just 42% in 2022.
Newlove, who crisis-proofed her farm with off-grid solar panels to escape reliance on the unstable national grid, narrowly avoided closure and kept all 14 of her full-time employees on payroll, but the empty, overgrown failed farms on the land adjacent to her property serve as a constant reminder of how close she came to losing everything. “We were lucky enough to make it through, but so many other business owners were not that fortunate,” she said. “That near-disaster taught us that we can never again build our livelihoods on a single, fragile system that can collapse overnight.”
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Canada’s central labour union says workers will not handle military cargo going to Israel
Following a historic membership vote held on Thursday, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) — the country’s largest central labour body, representing roughly 3 million workers across every province and territory — has formally adopted a policy directing its affiliated union members to refuse all handling, transport and processing of weapons and military equipment bound for Israel.
In an official public statement, the CLC framed the resolution as a gesture of cross-border solidarity with Palestinian working people and their families, as well as with global communities advocating for a ceasefire, equitable peace, and full adherence to international humanitarian law. The federation also issued a direct, formal demand to the federal Canadian government to match its new policy, by immediately halting all direct and indirect transfers of arms and military hardware to Israeli authorities.
The move comes more than a year after investigative reporting from Middle East Eye first revealed that the Liberal federal government had misled domestic public opinion when it claimed to have paused all new weapons export permits to Israel. Independent volunteer research compiled by a coalition of grassroots groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement, World Beyond War, and Arms Embargo Now later confirmed that military shipments from Canada not only continued after the announced pause, but were in many cases fast-tracked, with some rerouted through third countries including the United States to avoid public scrutiny.
The 58-page collaborative report, titled *Exposing Canadian Military Exports to Israel*, documents more than 390 separate shipments originating from 21 Canadian manufacturers across six major Canadian cities. The tracked cargo included over 420,000 rounds of ammunition, 735 complete firearm cartridge assembly sets, specialized F-35 stealth jet components such as navigation sensors and radar systems, and dual-use technology including high-precision GPS antennas that can be deployed for military operations. The coalition’s analysis concluded that the Liberal government’s public pause announcement was a deliberate political tactic intended to appease a growing share of the Canadian electorate frustrated with Ottawa’s unwavering backing of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, without actually rolling back longstanding policies of unconditional military support.
The CLC emphasized in its statement that Canadian institutions bear a binding moral and legal obligation to ensure no domestically produced weapons or military equipment are used to harm Palestinian civilians or enable breaches of international humanitarian law. “Canada must uphold international law, protect civilian lives and support a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis,” the statement read, adding that the Canadian labour movement has a decades-long legacy of advocating for the rights, safety and dignity of working people across the world, and that the resolution explicitly rejects all forms of bigotry including antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia.
The new policy marks a further break in the CLC’s longstanding formal ties with Israel’s national labour federation Histadrut, a relationship that began to gradually deteriorate following the First Intifada, as documented in a 2014 peer-reviewed study published in the *Journal of Labor and Society*. Earlier this May, the CLC had already voted to sever formal institutional ties with Histadrut, though procedural limits prevented a full debate on a broader “hot cargo” resolution that would have barred all handling of Israeli-linked goods, services and institutional partnerships.
Grassroots labour advocacy group Labour for Palestine – Canada, which led years of organizing to advance the arms ban policy, noted that Canadian union workers played a pivotal role in global movements to end apartheid in South Africa, support East Timorese independence, and oppose the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “Now is the time to take a stand for Palestine,” the group stated in response to the vote.
Leading Canadian civil society organizations also praised the historic resolution. Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East called the vote “an important way that workers can prevent Canadian weapons from facilitating genocide” in a public post on X, while activist network Independent Jewish Voices emphasized that the policy “is a clear message: Canadian labourers refuse to be complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.”
Official data published by Global Affairs Canada, the country’s federal foreign affairs department, confirms that Ottawa authorized more than $44 million worth of military goods exports to Israel over the 2023 to 2025 period. -
UN must investigate death of UAE poet and writer Habib al-Sayegh, advocacy group says
A prominent U.S.-based Arab human rights advocacy organization is formally petitioning three United Nations special rapporteurs to launch a full, impartial probe into the alleged 2019 torture and extrajudicial killing of celebrated Emirati literary figure Habib al-Sayegh, citing explosive new evidence laid out in a recently released investigative nonfiction work. The call for action was issued Thursday by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a group co-founded by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — who was assassinated inside his country’s Istanbul consulate exactly one year prior to al-Sayegh’s reported death. Matthew Cole’s newly published book *Princes and Thieves* lays out detailed, unreported accounts of the 64-year-old poet and writer’s final days: a decorated public intellectual who once served as chairman of the Emirates Writers Union, secretary-general of the General Union of Arab Writers, and editor-in-chief of prominent regional newspaper Al Khaleeg, al-Sayegh was forcibly abducted from his UAE residence, transferred to a state detention facility, and tortured to death between August 16 and 19, 2019. The book’s sourced accounts describe interrogators using pliers to yank out multiple of al-Sayegh’s teeth, and repeatedly striking him with a sharp metal implement to inflict severe, permanent injury. DAWN’s advocacy director Raed Jarrar emphasized in his formal letter to the UN experts that the distinct, heavy physical traces of such abuse would be clearly identifiable via a professional forensic examination of the writer’s remains. According to Cole’s findings, Emirati authorities held al-Sayegh’s body for more than 24 hours and prohibited his grieving family from accessing it before first interring him in an Abu Dhabi public cemetery, then secretly exhuming his remains to re-bury them in an unmarked, remote desert grave to prevent his loved ones from conducting traditional Islamic funeral prayers at his resting site. DAWN is demanding the UN special rapporteurs compel the UAE government to produce al-Sayegh’s official death certificate, full documented cause of death, any existing records of his detention, and an official formal response to the book’s damning allegations, as well as grant his family and an independent, court-approved forensic expert full access to locate and examine his final grave. The organization further requested that the UN panel submit all verified findings to the UN Human Rights Council, and pursue formal accountability for any confirmed breaches of international human rights law, noting that the UAE is a signatory state to the UN Convention Against Torture, despite a well-documented longstanding pattern of enforced disappearances targeting dissident voices within its borders. The respected literary figure, who was awarded a state honor in 2012 for his contributions to preserving and advancing Emirati national cultural identity, had published a public column just days before his 2019 disappearance, in which he labeled Israel a “real and natural enemy” and publicly questioned the legitimacy of political actors pushing for unapproved normalization with the state, asking “Who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?” The UAE’s official state news agency announced al-Sayegh’s sudden death days later, but never released any public details on the circumstances or medical cause of his passing. Barely more than 12 months after al-Sayegh’s death, the UAE formally signed the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords to fully normalize diplomatic and economic relations with Israel during a 2020 White House ceremony overseen by then-U.S. President Donald Trump. Bilateral ties between Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem have deepened dramatically in the years since, even after the UN formally designated Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a potential genocide, with the two states forging expanding defence and security partnerships amid shifting regional geopolitical tensions. The UAE has taken an unusually divergent stance from most other Arab states following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel: its U.S.-based ambassador stated on public record last year that Abu Dhabi saw no viable alternative to Trump’s controversial “Gaza Riviera” redevelopment proposal, widely condemned across the Arab world as a blueprint for mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinian residents. Previous investigative reporting from Middle East Eye has also documented that Emirati officials have actively lobbied U.S. policymakers to reject a formal Arab League-backed peace plan for Gaza, and have openly supported Israeli proposals to forcibly displace large swathes of Gaza’s Palestinian population into neighbouring Egypt.
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He questioned Thailand’s monarchy dressed as Harry Potter. Now he’s in jail for 34 years
Shackles clink in steady, unmistakeable rhythm down the narrow corridor leading to Bangkok’s criminal court, as five long-time political detainees make their way to yet another procedural hearing, navigating a years-long maze of overlapping criminal prosecutions that have defined nearly half a decade of their lives. Among them is 42-year-old human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, a greying, bespectacled man who breaks away from the group the moment he spots his three-year-old son Karl, brought to the courtroom by his partner for a rare in-person visit.
Arnon’s path to incarceration traces back to a landmark 2020 Harry Potter-themed rally in central Bangkok, where he donned the iconic young wizard’s signature round glasses and cloak to deliver the first ever public, unapologetic call for Thailand’s powerful monarchy to be subjected to public scrutiny and formal accountability. Last Friday, a Bangkok court handed down a 2-year and 8-month prison sentence for his actions, a conviction under the kingdom’s sweeping lèse majesté legislation, formally known as Article 112. To date, more people have been jailed under this single law for perceived insults against the royal family than across every other country with comparable royal defamation statutes combined.
This latest ruling is just one of 14 separate lèse majesté cases filed against Arnon, pushing his total accumulated prison sentence to over 34 years, with two additional verdicts still pending. Speaking to reporters immediately after the ruling, Arnon remained stoic: “To me, this isn’t a surprise. If the country was more open, we would be able to talk about these issues freely.” His three-year-old son currently believes the courtroom is simply where his father goes to work, unaware that the only other glimpses of his dad he gets come from hand-drawn illustrations his 10-year-old sister Pran creates, many of which depict their father behind bars or at court hearings, emblazoned with the slogan “Free my dad.”
The past six years mark the most aggressive period of lèse majesté enforcement in Thai history, a direct response to the 2020 wave of student-led mass protests that shattered a centuries-old national taboo by demanding open public discussion of the monarchy’s role in governance. Since that wave of demonstrations began, 294 people – 20 of them under the age of 18 – have been prosecuted under Article 112, with some receiving sentences as long as 50 years, and dozens still awaiting trial. The vast majority of those charged are denied bail, left to languish in pre-trial detention for years as their cases drag on. Thai government officials routinely defend the law as a core reflection of national identity, noting that the monarchy is one of the three foundational pillars of Thai society and widely revered by the population.
On paper, Article 112 is brief, stating that anyone who defames, insults, or threatens the King, Queen, Heir-apparent, or Regent faces 3 to 15 years in prison. In practice, however, enforcement has stretched far beyond that narrow text, targeting commentary on nearly every aspect of the royal institution, from critiques of long-dead monarchs to public jokes about the king’s pet dog. “If you ask me what the text of the law says, I can tell you,” explains Akarachai Chaimaneekarakate, assistant director of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, an organization that provides legal defence for Article 112 defendants. “If you ask me how the courts interpret the words ‘defame’ or ‘insult’, I don’t think I can give you a definition, because it’s so ambiguous, it’s so vague. Even questioning the law itself, for example, can constitute lèse majesté under Section 112.”
For the past three years, Arnon has been held in Bangkok Remand Prison, where he sends regular handwritten letters to his two young children. One recent message reads: “Dear Pran and Karl, my beloved children, The winter wind has not only brought us cool weather, but also brings back stories from the past. I miss the time we travelled outside Bangkok that first winter after Karl came into this world. It was such a magical time for me. I shall miss it every winter I spend here until I regain my freedom.”
The sweeping crackdown on free speech under Article 112 has effectively erased nearly all public discussion of the monarchy, which for decades was only ever whispered in private, unrecorded conversations. One widely cited case saw a taxi driver jailed after a passenger reported critical comments he had made about the royal family during a ride. That long-standing silence was broken on August 3, 2020, when public frustration boiled over against the military-backed conservative government led by 2014 coup leader Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha. A year prior, millions of Thai voters had cast ballots for the progressive Future Forward Party, which promised sweeping military reform, only for the Constitutional Court to dissolve the party on a procedural technicality in February 2020. COVID-19 lockdowns paused public demonstrations for three months, but once infection rates fell, student organizers launched rallies demanding an end to military interference in civilian politics. Arnon argued these demands did not go far enough, and his Harry Potter-themed speech calling for scrutiny of the monarchy’s opaque wealth and unaccountable power – including King Vajiralongkorn’s decision to seize direct personal control of the multi-billion dollar Crown Property Bureau and key royal army units – shattered a taboo that had stood unbroken for generations of Thai society.
At the time Arnon gave that speech, lèse majesté prosecutions had been suspended for three years, with palace insiders acknowledging that the negative international publicity generated by high-profile convictions was doing far more harm to the monarchy’s reputation than any critical public commentary. But the unprecedented scale of the 2020 protests forced a sudden policy reversal, and by the end of that year, Article 112 prosecutions had restarted and accelerated at a rapid pace, pushing dozens of young activists to flee the country to avoid decades of jail time.
Among those exiled activists is 24-year-old Supitcha “Melinn” Chailom, who now lives in Montreal, Canada, after fleeing four separate lèse majesté charges against her. She was an 18-year-old high school student when she delivered a speech at a Chiang Mai University protest just three weeks after Arnon’s landmark 2020 speech, raising the iconic Hunger Games three-finger salute in a photograph that became one of the defining visual symbols of the pro-reform movement. The young activist, who once dreamed of working as a video game designer, traveled across the country leading rallies, organizing public opinion polls about the monarchy, and demanding sweeping overhauls of Thailand’s rigid, outdated education system. “I felt that, as a young person, I could not question, or have a discussion with people older than me. The monarchy gave me the same vibe,” she recalled in a recent interview from her Canadian asylum home.
Her legal troubles began after a 2020 Hat Yai protest where she compared the special royal treatment afforded to the king’s pet dog to the struggles faced by ordinary Thai citizens. Nine months later, police arrived at her family home to serve her a lèse majesté summons. “It was a shock. I wasn’t expecting it because I only talked about the dog,” she said. “They tried to stay calm, but I nearly lost my mind.” After receiving two additional lèse majesté charges in 2022, she was placed under home detention, forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor, and barred from leaving her home between 4pm and 6am, with her parents required to sign a formal document promising to report any unapproved activity to authorities. Facing the prospect of decades behind bars, she fled the country with a friend, eventually securing refugee status in Canada.
While Article 112 is technically a piece of ordinary legislation that could be amended by elected members of parliament, the Thai Constitutional Court has since ruled that the law – and the royal institution it protects – is effectively untouchable. The progressive Move Forward Party, the direct successor to the dissolved Future Forward, was disbanded in 2024, and its party leader banned from public office entirely, for the sole act of proposing modest reforms to reduce the harshness of lèse majesté prison sentences. Courts have also systematically blocked defendants from mounting meaningful defences: “In many cases, like the one against Arnon Nampa, prosecutors accuse the defendant of lying about the monarchy,” Akarachai noted. “But when we ask the judge to subpoena documents or witnesses who could show the truth of what the defendant says, the judge refuses to do it. When one lawyer protested against the court deciding that the trial would be held in secret, she was warned by the judge to be quiet or face a contempt of court charge.”
Even with 34 years of accumulated sentences hanging over him, Arnon continues to meticulously prepare for every court appearance, representing himself and offering legal guidance to fellow detainees, all without being allowed to bring written notes into the courtroom, forcing him to memorize every line of his legal arguments. The judges often object to the sight of him acting as a defence lawyer while dressed in standard brown prison shorts, barefoot and still wearing his ankle shackles, but these rare court appearances are his only chance to see his children in person. In a letter to his family last year, he wrote: “Since the first day that we made up our mind to take up this mission, we knew of the dangers. Speaking the truth is not difficult. What is difficult is speaking a forbidden truth. I remember well that on the evening of 3 August 2020, after speaking at the Harry Potter event, I felt very good, content, and relieved to have finally begun speaking about the truth, in public.” A more recent letter adds: “Living here is a struggle. But it is just a dot in the bigger picture of our movement’s struggle. We must play a part in writing our own history. Become a drop of water that will one day become an ocean.” -
US approves sale of 500 Patriot missiles to Ukraine
The U.S. State Department has formally greenlit a $2.1 billion foreign military sale of 500 PAC-3 Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine, a long-delayed air defence asset Kyiv has warned is critically scarce as Russia ramps up large-scale aerial assaults targeting civilian and energy infrastructure ahead of the 2024-2025 winter season. The landmark deal, which excludes any direct U.S. taxpayer funding, will be fully financed via pooled contributions from Canada, Germany, and Norway through the multilateral JUMPSTART program, plus national funds backed by the European Union’s dedicated Ukraine Support Loan, U.S. officials confirmed in an official Friday statement. Lockheed Martin, the U.S.-based defence giant that manufactures the PAC-3 system, has been named as the prime contractor for the order. The announcement comes against a backdrop of weeks of mounting urgency from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who publicly revealed earlier this week that his government had spent nearly 30 days pressing Washington to sign off on the missile shipment, and recently acknowledged his nation’s Patriot stockpiles had fallen to dangerously low levels. Zelensky emphasized that the Patriot system is the only reliably operational defensive asset capable of neutralizing the high-speed Russian ballistic missiles that have increasingly been used to bombard Ukrainian population centres. In a late Friday Telegram post, the Ukrainian leader noted that Russian forces had launched fresh ballistic missile strikes across two separate Ukrainian regions earlier that same day, describing the ongoing attacks as deliberate terrorist targeting of civilian communities. The U.S. State Department’s statement framed the approval as aligned with core American foreign policy and national security priorities, noting that bolstering Ukraine’s air defence capacity would strengthen a key European partner that acts as a stabilizing force for regional political and economic order. The approval also lands just days after a highly publicized diplomatic rift between Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump, who publicly stated earlier that week that Ukraine should install new leadership to accelerate negotiations to end the ongoing conflict with Russia. Complicating the near-term outlook for Kyiv, defence industry analysts confirm that the 500 missiles included in the approved sale are newly manufactured units, not drawn from existing U.S. or allied stockpiles. Annual global production of PAC-3 Patriot interceptors stands at only 600 units per year, per official U.S. Department of Defence data, and widespread global demand for the munitions – driven in part by U.S. operational deployments related to recent tensions with Iran – has created a widespread supply crunch, meaning rapid delivery of the full order to Ukraine is not feasible. The announcement also clarifies lingering uncertainty over U.S. policy on local Patriot production in Ukraine: back in July, Trump publicly reversed a prior offer to grant Ukraine a licensing agreement to domestically manufacture the air defence missiles, roughly three weeks after first floating that proposal to Kyiv.
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The Sahel, a new front in the rivalry between Algeria and Morocco
For over half a century, the deep-seated rivalry between Algeria and Morocco has been largely defined by two core flashpoints: the contested status of Western Sahara, and the decades-long tussle for regional leadership across the Maghreb. A former Spanish colonial territory, Western Sahara is mostly controlled by Morocco, which claims full sovereignty over the region, while Algeria backs the Polisario Front, the indigenous movement demanding a UN-supervised self-determination referendum for the local Sahrawi population. Parallel to this territorial dispute, the two North African nations have vied for status as the Maghreb’s leading power ever since securing their independence, frictions that have fueled years of severe diplomatic breakdown: their shared land border has remained fully closed since 1994, and formal bilateral ties were completely severed in 2021. In a notable new shift, however, this long-running competition has now expanded far south of the Maghreb, into the vast, geopolitically turbulent Sahel region.
Today, the Sahel has emerged as a sprawling new arena for the two nations to extend their influence, with battles unfolding across diplomacy, security policy, infrastructure investment, energy development, cross-border trade, and even religious cooperation, all against a backdrop of rapid, sweeping geopolitical upheaval across West Africa. This new playing field has opened up just as the three member states of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger — have actively distanced themselves from their longstanding Western allies, and are aggressively diversifying their international partnerships to reduce external dependence. It is within this fast-evolving landscape that Algeria and Morocco now find themselves locked in a tight, head-to-head contest for regional clout.
For Algeria, engagement with the Sahel is rooted first and foremost in non-negotiable national security imperatives. Both Mali and Niger share extensive, largely unpatrolled land borders with Algeria, meaning any political upheaval or security breakdown in these two nations has immediate, direct spillover impacts on Algerian territory. Transnational armed extremist groups, widespread cross-border smuggling networks, and chronic political instability along its southern frontier are threats Algeria cannot afford to overlook. This pressing reality has pushed Algiers to gradually abandon its long-held foreign policy doctrine of strict non-intervention in the internal affairs of neighboring states. As Jalel Harchaoui, a senior analyst at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute, emphasized in an interview with Middle East Eye: “Algeria does not make its decisions based on Morocco.”
In a landmark break from past policy, just one day after a foiled coup attempt in Niger’s capital Niamey on August 30, Algeria deployed four Su-30 fighter jets to Niger at the formal request of local authorities. By October 25, Algeria’s national parliament had formally approved the deployment of Algerian ground troops to Niger, marking the first such foreign military deployment for the country since 1973. Algiers has also moved aggressively to rebuild its diplomatic footprint in a region where its influence had eroded significantly following a series of high-profile rifts with the governments in Bamako and Niamey. The diplomatic falling out with Mali dates back to December 2023, when Mali publicly accused Algeria of interfering in its domestic affairs, and both nations recalled their respective ambassadors. This rift deepened further in January 2024, when Mali’s ruling junta formally denounced the 2015 Algiers peace agreement — a landmark Algeria-brokered deal designed to end decades of unrest and stabilize northern Mali. The dispute escalated to engulf the entire AES bloc in April 2025, after Algerian air defenses shot down a Malian drone, with both governments insisting the aircraft had been operating in their own sovereign airspace. In the aftermath, all three AES member states recalled their ambassadors from Algiers, and Algeria reciprocated. In recent months, however, Algeria’s bilateral ties with Niamey have improved dramatically.
While Morocco shares no direct land borders with any AES state, it has also been steadily advancing its own strategic interests across the Sahel. Harchaoui cautioned against over-simplifying the regional dynamic, noting that observers should not automatically attribute every move by either country to a direct tit-for-tat response to the other. “It’s not about seeing Morocco everywhere,” he explained, adding that Moroccan influence is highly visible in Mali but remains far more limited in Niger. He reiterated that Algeria’s policy choices are overwhelmingly driven by on-the-ground security priorities, not a preoccupation with competing with Rabat. Harchaoui also highlighted a notable recent shift in the positions of the Bamako and Niamey governments, which now increasingly endorse Algeria’s longstanding policy of pursuing negotiated political solutions to the Tuareg question, rather than relying exclusively on military force. The Tuareg, a Berber ethnic community spread across northern Mali, Niger, and southern Algeria, have demanded greater autonomy and formal state recognition ever since their respective countries gained independence, grievances that have sparked multiple armed uprisings including the 2012 Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali. This growing alignment on conflict resolution has been a key driver of Algeria’s renewed influence in the Sahel, bolstered by its geographic proximity, decades of on-the-ground knowledge of local community dynamics, and long track record mediating Tuareg-related crises.
Morocco, by contrast, has pursued a distinctly different strategy that places far less emphasis on security cooperation. “Morocco is constantly working to strengthen economic, religious, cultural and diplomatic ties with Sahelian states,” Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South and an independent Sahel-focused consultant, told Middle East Eye. Moroccan banking groups already have established a widespread presence across multiple West African nations, and Rabat leverages this extensive financial network alongside targeted direct investments to expand its economic footprint across the region. The kingdom has also rolled out large-scale agricultural development partnerships and targeted training programs for Sahelian imams, framing these initiatives as vehicles for constructive religious and cultural cooperation. In April 2025, the three AES member states formally endorsed Morocco’s Atlantic Initiative during a summit in Rabat, a policy framework designed to grant landlocked Sahelian nations direct access to Atlantic coastal shipping routes via Moroccan port infrastructure. The initiative signals Rabat’s far broader ambitions beyond simple trade access: it lays the groundwork for a sprawling cross-continental economic corridor linking Morocco directly to West Africa and the Sahel. This strategy is already being advanced via the Dakhla-Nouakchott transport and economic integration project: a bilateral framework agreement signed in September between Morocco and Mauritania outlines plans to rehabilitate and expand Mauritania’s RN4 highway, as part of a larger integrated transport axis connecting Dakhla in southern Western Sahara, the Guerguerat border crossing, and the Mauritanian coastal cities of Nouadhibou and Nouakchott. The planned new Dakhla Atlantic port, scheduled to begin full operations in 2028, is designed to serve as the central maritime hub for this entire trans-Sahelian economic corridor.
This dynamic positions Mauritania as a critical strategic linchpin, sitting at the exact intersection of Morocco’s westward-focused regional ambitions and Algeria’s eastward-oriented Sahel interests. The two North African powers are now pursuing two competing, mutually exclusive corridor models: Algeria has long projected its influence southwards into the Sahel via its own southern land borders and historic trans-Saharan trade networks, while Morocco is building an entirely new Atlantic access route running through Mauritania. Both strategies are rooted in the shared core assessment that for the largely landlocked Sahel region, cross-border infrastructure and guaranteed access to global markets function as powerful instruments of geopolitical leverage. Energy competition has also become a key component of this contest: the proposed 6,000-kilometer Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, which will run through Mauritania, is still seeking full project financing, and directly competes with the parallel trans-Saharan Nigeria-Niger-Algeria gas pipeline, whose Algerian section officially broke ground in June. Both projects are designed to transport vast volumes of Nigerian natural gas to lucrative European consumer markets. The United Arab Emirates has emerged as a quiet but influential background player in this regional competition: Abu Dhabi is financing and developing a network of new infrastructure and port facilities across Mauritania, moves that effectively strengthen Morocco’s strategic position in the area. Algeria has long viewed the deepening strategic alignment between the UAE and Morocco — and Abu Dhabi’s explicit support for Rabat’s position on the Western Sahara dispute — with deep suspicion. This long-running mistrust boiled over into a full diplomatic break in September, when Algeria formally severed all bilateral relations with the UAE, accusing Abu Dhabi of carrying out hostile acts and unwarranted interference in North African regional affairs.
This expanding economic and diplomatic rivalry has been accompanied by a parallel regional arms build-up. Algeria remains by a wide margin Africa’s largest military spender: according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the country allocated approximately $25.4 billion to its defense budget in 2025, marking an 11 percent year-on-year increase. Morocco ranked as the continent’s second largest military spender, with a 6.6 percent year-on-year rise to $6.3 billion. While this military expansion has sparked widespread concerns about the risk of future armed escalation, most regional analysts agree it is highly unlikely that the Sahel will become a theatre of direct military confrontation between Algeria and Morocco. Instead, the build-up underscores a broader reality: the decades-old strategic rivalry between the two Maghreb powers has now spilled far beyond their traditional shared regional borders. “The fundamental question is whether Sahelian states can turn this competition into an opportunity to strengthen their strategic autonomy,” noted Oumar Keita, former Malian ambassador to UNESCO and president of the Sahel-Africa Institute for Diplomacy and Influence (Isadi). Keita rejects the framing that the ongoing arms build-up will inevitably lead to direct military conflict between the two North African neighbors. “I would speak more of a competition for positioning and influence than of confrontation,” he explained to Middle East Eye. He also pushed back against the common external narrative that frames the Sahel as an empty, passive geopolitical space where outside powers can simply project influence unimpeded. For the three AES ruling juntas, which have already turned to Russia as a key security and political partner in their push to reduce decades of dependence on France and other traditional Western allies, the current competition between Algeria and Morocco creates valuable new diplomatic and material options. Keita argues that Sahelian governments should avoid aligning exclusively with a single external power, and instead pursue a deliberate “diplomacy of diversification” built on multiple complementary international partnerships. The key risk of the current dynamic, he warns, is that Sahel states may simply end up swapping one set of external dependencies for another. “Lasting influence cannot be decreed. It is built through trust, continuity of commitments and tangible results for populations.”
This reality will be the defining test for both Algeria and Morocco as they pursue their regional ambitions. At present, Morocco holds a clear early advantage in the economic and infrastructure development spheres, while Algeria retains unique strengths from its geographic proximity to the Sahel, longstanding security cooperation experience, and deep diplomatic ties across Mali and Niger. Neither power, however, holds unchallenged dominance over the region, which continues to be shaped by its own ongoing domestic political crises, local communal conflicts, persistent armed extremist groups, and the sovereign independent policy choices of Sahelian national governments. “The question is therefore not whether Algiers or Rabat will gain more influence in the Sahel. The fundamental question is whether Sahelian states can turn this competition into an opportunity to strengthen their strategic autonomy, development and collective ability to defend their interests,” Keita emphasized. The future trajectory of this fast-evolving regional dynamic will be clearly visible via two key upcoming milestones: the scheduled 2028 opening of the new Dakhla Atlantic port, and Algeria’s ability to translate its recent diplomatic reset with the Bamako and Niamey governments into tangible, visible on-the-ground development projects that benefit local populations.
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Elbit factory targeted in Palestine Action raid was set to deliver ‘immediate shipment of drones’ to Israel, court hears
A London crown court heard on Friday that a UK-based Israeli-owned arms manufacturing facility targeted by pro-Palestine activists in August 2024 was on the verge of dispatching a drone shipment bound for Israel at the time of the direct action. The five defendants facing trial at Woolwich Crown Court — 21-year-old Qesser Zuhrah, 26-year-old Zahra Farooque, 29-year-old Kamran Ahmed, 31-year-old Heba Muraisi, and 34-year-old Liam Mullany — are formally charged with criminal damage and violent disorder over the break-in at the Elbit Systems site in Filton, a town near Bristol, on 6 August 2024.
Testifying this week, Zuhrah, who identified herself as a core coordinator of the action, told jurors the group accelerated their planned operation after learning of the impending weapons shipment from other Palestine Action members. At the time of the raid, Zuhrah was a 19-year-old university student, and she stated under oath that Elbit Systems supplies an estimated 85% of Israel’s land-based military hardware, with the Filton facility producing drones that the company openly acknowledges are field-tested on Palestinian populations. She emphasized her belief that the drones set to ship from the site were destined for use in Gaza, dismissing any suggestion this was an unsubstantiated assumption.
Prosecutors have framed the five defendants as members of a so-called “black team” whose stated objective was to overwhelm on-site security personnel to clear a path for a second “red team” of activists, who planned to use a repurposed prison van to ram through the factory’s loading bay shutters and destroy stored military equipment. Prosecution claims allege the black team members, dressed in matching black jumpsuits, deployed threats, intimidation, fireworks, and carried implements including whips, hammers, and large kebab skewers to assault or coerce security staff. All five defendants have entered not-guilty pleas to all charges against them.
Under direct examination from her defense counsel Garry Green KC, Zuhrah pushed back against the prosecution’s framing of the black team’s purpose, explaining their sole intended role was to create a distraction: generating a thick smoke screen via flares and fireworks to obscure the red team’s movements, and using loud pyrotechnics to muffle the sound of the prison van crashing through the loading bay, before evacuating the site immediately. Zuhrah confirmed she purchased many of the items used in the operation, including fireworks and flares, as well as contingency tools such as axes, crowbars, and hammers that would only be deployed to cut through shutters if the van failed to breach the entrance. She addressed court testimony that she had referred to these tools as “weapons” in pre-action group messages, explaining the term was used interchangeably with “tools” or “equipment” because the group had been discussing arms factories nonstop in the lead-up to the action, and the implements were designated to destroy weapons held inside the facility, not harm people.
Zuhrah also clarified the purpose of the kebab skewers carried by the black team: the sharpened metal sticks were intended to puncture the tires of the prison van if it failed to break through the shutters, leaving the disabled vehicle parked across the loading bay to block any outgoing weapons shipments for an extended period of time. When asked directly by her lawyer if the raid plan ever included intentional violence or threats of harm against security staff or other individuals on site, Zuhrah responded with a firm “absolutely not.” She noted that prior Palestine Action operations typically relied on evasive tactics, with activists fleeing quickly and using winding routes to shake off pursuing security personnel, with no intention of lingering to provoke confrontation. She added that the team was fully aware Elbit’s on-site security staff were largely ex-military and highly trained, making any prolonged direct confrontation impractical.
The court heard that after the red team’s van breached the site’s outer perimeter fence, the black team advanced on foot toward the loading bay, where one member used an angle grinder to weaken the metal shutters to make it easier for the van to ram through. The rest of the black team began lighting fireworks and flares to generate rapid, dense smoke to obscure their movements, and Zuhrah emphasized she threw all of her lit flares into an empty open space ahead of her, and had not spotted any security staff at that point in the operation.
Once the van successfully crashed through the loading bay shutters, the black team moved toward the outer perimeter fence to evacuate as originally planned, before a member of the group spotted a fellow activist being dragged backward by the throat by two unseen security guards through the thick smoke. Distressed by what she initially mistook as a lifeless body being pulled away, Zuhrah lit a firework and discharged it into the open space in front of her, hoping the sudden noise and light would break up the altercation and stop the guard’s assault. She stressed she did not aim the firework at the security staff, and had no intention of causing anyone burns or physical harm, as the guards were not positioned directly in her line of sight at the time.
Zuhrah told the court that at one point during the chaotic incident, a security guard picked up an axe and a whip and began swinging them wildly while shouting, leaving her fearing for her safety. She noted the unplanned detour to intervene in the altercation derailed her original plan to leave the site quickly to return home and sit for scheduled university exams. When the group finally fled toward the perimeter fence, a pursuing security guard lashed Zuhrah with the whip as she attempted to climb a pole to scale the barrier, after she failed to scramble over the main fencing alongside her peers.
During cross-examination by lead prosecutor Deanna Heer KC, Zuhrah was questioned about a pre-operation message she sent to a prospective activist noting that many Elbit security staff were ex-military, framing the situation as “literally fight or flight.” Zuhrah explained the message was not referencing planned violence, but was a screening measure to ensure the recruit remained calm and level-headed in the event of a potential unexpected confrontation, rather than panicking and escalating the situation. When questioned about a separate conversation with an activist who refused to let his younger brother join the action, Zuhrah clarified that the concerns raised were about the risk of arrest, not any planned violent conduct. The trial remains ongoing at Woolwich Crown Court.