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On Monday, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a stark public warning: escalating restrictions imposed by Israel on independent human rights and humanitarian organizations operating across the occupied Palestinian territories have left Palestinian children growing more exposed and unprotected by the day.

The 18 independent child rights experts that make up the committee, which operates under the umbrella of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR), issued sharp condemnation of Israel’s policy of labeling Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist entities. According to the committee, this designation provides Israel with legal justification to disrupt critical life-saving and advocacy work, through tactics that include military raids on organization offices, travel bans targeting staff, personal financial penalties, threats of arrest, deliberate destruction of organizational documentation, and in multiple cases, threats of secondary sanctions against international partners that work with the targeted groups.

While the committee’s latest warning did not name the specific groups referenced, the pattern of restrictions stretches back years. In 2021, Israel formally outlawed six leading Palestinian human rights and advocacy organizations, among them Defense for Children International – Palestine, Al-Haq, Adameer, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees – all of which have a decades-long track record of defending Palestinian children’s rights.

More recently, new bureaucratic registration requirements imposed by Israel have threatened to force even more groups to end their operations at a moment of catastrophic humanitarian need in the Gaza Strip. On December 30 of last year, 37 international non-governmental organizations received official notification that their operating registrations would expire the following day. After a two-month grace period, the organizations would be legally required to cease all activity across Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. By January of this year, 53 international NGOs operating in the occupied territories issued a joint statement warning that these new measures would bring a complete halt to critical humanitarian programming.

Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs defended the new restrictions publicly, claiming that organizations that failed to meet the country’s “security and transparency requirements” would have their operating licenses suspended. The ministry added that the restrictions also apply to any group that “refused to submit a list of their Palestinian employees in order to rule out any links to terrorism.” The 53 NGOs pushed back against this framing, noting that attempts to evaluate the impact of the deregistration policy using narrow, selective metrics fail to account for the on-the-ground realities of how humanitarian aid is actually delivered to vulnerable communities.

Since a ceasefire took effect in Gaza on October 10, Israel has expanded this crackdown across all occupied Palestinian territories. One high-profile case involves Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF), which Israel moved to ban after the organization refused to hand over a list of its Palestinian staff. In February, 17 international aid organizations filed a petition with Israel’s Supreme Court to block the ban. While a temporary court injunction currently allows MSF to continue its operations, the Israeli government is still pushing for a permanent ruling to end the group’s work entirely.

UN OHCHR emphasizes that these Israeli measures have left organizations unable to guarantee the safety of Palestinian children and families seeking life-saving support and legal advocacy, resulting in a situation where children are effectively left defenseless. “For more than three decades, these organisations have played a vital role in defending Palestinian children, including in the Israeli military courts, and in documenting grave violations against Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli forces,” the committee said in its statement.

The committee warned that without the work of these independent groups, Palestinian children will be left even more exposed, and violations of their fundamental rights could continue without any accountability for perpetrators. The committee’s statement called on Israel to immediately lift all restrictions and barriers that target child rights defenders in the occupied Palestinian territories. It also urged the international community to use all available diplomatic and political tools to hold Israeli authorities accountable for these actions, and to prioritize the protection of Palestinian children’s fundamental rights.

“Despite grave risks and limited resources, child rights defenders have continued to stand with Palestinian children and families in extraordinarily dangerous conditions,” the committee added. “They must be protected, not punished.”

The rolling fertile fields of the Buqe’aa Plain, long known as the breadbasket of Palestine, have become ground zero for a sweeping Israeli land seizure initiative that is upending the lives of hundreds of Palestinian farming and herding families in the northern Jordan Valley. For Khairallah Bani Odeh, a lifelong Palestinian herder and farmer who once worked his family’s lands in the village of Atouf, displacement has turned his new home in Tammoun, south of Tubas, into nothing short of an open-air prison.

Months after being forced to abandon his ancestral lands, Bani Odeh is one of dozens of families pushed out by a confluence of escalating settler violence, deliberate water access cuts, and the ongoing construction of Israel’s “Crimson Thread” infrastructure project. The ambitious initiative calls for a 22-kilometer, 50-meter-wide separation wall and adjacent military road to be carved through eastern Tubas, cutting off Palestinian communities from vast swathes of their most productive agricultural and grazing land.

For generations, Bani Odeh and his neighbors sustained themselves through sheepherding and small-scale agriculture, their livelihoods tied directly to access to the Buqe’aa Plain’s fertile soil and local water networks. But from the moment construction crews moved in earlier this year, that foundation collapsed. According to Bani Odeh, Israeli settlers used bulldozers to destroy main water lines that fed hundreds of hectares of farmland across the plain, killing growing crops and cutting off critical water supplies for livestock. Without access to water, he was forced to buy expensive water from neighboring villages, walking miles to haul what he could for his herd. When settlers burned his standing barley crop, life in Atouf became untenable, forcing his family to relocate.

Three months after leaving, Bani Odeh says he still feels trapped. He struggles to find new grazing land for his remaining livestock, and he counts every day until he can return to his ancestral home. His experience is far from unique. Across Atouf and surrounding communities, thousands of residents are facing catastrophic losses of land, water, and livelihoods as the Crimson Thread project progresses.

Local estimates show more than 20,000 dunams (2,000 hectares) of agricultural land are already suffering severe drought and damage as a result of destroyed water infrastructure. For communities that rely almost entirely on livestock farming, shrinking pastureland and limited water access are pushing production costs sharply higher and forcing farmers to cull their herds, eroding their primary source of income.

Anis Bisharat, a local vegetable farmer who once tended thriving plots of melons, okra, cucumbers, and zucchini, has watched his entire season wither after the water cuts. With irrigation no longer possible, his crops have suffered irreversible damage, and the project has also closed the traditional access road to the plain, forcing him to travel twice the distance and pay double the fuel costs to reach what little of his land he can still access.

Muhammad Gharaibeh, another long-time farmer in the region, says the project is part of a far broader plan to seize more than 70,000 dunams of Palestinian land, facilitated by a settler outpost built on a hill overlooking the plain that has enabled repeated targeting of local agricultural activity. “This plain is the breadbasket of Palestine, and most of the fruits and vegetables distributed in the West Bank come from here,” Gharaibeh explained. With water lines cut, more than 40,000 dunams of standing crops are now without irrigation. With the scorching Palestinian summer just beginning, Gharaibeh says the entire growing season is at risk of total loss. “My crops have been without water for two weeks, and this is just the beginning,” he lamented.

Preliminary data from the Atouf Village Council confirms the scale of the crisis: 24,000 dunams of land belonging to roughly 300 local farmers are currently facing drought and damage from ongoing bulldozing operations. That affected area makes up roughly a quarter of the entire 96,000-dunam Buqe’aa Plain.

Details of the Crimson Thread project first emerged publicly in November last year, when Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the barrier and military road would stretch across Palestinian territory from Ein Shibli in the central Jordan Valley to the Tayasir military checkpoint. Shortly after the report, Israeli authorities issued formal military seizure orders for 1,042 dunams of Palestinian land along the planned route. Since the start of 2024, construction crews have operated continuously to advance the project, which researchers and local residents say will ultimately cut off thousands of additional dunams from Palestinian access entirely.

The humanitarian and political fallout of the project is rooted in long-standing Israeli restrictions on Palestinian presence in the Jordan Valley, which makes up roughly 30 percent of the occupied West Bank. A recent April report from Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem found that the Jordan Valley has some of the strictest limits on Palestinian access and residency in the entire occupied territory. As of April, the group reported that more than 4,100 Palestinians across 62 communities in Areas B and C have already been displaced by a combination of Israeli state restrictions and settler violence. Currently, 53.4 percent of the Jordan Valley is classified as Israeli “state land,” 45.7 percent is designated as military firing and training zones, and roughly 20 percent is set aside as nature reserves — designations that all but bar Palestinian access and use.

Mu’taz Bisharat, a leading expert on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, told Middle East Eye that the Crimson Thread project represents a dramatic tightening of Israeli control over the Jordan Valley, and a direct threat to the continued existence of Palestinian communities in the region. Bisharat noted that the deliberate destruction of water infrastructure is an intentional attack on the foundation of Palestinian life in the area, leaving little option for families but displacement. “Today, 70 percent of the land in this area has been lost due to the compounded crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, the Palestinian presence, and Palestinian agriculture. Nothing remains for the Palestinian citizen,” he said.

Bisharat added that the new barrier and road are intended to redraw de facto boundaries in the Jordan Valley, cutting the region off from the rest of the occupied West Bank in a quiet, ongoing process of annexation that continues out of the global media spotlight. “The annexation process is taking place on the ground in full view of the entire world,” he said. “It has been halted in the media, but it hasn’t stopped on the ground.”

A leading human rights researcher has delivered explosive testimony to a British parliamentary committee, alleging that the United Kingdom failed to prevent a documented genocide that killed an estimated 60,000 civilians in Sudan’s el-Fasher after bowing to behind-the-scenes political pressure from the United Arab Emirates.

Nathaniel Raymond, founding director of the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at the Yale School of Public Health, told the House of Commons International Development Committee on Tuesday that the UK – as the official penholder for Sudan affairs at the United Nations, tasked with coordinating the international community’s response to the crisis – was uniquely positioned to avert what he calls one of the worst mass casualty events of the 21st century. Instead, he says, more than two dozen private warnings and evidence-based recommendations were dismissed, sidelined or ignored to protect London’s strategic economic and diplomatic ties with Abu Dhabi.

The crisis in el-Fasher began unfolding long before the October 2025 massacre. In the summer of 2023, the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out a genocide that killed tens of thousands of Masalit civilians in el-Geneina, another major Darfur city – a atrocity the U.S. government and multiple leading human rights organizations have officially classified as genocide. Within weeks, researchers and analysts confirmed that el-Fasher, home to long-standing displacement camps for survivors of the 2003–2005 Darfur genocide, was the RSF’s next primary target.

Raymond first briefed the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on the looming threat in July 2023, where he called for urgent UN peacekeeping intervention to stop the impending violence. By April 2024, HRL monitoring confirmed the RSF had begun its full siege of el-Fasher, a city with a population roughly three-quarters the size of the Gaza Strip. HRL leadership concluded that engaging the British government, given its UN mandate, represented the best possible chance to prevent catastrophe.

In mid-May 2024, as the UK drafted UN Security Council Resolution 2736 – a text calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Sudan – Raymond met with FCDO officials in London to present newly compiled evidence: an analysis of public phone records showing regular travel between RSF-held territory in Sudan, UAE locations, Somalia’s Bosaso port, and Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa. Subsequent reporting has confirmed that Bosaso’s military base and Ethiopian transit routes serve as key logistics hubs for the UAE to supply the RSF with weapons, military equipment and mercenary fighters. The phone travel data traced directly to Abdel-Rahim Dagalo, brother and second-in-command of RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti.

During those meetings, Raymond told MPs, FCDO officials admitted they were facing intense private diplomatic pressure from the UAE that limited London’s ability to act on the crisis. He said British officials asked his independent American research lab – not UK intelligence agencies like GCHQ or MI6 – to publicly release the sensitive phone data to counter the UAE’s covert support for the RSF. Raymond declined the request, noting that public release would expose the tracking system, allow the RSF and UAE to close the security loophole, and eliminate the lab’s ability to predict future attacks. The tracking mechanism was eventually exposed months later when Human Rights Watch published reporting on Colombian mercenaries being trained in the UAE for RSF service.

In follow-up meetings with NGO representatives, FCDO officials made clear that Resolution 2736 was the maximum action the UK was willing to take, and that the text would not include any consequences for foreign state backers of Sudan’s warring parties – including the UAE. Officials also told humanitarians they would only issue one public warning that el-Fasher was on the brink of collapse, for fear of being accused of “crying wolf” if an attack was delayed.

After Resolution 2736 was adopted on June 13, 2024, the RSF paused its attacks on el-Fasher for a brief period. Raymond told the committee that HRL obtained intelligence from a source with direct access to RSF internal operations: the UAE had ordered Hemedti to halt the assault so Abu Dhabi could assess whether the UN resolution would trigger any meaningful political consequences for its support of the RSF. HRL shared this intelligence with the FCDO and urged the UK to prepare punitive measures if the RSF resumed attacks. According to Raymond, the FCDO made explicitly clear that no unilateral or multilateral consequences would be imposed for violating the resolution. Once the UAE confirmed there would be no repercussions, the siege and attacks resumed.

Later that month, Raymond confirmed, the UAE blocked him from speaking about RSF bombing damage in an official UN chamber. In January 2025, he was contacted by staff for then-UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who was visiting Sudanese refugee camps in Chad. Lammy’s team only asked Raymond for a U.S. National Security Council phone number, but he used the call to warn them that the large Zamzam internally displaced persons camp outside el-Fasher – home to more than 500,000 people already facing famine conditions, most from ethnic groups targeted in the 2003 Darfur genocide – was being bombarded with advanced UAE-supplied weapons, and that the attack was a precursor to a full RSF seizure of the camp.

In April 2025, as Lammy hosted a high-profile multinational donor conference for Sudan in London, the RSF stormed and captured Zamzam. Raymond described graphic atrocities: humanitarian and healthcare workers were executed on camera after begging for mercy, women and girls were kidnapped as sexual slaves and systematically tortured, and large sections of the camp were burned to the ground. Despite hosting the donor conference as the massacre unfolded, the FCDO issued no public statement on the fall of Zamzam, and Raymond says HRL is aware of no official UK comment on the atrocity.

By September 2025, HRL satellite imagery analysis confirmed the RSF had built 31 kilometers of earthen berms around el-Fasher, encircling the city to create what Raymond calls a “kill box” to trap and slaughter the civilian population. That same month, a senior FCDO official privately expressed to Raymond that the Starmer government had no intention of taking meaningful action as the city neared collapse. One month later, the RSF launched its final assault and seized full control of el-Fasher. Verified eyewitness accounts, video footage, photos and satellite imagery confirm widespread massacres of unarmed civilians, with survivors reporting summary executions, systematic sexual violence and routine torture at the hands of RSF fighters. Hours before el-Fasher fell, ceasefire talks in Washington collapsed after the UAE refused to address the 18-month crippling siege of the city.

HRL’s analysis estimates that at least 60,000 civilians were killed in the final assault and its aftermath. Raymond told the committee that after the massacre, a senior FCDO Atrocity Prevention official contacted him via encrypted chat to question whether the 60,000 death toll was inflated, then followed up with a phone call. During that conversation, Raymond said, he concluded the death estimate represented a political problem for the FCDO, given its ties to the UAE. The official requested a formal briefing for FCDO and UN officials on the casualty data, but the FCDO never scheduled the briefing, and it never took place.

Raymond emphasized to MPs that the el-Fasher massacre was “arguably the most accurately predicted mass atrocity in human history.” The real-time intelligence provided by HRL and other independent researchers was detailed, timely, granular and actionable enough to allow the UK to develop robust policy interventions that could have prevented the slaughter entirely. He pointed to targeted sanctions against UAE officials responsible for arming the RSF as one minimal intervention that could have disrupted the covert weapons pipeline flowing to the paramilitary group.

The researcher warned that the same pattern of inaction is already repeating itself in el-Obeid, a city in southern Sudan’s Kordofan region that is currently under siege and attack by the RSF. He also called for grassroots accountability for the UAE’s role in the atrocities, urging a public consumer boycott of UAE-linked businesses – including stopping purchases at Dubai and Abu Dhabi airport duty free shops, and highlighting public pressure on Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City football club as a potential catalyst for change.

On a crisp Tuesday in Beijing, young athletes from China and the United States traded serves, laughed over quick points, and built unexpected friendships at the 2026 China-US Youth Pickleball Friendship Tournament, hosted by the University of International Business and Economics. The one-day event brought together 42 American high school students from an Iowa study tour delegation alongside Chinese student players from Shijiazhuang Foreign Language School, turning a casual recreational sport into a powerful platform for people-to-people diplomacy between the two nations.

Organizers of the tournament framed the gathering as more than just a athletic competition: they designed the event to position pickleball as an accessible, informal bridge for cross-cultural exchange, nurturing the next generation of informal ambassadors for China-US relations and laying small, solid groundwork for the long-term development of bilateral ties. Unlike formal diplomatic summits, the mixed doubles format paired Chinese and American players as teammates, forcing collaboration over competition and creating natural opportunities for connection beyond language barriers.

For 18-year-old Zuo Yining, a graduating senior from Shijiazhuang Foreign Language School, that collaboration worked far better than any formal exchange activity he had joined before. Teamed up with a teenage American partner during his matches, he recalled seamless on-court coordination that required barely any verbal communication. “We barely needed verbal communication amid intense rallies. A simple eye contact or gesture was enough for us to figure out when to run and catch the ball together,” Zuo explained.

The experience, he said, has already forged lasting personal bonds that extend far beyond the tournament court. “A single match, a casual meal or small talk can easily bring teenagers close. The US students I met are warm, sincere and outgoing,” he noted. As someone who regularly hosts foreign visitors at his school, Zuo has long kept in touch with international friends he met through past exchange programs via social media, and one of his former American guests is set to return to China this August — Zuo has already extended an invitation for him to stay at his family home. “We have cultural differences, but every teenager here, regardless of nationality, has a warm and open heart,” he added.

Laura Michelle Kelly, the high school teacher leading the Iowa student delegation, shared that every one of the 42 American teenagers on the trip is visiting China for the first time. Following the tournament, the group will spend seven days traveling across both Beijing and Shanghai, exploring the country’s cultural and urban landscapes for themselves. Kelly said she and her students have already been deeply impressed by the warmth of their reception across the capital. “Everyone here has been incredibly welcoming, making this journey fantastic,” she said.

She also echoed organizers’ praise for pickleball as the perfect activity to bring young people from different countries together. The sport has exploded in popularity across American schools and community parks over the past five years, making it a common pastime for teenagers on both sides, and its low barrier to entry makes it an ideal icebreaker. “Pickleball creates a relaxed atmosphere that combines healthy competition and teamwork. It is a lighthearted way for young people from different countries to get to know one another,” Kelly explained.

Past exchange groups from Iowa that have traveled to China have returned home with glowing reports of their trips, Kelly said, and those positive accounts have sparked growing curiosity about China among more Iowa teenagers, leading to rising demand for similar exchange opportunities. She also called for continued reciprocal exchange, extending an open invitation for Chinese student groups to visit Iowa in the future to build their own connections.

For 15-year-old Iowa student Carrigan Grace Rasmussen, the entire trip has already exceeded her expectations. An avid pickleball player herself, she said the sport is ubiquitous in her home community, where she and her friends gather regularly to play between classes and on weekends. Like Zuo, she emphasized that shared participation in sport cuts through cultural and political differences to create genuine closeness. “Competitions help us build close bonds. When either side makes mistakes, we can cheer each other up and offer support,” she said, summing up the event’s core spirit: that common ground is easier to find than many think, when you start with a ball and a shared love of play.

On Tuesday, the fifth round of direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel kicked off in the U.S. capital, marking a new chapter in efforts to end ongoing hostilities even as a parallel diplomatic track between the United States and Iran threatens to complicate and overshadow the bilateral process. This three-day round of talks follows four earlier negotiating cycles that failed to deliver a lasting ceasefire or close the deep ideological and territorial divides separating the two neighboring states.

As talks get underway, Lebanese negotiators are arriving in Washington with a clear set of core priorities: pushing for a binding timetable for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon, securing the safe return of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Lebanese civilians, negotiating the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, and laying the groundwork for large-scale post-conflict reconstruction. For its part, Israel has repeatedly linked any territorial withdrawal to the full disarmament of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, and insists that Israeli forces maintain control over a wide security buffer zone inside southern Lebanon until Israeli officials are satisfied that the Lebanese army can fully prevent Hezbollah from reestablishing a military presence in the area.

Unlike the four prior rounds held earlier this year, this latest negotiating session unfolds against a drastically shifted regional diplomatic landscape. A recent memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran has folded the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a broader regional ceasefire framework, and follow-up discussions held near Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne produced a blueprint for a new multilateral mechanism designed to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. This development means the bilateral Washington talks are no longer the sole diplomatic forum addressing the Lebanon conflict, creating new questions about who ultimately holds decision-making power over Lebanon’s negotiating path – a particularly sensitive issue for the Lebanese presidency, which has framed the direct bilateral talks as a critical step to restore state control over issues of war, peace and national sovereignty.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has repeatedly stressed that no foreign power has the authority to negotiate on Lebanon’s behalf. “We welcome any assistance to end the war, but we are a sovereign country and no one negotiates on our behalf,” Aoun stated ahead of the fifth round of talks. Lebanese officials have described the decision to open direct negotiations with Israel as a historic step that allows the Lebanese state to reclaim full responsibility for the country’s foreign and security policy, in line with Article 52 of the Lebanese constitution, which grants the president authority to negotiate international agreements in coordination with the prime minister, with final approval required from the cabinet and, depending on the terms of any deal, parliament. Still, well-placed sources confirm that the launch of direct talks came in large part from intense U.S. diplomatic pressure on Beirut, and that talks have proceeded even as Israel has continued its airstrikes and ground operations across southern Lebanon.

After four rounds of talks since April failed to secure a durable end to fighting, the longest pause in Israeli airstrikes came not from an agreement between Lebanon and Israel, but after the U.S.-Iran memorandum was signed – a reality that has strengthened Hezbollah’s argument that Iran’s diplomatic track with Washington is far more effective at securing an Israeli ceasefire than the Lebanese government’s bilateral negotiations.

The fourth round of Washington talks, held June 2 and 3, concluded with a joint statement from the U.S., Lebanon and Israel that outlined a framework requiring a full halt to Hezbollah attacks and the withdrawal of Hezbollah operatives from the area south of the Litani River as preconditions for a ceasefire. The statement also announced plans to establish “pilot zones” where the Lebanese Armed Forces would exercise full exclusive control, with all non-state armed groups excluded from the areas. The framework also emphasized that the future of Lebanese-Israeli relations must be determined by the two national governments, and rejected any attempts by external actors to hold Lebanon’s future hostage.

This joint statement drew sharp criticism from Hezbollah, which argued it imposed one-sided obligations on the group while offering no binding Israeli commitment to withdraw from occupied Lebanese territory. Hezbollah officials have labeled the direct bilateral talks a grave mistake that grants Israel long-sought political gains without requiring it to end its occupation or halt military operations. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who led Lebanon’s indirect negotiating channels with Israel in prior talks, has also argued that Beirut should rely on the existing ceasefire monitoring mechanism established after the 2024 hostilities agreement, and has publicly rejected limited pilot zones, calling instead for a full comprehensive ceasefire, full Israeli withdrawal, and parallel implementation of commitments by both sides.

A senior source close to the Lebanese delegation revealed that the pilot zone proposal nearly caused the fourth round of talks to collapse entirely. Initially, Israel rejected the proposal, prompting Lebanese negotiators to threaten to walk away from the session. U.S. officials stepped in to broker a compromise, persuading Israel to accept the principle of pilot zones, but the two sides remain deeply divided over where the zones will be located and what specific obligations will apply to each party.

Lebanese negotiators proposed the southern Lebanese city of Bint Jbeil as the first pilot zone, a city that falls within what Israel calls the “Yellow Line” – a self-declared military boundary Israel has marked inside Lebanese territory to demarcate areas under its operational control. By nominating Bint Jbeil, Beirut aimed to push back against the risk that Israel’s current controlled area would gradually become a permanent buffer zone. Under Lebanon’s proposal, Israel would withdraw from Bint Jbeil, the Lebanese army would deploy to the city, Hezbollah would dismantle its military infrastructure, and displaced residents would return to their homes. But Israel rejected Bint Jbeil as the initial test site. “The Israelis appeared as though they had been dragged into the negotiating room by the Americans. You could see it on their faces. They did not want to be there,” the source close to the negotiations noted.

Instead of accepting Lebanon’s proposal, Israel has demanded that it retain full control over the entire Yellow Line, while retaining the right to monitor Lebanese army operations targeting Hezbollah both south and north of the Litani River. Israel has stated that it will only consider further territorial withdrawals after it assesses the Lebanese army’s performance and confirms that the army has fully dismantled Hezbollah’s military positions. For Lebanon, this framework risks cementing Israel’s current positions as a semi-permanent security zone, and makes withdrawal conditional on an open-ended, unregulated Israeli assessment of the Lebanese army’s actions.

In this fifth round of talks, the Lebanese delegation plans to revisit the pilot zone proposal and push for a broader geographic scope, moving beyond the small individual villages and narrow sectors discussed in prior rounds. A presidential source close to the talks says a new broader framework covering entire districts has been proposed, which would include multiple towns and villages on both sides of the Litani River, rather than testing the arrangement in isolated localities. The source added that this approach has even been discussed by Berri, despite his public rejection of limited pilot zones. Under this broader framework, Israeli withdrawal, Lebanese army deployment, civilian return, and the removal of Hezbollah military infrastructure would be implemented across a much larger contiguous area. Even with this new proposal, core fundamental differences between the two sides remain unchanged: Lebanon demands that withdrawal begin the process, while Israel demands concrete proof of Hezbollah’s disarmament before it gives up control of occupied territory.

The biggest uncertainty hanging over the Washington talks, however, stems from the new parallel diplomatic mechanism emerging from U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland. U.S. Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the Swiss talks produced a framework for a body designed to reduce tensions in Lebanon and prevent renewed escalation. Details of the proposed body, which has been called both a deconfliction cell and a tension-reduction committee, have not been released to the public. A source close to the Lebanese presidential palace told Middle East Eye that Lebanese officials have not yet received a full explanation of the body’s membership, authority, or relationship to the existing Washington negotiations.

Current indications suggest the mechanism will include Lebanon, Iran, and the U.S., with Pakistan and Qatar potentially joining as mediators. The working model appears to have the U.S. communicating directly with Israel, Iran communicating directly with Hezbollah, and the Lebanese state participating as a formal direct party. Under this arrangement, neither Israel nor Hezbollah would have formal representation, but both would have indirect access through their main international backers.

Israel has already raised concerns that the mechanism grants formal recognition to Iran’s role in Lebanese affairs, while potentially restricting Israel’s freedom of military action. For Lebanese officials, the key concern is that Iran could use the process to speak for Hezbollah and negotiate matters involving Lebanese territory independent of the internationally recognized Beirut government. Still, the Lebanese presidency has indicated it is willing to engage with the new mechanism as long as the U.S. leads the process and the Lebanese state retains formal representation.

According to the presidential source, U.S. recognition of the Pakistan-backed diplomatic initiative does not mean the Washington and Swiss tracks have to be mutually exclusive. The two processes could eventually converge: the direct bilateral talks would resolve core Lebanese-Israeli territorial and political disputes, while the Swiss mechanism would work to enforce calm between Israel and Hezbollah through guarantees from the U.S. and Iran. But no framework has yet been established to clarify where one process’s authority ends and the other’s begins. “The Washington and Swiss tracks do not have to remain separate,” the source said. “The question is how they will intersect. At this stage, that is still not clear.”

On the night of April 30, Israeli military forces raided the West Bank home of Musab Zaloum, a Palestinian father of two, as he and his family slept peacefully. Zaloum was separated from his wife Manar Karaja and their young children within minutes of the soldiers’ arrival, handcuffed and forced outside before he had any understanding of the operation’s target. It was only after he was placed in an armored military vehicle that a soldier informed him: 28-year-old Karaja, who was just two days prior confirmed to be pregnant with the couple’s third child, was under arrest.

Zaloum, still cuffed, was soon allowed to return to the house, where he found his 5-year-old son Ayman and 4-year-old daughter Layla awake and screaming in terror. Woken by the commotion after the soldiers left, the children immediately begged to know where their mother was. To calm them in that terrifying moment, Zaloum told them intruders had broken into the home, and that their mother would return by morning. That promise was broken, and he soon had to tell the children the truth: the Israeli army had taken their mother.

Karaja is one of three pregnant Palestinian women currently held in Israel’s Damon Prison, all of whom are being subjected to brutal, degrading conditions that put both their lives and the lives of their unborn children at severe risk, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club. These three women are part of a larger population of 93 Palestinian female detainees held in Israeli prisons, a group that has seen conditions deteriorate dramatically since October 2023. Since that date, no family members nor International Committee of the Red Cross representatives have been granted access to visit the female prisoners.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club released a statement accusing the Israeli Prison Service of ramping up punitive measures against female detainees in recent months. “Some pregnant prisoners have been subjected to harsh interrogations and detention conditions in cells that lack even the most basic sanitary standards,” the organization said. “This has exacerbated their physical and psychological suffering, leading to weight loss, emaciation and extreme exhaustion.” The group added that even pregnant detainees have been forced to undergo invasive, humiliating strip searches.

For Zaloum, life since Karaja’s arrest has been consumed by worry. The couple had only just learned of their pregnancy days before the raid, and had already begun picking out names for their coming child, a brief burst of joy cut short by the midnight raid. Today, he cares for their two young children alone, and his biggest fear is the lack of proper food and medical care for his wife in detention. He describes the prison conditions as “deplorable”, noting that even the small rations provided to regular prisoners are far from enough to meet the dietary needs of a pregnant woman.

Through lawyers that visit Karaja every few weeks (the only contact her family is allowed), Zaloum has learned that overcrowding at Damon Prison has forced Karaja to sleep directly on the cold concrete floor since her arrest, and she suffers from constant body pain as a result. Israel is holding Karaja on suspicion of incitement, a loosely defined charge that is frequently used to detain Palestinian women, often based on social media posts, and she remains in detention awaiting trial.

Karaja is far from alone in her suffering. Thirty-five-year-old Dana Joudeh, a five-month pregnant woman from Nablus, was arrested on April 18. Just months before her arrest, Joudeh underwent gastric bypass surgery, and she had only just learned of her pregnancy when Israeli forces raided her home and detained her. She was first held at the notorious Hasharon detention center, where reports routinely document humiliating treatment, invasive strip searches, and the denial of basic necessities including mattresses and adequate food.

Joudeh’s family told Middle East Eye that she has repeatedly suffered fainting spells and dehydration in detention, but prison officials have refused to provide the specialized medical care she needs given her pregnancy and recent surgery. “She told her lawyer that the women sleep on the floor in overcrowded, cold cells,” Joudeh’s mother said. “Some pregnant prisoners try to support others by sharing portions of bread and food, despite the already meagre rations and poor-quality meals.” The family lives in constant fear, with repeated requests for medical checkups for Joudeh ignored by prison authorities.

In Qalqilya, 37-year-old Amina al-Taweel, a mother of four who is four months pregnant, has been held on incitement charges since her March 18 arrest. Her husband Ali Shawahneh, who himself has spent 19 years total in Israeli prisons, says her arrest came as a devastating shock. “On the day of her arrest, I told the officer, ‘Take me instead of her,’” he recalled. “He replied, ‘This time, you’re not the one we’re after – it’s your wife.’ They handcuffed her and took her away while I stood there in shock, and the children cried.” Now caring for their four children alone, Shawahneh says he cannot meet the children’s emotional needs as they grieve for their mother. Al-Taweel, who experiences severe complications in early pregnancy that require ongoing care, has no access to that support in prison. “During my last detention, I lost more than 60 kilograms because of the poor quality and scarcity of food. How is a pregnant woman supposed to endure that?” Shawahneh asked.

Palestinian human rights defenders say Israel’s treatment of these pregnant detainees crosses every line of international law. Helmi al-Araj, director of the Hurryyat Centre for Defence of Liberties and Civil Rights, said that Israel’s policy of abuse toward prisoners has existed long before October 2023, but has become far more severe in recent months. “Prisoners face collective punishment, abuse, torture, starvation, isolation, and denial of family visits,” al-Araj told Middle East Eye. “All of this negatively impacts the psychological state of female prisoners who are mothers and pregnant women. This Israeli policy existed even before 7 October, but it has become a deeply entrenched policy based on grave violations of the rights of prisoners.”

Official Palestinian detainee advocacy groups confirm that the broader population of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody faces systemic abuse. According to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, more than 9,300 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including 93 women and more than 350 children. More than 765 women and girls have been arrested by Israeli forces since the start of the military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Nearly half of all Palestinian detainees are held without charge or trial under indefinitely renewable administrative detention orders.

The United Nations’ leading independent investigative body mandated to probe violations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has issued a landmark 88-page report concluding that Israeli security forces have systematically and deliberately targeted Palestinian children, committing acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes across the Gaza Strip, alongside additional war crimes in the occupied West Bank. The report covers the two-year period from October 7, 2023, to October 7, 2025, documenting that at least 20,179 Palestinian children were killed and another 44,143 wounded in Gaza during this window, with children accounting for 30% of all fatalities and 26% of all injuries recorded.

Srinivasan Muralidhar, the current chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem), emphasized that overwhelming on-the-ground evidence confirms Palestinian children have been intentionally targeted and killed by Israeli forces. He added that even after the ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025, the killing and maiming of children has continued, with Israel consistently ignoring the terms of the truce and its legal obligation to protect Palestinian children under international humanitarian law.

Drawing directly from the provisions of the UN Genocide Convention, the inquiry concluded that the deliberate targeting of children constitutes clear evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, within Gaza. This finding builds on the commission’s September 2024 conclusion that Israel was carrying out genocide in Gaza, a finding that former commission chair Navi Pillay described at the time as the most authoritative genocide determination the United Nations had issued to date on the situation in Gaza.

Unlike previous findings, the new report centers its analysis specifically on the impact of the conflict on children, examining direct violence, arbitrary detention, reproductive harm, and long-term psychological trauma. The inquiry documents a repeated, consistent pattern of children being struck by Israeli precision weapons, including fire from sniper units and attacks by reconnaissance quadcopter drones. Medical workers operating in Gaza documented hundreds of cases where children presented with single gunshot wounds concentrated in the head and upper torso.

The report details two horrific, representative cases to illustrate this pattern: in April 2024, a 10-day-old infant was shot in the head by an Israeli quadcopter while breastfeeding inside a displacement tent in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Four months later, in August 2024, a four-year-old girl was killed by a quadcopter strike to the head while eating a meal with her family in Khan Younis. Seventeen frontline medical practitioners who treated casualties in Gaza confirmed to the commission that this pattern of targeted head and upper torso wounds from sniper and drone fire was uniform across child casualties. One physician told investigators that Israeli soldiers appeared to be engaging in “deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice.”

The commission has publicly identified specific Israeli military units it found responsible for these targeted killings, including the Kfir Brigade, the 162nd Division, the 98th Division, the 99th Division, and an elite drone unit known as the Refaim or Ghost Unit.

The report confirms that lethal violence against children has not ended with the October 2025 ceasefire, which Israel has repeatedly violated despite the agreement’s mandate to end all hostilities. A prominent example cited is the killing of two brothers, aged 9 and 10, who were shot dead by an Israeli drone near Bani Suheila in southern Gaza in late November while collecting firewood. Israeli forces attempted to frame the children as “suspects” crossing a restricted military boundary known as the yellow line, but the commission dismissed this claim as entirely baseless. Investigators confirmed the boys were more than 300 meters from the nearest Israeli troops, their identity as children collecting firewood was unambiguous, and the drone operator had an unobstructed, clear view of the pair before launching the strike.

Beyond direct targeted killings, the report details the total systemic destruction of Palestinian childhood across every aspect of daily life. As of October 2025, 459 of Gaza’s 564 school buildings had sustained direct military damage, leaving more than 668,000 school-age children completely cut off from formal education and forcing them to miss three full academic years. By January 2026, more than 335,000 children under the age of five face severe long-term developmental delays after the complete collapse of early childhood support services in the enclave.

Attacks on neonatal medical infrastructure have directly caused hundreds of preventable newborn deaths, the inquiry finds. Before October 2023, Gaza operated 178 incubators across eight full neonatal intensive care units; by November 2024, only 54 incubators remained functional. The report records that miscarriage rates in Gaza have risen by as much as 300% since the start of the conflict, and as of March 2026, 70% of all newborns in Gaza are classified as premature or underweight due to widespread maternal malnutrition and collapsed healthcare.

The inquiry also documented widespread abuse against Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces, finding that detained children are routinely subjected to torture, sexual violence, forced public nudity, coercive stress positioning, and deliberate denial of food, water, and emergency medical care. One case highlighted is that of a 17-year-old boy from Ramallah who died in Israel’s Megiddo Prison in March 2025 from severe, prolonged malnutrition; Israeli authorities withheld his body from his family for months after his death. The commission classified his death as a deliberate war crime of willful killing.

Muralidhar emphasized that the harm inflicted on Palestinian children will outlast active hostilities: “Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight. The destruction of their health, education and development is irreversible.”

The commission has issued a series of binding calls for action: it demands Israel immediately halt all military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, release all detained Palestinian children, return the bodies of deceased children withheld from families, and end its years-long blockade of Gaza. The inquiry also urges all UN member states to immediately cease all arms transfers to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for the documented violations, and calls on the International Criminal Court to prioritize the investigation of crimes against children in its ongoing inquiry into Palestinian violations.

Notably, Israel did not respond to 13 separate formal requests for information or access from the commission to conduct its investigation.