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Living 10,000 kilometers away in Ohio, Louai Abu Ridi, a Palestinian-American property owner, spent weeks glued to live security camera footage, watching armed Israeli settlers escalate their campaign of harassment against his family at his dream home in Qusra, a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank. For months, settlers had targeted the property, where his brother had been staying while Abu Ridi lived and worked in the U.S. with his wife and two daughters. But earlier this month, the intimidation crossed a dangerous line: settlers surrounded the home and pitched permanent tents outside, launching a full siege to force the Abu Ridi family to abandon their land.

When he watched settlers establish the encampment on his property in real time, Abu Ridi immediately began working from overseas to end the blockade. He urged his brother to contact Israeli law enforcement, and reached out to U.S. diplomatic officials and his elected representatives in Congress for intervention. But when days passed with no meaningful action to dislodge the settlers, the emotional weight of watching his family trapped 24/7 through security cameras became too heavy to bear. He booked the next available flight to Qusra, the town where he was born, raised, and built the home he intended for his family to enjoy for generations.

“I told my brother, ‘I’m tired. I can’t sleep another night watching this siege unfold from thousands of miles away. I’m coming to stand with you, to bring you supplies, and to end this blockade together,’” Abu Ridi told Middle East Eye in an interview from inside the besieged property. Today, he remains inside the home alongside his brother, sister, 83-year-old mother, and a neighboring family that was already forced out of their own adjacent property by settlers, adamant that he will not leave until the siege is lifted and his home is secure.

For Abu Ridi, the Qusra home is far more than a structure of concrete and brick. Though he now resides permanently in Ohio with his family, he returns to his hometown two to three times a year to visit relatives who still live in the community. He began constructing the vacation home nearly three years ago, envisioning a space where his American-born daughters could connect with their ancestral roots and build memories alongside their extended family. That dream, he says, has curdled into a persistent nightmare.

Sporadic attacks on the property began in January 2024, just three years after construction broke ground. In May, Abu Ridi watched via live feed as roughly 15 settlers pelted the home with rocks while his brother hid inside. The August 9 siege marked a dangerous escalation that immediately reminded Abu Ridi of a recent, high-profile takeover just kilometers away in Jalud, another West Bank town. Just weeks prior, settlers cut water and electricity, blocked access roads, and laid siege to the home of the al-Tubasi family. After five days of blockade, settlers stormed the property at gunpoint, forced the family out, and raised the Israeli flag over the roof, where the home remains under settler control today.

United Nations data underscores the growing scale of this crisis: since January 2023, more than 6,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the occupied West Bank following violent settler attacks, with attacks spiking sharply after October 2023. Fearing his family’s home would be the next seizure, Abu Ridi pushed for urgent intervention.

After the siege drew international condemnation and media attention, the Israeli military announced it would deploy forces to Qusra to remove the settlers and prevent violent clashes. But Abu Ridi says the on-the-ground reality could not have been more different from the official statement. “When the army arrived, they took the settlers’ side,” he explained. “They went to their tent, prayed with them, and celebrated with them.” The military also designated Qusra a closed military zone, restricting access for non-residents, a move that Abu Ridi says has only reinforced the siege, rather than ending it. Soldiers have blocked food and supplies from reaching the family trapped inside the home, he says, even though just 10 to 15 settlers are camped outside the property.

“It’s insane. If the army actually wanted to remove them, they could simply arrest the settlers and move them out, and the problem would be solved in hours,” Abu Ridi said. “They tell the media they sent the IDF to protect Palestinian residents and remove the settlers, but that is not what’s happening here on the ground.”

Abu Ridi also sought help through U.S. channels, reaching out to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the office of his Ohio congressional representative, Marcy Kaptur. While both entities responded with public condemnation of the settlers—including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee labeling the settlers terrorists, a step Abu Ridi says he appreciates—no action has changed his family’s situation on the ground. After two full weeks under siege, the blockade remains firmly in place.

The decision to leave his wife and two daughters behind in Ohio to return to Qusra was not an easy one, Abu Ridi says. His 10-year-old daughter messages him repeatedly, even after midnight Ohio time, to check if he is safe, asking if she will ever get to sleep in the Qusra home, and if he will make it back to the U.S. alive. Still, he says leaving his mother, siblings, and extended family to face the siege alone was unthinkable.

Life inside the besieged home is a constant state of vigilance. No one in the house can sleep through the night; family members take turns keeping watch around the perimeter, waiting for the next potential attack. “It is a nightmare. We can’t sleep at night. We have to keep watch,” Abu Ridi said. “This has been going on for months. Someone has to stay up all night watching the property.”

Abu Ridi has also opened his home to a neighboring couple with two young daughters, ages two and four, who were forced out of their adjacent home by soldiers after settlers laid siege to it. The young girls constantly ask to return to their home to retrieve their toys, he says, too young to understand why they cannot go back. “It is a mixed emotion: sad, devastating, terrifying, all of the above,” he said of the ongoing crisis.

Even with the constant threat of a violent settler raid, Abu Ridi says he has no plans to leave. “I’m not leaving this house until I make sure it’s safe and won’t be stolen by settlers,” he said.

Tensions in the ongoing U.S.-China artificial intelligence rivalry have escalated once again, after Taiwanese prosecutors levied criminal charges Monday against nine individuals tied to top global tech firms for smuggling restricted high-end AI hardware into mainland China. The defendants include one current employee of leading chip designer Nvidia and two former workers of U.S.-based server manufacturer Super Micro Computer, according to official prosecutorial documents.

Advanced AI infrastructure, which relies heavily on cutting-edge semiconductors produced primarily in Taiwan, has emerged as the central battleground for technological and economic competition between Washington and Beijing. The U.S. first implemented sweeping restrictions on Nvidia’s exports of top-tier AI chips to mainland China in 2022, tightening the regulations in subsequent years to block access to hardware that could advance China’s military and domestic AI development. Most recently, in April 2025, the Biden administration mandated that all exports of Nvidia’s H20 AI chips to China require special government approval, only partially reversing the rule to allow limited shipments later the same year.

Per guidelines outlined by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office in northern Taiwan, all sales of high-end AI servers — the specialized computing systems that host the powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) that power large-scale generative AI models — to parties linked to mainland China are subject to rigorous export control reviews. Regulations also require that any bulk purchase of more than eight high-end AI servers must be preceded by in-person compliance checks of the end client by company staff to verify the final destination and use case.

Prosecutors confirmed that the restricted hardware at the center of the smuggling ring is Nvidia’s B300 GPUs, a high-end AI chip model that is explicitly banned from commercial sale to mainland China under current export rules. Investigations found that the ring successfully smuggled 74 B300-powered AI servers into mainland China via multiple layered smuggling routes to avoid detection: 50 units were transshipped through Indonesia, 16 were sent directly to Chinese ports, and an additional eight were first routed to Japan, then transferred to Hong Kong before being moved across the border to the mainland. A separate attempted shipment of 56 more banned servers was intercepted before it could leave Taiwan, and the hardware remains in custody of local authorities.

Among the nine charged defendants, four — including a senior Nvidia manager identified only by his surname Chang — are being pursued for the maximum possible five-year prison sentence under Taiwanese export control laws. Prosecutors labeled Chang the “key mastermind” of the scheme, noting he bore direct responsibility for authorizing the release of the restricted B300 GPUs for shipment, and has not cooperated with investigations following his arrest. Court documents also detail that multiple conspirators set up a front company in Japan to facilitate the shipment of eight servers, while others created fraudulent business websites and falsified end-user documentation to trick compliance screenings and evade border checks.

In an official written statement responding to the charges, Nvidia spokesperson Patrick Rutherford said the company is committed to collaborating with Taiwanese regulatory and prosecutorial authorities to resolve the allegations as quickly as possible. Super Micro, meanwhile, noted in its own statement that the two former employees arrested in the case were identified during the company’s own cooperation with Taiwanese investigations. The company added that it will continue to upgrade its internal export compliance protocols “to protect American innovation”, in line with U.S. regulatory requirements.

The charges mark the latest high-profile enforcement action against illegal tech smuggling amid growing global scrutiny of AI hardware flows to China, as the U.S. doubles down on efforts to limit China’s access to cutting-edge AI technology.

A 54-year-old Palestinian gynecologist, Dima Amin, has remained in Israeli custody after a dramatic pre-dawn raid that saw dozens of Israeli soldiers forcefully abduct her from her Ramallah home over an alleged inflammatory social media post, triggering a cardiac event that required emergency medical intervention and sparking widespread condemnation from human rights groups.

The raid unfolded at 2 a.m. last Tuesday in Ramallah’s al-Tira neighborhood, where soldiers broke the main entrance lock of Amin’s home before catching the doctor and her husband, Haider Abu Ghosh, completely off guard. According to Abu Ghosh, Israeli forces did not conduct a standard, documented search of the property: soldiers immediately confirmed Amin’s identity when they found her, placed her under arrest, and ordered her to prepare to leave, while holding Abu Ghosh in a separate room to isolate him from the interaction. He told Middle East Eye that he never witnessed the moments his wife was taken into custody, but it is understood soldiers, including a female service member, led her outside and restrained her with tight cuffs.

Within hours of her arrest, Amin developed severe chest pain and required an emergency catheterization procedure. Israeli outlet Haaretz confirmed the incident amounted to a cardiac episode brought on by the excessive force used to restrain her; tight handcuffs left permanent-looking marks on her wrists that were still visible days after her arrest, according to reports.

More than 24 hours after the procedure, Amin was transferred back to Israel’s Moscovia Detention Center, even as her family was denied access to full medical records of her treatment. Her family says they have not been able to independently confirm Israeli reports that she was treated at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital. A follow-up court hearing following her return to custody extended her detention until the following Monday, with Israeli officials confirming the arrest stems from social media posts Israeli intelligence has labeled as incitement.

Amin’s two children, who currently study in Germany and Spain, have only been able to get updates on their mother’s condition via phone calls to their father, and the entire family says the uncertainty around her health and well-being has been crippling. “The absence of a family member, without any means of communication, even without a health issue, is absolutely devastating for us, and it’s deeply distressing that we can’t know anything about her,” Abu Ghosh told reporters.

Amin’s case is far from an isolated incident, human rights organizations say, pointing to a broader pattern of escalating abuse and systemic rights violations against Palestinian detainees held in Israeli custody since October 2023. Leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem confirmed via Amin’s legal representation that the doctor remained tightly restrained throughout her transfer to hospital and treatment, with visible restraint marks clearly visible on her wrists during a recent military court hearing.

B’Tselem director Yuli Novak noted that the abuse of Palestinian detainees has become institutionalized in recent months, describing the entire Israeli prison system as having been reorganized to enable “systematic violations, including physical violence, humiliation, denial of medical treatment, and inhumane living conditions.” Novak emphasized that Amin’s arrest and treatment encapsulates this pattern of brutality: as of mid-2024, at least 90 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody, and more than 9,300 Palestinians remain imprisoned by Israel. “A woman and a doctor of her age suffers a heart attack and undergoes a catheterisation while in Israeli custody, yet she is returned to detention and remains imprisoned,” Novak said. “This is what the policy of intimidating the civilian population and normalising torture and ill-treatment looks like.”

Palestinian advocacy groups add that targeting Amin, a medical professional, fits into a wider campaign of repression against Palestinian health workers. The Palestinian NGO Network says the arrest is part of a consistent pattern of attacks on humanitarian and community infrastructure across the occupied Palestinian territories, noting that Amin is one of 250 detained Palestinian medical professionals, most of whom are from the besieged Gaza Strip. Other detained health workers include Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi and Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, while Dr. Jamila Abu Dahou was only recently released after being taken into custody.

The group holds Israeli authorities fully accountable for this deliberate targeting of the health sector, calling for immediate international intervention to secure the release of all detained medical personnel and end what the network describes as ongoing violations by the occupying power against Palestinian healthcare.

The crackdown extends specifically to Palestinian female prisoners, who face increasingly harsh conditions in Israeli detention. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, more than 90 Palestinian women are currently held at Israel’s Damon Prison, including pregnant people, minors, and detainees with pre-existing chronic health conditions. The group says prison administrators have imposed extreme restrictions that deny female detainees access to critical medical care, adequate nutrition, personal items including clothing, and other basic human rights.

The Prisoners’ Media Office confirmed Saturday that between July 29 and August 18, Palestinian female prisoners at Damon Prison were subjected to seven repeated invasive raids and repressive operations over just 21 days, as part of a systematic escalation of abuse against the detainee population. The office documented a range of violations during these operations, including forced entry into detainee living quarters, verbal and physical abuse, beatings, excessive handcuffing, enforced isolation, and forcible removal of prisoners to the prison yard during raids.

An in-depth investigation by British newspaper The Independent has uncovered compelling evidence suggesting Israel may have violated international law and committed war crimes in a double-tap strike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza last August, which left 20 people dead, among them practicing journalists, medical workers and emergency first responders.

The deadly incident unfolded in two waves on 25 August 2025. The first Israeli projectile struck and killed Hussam al-Masri, a Reuters cameraman, while he was actively filming at the hospital grounds. Within eight minutes, as journalists, medical staff and rescue workers converged on the site to treat survivors and document the initial attack, Israeli tanks launched two additional projectiles directly into the gathered crowd. This second, fatal strike was even captured live on international television, leaving 19 dead.

Among the victims were Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, contributors to regional outlet Middle East Eye, and Mariam Abu Dagga, a correspondent for The Independent. The investigation confirmed that two of the six people Israel labeled as “terrorists” were in fact a hospital employee and a civil defence rescuer who had been assisting with recovery efforts after the first strike.

International law experts consulted by The Independent say the attack raises severe red flags for potential war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, including the deliberate targeting of unarmed civilians and the launch of a disproportionate military attack that far outweighed any claimed military gain. Of particular legal concern, experts emphasized, is the deliberately timed second strike against people responding to the initial blast.

Israel has repeatedly denied committing war crimes in its Gaza military campaign and maintains it does not intentionally target journalists. At the time of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who already faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over prior allegations of war crimes – characterized the incident as a “tragic mishap”. The Israeli military justified the strike by claiming it had targeted a camera that Hamas had placed to monitor Israeli troops.

However, interviews with Israeli whistleblowers obtained by The Independent reveal that any strike on a Gazan hospital requires formal approval at least at the battalion command level, as well as advance operational planning, contradicting framing of the incident as an accidental error. The investigation also found that despite having contact information for hospital administration, the Israeli military never reached out to Nasser Hospital to address its purported concerns about the camera before launching the lethal attack.

Following the release of The Independent’s findings, British cross-party members of parliament have called on the UK government to hold Israeli authorities legally accountable for the strike. Sarah Champion, Labour chair of the House of Commons International Development Committee, questioned the international community’s apparent willingness to accept the killing of civilians and aid workers without consequences, noting that the 77-year-old Geneva Conventions were created to set clear rules of war that must be enforced.

Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat MP, raised concerns that the UK may be holding relevant evidence that it has failed to share with ongoing international investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes and acts of genocide, calling on British authorities to proactively turn over all relevant materials to appropriate judicial bodies. Labour MP Rachael Maskell echoed calls for accountability through international courts, saying that medics operating in Gaza have reported systemic targeted attacks on humanitarian workers, including through sniper fire and drone strikes. She urged the UK to adopt sweeping measures, including ending all trade with Israel and imposing new sanctions on the Israeli government, to force accountability for the actions of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Once renowned across North Kordofan for its fragrant lemon groves that filled the market town’s streets with sweet spring blossom, Bara now bears the unthinkable scars of Sudan’s brutal 2023 civil war. What was once a thriving community of 100,000 residents is now a desolate landscape of destruction, where the scent of rotting human flesh has replaced the scent of lemon flowers, following months of sieges, violent clashes, and targeted civilian massacres carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during their occupation of the town.

In July 2024, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its allied resistance groups achieved a decisive victory, driving RSF fighters out of Bara and opening a rare window for independent observers and local first responders to access the war-ravaged town. Multiple eyewitnesses who entered Bara shortly after the SAF recapture described scenes of widespread horror: unburied civilian corpses left abandoned on roadways by the RSF fighters who gunned them down, while the few dead that received any form of burial lie in shallow graves or sealed inside destroyed private homes.

Local engineering experts working to assess Bara’s critical infrastructure have issued an urgent public warning about an impending public health catastrophe. Bara draws all its drinking water from shallow underground aquifers and wells, which reach depths of just 20 to 30 meters. Decomposition from thousands of unburied bodies already risks leaching contaminants into these water sources, threatening the lives of any returning residents and local livestock alike.

Bara’s strategic value has made it a key battleground throughout Sudan’s ongoing conflict. Sitting directly on the primary transport corridor linking Sudan’s capital Khartoum to resource-rich Kordofan, control of the town has shifted repeatedly between warring factions since fighting broke out in April 2023. The RSF, a United Arab Emirates-backed paramilitary group already accused of genocide by the U.S. government and multiple leading human rights organizations, first captured Bara in October 2023, using the town as a launch base for repeated drone strikes on el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state located just 60 kilometers away.

The RSF has a well-documented pattern of mass civilian atrocities across Sudan, including ethnically targeted massacres that killed tens of thousands of people in the Darfur cities of el-Geneina and el-Fasher. Osman Abdulatif, a member of Bara’s pro-SAF popular resistance committee, says the same pattern of violence unfolded in his hometown, even as it remained underreported to the international community.

“Clashes and RSF atrocities in Bara have not gotten the same media attention as what happened in other areas, but we believe the RSF killed hundreds of civilians inside Bara and in the surrounding villages,” Abdulatif told Middle East Eye in an interview from el-Obeid. “We entered the city just a few days after SAF took control, and we found everything destroyed. Bodies littered the streets and homes, and the entire surviving population had fled to el-Obeid and other safe regions.”

Abdulatif added that only two elderly residents, a man and a woman, were found alive in Bara after the RSF occupation, having survived for weeks without access to food after the paramilitary group cut off all supplies to the town. Beyond the urgent need to recover and properly bury civilian corpses, Abdulatif warned that Bara is still littered with large stockpiles of unexploded ordnance that pose a constant lethal threat to any civilians who attempt to return.

Humanitarian teams have confirmed that atrocities are not limited to Bara itself. When Middle East Eye visited surrounding communities, including Gabrat al-Shiekh and Um Syala, they found matching patterns of mass destruction and mass displacement, with hundreds of unclaimed civilian bodies still left scattered across the countryside. Local authorities and non-governmental organizations are preparing to launch a mass body recovery operation, but local organizers say they desperately need additional technical, logistical, and humanitarian support from international partners to carry out the work safely and effectively.

“Right now we are supporting local volunteers to get the process started, but we desperately need technical and humanitarian backing from morgue teams, civil defense, national and international NGOs, and government agencies to get this work done properly,” said one local organizer, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on media contact.

A volunteer based in Um Syala, a border community adjacent to Bara, confirmed that at least 200 bodies are still unaccounted for in that area alone. Like Bara, Um Syala and Gabrat al-Sheikh hold major strategic value: they ring Bara and sit along the Export Road, a critical logistical artery that carries Kordofan’s key exports — including gold, gum Arabic, silica, and agricultural goods — to Khartoum and global markets. With the SAF’s recapture of Bara and its surrounding communities, the road is now secure, reopening a vital supply line to el-Obeid, which had been under RSF siege for months.

Local military and resistance leaders say the recapture of Bara has shifted the entire balance of power in Sudan’s civil war firmly in the SAF’s favor. “This advance has given the SAF a much more secure position and protected el-Obeid, opening the shortest route between Kordofan and the capital Khartoum. That means el-Obeid and Omdurman are now far safer,” explained Godat Abdul Hadi, a senior leader of the armed popular resistance in North Kordofan.

Local residents and business owners in el-Obeid have already seen tangible improvements to daily life. Mohammed Abbas, a market trader in el-Obeid, said that since the siege was lifted and the Export Road reopened, markets have resumed operation and critical supplies have started flowing into the city for the first time in months. Military sources also confirm that RSF drone strikes on el-Obeid and Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the banks of the Nile, have dropped dramatically, as the RSF lost the forward operating bases it used to launch these attacks.

Just a few months ago, the outlook for el-Obeid was far grimmer. In June 2024, near-constant RSF attacks and threats of a full-scale invasion sparked widespread fears that the North Kordofan capital would suffer the same fate as el-Fasher, where an estimated 60,000 people were killed in RSF massacres in late 2023. The United Kingdom, France, other European governments, and senior United Nations officials issued public calls for the RSF to halt its attacks on el-Obeid, warning of an impending mass civilian bloodbath.

But Abdulatif dismissed these international appeals as empty gestures that did nothing to alleviate civilian suffering. “If these actors were being honest, they would have forced the RSF to lift the siege instead of just asking them not to commit atrocities,” he said. “The international community has lost all credibility when it comes to what is happening in el-Obeid and Kordofan. When they only urge the RSF not to commit crimes, they are indirectly encouraging the group to maintain the siege and deepen the humanitarian suffering of our people.”

“Thankfully, we managed to lift the siege ourselves at this stage, especially after the liberation of Bara and the surrounding areas,” he added.

Despite the SAF’s recent gains, the conflict in North Kordofan is far from over. RSF leadership has not abandoned its goal of seizing full control of the region, and in recent weeks the paramilitary group has launched counteroffensive drone strikes against Gabrat al-Sheikh and targets further afield, including Omdurman, al-Damar, and even Atbara in River Nile State, north of Khartoum.

SAF military officials claim all RSF counterattacks around Bara and el-Obeid have been successfully repulsed, and say army forces are now advancing through West Kordofan toward the RSF’s major stronghold in Darfur. But a senior source with intimate knowledge of the security situation in North Kordofan, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, warned that RSF fighters still hold territory just 100 kilometers from Bara in the Sodari and al-Mazroob regions.

“If the SAF does not continue advancing to secure remaining RSF-held areas in North and West Kordofan, all of our recent gains could be reversed very quickly,” the source said.