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On a Monday announcement from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, 15 senior military commanders affiliated with both Sudan’s rival warring factions — the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) — have been formally designated for stringent punitive measures, including full cross-border travel bans and immediate global asset freezes. The targeted measures are explicitly tied to documented atrocities perpetrated during the brutal 2025 RSF takeover of el-Fasher, a major urban hub in Sudan’s Darfur region, where widespread, systematic mass sexual violence and civilian slaughter was carried out on an unprecedented scale.
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband emphasized in an official public statement that the new sanctions regime deliberately targets suspected war criminals on both sides of the two-year-long Sudanese civil conflict, which first erupted in April 2023 and has since escalated into the single largest active humanitarian crisis on the global stage. Miliband underscored that independent UK-funded investigative work, conducted one full year after the el-Fasher atrocities first came to light, has confirmed that rival armed groups continue to weaponize both sexual violence (including mass rape of women and minor girls) and deliberate starvation as tools of war against civilian populations across Sudan. He framed these acts as transgressions against shared global humanity, stressing that all perpetrators of such crimes must face formal accountability, and all external state backers that provide military, financial, or logistical support to Sudan’s warring parties must immediately cease all such assistance.
Official timelines confirm that on 26 October 2025, after more than 500 consecutive days of encirclement, the RSF launched a full-scale final offensive to seize control of el-Fasher. The subsequent violence produced the deadliest single massacre recorded across the entire Sudanese conflict to date. Researchers from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab noted that the unprecedented speed and industrial, mass-scale nature of the killings in el-Fasher are comparable only to the full scope of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Multiple eyewitness accounts from survivors detail that RSF fighters, who have received substantial external backing from the United Arab Emirates (a claim the UAE has consistently and publicly denied), filmed themselves carrying out mass extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians. Survivors also documented a litany of additional abuses: systematic gang rape of young women and adolescent girls, arbitrary execution of civilian bystanders, forced relocation of surviving civilians to makeshift medical sites to extract their blood, and widespread predatory extortion targeting ordinary residents and their family members.
The UK Foreign Office noted that the new sanctions package is also designed to amplify global awareness of the full scope of the atrocities committed in el-Fasher, ensuring these crimes are not erased from international public record. Notably, the announcement comes amid longstanding public criticism of successive UK governments for failing to hold the UAE — a longstanding close British strategic ally — accountable for its alleged support to the RSF. The United Nations’ official independent fact-finding mission on Sudan has already established reasonable, verified grounds to conclude that private companies and recruitment actors operating out of UAE territory have routed critical supplies to the RSF via transit points in Chad, southeastern Libya, and Bosaso, Somalia. Extensive prior investigative reporting from Middle East Eye has further mapped this shadowy supply network, as well as the use of military bases in Ethiopia to provide covert operational support to RSF forces.

The latest outcome of Israel’s parliamentary elections paints a nuanced portrait of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political standing: while he did not secure a clear path to a ruling majority, he is far from being fully ousted from power. Netanyahu framed his campaign narrative around two core pillars for Jewish voters: sustaining ongoing military operations and retaining the national state of emergency that took root after the devastating 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks. He actively shifted blame for the unprecedented security failure that day away from his own administration, laying full responsibility on Israeli military leadership, while positioning himself as the decisive leader who stepped in to restore safety and elevate national security to levels higher than pre-October 7, a messaging strategy that resonated widely with his base.

Compared to the 2022 Israeli election, Netanyahu and his far-right allies lost significant ground, with their projected bloc falling 8 to 10 seats short of the 61-seat majority required to form a stable government. Critically, however, the so-called “change campaign” opposition bloc also failed to lock in a majority, leaving both major Jewish political camps deadlocked and no side able to form a ruling coalition on its own.

The most transformative, positive development of this election cycle lies in the historic breakthrough of Israel’s Palestinian political factions. The Joint List alliance of Palestinian parties, alongside Mansour Abbas’ more moderate Raam party, are on track to win a combined 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, a record high for Palestinian political representation in Israel’s parliament. Palestinian citizens, who make up 20% of Israel’s total population but have long been systematically sidelined and excluded from formal governing coalitions, turned out to vote in unprecedented numbers, deliberately mobilizing to block the inclusion of notoriously racist far-right figures Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich from any future ruling coalition. Even if Netanyahu manages to strike a unity government deal with opposition centrist leader Gadi Eisenkot, the resulting coalition will almost certainly have to exclude the two ultra-nationalist hardliners, marking a clear win for Palestinian voter mobilization.

This election outcome has delivered a stark reality check to Israel’s secular liberal Zionist camp, which previously operated under the false assumption that it could secure a parliamentary majority by leaning into nationalist rhetoric, targeting the ultra-Orthodox community, and aligning closely with military leadership. The results have proven that this camp cannot form a government without the support of Palestinian political parties, forcing it to confront a long-avoided choice: remain trapped in perpetual cycles of Netanyahu-aligned right-wing rule, or abandon long-held anti-Arab hostility to build pragmatic partnerships with Palestinian voters and factions. Analysts note that this shift is unlikely to stem from sudden ideological reckoning over Zionism’s settler-colonial foundations, but rather from cold political necessity, as pragmatic interest-driven realignments have historically triggered major political shifts in Israeli politics.

The election has also laid bare a clear ideological split within Israel’s Palestinian political community. Mansour Abbas and his Raam party have long advocated for a strategy of incremental, pragmatic engagement with Israeli state institutions and Zionist parties to secure tangible material gains for Palestinian citizens, including expanded housing access, improved public services, reduced systemic discrimination, and reduced rampant organized crime that has plagued Palestinian communities for decades. This approach, critics note, requires a degree of deliberate decoupling from the struggles of Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. By a two-to-one margin, however, Palestinian voters in this election rejected this framework to back the Joint List’s platform, which refuses to abandon its moral and political commitment to the rights of Palestinians in occupied territories and the diaspora. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen has publicly outlined four non-negotiable conditions for any potential support of a non-Netanyahu government: targeted action to end rampant crime in Palestinian communities, expanded development and legal recognition of underserved Palestinian residential areas, full equal civil rights for Arab citizens of Israel, and a formal, binding process to advance the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

For the first time in Israeli political history, Palestinian parties hold the decisive kingmaker power that will determine who forms the next government, forcing them to navigate the delicate challenge of advancing their core demands for equality and Palestinian statehood without compromising their national identity or alienating potential centrist Zionist partners. The path ahead remains deeply uncertain: far-right factions aligned with Netanyahu could move aggressively to implement new legal and procedural barriers to suppress Palestinian voting power and prevent this level of Arab political influence from ever being repeated. Alternatively, the secular centrist camp could choose to embrace pragmatic cooperation with Palestinian parties to break the decades-long cycle of right-wing political dominance in Israel.

A new investigation from Middle East Eye has uncovered that the upcoming World Travel Market (WTM) London, one of the global travel industry’s flagship annual gatherings running from 3 to 5 November, will host an official Israeli government tourism booth that showcases entities directly linked to illegal Israeli settlement construction and Palestinian dispossession in occupied East Jerusalem. Publicly listed on WTM London’s official event directory, the shared Israeli national booth includes the iTravelJerusalem tourism promotion platform, which falls under the full operational management of the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) — a statutory agency jointly overseen by the Israeli national government and the Jerusalem municipal authority. Long documented by human rights groups and international governing bodies, the JDA has for years spearheaded initiatives to seize Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem for settlement expansion and state-backed tourism projects that displace local Palestinian communities. Back in 2020, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement published a detailed statement outlining how the JDA illegally expropriated privately owned Palestinian land to build so-called “Biblical parks”, actions that have displaced hundreds of Palestinian residents and put hundreds more at imminent risk of forced eviction, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. The agency has also played a central role in expanding major illegal settlement outposts across East Jerusalem, including the large Gilo settlement complex. A 2025 official report released by the European Union’s Representative Office for the West Bank and Gaza Strip further confirms the JDA’s formal plans to evict roughly 40 Palestinian families residing in the Umm Haroun compound in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, to make space for a new 320-unit illegal settlement housing development. Additional well-documented JDA initiatives that have drawn widespread condemnation include a state-approved 2020 cable car project in Jerusalem, which will require mass uprooting of native trees and the destruction of critical local water, sewage and telecommunications infrastructure. The project has moved forward despite fierce pushback from local Palestinian communities and the withdrawal of four international partner firms. Israeli heritage rights NGO Emek Shaveh has publicly denounced the cable car scheme, noting that its core purpose is not tourism development, but to cement settler control over Jerusalem’s historic core, push remaining Palestinian residents out of the city’s Historic Basin, and erase the area’s longstanding Palestinian cultural identity. Two other controversial JDA projects are also moving ahead: a large new settlement housing development adjacent to the Palestinian neighbourhood of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem, and the high-profile renovation of the Mamilla Pool tourist site near Jerusalem’s Old City, which critics warn will desecrate a centuries-old Palestinian Muslim cemetery. Also listed as a participant on the Israeli WTM London booth is Africa Israel Hotels, a subsidiary of the Africa Israel Group, a firm with a long track record of involvement in illegal settlement construction projects across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The revelation of the upcoming WTM London booth comes amid a rapidly shifting UK policy landscape around illegal Israeli settlement advertising. Earlier this year, Middle East Eye exposed a London-based Israeli real estate expo that advertised properties built on illegal settlement land, prompting the British government to refer the event to the UK’s advertising regulatory body. MEE later revealed in August that the regulator had declined to open a formal investigation into the expo, a move that drew public criticism from senior UK officials. In a parliamentary address delivered in September, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband explicitly condemned the 2024 settlement property expo held just outside London, vowing to implement a full ban on all advertising of illegal Israeli settlements across the UK to prevent similar events from taking place in the future. The new controversy also echoes a 2010 ruling from the UK advertising regulator, which banned a prior Israeli tourist office campaign that featured imagery of East Jerusalem, on the grounds that the ad misleadingly implied occupied East Jerusalem was an official part of the State of Israel, at a time when the final status of the territory remains the subject of unresolved international negotiation. At the time of MEE’s publication, WTM London event organisers had not responded to repeated requests for comment on the presence of JDA-linked entities at the 2024 event. The official WTM London website markets the gathering as the world’s most influential travel and tourism industry event, designed to connect global travel professionals, foster new industry ideas, and build cross-border commercial partnerships.

A recent London-based medical recruitment event hosted by Israeli state-affiliated immigration bodies has drawn scrutiny, as officials seek to recruit British physicians to relocate to Israel amid a sustained exodus of local medical professionals. Titled MedEx UK, the Sunday job fair was held at a London Jewish community centre, organized collaboratively by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a group focused on facilitating Jewish immigration to Israel, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration.
The event falls under the broader umbrella of the 2020-launched International Medical Aliyah Program (IMAP), a government initiative with a stated target of bringing 2,000 foreign doctors to Israel by 2029. The program is designed to reduce critical medical staffing shortages by simplifying Israel’s medical licensing process for new arrivals. Pre-event emails shared with attendees, reviewed by Middle East Eye, advertised direct access to representatives from Israeli hospitals and national health funds, as well as on-site YAEL Hebrew proficiency testing, a mandatory step for securing an Israeli medical license.
However, on-the-ground observers from Jewish Anti-Zionist Action (Jaza), an activist group whose member gained entry to the closed event, revealed that participating medical providers distributed promotional materials highlighting healthcare facilities operating in illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank. Flyers from urgent care provider Terem, for example, listed operational centres in the settlements of Modiin, Beit Shemesh, Ma’ale Adumim, and Beitar Illit. A verified attendee list included representatives from Leumit Health Services, an organization that advertises medical centres and pharmacies across 30 West Bank settlement communities, alongside the head of obstetrics and gynaecology for the Israeli military. The Jaza activist noted that dozens of leading Israeli medical professors travelled to London specifically for the one-day event before returning to Israel the following day, and that Shivat Zion, an organization previously exposed by Declassified UK for supporting British citizens seeking to move to West Bank settlements, was also in attendance. Multiple attendees reported that representatives from major health fund Clalit repeatedly emphasized flexible placement options across all regions of Israel, with guaranteed accommodation support for relocating medical staff. Middle East Eye reached out to all event organizers and participating health providers for official comment, but received no response prior to publication.
This London recruitment drive is the latest step in a multi-year Israeli government campaign to offset a deepening physician brain drain: data from a recent Israeli Medical Association survey shows 1,369 doctors left the country for postings lasting more than one year between 2023 and 2025. To attract foreign medical talent, policymakers have rolled out a series of financial incentives and regulatory adjustments to lower barriers to Israeli licensing. In 2025, the Israeli Ministry of Health updated rules to reduce the required professional experience threshold for exemption from the national medical licensing exam from 14 years to 10 years. The following year, the government earmarked up to 240 million NIS ($76.7 million) in dedicated funding for international medical recruitment efforts.
These aggressive international hiring measures run parallel to policy changes that have systematically restricted pathways for Palestinian doctors to join Israel’s healthcare system. The 2019 Yatziv Reform revoked official recognition of medical degrees issued by non-OECD nations, including multiple Eastern European countries such as Moldova, Armenia, and Romania, where large numbers of Palestinian students pursue lower-cost medical education, as well as degrees from Palestinian universities operating in the occupied West Bank. Structural barriers and discriminatory admission policies already limit access for Palestinian citizens of Israel to Israeli medical schools, while Palestinians residing in the occupied territories are barred from enrolling entirely in these domestic programs.
Despite these restrictions, the share of Palestinian doctors working in Israel grew steadily over the past 15 years, rising from 8% of all physicians in 2010 to 25% in 2023. That same year, government data showed Arab and Druze new licensees made up nearly 45% of all newly certified medical professionals in Israel, a sharp jump from 18% in 2010. However, this trend is set to reverse dramatically in 2026, as the cohort of Palestinian students who began medical studies in 2019 at now-disqualified non-OECD institutions graduate, and their degrees will no longer be recognized by Israeli regulators. Shani Bar Tuvia, director of the health policy department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, emphasized that the share of Palestinian students enrolled in Israeli domestic medical schools has fallen to just 9%, a figure far too low to sustain the previous 45% share of new licensees. Bar Tuvia noted that health officials are fully aware the Yatziv Reform will create a major domestic staffing shortfall, and that international recruitment efforts are explicitly designed to fill that gap. The government has also attempted to expand domestic medical training capacity by opening two new university medical programs: one at Ariel University, the only higher education institution located in a West Bank settlement, and another at Reichman University, Israel’s only private university, both of which are largely inaccessible to Palestinian students.