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Two prominent Palestinian-American public figures and online advocates, Alana Hadid and Jenan Matari, spent two years crafting a young adult nonfiction manuscript centered on Palestinian history, which they hoped would serve as a accessible educational tool for teen readers to understand the realities of Palestinian displacement and anti-occupation struggle. The pair initially secured a highly anticipated publishing deal with Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade publishing group, to release their work *Displacement and the Palestinian American Story* as part of the publisher’s Race to Truth series – a curated seven-book nonfiction collection designed to center marginalized community perspectives, including narratives from African American and Indigenous populations. What the authors expected to be a landmark opportunity to amplify underreported Palestinian history to a broad youth audience quickly unraveled amid a deeply unconventional, fraught editorial process. Matari, speaking on behalf of both authors to Middle East Eye, explained that the manuscript moved through multiple rounds of internal and external reviews, with input from the publisher’s legal and public relations teams, long before the authors were granted full access to the revised text. At the time the book was already listed for pre-order, with a scheduled September 2026 release, the pair had to formally petition Penguin Random House leadership in June 2026 just to review the full edited manuscript they had never approved. Upon accessing the text, the authors discovered multiple unauthorized, unilateral changes that distorted core historical and legal facts most notably, a line inserted into a chapter introduction that framed the events of October 7, 2023, as a violation of international law, with no corresponding context acknowledging that under established international humanitarian law, populations living under foreign military occupation hold the legal right to pursue armed resistance against that occupation. When Hadid and Matari pushed to remove the misleading line, they say Penguin Random House leadership explicitly told them the entire book would be deemed unpublishable if the disputed text was cut, and admitted outright that editorial teams’ top priority was not factual accuracy. The authors also reported that the publisher pressured them to swap historically precise terminology referencing pre-1948 Jewish paramilitary groups – terms the pair had sourced directly from period reporting in outlets including *The New York Times* and *The London Times* – to falsely equate the labels “Jewish,” “Zionist,” and “Israeli,” a framing Matari rejected as not only historically false but also dangerous to the safety of global Jewish communities by conflating religious identity with a specific political nationalist movement. Matari stated that the edits appeared designed to cater to a Zionist framing of Palestinian history, prioritizing the comfort of readers sympathetic to Israeli state narratives over documenting verified Palestinian lived experience and historical fact. Rejecting the publisher’s demands, Hadid and Matari formally walked away from the seven-figure mainstream publishing deal, secured full reversion of their manuscript rights, and partnered with independent, Palestine-focused Interlink Publishing to release their work as originally intended. This latest editorial dispute is the third recent high-profile case of institutional pushback against Matari’s pro-Palestine educational work: just weeks prior, she and a co-author filed a civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles Public Library over the cancellation of a planned Read Palestine Week event, alleging that baseless accusations of antisemitism and terrorist ties from a library staff member constituted viewpoint discrimination and a violation of First Amendment free speech protections. Last year, a promotional event for Matari’s previously released Palestinian children’s book *Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden* at a New Jersey bookstore was also scrapped following a targeted pressure campaign from pro-Zionist groups. Matari told Middle East Eye that the repeated pattern of censorship is rooted in widespread institutional discomfort with introducing young audiences to unvarnished decolonial Palestinian history, but that the pushback only fuels her commitment to the work, noting that the fierce institutional backlash is a clear sign the material is filling a critical unmet educational gap. Middle East Eye reached out to Penguin Random House for an official statement on the allegations, but received no response at the time of publication.

In a damning new investigative report released Friday, Amnesty International has revealed that El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, has lost over 90% of its pre-raid population, just one full year after the Emirati-backed breakaway Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the southwestern Darfur city. Once a critical safe haven hosting more than 1 million displaced civilians, per 2025 estimates from Sudan’s federal government and on-the-ground humanitarian groups, the city now holds barely 70,000 remaining residents.

Documented over two months of rigorous field research, human rights investigators collected firsthand, anonymized testimony from 25 civilian witnesses: 19 current and former El Fasher residents, plus 6 frontline humanitarian workers. Seventeen of the interviewed survivors had been detained in RSF-run makeshift facilities, with 15 of the group fleeing the city between July and August 2026. The testimonies paint a harrowing portrait of unrelenting abuse: unlawful extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, systematic torture, pervasive surveillance, and targeted ethnic persecution have become normalized across all areas of RSF-held El Fasher, casting a suffocating blanket of terror over the remaining civilian population.

Multiple survivors shared graphic accounts of unprovoked violence in RSF detention sites, many of which repurposed local public schools to hold hundreds of captives at a time. 29-year-old Modathir, a member of the targeted Zaghawa ethnic group who escaped an RSF prison, described arbitrary execution as a constant threat: “Torture is permanent in every RSF detention site. They execute people just for glancing at them the wrong way. If you fall asleep, they get angry and kill you, saying they will give you the permanent rest you supposedly wanted.” 38-year-old Hatim, from the Berti ethnic group, was detained in spring 2026 when he returned to El Fasher to retrieve personal belongings, despite still recovering from a serious shrapnel wound to his jaw. Held for four months alongside roughly 300 other detainees in a repurposed school, he was beaten repeatedly when he tried to escape, including direct blows to his unhealed injury, before succeeding on his third attempt. 33-year-old Zaghawa survivor Mamoun explained that captives were selected for abuse at random, with no formal process: “They drag people out of cells whenever they want, accuse you of siding with the Sudanese Joint Forces or regular army, and beat you until you pass out. Sometimes I was assaulted four times in a single day, depending entirely on the mood of the guard on duty.”

Detention facilities that housed women, children, and elderly or wounded captives also suffered catastrophic rates of malnutrition, with ethnic slurs and dehumanizing treatment directed specifically at members of marginalized Darfuri groups. A 45-year-old Zaghawa woman identified as Haram for protection said RSF fighters routinely targeted women from her community with racial slurs referencing enslavement, while forcing captives to perform unlawful unpaid forced labor in violation of international humanitarian law.

Amnesty International confirmed it formally reached out to RSF leadership on October 9 to share its preliminary findings and request a formal response, but received no communication of any kind from the paramilitary group. Even as a small handful of humanitarian organizations have been permitted limited re-entry to El Fasher as of September 2026, witnesses reported that all staff movements are closely monitored, no private conversations with residents are allowed, and all aid activities are overseen by RSF forces, who ban photography, independent interviews, and unregulated civilian interactions with aid teams. “Everyone is watched so closely that no one dares speak freely,” one local resident told investigators. “No one feels safe at all.”

The widespread atrocities in El Fasher form part of a broader, years-long pattern of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the RSF across Darfur, Amnesty’s report concludes, enabled by unimpeded arms flows from the United Arab Emirates that have continued despite a longstanding UN Darfur weapons embargo. Since Sudan’s civil war escalated in April 2023 following the collapse of a fragile power-sharing agreement between the RSF and Sudan’s regular armed forces, the conflict has claimed more than 150,000 lives, displaced 10 million people internally, and pushed an additional 4 million to seek refuge across international borders. Out of Sudan’s total 52 million population, more than 21 million now face life-threatening acute food and water shortages.

Human rights advocates note that the lack of meaningful diplomatic pressure to curb UAE arms shipments to the RSF has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s reluctance to confront its Emirati ally, even as its appointed African affairs envoy Massad Boulos previously signaled support for a negotiated path to peace earlier in 2026, with no visible progress in recent months. The ongoing diplomatic campaign of UAE Assistant Minister for Political Affairs Lana Nusseibeh for the position of next UN Secretary General has also raised concerns among Sudan advocacy groups that the UAE faces limited international accountability for its role in fueling the Sudanese conflict.

In its formal set of demands, Amnesty International has called on the RSF to immediately release all arbitrarily detained civilians, end all acts of torture, extrajudicial killing and forced labor across its territory, and grant full unobstructed humanitarian access to El Fasher. The organization further urged all global states to immediately halt all arms transfers to every party to the Sudanese conflict, specifically to end all weapons sales to the UAE until the country ceases its violations of the UN Darfur arms embargo, and called on the UN Security Council to expand the existing Darfur weapons embargo to cover the entire territory of Sudan. The longstanding Amnesty campaign also renewed its call for an immediate nationwide ceasefire and the urgent deployment of a dedicated international civilian protection force to shield vulnerable populations across Sudan from ongoing violence.

Across the Middle East, US diplomatic personnel are actively making contingency arrangements to evacuate embassy staff, while Israeli fighter jets have ramped up regular patrols along Iran’s border. Multiple Arab and US officials operating in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity to Middle East Eye, uniformly convey that a resumption of joint US and Israeli military strikes against Iran is no longer a matter of if, but when. The tense calculus comes as Iranian authorities have explicitly warned of retaliatory strikes targeting trillions of dollars in US-linked data centers, artificial intelligence facilities, critical energy installations and major airports across the Gulf, laying the groundwork for a widely anticipated second phase of the ongoing regional conflict.

Aaron David Miller, a seasoned former Middle East negotiator who served under both Republican and Democratic US administrations, confirmed the trajectory of escalation in comments to MEE. “An escalation is coming. Whether it’s before the US midterms or after is not relevant. The purpose of the escalation is clear,” he stated. Direct, large-scale hostilities between US and Iranian forces were temporarily halted after a fragile ceasefire agreed in April, but a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding signed by both sides in June to pave the way for a long-term settlement was never implemented. The landmark deal was widely perceived to include extensive concessions to Iran that the Trump administration finds politically unacceptable, creating an uncrossable impasse.

“There is a foundational gap, galactic in scope, that can’t be bridged. The Iranians are not going to change their position on the Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear issue or the Houthis to the extent that Trump needs in order to spin a win,” Miller explained. Senior envoys representing the Trump administration are now actively laying the operational groundwork for a return to full-scale military conflict. “We are going to have to keep working at this to make sure there’s a regime change eventually,” noted prominent Republican Senator Rick Scott, a close Trump ally, during a Thursday interview with Fox News.

Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Financial Times that the White House has fully prepared for a prolonged, drawn-out conflict in the region. “The president and the US Navy can maintain this blockade [on Iranian ports] for the foreseeable future,” he remarked in a Friday-released interview. What began in February as a US-led military campaign framed as an operation to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program has gradually evolved into a sweeping, zero-sum battle for geopolitical dominance across the Middle East. Current flashpoints include Iran’s push to impose transit fees on all commercial vessels passing through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, with months of tit-for-tat strikes between US and Iranian forces in the waterway. The sweeping US naval blockade on Iranian ports has crippled Iran’s domestic economy, while Iranian retaliatory attacks on commercial shipping have sent global maritime freight rates skyrocketing: at least 27 separate vessel attacks were recorded in the current month alone, marking the highest monthly total since March.

The deepening bilateral tensions have also shattered a separate ceasefire in Yemen, where fierce fighting has reignited between Iran-aligned Houthi militants and the Saudi-backed internationally recognized Yemeni government. Geopolitical and regional affairs analysts largely agree that a return to full-scale war appears all but inevitable, as the current unstable status quo satisfies neither the Trump administration nor Tehran, while neither side perceives itself as militarily or politically weak enough to make the concessions required to reach a negotiated settlement.

Gregory Brew, a leading energy and Iran specialist at global geopolitical consultancy Eurasia Group, noted that both the Trump administration and Iranian leadership are closely monitoring fluctuations in the global oil market, drawing vastly different strategic conclusions from recent trends. Data published this week by energy analytics firm Kpler shows that total Middle East oil and petroleum product exports rebounded to pre-February war levels last week, though experts caution the figures are skewed by a short-term surge in shipments. The increased export volumes stem almost entirely from US-aligned Gulf nations, while Iran’s own oil exports remain severely constrained by the enforced US naval blockade. Saudi Arabia has expanded exports via a newly operational Red Sea pipeline that circumvents the Houthi-controlled Bab el-Mandeb strait, routing crude directly to Mediterranean markets. Other Gulf states with coastlines on the Strait of Hormuz now rely on a shuttle transfer system, in which small state-owned vessels ferry crude out to much larger tankers waiting safely in the Gulf of Oman, with the US Navy providing armed escort at significant operational cost.

Despite the rise in regional export volumes, global energy prices have not fallen. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, has surged 43% since the June MoU was signed, while global diesel prices have climbed roughly 35%, and gasoline prices have risen by just under 10%. Iran’s domestic economy is clearly under severe strain, with official September inflation figures hitting a staggering 90%, but Brew points out that Iranian leadership remains convinced it can outlast the Trump administration through another round of intensified hostilities. “If the US is watching export volumes in Hormuz, the Iranians are watching price. And they are pretty confident they can withstand pressure over a longer period of time than Trump can,” Brew told MEE. “In a context where the US and Israel are bombing Iran again directly, we are certain to see more aggressive Iranian strikes on energy infrastructure. The US will also have fewer resources to manage this escort system,” he added, predicting global energy prices will remain elevated for the foreseeable future.

In the lead-up to the original US-Israeli strike on Iran in February, multiple Gulf states launched an intense last-minute lobbying campaign to prevent the military operation from moving forward. During the initial phase of the war, Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined US forces in launching strikes against Iranian targets, but Riyadh later pivoted to support diplomatic mediation efforts, and Reuters reported the UAE paid Tehran significant sums to secure a pledge that Iran would halt attacks on Emirati territory. For the anticipated second round of conflict, analysts note that Gulf states will struggle to maintain any meaningful strategic relevance, even as they find themselves on the front line of anticipated Iranian retaliatory strikes. Following the February 2024 attacks on Iran, Gulf states endured thousands of drone and missile assaults originating from Iranian territory.

“From the Gulf perspective, this is going to be devastating,” said Abdullah Baabood, a prominent Omani academic and international relations expert. “Already we see serious economic problems in the Gulf.” Recent reporting from Asharq Bloomberg indicates Bahrain is poised to receive a UAE-led financial bailout to prop up its rapidly depleting foreign currency reserves. Qatar’s economy contracted 15% year-on-year in the most recent quarter, the IMF projects the UAE’s economy will shrink by 4% this year, and Saudi Arabia was forced to cancel its flagship annual international investment conference due to persistent Houthi security threats. “The Gulf is hostage to a crisis that has no end,” Baabood observed. “Qatar is trying to mediate. Oman has been pushed aside by Trump. The UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are very quiet. They just don’t know what to do. They can’t read Trump.”

“Other than Israel, no one has real interest in a serious continuation of the war,” noted Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and current vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The growing expectations of renewed major hostilities coincide with the upcoming Israeli general elections scheduled for next week. In his recent public endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump dramatically raised the stakes for fresh military action against Iran, stating he intended to assist Israel to “finish the job” against Iran “unless they change their ways rapidly.” Analysts note that the military campaign against Iran remains broadly popular among the Israeli public, meaning a resumption of large-scale fighting could deliver significant political benefits to Netanyahu ahead of the vote, or help him retain his position as prime minister even if election results are inconclusive.

Baabood acknowledged that there is no question the US and Israeli militaries possess the capability to inflict catastrophic damage on Iran’s civilian and military infrastructure, but emphasized that the Islamic Republic retains the capacity to inflict significant, painful harm on Gulf state targets. In an interview with Dropsite News earlier this week, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, left no ambiguity about Tehran’s intent to target Gulf energy facilities the moment US forces resume hostilities. “If the US strategy is to prolong the war while using neighbouring countries’ energy infrastructure to offset the pressure arising from Hormuz and maintain the blockade of Iran, those governments should not assume they can participate in economic warfare against Iran without putting themselves at risk,” he warned.

One of the most critical unresolved variables ahead of a second round of conflict is the ability of Gulf state defense systems to fend off Iranian drone and missile attacks that could send global energy prices spiraling even higher. A September report from the US Department of State Inspector General confirmed that the US military is facing “strategic inventory shortfalls” of key precision munitions, and MEE previously reported in March that US stockpiles of critical interceptor missiles were already depleted, a situation that has only worsened following months of high-intensity military operations across the region. The Trump administration has repeatedly and publicly denied that it is facing any munitions shortages. The Gulf states’ acute vulnerability to Iranian drone capabilities has been laid bare by a recent wave of Houthi attacks on Saudi territory: the kingdom has been reeling from repeated strikes targeting major airports and high-profile energy sites, with Saudi authorities confirming at least 21 people, including religious pilgrims, have been killed in Houthi attacks on Saudi airports since the start of October. A September attack attributed to Iran-aligned Iraqi militias also targeted the kingdom’s critical East-West Pipeline.

“Continuing the war will only bring more difficulties to countries in the Gulf, and it’s clear it will not result in regime change in Iran. Meanwhile, Trump is suffering domestically because of rising fuel and food prices” across the US, Muasher noted. But Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that Trump may face far fewer constraints on military action than most observers assume, particularly given his lingering frustration that Iran derailed his original plans for a quick, decisive military victory earlier this year. “There is no cost-benefit analysis because Donald Trump is going to be OK. He may lose the House and maybe the Senate in midterms, but he will be OK. His family will be OK. He will build his presidential library,” Miller said. “Trump’s urgency to end this thing is not evident. There is no accountability. Where is the pain for Donald Trump?”

Closed-door diplomatic negotiations between senior Lebanese and Israeli representatives, convened this week at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, wrapped up without any substantive progress on core outstanding disputes, independent regional news outlet The New Arab confirmed Thursday via anonymous sources close to the talks.
Held under U.S. auspices, the latest round of discussions unfolded against a backdrop of sustained Israeli military operations across Lebanese territory throughout the current month, including targeted airstrikes and deliberate home demolitions in the southern districts of Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil, and Sidon. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the proceedings reported that Israeli negotiating teams took uncompromising, rigid stances across all agenda items, while Lebanese delegates maintained a firm, non-negotiable position that all security and de-escalation measures between the two nations must follow a fully reciprocal framework.
Notably, the U.S.-funded Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has formally rejected any proposal for direct military-to-military coordination with Israeli counterparts, pushing instead for a neutral third-party verification system administered jointly by the United Nations and key international partners including France.
The current cross-border conflict traces its origins to October 2023, when Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel triggered widespread regional unrest, prompting near-continuous Israeli airstrikes on Lebanese territory. A November 2024 ceasefire negotiated by the outgoing Biden administration failed to meaningfully reduce Israeli military activity, as Israeli officials insisted their operations were necessary to target Hezbollah leadership and alleged weapons stockpiles across Lebanon, including sites located in the capital Beirut.
A dramatic escalation of Israeli military actions materialized earlier this year, when Israel launched a full-scale ground invasion and seized control of large swathes of southern and eastern Lebanese territory. The pace of violence accelerated further after the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated military operations against Iran on February 28, a move that prompted Hezbollah to launch defensive strikes on Israeli targets in support of its Iranian ally. Since that date, Israeli military actions in Lebanon have killed over 4,300 Lebanese civilians and combatants alike, and displaced more than 1 million people across the country.
A core top priority for Lebanese negotiating teams throughout all recent talks has been securing a binding, clear timeline for the safe return of all internally displaced Lebanese people to their homes, a demand that has seen zero actionable progress since the U.S.-brokered trilateral framework was formally agreed to by Lebanese, Israeli, and U.S. representatives in June of this year. That landmark framework followed five prior rounds of talks hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, culminating in a widely publicized, billed-as-historic signing ceremony on June 26. At the event, Rubio characterized the agreement as merely “the beginning of the beginning” of a longer peace process, and announced two separate U.S. funding commitments: $100 million in humanitarian assistance to be distributed in coordination with the United Nations for conflict-affected communities, with no explicit clarification on whether the funds would serve only Lebanese populations or also cover northern Israeli border towns, plus an additional $30 million in reimbursements for the Lebanese Armed Forces earmarked by the Trump administration.
The 26 June framework established a U.S.-facilitated Military Coordination Group for Lebanon, but the so-called “pilot zones” from which Israel had pledged to withdraw its troops to allow the LAF to assume full security control have not been expanded in any capacity since July. Israeli officials have justified the frozen withdrawal process by claiming the LAF lacks the operational capacity to disarm Hezbollah fighters operating in the region.
Critically, Hezbollah — the U.S.-designated terrorist group that serves as the most powerful armed faction in Lebanon, with military capabilities vastly exceeding those of the U.S.-backed LAF — was excluded entirely from the formal negotiation track. Formed in the 1980s to resist Israel’s longstanding illegal occupation of Lebanese territory, Hezbollah has refused to engage in direct bilateral talks with Israel, though unconfirmed reports indicate the group has maintained discrete backchannel communications with the Trump administration. Hezbollah leadership has repeatedly stated it will not agree to any disarmament measures as long as Israel continues to pose an active military threat to Lebanese sovereignty, especially amid growing public rhetoric from Israeli policymakers openly discussing plans to formally expand Israel’s national borders northward into Lebanese territory.

Following a deadly Friday gun skirmish in the illegally occupied West Bank that left two Palestinians dead and at least five Israeli soldiers wounded, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued immediate directives to the Israel Defense Forces to enforce a full lockdown on the city of Hebron, and to mobilize forces in preparation for a territory-wide full lockdown across the occupied West Bank. The announcement came shortly after Netanyahu convened an emergency security cabinet session alongside his senior military advisory team, after which he released a public social media statement blaming the Palestinian political and military faction Hamas for orchestrating the deadly exchange, claiming the group was plotting a large-scale offensive targeting innocent civilian populations. While Netanyahu asserted that security forces had uncovered substantial caches of weapons and ammunition in the aftermath of the clash, he declined to share specific details corroborating the alleged planned major attack. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who arrived at the scene of the shooting shortly after the violence unfolded, issued even more aggressive public remarks, stating that a sweeping full-scale military operation modeled after past campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon would soon be launched across the occupied West Bank, which he referred to by the settler-facing nomenclature “Judea and Samaria” to target individuals he labeled as terrorists. Smotrich went further to publicly call for the full dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous governing body for parts of the occupied territories, and announced that orders to demolish Palestinian residential structures in the vicinity of Friday’s clash would be executed within one hour, with additional demolition operations set to continue through the rest of the day. In response to the Israeli government’s sweeping new punitive measures, Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, condemned the planned territory-wide West Bank closure as a blatant act of collective punishment that violates longstanding international humanitarian law. Barghouti warned that Netanyahu’s administration was laying the groundwork for ethnic cleansing of entire residential neighborhoods in Hebron, framing the policy shift as a dangerous, unprecedented escalation of Israel’s long-running forced displacement campaigns against Palestinian communities, and urged the global community to intervene immediately to hold Israeli officials accountable and prevent mass displacement. Yariv Oppenheimer, a former director of the anti-settlement group Peace Now and current project director at the Geneva Institute, echoed these concerns in an interview with Al-Jazeera, noting that the already volatile occupied West Bank, which has seen surging settler violence and near-daily Israeli Defense Force incursions into Palestinian communities for months, was on the brink of far greater unrest. Oppenheimer argued that Israeli political leaders were exploiting the fatal gun battle as a public justification to ramp up military control over Palestinian population centers, predicting a wave of punitive actions including widespread home demolitions, extended curfews, mass arbitrary arrests by IDF troops, and revenge attacks by extremist Israeli settler factions that would push the region into far deeper crisis.