标签： Asia

Deep divisions have emerged within Israeli military ranks over the nature of ongoing operations in southern Lebanon, with senior officers confirming that the force’s core mission has shifted from active combat to the systematic leveling of civilian infrastructure and residential communities, a new investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz has revealed.

The Wednesday report outlines a coordinated, top-down plan to destroy predominantly Shia villages across the border region, a strategy explicitly designed to block displaced local residents from returning to their homes once operations conclude. Under the current operational framework, infantry units are assigned specific geographic zones to clear for demolition, with commanding officers mandated to submit daily tallies of the number of structures destroyed to senior leadership.

“The only mission is to continue the destruction,” one unnamed Israeli commander told Haaretz. “There are no other tasks.” A second senior officer pushed back against official Israeli military narratives that frame the campaign as targeting solely “terrorist infrastructure,” saying: “These are not terrorist infrastructures – everything is being destroyed.”

Not all Israeli personnel have echoed the description of a blanket demolition order. One separate officer maintained that operations are targeted exclusively at Hezbollah’s underground militant networks, weapons caches, and surveillance and communications systems, arguing that “We are operating pragmatically, according to operational need.”

Despite this official framing, on-the-ground data and visual evidence confirm the scale of devastation being inflicted on civilian communities. Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research estimates that approximately 40,000 housing units have been partially or completely destroyed since operations began in early March. On peak days of activity, more than 1,000 residential structures are damaged or leveled, with entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Drone footage circulated publicly in recent weeks shows entire southern Lebanese villages wired for controlled demolition before being completely destroyed by Israeli explosive teams.

The investigation also uncovered that the majority of demolition work is being carried out by private contractors, whose compensation is tied directly to the volume of destruction they complete. “The companies profit based on the number of houses [destroyed],” one serving Israeli soldier told Haaretz. “And we’re there to provide security, at risk to our lives.”

Multiple frontline soldiers have criticized the demolition mission as strategically senseless, noting that the task of guarding contractors while they destroy civilian structures leaves troops exposed to regular Hezbollah drone strikes. “We stand exposed, guarding demolitions while drones are in the air,” one soldier said.

Official casualty figures from Lebanon’s Ministry of Health underscore the devastating human toll of the two-month campaign. Since Israeli ground operations launched on March 2, at least 2,290 people have been killed across Lebanon, including 100 rescue workers and healthcare personnel, and more than 7,500 others have been wounded. The violence has displaced roughly 1.2 million people nationwide, nearly a quarter of Lebanon’s total population.

Though a US-brokered truce was announced in mid-April, Israeli airstrikes and ground operations have continued uninterrupted in southern Lebanon, triggering renewed exchanges of fire with Hezbollah militants. Israeli forces maintain a permanent presence roughly 10 kilometers inside sovereign Lebanese territory, with consistent reports of targeted strikes on civilian areas and ongoing demolition of residential structures.

A high-profile, award-winning Kuwaiti-American journalist who spent nearly two months in Kuwaiti custody for sharing public materials related to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran has been formally stripped of his Kuwaiti nationality, marking the latest step in a sweeping regional crackdown on dissenting speech that has accelerated sharply since the outbreak of the conflict.

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, 41, a veteran contributor to leading international outlets including *The New York Times*, Al Jazeera English and PBS whose work has earned honors including the British Journalism Award and Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender Award, released a statement Wednesday through his legal team following the citizenship revocation. “I am free – but many remain behind bars in Kuwait and across the region for speaking the truth,” he said. “Today, my sisters and I have become part of the more than 50,000 Kuwaitis who have had their citizenship revoked.”

Born in the United States, Shihab-Eldin was arrested on March 2 during a routine family visit to Kuwait. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, his detention followed his online sharing of publicly available footage and imagery tied to the Iran war, including video of a U.S. fighter jet crashing at an American air base located on Kuwaiti territory. His international legal counsel confirmed he was cleared of all criminal charges and released from prison last week, but the unexpected citizenship revocation immediately stripped him of legal status as a national of the country.

In a joint statement, Shihab-Eldin’s lead lawyers Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC and Kate Gibson condemned the prolonged abuse of his rights. “Ahmed Shihab-Eldin is a superb journalist and storyteller,” they said. “For 52 days, he was wrongly imprisoned and endured repeated, grave violations of his fundamental rights due to his work. For reporting. For expressing opinions. For simply doing his job.”

The revocation of Shihab-Eldin’s citizenship is not an isolated incident: Kuwait has overseen a mass campaign of citizenship stripping in recent months that rights campaigners warn could eventually impact hundreds of thousands of people, a push that has gained significant momentum since the US-Israeli war on Iran began. In December 2024, Kuwait’s legislature passed a new law that explicitly allows the state to revoke citizenship for a broad set of vaguely defined infractions, including actions deemed “moral turpitude or dishonesty,” threats to state security, or even criticism of the emir or prominent religious figures. Prominent Kuwaiti Islamic scholar Tareq al-Suwaidan was among the high-profile figures stripped of nationality in recent months.

Multiple motivations have been documented for this mass revocation campaign beyond the crackdown on anti-government dissent. For decades, Kuwait has relied on its oil wealth to fund a generous national welfare system for citizens, supported by a large low-wage migrant labor force. As oil-rich Gulf states move to diversify their economies and restructure public spending, citizenship stripping has emerged as a tool to preserve welfare access for a smaller group of eligible citizens without collapsing public finances. Tiana Danielle Xavier from the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion explained to Middle East Eye in December that the policy is being deployed in part to maintain Kuwait’s existing welfare and public sector arrangements while avoiding economic instability. Xavier also noted that the campaign directly violates established international human rights law, which bans arbitrary deprivation of nationality, prohibits discriminatory treatment, protects individuals from being rendered stateless, and requires all citizenship decisions to follow formal due process.

The crackdown extends far beyond Kuwait’s borders. Just days after Bahrain’s King held a meeting with Kuwait’s foreign minister, the Bahraini government revoked the citizenship of 69 people, accusing the group of sympathizing with Iran and aiding foreign entities. The list includes people accused of harming Bahrain’s national interests, as well as their dependent family members. Rights campaigners confirmed to Middle East Eye that most of those targeted belong to the Ajami community, a long-established ethnic group in Gulf states whose ancestry traces back to southern Iran.

Bahraini-Danish activist Maryam al-Khawaja told Middle East Eye that regional Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regimes have exploited the outbreak of the Iran war to escalate repression across the board. “Unfortunately, since the beginning of the war on Iran, the GCC regimes have taken this as an opportunity to crack down even harder,” she said.

For nearly 60 years, one political reality has remained unshaken in Newham, east London: since the borough’s founding in 1965, the London Borough of Newham has been continuously governed by the Labour Party, a rock-solid stronghold for the centre-left party in the capital. But as voters head to the polls for local elections on May 7, that long-standing status quo is at greater risk than ever before, as the Green Party surges to challenge Labour’s grip on power across multiple east London boroughs.

While small independent left-leaning groups such as Redbridge Independents have chipped away at Labour’s support in the region, political analysts and campaigners are increasingly pointing to a growing “Green wave” that could flip multiple councils away from Labour control. Green Party leader Zack Polanski has set ambitious targets for significant gains nationwide, and polling indicates the party is on track to seize outright majorities in two other east London boroughs, Hackney and Lewisham. Newham, however, has flown under the radar of most national political coverage – despite emerging polling that puts the Green Party within striking distance of a historic upset here.

Recent polling offers competing snapshots of the tight race in Newham: a YouGov survey released last week placed the Greens five percentage points behind Labour, with the local Newham Independents grouping a further four points behind the Greens. But a new study commissioned by the London School of Economics and published this Monday puts Green support at 34%, a single percentage point ahead of Labour.

Areeq Chowdhury, the 33-year-old Green Party candidate for Newham mayor, who spoke to Middle East Eye during a campaign stop in Plaistow Park on Monday, is clear about his chances: he is confident he can win. For Chowdhury, this election is rooted in widespread voter discontent, both with local Labour governance and the national party under Keir Starmer. “There’s a huge amount of discontent with the Labour Party locally,” he explained. “We’re at the highest level of homelessness. One in 18 people are homeless. We’ve got the title of litter capital of England.”

Chowdhury is no stranger to the Labour Party: he was a member from his student years, and even won election as a Labour local councillor in 2022. His defection to the Greens in 2023 was driven by two core frustrations: Starmer’s Labour refusal to take a strong stance against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and call for an immediate ceasefire, and the party’s repeated high-profile U-turns on key progressive campaign pledges, including cuts to welfare benefits for disabled people. “A big part of why I joined Labour was things like human rights and standing up for workers,” he said. “The more I got to know about the Green Party, the more I understood that actually they were focused on the correct issues facing society, around the environment and human rights.” For many Newham voters, he added, Labour’s weak position on Gaza was the “trigger for people to look elsewhere”.

The Green momentum stretches beyond Newham, across east London’s boroughs. In Waltham Forest, recent YouGov polling puts both Labour and the Greens at 30%, setting up a knife-edge contest for council control. Green candidates on the ground say voters are linking national political failures directly to local quality-of-life issues. Eva Tabassam, 35, a first-time Green candidate for Cann Hall ward who joined the party last summer, says voters consistently raise both international conflicts and local struggles on the campaign trail. “They go hand in hand,” she explained. “We get a mixture of big things, like the illegal war on Iran. We also get told about what’s happened in Palestine and the government’s complicity in that.” Tabassam added that it is often non-Muslim voters who first bring up Gaza, alongside criticism of Starmer’s repeated policy U-turns, the ongoing cost of living crisis, sky-high local rents, and the two-child benefit cap – all issues that directly impact daily life for east London residents.

Peter Ibrahim Kanyike, 26, the Green candidate for Waltham Forest’s William Morris ward, says his local campaign focuses on bread-and-butter issues: cleaner public streets, improved safer parking for local businesses, and better accessibility for residents. But he echoes the sentiment that national political discontent is driving Green gains. “I think there’s a load of concern with the direction that society is going in and how the current government, Labour specifically, have directed society in that way,” he said. “The Greens want to create a council and a borough that works with our neighbours. That feeds into policy, and I think that’s one of the overarching concerns – society-building, working with each other.”

On the streets of Newham’s Stratford district, public opinion remains mixed: many voters are still undecided, and some are unaware that an election is just days away. While one voter told MEE she planned to vote for Reform UK over its anti-immigration platform, another middle-aged woman said she was voting Green out of concern for future generations. “My grandchildren are not here yet, and I want them to enjoy the planet,” she said. “It’s green all the way, darling. We need the oxygen. We need the plants, which are part of our biodiversity for the planet.” For long-time Labour voters, the shift is already palpable within families: an elderly Moroccan long-time Labour voter told MEE his daughters are pushing him to switch to the Greens over the party’s position on Gaza, and he is still considering changing his vote on election day.

The Green’s gains, particularly around their stance on Gaza, have drawn criticism from right-wing party Reform UK, whose leader Nigel Farage has accused the Greens of engaging in “sectarian politics” over the issue. Chowdhury calls the accusation “completely racist”, noting that the Greens are a broad coalition of progressive voices that welcomes diverse communities. “The Green Party is at the same time an Islamist party and a super LGBT party? Right. The reality is that we’re a coalition of progressive voices [that] wants to build a better society. So we have a lot of diversity in our party, and we have a lot of Muslims joining the party. We do have a lot of LGBT people join the party, people from every different community.” Chowdhury added that he has faced constant racist abuse during the campaign, including repeated calls for his deportation.

Tabassum pushes back against the common misconception that Muslim voters and climate action are disconnected issues. “There seems to be this weird perception that these two things are so artificially distinct,” she said. “As Muslims ourselves, we’ve always been taught to protect the world and nature and environment and living things around us. So I don’t know why there seems to be this artificial separation of the two.” Kanyike added that the Green’s welcome for Muslim voters is not sectarianism, but a commitment to inclusion: “I think critics are just afraid because Muslims are finding a party that actually wants to support them. We actually focus on unity rather than division. Just because we’re welcoming different groups doesn’t mean that we’re being sectarian. Our focus is to be open for all groups.”

Labour still retains solid support in the region. Phil, a Labour voter shopping at Westfield Stratford, told MEE he remains resolute in his support for the party, calling it the only “sensible” option in UK politics. “They’re less extreme, they look after the individual people,” he said. “And yes they’ve made mistakes in the past two years but I still think they’re the people for me.” He dismissed the Greens as well-meaning but unfit to govern, and called Reform UK “a complete load of loonies. It’s sensational stuff, and it’s actually nasty and evil in many ways.”

Green Party officials frame the 2024 local elections as a turning point for the party. Faaiz Hasan, the Green Party’s national elections coordinator, said the vote “comes at a critical time” for UK politics. “This is the moment that we can actually start putting forward an alternative vision for the country that is not based on blaming migrants, is not based on blaming people of colour or others, but identifies that the real issue is not race, it’s class, and the concentration of wealth and power in a very tiny group of people,” he said.

Nationally, polling suggests the Greens could win control of nine councils across the UK, including the east London seats of Lewisham and Hackney. Even if the party falls short of capturing an outright majority in Newham, political observers broadly agree that these elections will cement the Green Party’s status as a major national political force, with a permanent foothold in local government across the country. For Labour, which has dominated east London politics for generations, the Green surge is already a major cause for concern.

Viktor Orban’s recent electoral loss in Hungary has dominated global political headlines, with most analysis fixated on what the shift means for European integration and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. But what this coverage misses is a far-reaching strategic ripple effect: the unexpected disruption it could bring to China’s long-standing approach to influencing the European Union.

For more than a decade, Orban’s Hungary served as a critical linchpin for Beijing’s EU strategy. By leveraging Hungary’s membership in the bloc and the EU’s rule of unanimity for key policy decisions, China was able to weaken collective European action on issues ranging from human rights to trade. Orban’s departure from power now forces a fundamental reexamination: can China still depend on exploiting internal EU divisions to maintain its regional influence?

Beijing’s long-term strategy toward Europe has long centered on a “divide and conquer” framework, designed to prevent the 27-member bloc from forming a unified front against Chinese interests. At the broadest level, China has positioned itself as a critical economic partner and indispensable trade market for the EU as a whole, prioritizing stable macroeconomic ties. But behind this broad engagement, Beijing has worked quietly to nurture close bilateral relationships with individual member states that are willing to break with the Brussels consensus — and Orban’s Hungary was the most high-profile example of this model.

The combination of Orban’s illiberal political orientation and the EU’s institutional structure, particularly its unanimity requirement for foreign policy decisions, created a unique opening that Beijing was quick to exploit. Over years of deepening engagement, the relationship grew far beyond routine diplomacy: Hungary became a trusted proxy for China within EU institutions, regularly acting as a brake on collective European responses to sensitive Beijing-related issues. On multiple occasions, Budapest blocked or watered down EU statements critical of China, including declarations addressing human rights concerns in Hong Kong. It also resisted efforts to impose stricter trade measures, such as anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles — a priority that became even more impactful when Hungary held the rotating EU presidency from July to December 2024.

Economically, the partnership was equally strategic. Hungary became the first European nation to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, allowing Beijing to use its central European location and EU membership as a gateway for Chinese goods to enter the single European market without friction. Hungary quickly emerged as a regional hub for Chinese manufacturing and infrastructure investment: Chinese capital poured into battery production, electric vehicle manufacturing, and cross-border transport links, moves that were as much about anchoring Beijing’s strategic presence in Europe as they were about commercial profit. For context, China is Hungary’s largest non-EU trading partner and its top source of foreign direct investment, with BRI investments creating more than 20,000 domestic jobs. Most recently, in December 2024, Chinese automaker BYD announced plans to build its first European passenger vehicle production base in the Hungarian city of Szeged, cementing this economic interdependence. In return, Orban reaped clear domestic political and economic benefits: Chinese investment supported growth, shored up his political base, and aligned with the ideological affinities between his illiberal governance model and China’s authoritarian system. The depth of the partnership was on full display during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s May 2024 visit to Budapest, where the two sides signed 18 bilateral agreements and formally upgraded ties to an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership” — a rare designation in Chinese diplomatic practice that signals exceptional closeness.

This dual model — political leverage through EU institutional veto points, and strategic entrenchment through targeted economic investment — allowed China to maintain its influence even as the EU as a whole hardened its posture toward Beijing. In recent years, Brussels has formally labeled China a “systemic rival,” alongside its roles as economic partner and competitor, but turning this framing into concrete policy has been stymied repeatedly by divisions among member states, with Hungary as the most consistent blocker of unified action.

Now, with Orban’s defeat, that dynamic is thrown into question. The expected incoming government led by Peter Magyar, who is broadly aligned with EU mainstream policy, signals a potential recalibration of Hungary’s foreign posture. While it is far too early to predict a full reversal of Hungary’s pro-Beijing policy, even incremental shifts toward Brussels could reshape EU decision-making on China. If Hungary is no longer willing to block EU initiatives or water down statements on China-related issues, collective action could become far easier. That said, deep divisions among other member states will persist: France and Germany, for example, still maintain strong economic ties to China and have previously resisted hardline EU policies, allowing Beijing to continue exploiting splits. Furthermore, the structural incentives that drove Sino-Hungarian cooperation — namely, the appeal of Chinese investment for domestic growth and job creation — have not disappeared. A new pro-EU government in Budapest may still choose to preserve key elements of the bilateral economic relationship.

This means the most likely outcome of Orban’s defeat is not a sudden, clean break, but a period of gradual adjustment for both China and the EU. For Beijing, the shift will likely force a reworking of its European strategy, requiring it to diversify its network of aligned partners across the bloc and double down on other nations where economic ties can be converted into political leverage. For the EU, Orban’s departure creates an opportunity to build greater strategic coherence, though there is no guarantee of success. If member states can capitalize on the reduced risk of an internal veto, they may finally be able to implement a more consistent approach to China that balances economic engagement with concerns over security, technology, and human rights — a balance that has long eluded the bloc.

Ultimately, the true significance of Orban’s electoral defeat lies not in immediate policy change, but in its potential to reshape the entire strategic landscape of China-EU relations. For more than a decade, Hungary served as a critical hinge between Beijing and Brussels, enabling China to navigate and exploit the EU’s internal divisions. As that hinge loosens, the long-standing dynamics of China-EU engagement stand to shift in meaningful ways. Whether the end result is a more unified European stance toward China or simply a new pattern of fragmentation depends on how both sides adapt to the new context. What is certain, however, is that China’s Europe strategy, built for decades on preventing a unified European coalition, can no longer rely on one of its most dependable partners — and change is now inevitable.