Global Pulse

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  • Israel’s army to set up polling stations in occupied Gaza, Lebanon and Syria

    Israel’s army to set up polling stations in occupied Gaza, Lebanon and Syria

    As Israel gears up for its upcoming general election on October 27, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has launched preparations for a historically unusual voting arrangement: placing dedicated polling stations directly in active, occupied territories across the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria, military broadcaster Army Radio confirmed in a report published Wednesday. The plan, which military chief Eyal Zamir has formally ordered military leadership to implement, is designed to guarantee that frontline combat troops deployed beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders can exercise their right to vote from their active posts.

    Army Radio framed the initiative as a step unseen in Israeli electoral politics for decades, a framing that omits the longstanding practice of Israeli soldiers casting ballots at permanent military bases located in the occupied West Bank. The groundwork for this plan was laid just last week, when Israel’s Central Elections Committee signed off on a new slate of electoral regulations that explicitly permit active-duty troops to vote from their deployed positions in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

    Israeli online news outlet Ynet has outlined the practical adjustments for in-theater voting: since service rules prohibit soldiers from carrying personal identification documents into these three regions, voters will be verified through their military service number and a confirmation check by a fellow service member.

    The expansion of special out-of-district polling stations reflects a growing trend in Israeli elections. Over the past several years, the share of eligible voters casting ballots outside their assigned local precincts has climbed steadily, with active-duty soldiers and other security personnel making up the vast majority of voters using these special stations. Data from the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), an independent Jerusalem-based research center, shows that roughly 425,000 Israelis voted at special polling locations during the 2021 March general election. That total includes not only security service members, but also diplomats, hospitalized patients, and incarcerated citizens.

    While definitive voting pattern data for special precincts remains hard to compile, the IDI notes that the overwhelming majority of special station voters are young Israelis serving in active military roles. Political analysts widely assess that right-wing Israeli political parties draw the most support from this demographic, meaning the expanded in-theater voting option could deliver a tangible advantage to conservative blocs in the upcoming vote.

    Per official figures from the Central Elections Committee, approximately 7.3 million Israelis are eligible to participate in the October 27 contest. That pool includes nearly 550,000 first-time voters who have reached voting age since the previous national election held in late 2022. While the committee has publicly released details for special polling stations in hospitals, prisons, and Israeli diplomatic missions around the world, it has declined to disclose how many polling stations will ultimately be set up in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

    Beyond the logistics of in-theater voting, Army Radio also shared details of a new directive from Zamir aimed at preserving the IDF’s longstanding mandate of political neutrality. Zamir has ordered all commanding officers to block active-duty soldiers and officers from engaging in partisan political campaigning on behalf of any party during the election cycle. He has additionally mandated that commanders review all correspondence distributed to troops to screen out any unauthorized partisan political messaging.

    “There is a need to uphold current regulations, orders and instructions on the issue,” Zamir stated during a meeting with senior military leadership. He added that all IDF personnel must “avoid innovations that could bring about the undermining of public trust in the IDF.”

    Zamir’s directive comes in direct response to public controversy that emerged earlier this week, when the IDF drew widespread criticism after dismissing a reserve soldier who had repeatedly posted public videos expressing personal support for the current Israeli government. The dismissal was ultimately reversed after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz personally intervened to reinstate the service member.

  • The Iran off-ramp Trump keeps driving past

    The Iran off-ramp Trump keeps driving past

    Five months after the outbreak of the 2026 Iran conflict, the United States finds itself trapped in a familiar strategic quagmire that has plagued its past major military engagements in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington is too deeply entrenched to withdraw without significant political fallout, yet it lacks the leverage and military progress necessary to declare a definitive victory.

    This impasse has been amplified by the chaotic, inconsistent approach of US President Donald Trump to the conflict. Trump has flip-flopped repeatedly between issuing fiery threats of what he describes as “the biggest attack since World War II” and suddenly announcing that peace talks are “imminent” — only for Tehran to immediately deny any negotiations are underway at all. This back-and-forth is not a calculated negotiating strategy; it is public evidence of a superpower learning the hard way that overwhelming air power can reduce a nation’s infrastructure to ruin, but it cannot guarantee the political settlement that military intervention was supposed to secure.

    Long before the full-scale buildup to this conflict, foreign policy realists warned of this exact outcome: the persistent gap between what military force can destroy and what political outcomes it can deliver. Working alongside Israel, the US has successfully degraded Iran’s core military infrastructure, damaged facilities linked to Iran’s nuclear program, and eliminated multiple top Iranian military commanders. But these tactical gains have not translated into the strategic outcome Washington seeks: an Iranian government willing to surrender on terms the US can brand as victory, nor a stable regional order that does not require the US Navy to maintain a permanent, force-backed presence to keep the Strait of Hormuz open for global shipping. Already, commercial oil tankers have begun rerouting their journeys around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa to avoid the conflict zone — a shift that alone makes clear how far the conflict is from being contained, despite official Washington rhetoric.

    Trump’s instinct to seek an exit ramp from the conflict is not misdirected. Unlike many of his predecessors and foreign policy advisers, he has repeatedly pulled back from carrying out the all-out maximalist strike he often threatens, in large part due to appeals from Gulf Arab states. These nations understand far better than most Washington policymakers that a wider regional war only benefits Iran’s hardline factions and the defense contractors profiting from increased arms shipments.

    The critical flaw in Trump’s approach is his persistent reliance on empty threat-based leverage. When threats are never followed through, they quickly lose their credibility. The current public disconnect — the White House insisting talks will begin Monday, while Iran’s foreign ministry flatly denies any negotiations are scheduled — is a clear sign that Trump’s repeated threats have been so overused that Tehran no longer feels pressured to back down.

    To achieve a genuine exit from this stalemate, Washington must abandon three long-held flawed assumptions that have shaped not just this war, but nearly every US military venture in the Middle East over the past three decades.

    First, the assumption that eliminating a regime’s military capabilities will create strategic clarity, rather than strategic drift. History from Iraq to Libya shows this logic is almost always wrong. Destroying infrastructure and military assets is the easy part of military intervention; the longer bombing campaigns continue, the harder it becomes to reach a negotiated settlement. This is because hardline factions on both sides gain political and tactical power from prolonging the conflict, eroding the influence of moderates who favor a diplomatic resolution.

    Second, the assumption that regional US allies are willing to bear the costs of an American-guaranteed regional security order. Saudi Arabia’s public call by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for Trump to prioritize dialogue is a clear warning sign. The Gulf states that once quietly supported pressure on Tehran are now the ones pushing to de-escalate, because they border the Strait of Hormuz and cannot retreat across an Atlantic Ocean when the waterway closes to commercial traffic.

    Third, and the assumption Washington is most resistant to abandon, is that “no deal” is a neutral default position while the war grinds on. In reality, every week that passes without a diplomatic settlement embeds the 2026 Iran war as the permanent baseline condition of the Middle East, rather than an emergency that demands resolution. Conflicts without clearly defined endpoints almost always expand and extend themselves, becoming self-sustaining policy commitments that are harder to exit over time.

    A viable path to exit was already visible back in May and June, when Gulf states first talked Trump down from launching massive new strikes and a tentative negotiating framework nearly held. That path remains open today through the tentative Oman-brokered talks focused on securing freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

    What is missing is not opportunity, but political discipline: the willingness to accept a narrow, verifiable agreement focused on the Strait of Hormuz as a sufficient achievable objective, rather than treating it as just a stepping stone to the larger goal of total Iranian capitulation. Facing intense internal political pressure, Iran’s government will never accept total surrender at the point of a bombing threat.

    Trump built much of his political brand around criticizing the endless wars his predecessors failed to end. Escaping this conflict with a better outcome than permanent stalemate will require him to embrace the harder political work of accepting a modest, workable deal now, instead of holding out for the politically satisfying but unattainable fantasy of total Iranian surrender later. Throughout history, empires that keep waiting for that one decisive blow that will force their enemy to fold almost always find themselves still waiting, years later, mired in the stalemate they could not bring themselves to exit.

  • AI or real? BBC analyses viral China disaster videos

    AI or real? BBC analyses viral China disaster videos

    Against a backdrop of increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events globally, a new digital threat has emerged: artificially generated fake disaster footage that is spreading at alarming speed across online platforms in China, triggering tangible real-world disruptions, a new BBC analysis has found.

    As climate change drives more intense and frequent natural disasters across East Asia, bad actors have seized on generative artificial intelligence tools to fabricate seemingly authentic footage of catastrophic events including floods, wildfires and landslides. These manipulated or fully AI-generated clips quickly go viral on Chinese social media platforms, where users hungry for real-time updates on developing disaster situations share them widely before fact-checking can take place.

    The BBC’s analysis of multiple viral clips that circulated during recent extreme weather events in China highlights how easy it has become for bad actors to create convincing fake disaster content using off-the-shelf generative AI tools. Unlike traditional edited video fakes, modern AI-generated footage can mimic camera shake, on-the-ground reporter audio, and the chaotic visual texture of real breaking disaster coverage, making it extremely difficult for ordinary users to distinguish from authentic footage.

    The rapid spread of these fake videos carries significant real-world consequences. In some cases, false footage has sparked unnecessary public panic, leading to runs on grocery stores in unaffected regions and overwhelming emergency response phone lines with false reports of danger. Local disaster management officials have been forced to divert time and resources away from actual response efforts to debunk viral fake content, creating additional strains during already challenging emergency situations.

    This trend also reflects a broader global challenge: as extreme weather events become more common, the spread of AI-fabricated disaster misinformation has become a growing risk to public safety and emergency management worldwide. Experts quoted in the BBC analysis note that platform providers and regulators across the globe are still playing catch-up to develop effective systems to detect and remove AI-generated fake disaster content before it can spread widely and cause harm.

  • Palestinian-Israeli movement calls for multinational force in occupied West Bank

    Palestinian-Israeli movement calls for multinational force in occupied West Bank

    On Tuesday, a cross-community Palestinian-Israeli grassroots political movement unveiled a urgent new campaign pushing for the deployment of a multinational civilian protection force in the occupied West Bank, as violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities continue to escalate unchecked.

    The group behind the push, A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland, argues that rising settler aggression, paired with the Israeli government’s consistent failure to safeguard Palestinian civilians living under occupation, has made direct international intervention an unavoidable and time-sensitive priority. The formal appeal was launched during a public press conference hosted in Kafr Malik, a Palestinian village located east of Ramallah, where local residents have documented months of persistent settler attacks, limited access to their agricultural lands, and growing anxiety over forced displacement.

    Movement leaders emphasize that a deployed international protection force would not act as a replacement for a long-term political resolution or the future establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Instead, it would serve as an immediate emergency mechanism to shield vulnerable civilian populations and preserve the fragile possibility of a negotiated political settlement down the line. Branded under the slogan “Multinational Force in the West Bank — Now”, the campaign holds that verbal international condemnation of settler violence is no longer sufficient to address the crisis, and calls for a formally mandated force with authority to protect civilians and catalog human rights violations on the ground.

    Rula Hardal, Palestinian co-director of A Land for All, confirmed that the movement circulated an official statement last week to global diplomatic bodies and foreign missions operating in both Israel and Palestine, urging formal backing for the protection force deployment following the recent sharp escalation in settler attacks. Kafr Malik was selected as the press conference venue, Hardal explained, because of its central location in the West Bank, its direct experience of ongoing settler violence, and its relative accessibility and safety for both Palestinian and Israeli Jewish members of the movement compared to other at-risk Palestinian communities.

    “We are a joint Palestinian-Israeli political movement that advocates for a confederative two-state solution along the 1967 internationally agreed borders,” Hardal told reporters during the event. “But we cannot continue clinging to the outdated traditional model of a two-state solution, because the on-the-ground reality has shifted dramatically over the past three decades.” The movement’s work centers on updating and refining the two-state framework to address long-standing core issues including existing Israeli settlements, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, and cross-community security arrangements, all of which are detailed in the movement’s formal political platform.

    Meron Rapoport, an Israeli co-founding president of the movement, warned that security conditions in the occupied West Bank have deteriorated drastically over the past 12 months. He went as far as accusing the current Israeli government and military of advancing “a clear plan of ethnic cleansing” in the occupied territory. “We hear open plans to target Palestinian refugee camps. The writing is on the wall. The era of waiting, asking, and begging Israel to protect Palestinian lives is over,” Rapoport stated during the press conference.

    Other Israeli members of the movement echoed Rapoport’s assessment, agreeing that they no longer have confidence that Israeli authorities are either willing or able to protect Palestinian civilians living under occupation. Professor Yael Berda, co-chair of the movement’s joint board, noted that Kafr Malik specifically faces consistent, systematic threats of violence from organized settler militias. She added that the press conference was organized to demonstrate cross-community solidarity, amplify the call for international intervention, and remind the global community of its legal and moral responsibility to protect civilians at risk of mass atrocities.

    “These mass atrocities include ethnic cleansing, and we are currently seeing imminent ethnic cleansing unfolding. Abstract international pressure is no longer enough,” Berda said. “We see an Israeli government that gives full backing to settler militias, and we see a military that either lacks the capacity or the political will to rein in settler violence.”

    For residents of Kafr Malik, the event was less a forum for abstract political debate and more an opportunity to highlight the daily crisis they navigate. Local villagers shared accounts of repeated settler invasions of their lands, blocked access roads, and steadily tightening restrictions on their ability to reach and work their agricultural plots. Abdel Fattah Hamayel, a long-time resident of Kafr Malik, welcomed the solidarity visit from the joint movement.

    “We appreciate this step, and we hope it will be the foundation for broader action to help the Palestinian people confront this settler-colonial aggression,” Hamayel said. He noted that a single gathering cannot capture the full scope of suffering experienced by Kafr Malik residents, or by Palestinian rural communities across the West Bank more broadly. “This issue is no longer hidden from anyone. The current Israeli government, through its leading fascist figures, states its goals openly and clearly. Our situation is not easy, because we face two core challenges,” he explained.

    The first challenge, Hamayel said, is the lack of a coordinated official Palestinian strategy or functional institutions with the capacity to counter the violence and support Palestinian farmers whose livelihoods are under threat. The second is that all attacks are carried out with the explicit backing of Israel’s far-right government, which has emboldened settlers to abandon all restraints and moral standards, according to Hamayel.

  • Exclusive: Cambridge University backtracks on divesting from arms companies

    Exclusive: Cambridge University backtracks on divesting from arms companies

    Exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye has uncovered that the University of Cambridge has reversed a planned policy that would have paved the way for full divestment from weapons manufacturers, a step that came in direct response to widespread student and faculty campaigning over the institution’s investments linked to Israeli human rights violations.

    Internal documents reviewed by MEE show that on April 16, Cambridge’s top governing body, the University Council, signed off on a new monitoring framework for endowment investments in conventional weapons producers. The framework was developed by the Cambridge University Endowment Trustee Body (CUETB), the body tasked with overseeing the university’s £4.2 billion ($5.74 billion) endowment fund, which is managed day-to-day by University of Cambridge Investment Management Limited (UCIM).

    Under the original policy, the framework was designed to track the endowment’s total exposure to firms that primarily manufacture conventional weapons. If that exposure crossed a pre-set threshold as a share of total fund assets, mandatory discussions would be launched with UCIM to outline a timeline for reducing those holdings. In July 2026, CUETB went a step further, setting the threshold for arms investments at zero percent — a historic decision that would have required divestment talks for any level of investment in weapons companies, effectively committing the institution to full divestment.

    This policy was developed by a 2024 university working group convened after student activists with Cambridge for Palestine set up on-campus encampments to demand the university cut financial ties with firms enabling Israeli occupation and human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. The policy reaffirmed commitments the university made to academic staff just one month ago, when the Council publicly stated it would move to reduce arms investments that crossed the established threshold.

    However, multiple anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the internal decision-making process told MEE that CUETB has quietly scrapped the original plan, replacing it with a new policy that removes any requirement to reduce holdings even if the zero percent threshold is breached. While the zero percent threshold remains on paper, the revised policy no longer mandates action to cut exposure to weapons manufacturers.

    Critically, the non-public policy change was made by CUETB without bringing the decision to a vote before the full University Council, and multiple sitting Council members confirmed to MEE they were never notified of the revision. It remains unclear when the reversal was approved, and the University of Cambridge has not responded to multiple repeated requests for comment from MEE on the policy shift.

    This is not the first time Cambridge has faced scrutiny over its endowment investments. In February 2025, MEE revealed that UCIM had allocated more than £140 million ($189 million) to an S&P 500 fund that holds stakes in multiple companies linked to Israeli human rights violations, including Palantir Technologies, Caterpillar, and GE Aerospace. The university has repeatedly refused to disclose the full list of firms in its endowment portfolio, citing legal confidentiality requirements. Earlier this year, dozens of senior Cambridge academics accused the institution of “maximal obfuscation” over its investments, arguing that the lack of transparency prevents faculty from conducting proper oversight of the endowment’s ties to arms manufacturers.

    A spokesperson for Cambridge for Palestine told MEE that the activist group was “shocked, but not surprised” by the university’s reversal of its public commitments. “The notice in April issued by the University Council made clear that if arms investments were to exceed a yet-to-be-decided threshold of overall investments, then exposure to such investments would be reduced as part of a new monitoring scheme,” the spokesperson said. “Now that this threshold has been set at zero percent, we are hearing that the university has chosen to ignore and sideline its own statements and commitments by removing any process of investment exposure reduction.”

    The spokesperson added that the decision is particularly problematic because it was made unilaterally by the trustee body, rather than going through the university’s formal governance processes. The original divestment motion that launched the working group process has still not been put to a vote before Regent House, Cambridge’s democratic governing body made up of faculty and staff. “The University can backtrack all it likes, and obfuscate language to avoid scrutiny and accountability,” the spokesperson said. “But Cambridge for Palestine re-emphasises that students, staff and local activists will never stop campaigning until the University’s money is used for education as it should be, not for funding war and occupation.”

  • UK charity regulator to investigate donations to illegal Israeli settlements

    UK charity regulator to investigate donations to illegal Israeli settlements

    The United Kingdom’s independent charity oversight body has launched a formal investigation into multiple domestic charities accused of directing financial support to illegal Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory, a significant escalation of the regulator’s ongoing scrutiny of UK charitable activity tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    The Charity Commission for England and Wales confirmed that the inquiry will examine three core areas: how donations transferred to the settlements were ultimately used, the stated and unstated purpose of the funds, and whether the activity aligns with legally defined charitable objectives under UK law. Stephen Roake, the commission’s assistant director for high-risk compliance, confirmed the probe targets eight unnamed UK charities in a public statement announcing the opening of the investigation.

    “Serious allegations have been raised regarding UK charities operating in connection with illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. Our immediate priority is to gather and verify all relevant facts to understand what has occurred,” Roake stated. “Once this fact-finding process is complete, we will assess whether regulatory intervention is necessary based on the evidence we uncover. This work will also inform future regulatory guidance for UK charities operating in the region, which is critical to upholding public trust in the charitable sector as a whole.”

    The investigation follows a series of recent developments that have pushed the issue into UK regulatory focus. Last month, independent regional outlet Middle East Eye exposed details of an event hosted by a London synagogue that openly marketed property in illegal Israeli settlements located in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Brochures and promotional materials from the event, obtained exclusively by Middle East Eye, confirmed the event’s focus on advertising settlement properties. Following this expose, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians—a UK-based legal advocacy organization focused on Palestinian rights—submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission urging an official inquiry.

    This new probe is the latest in a string of regulatory actions tied to the Israel-Gaza war from the Charity Commission. Late last year, the regulator explicitly ruled it unlawful for UK charities to raise or transfer funds to active Israeli soldiers. Since the outbreak of the 2023 Gaza war in October, the commission has opened more than 200 separate regulatory cases linked to the conflict, covering charities across the full spectrum of positions on the war, from pro-Israel to pro-Palestinian groups.

    Over the course of the conflict, multiple leading international human rights bodies, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have formally accused Israeli forces of committing war crimes and acts of genocide in their military campaign in Gaza. The regulator has already been conducting active probes into other UK charities tied to Israeli military activity: earlier in 2024, it confirmed it was assessing a complaint against AAC, a Jewish fundraising organization accused of facilitating donations to an Israeli charity that supplies military equipment to soldiers deployed in Gaza. It is also investigating the Hendon-based Boys Clubhouse, a UK charity, after the group hosted a welcome event for a British national who returned to the UK after fighting with the Israeli army in Gaza.

  • Ex-leader Hasina gambles on return to Bangladesh despite death penalty

    Ex-leader Hasina gambles on return to Bangladesh despite death penalty

    Nearly two years after being ousted from power by a mass popular uprising, former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has publicly pledged to return to her home country by December, even as she faces a confirmed death sentence for crimes against humanity handed down by a Dhaka tribunal last year. The 78-year-old leader, who fled to India at the height of the 2024 anti-government protests that ended her 15-year tenure, denies all charges against her, framing the conviction as a politically motivated campaign to destroy her and her Awami League party.

    Hasina delivered her remarks via audio link to a packed gathering of journalists at Delhi’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Tuesday, marking her first formal public address to media since her government collapsed. “I know that they may put me in jail or they may kill me, anything may happen, but still I have to go back,” she told attendees, declining to share specific details of her travel route or exact re-entry date to avoid preemptive disruption. During the address, she claimed without providing evidence that opposition and civil society organizations hijacked a 2024 student-led protest over government job quotas to orchestrate a violent coup against her administration.

    The conviction against Hasina rests on robust evidence collected by multiple independent bodies. United Nations investigators confirmed they found clear documentation that Hasina and her inner circle authorized systematic lethal force to cling to power during the uprising. A phone call recording verified by BBC’s investigative unit BBC Eye captured Hasina directly approving a deadly crackdown on demonstrators, which prosecutors used as core evidence to secure her in absentia conviction. The UN estimates that as many as 1,400 people were killed during the weeks of unrest, most by live gunfire from state security forces loyal to Hasina.

    Since Hasina fled to India, her long-ruling Awami League has fractured amid a widespread crackdown by the new government. The party was banned from political activity shortly after Hasina’s departure and was barred from contesting the country’s February 2026 general election, which brought the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to power with its leader Tarique Rahman installed as prime minister.

    The current Bangladeshi government has already reacted with fury to Hasina’s Delhi press event, accusing India of violating diplomatic norms by allowing her to hold a public political address. “Our people have firmly resolved that our nation will never again go back to the dark days of fascism and that Bangladesh will never be a client state,” the Bangladeshi foreign ministry said in an official statement following the address. Dhaka has formally requested India extradite Hasina to face her sentence, a request New Delhi says it is currently reviewing. Hasina’s continued residency in Delhi has already put significant strain on bilateral relations between the two neighboring South Asian nations.

    Political analysts warn that a potential return by Hasina would carry massive personal and national risks. “It’s a huge risk for her personally. If she does go back to Bangladesh, she will immediately be arrested,” said David Bergman, a Dhaka-based independent political analyst. He added that mass protests led by BNP supporters, student activists from the National Citizens Party, Islamist groups and other opposition factions would almost certainly immediately break out demanding the government carry out her death sentence.

    At the same time, the stakes of remaining in exile are equally high for the fractured Awami League. Exiled former Awami League cabinet minister Mohammad Ali Arafat told the BBC that without Hasina’s return, the party will be completely destroyed. “If Ms Hasina doesn’t go back, the violence will continue and they will exterminate the Awami League,” Arafat said. Already, internal discontent has grown within the party, with rank-and-file members and mid-level leaders criticizing top officials for fleeing the country and leaving grassroots supporters vulnerable to targeted violence by the new government. Awami League claims hundreds of its supporters have been killed in post-uprising mob violence and dozens more have died in custody, claims that current Dhaka officials have repeatedly denied.

    Bergman notes that Hasina’s vow to return reflects a clear political calculation: any future role for her in Bangladeshi politics depends on her facing the consequences of the conviction rather than remaining in exile. For the country, any move by Hasina to return is almost certain to trigger fresh political unrest and deepen existing divides two years after the uprising that ended her rule.

  • Social media platform X says it is challenging block of jailed Istanbul mayor’s account

    Social media platform X says it is challenging block of jailed Istanbul mayor’s account

    When social media platform X announced this week it would mount a legal challenge against a Turkish government order to block a campaign account supporting imprisoned Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s 2025 presidential bid, the claim was met with immediate skepticism from digital rights and free expression advocates.

    The campaign account, launched to boost Imamoglu’s candidacy in Turkey’s upcoming national election, was first taken offline for users within Turkey in late March 2025, after authorities submitted a formal block request to the platform. In a public post to its own platform Wednesday, X explained that it had complied with the block order the previous week, arguing that Turkish legislation left the company no choice: failure to act would have triggered aggressive bandwidth throttling of X’s entire service across the country by Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK).

    “Although Turkey’s laws force us to comply with the order, we are challenging the order in court and, in the spirit of full transparency, are sharing the court order,” the company stated, alongside a public copy of the official government directive. This is not the first time X has moved to block Imamoglu-linked content: the mayor’s personal main X account, which boasted close to 10 million followers before it was restricted, was blocked in May 2024 under an identical government order, which X also says it is contesting through the Turkish court system. Other major global social platforms have complied with similar Turkish government requests: both Meta and YouTube have already restricted access to Imamoglu-associated accounts and content at authorities’ demand.

    Yaman Akdeniz, founder of Turkish free expression nonprofit IFOD, told Middle East Eye that he doubts X, owned by Elon Musk who has repeatedly labeled himself a “free speech absolutist,” has any real intention of meaningfully opposing the Turkish government’s censorship demands. “It is true to say that every now and again they appeal against decisions and lodge a few applications with the Constitutional Court — however, this is very selective and X chooses not to provide further details about the judicial challenges,” Akdeniz explained.

    Data from X’s own transparency reports backs up critics’ claims that the platform regularly complies with Turkish content removal requests. Between July and December 2024, X received 11,107 separate content and account removal requests from Turkish authorities, and enforced action on 86 percent of those demands. An earlier review of X’s disclosure data by The Washington Post found that the platform’s compliance rate with legal content removal requests globally rose 20 percentage points between 2021 and the first half of 2024, hitting 71 percent. For Turkish government requests specifically, X complied with 68 percent of the 9,364 demands it received in the first half of 2024 alone. Akdeniz added that X is not an outlier in this practice: “I must say Meta and the others are no different as they have all become the long arm of the Turkish law enforcement mechanism.”

    Turkey is far from the only government where X has complied with demands to censor accounts belonging to dissident voices and government critics, a pattern that undermines the platform’s public commitment to free speech. Just this week, The Guardian revealed that X has blocked a collection of prominent Saudi Arabian critics of the Saudi monarchy, including prominent human rights advocate Yahya Assiri and activist Abdullah Alaoudh, whose father is imprisoned cleric Salman al-Ouda. The restrictions came after Snapchat, Meta and Instagram already implemented similar blocks following Saudi government claims that the accounts violated local content regulations. Notably, X had previously issued a public statement claiming it would refuse to follow the other platforms’ lead, saying it “strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of our users.”

    Saudi Arabia’s government has poured billions of dollars in investment into xAI, recently renamed SpaceXAI, the parent company that operates both the X social platform and its AI chatbot Grok, creating a clear conflict of interest that critics say drives the platform’s willingness to comply with Saudi censorship demands. Middle East Eye reached out to X for additional comment on the Turkish court challenge and compliance patterns, but had not received a response as of publication.

  • Ceuta migrant disaster death toll rises to 141, Morocco’s deadliest in recent history

    Ceuta migrant disaster death toll rises to 141, Morocco’s deadliest in recent history

    A catastrophic mass migration event following the opening of a border gate between Morocco and Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta has become the deadliest migration disaster in Morocco’s modern history, with an estimated death toll reaching at least 141 people.

    The crisis unfolded last Thursday, when Moroccan officials opened the Tarajal crossing gate, allowing more than 72,000 migrants to cross into Ceuta between July 30 and 31, according to Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska. In the chaotic aftermath of the mass crossing, dozens of migrants died while attempting treacherous sea voyages, their bodies washing up on both Moroccan and Spanish shorelines.

    As of Tuesday, migrant rights group Caminando Fronteras reported that 63 bodies had been admitted to hospitals across northern Morocco, a figure that has not yet been officially verified by the Rabat government. Separately, Spanish officials confirmed to local broadcaster Cadena SER that another 78 bodies had been recovered from waters controlled by Spain. Combined, these figures push the total death count to 141, far surpassing any prior migration-related fatalities recorded along the Morocco-Spain border. For comparison, the 2022 Melilla border crush killed 23 people per official counts, while rights groups put the toll at 37, and 15 migrants died at Ceuta’s Tarajal Beach in a 2014 incident.

    The recovered remains are currently held by medical facilities in four northern Moroccan cities: Tetouan, Tangier, Fnideq and M’diq. Most of the victims are identified as young Moroccan men between 20 and 30 years old, but Sub-Saharan African migrants, women and children are also counted among the deceased. One high-profile victim is Faten Ben Omar El Azizi, a female footballer who played for Moghreb Atletico Tetuan. Ahead of her daughter’s burial, her mother publicly demanded accountability in a video circulated by local outlet Al Ayoum 24, saying: “The youth are lost… Who opened the door the first time? Why did they open it so that our children could be killed?”

    Spanish authorities have activated the rare “multiple victims” emergency protocol, a framework reserved exclusively for large-scale mass casualty events such as major train collisions and plane crashes. In the weeks following the crossing, Spanish officials have repatriated roughly 70,000 of the migrants who entered Ceuta back to Morocco, leaving approximately 1,000 unaccompanied minor migrants stranded in the enclave with no clear path forward.

    Public anger has surged across Morocco in response to the government’s decision to open the border and the widespread lack of official accountability for the hundreds of lives lost and disrupted. On the international front, the European Union has publicly commended Spain for what it calls the country’s “swift response” to the crisis. Irish Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan confirmed the bloc’s full support for Spain, noting that irregular migration across the Mediterranean requires a coordinated, unified European policy response to prevent future tragedies.

  • Israeli army launches large-scale assault in East Jerusalem refugee camp

    Israeli army launches large-scale assault in East Jerusalem refugee camp

    On a pre-dawn Wednesday, Israeli military forces unleashed a sweeping, large-scale operational raid into the Qalandiya Palestinian refugee camp, located in occupied East Jerusalem, triggering widespread disruption, physical injuries, and property damage across the densely populated enclave, according to local Palestinian officials and on-the-ground witnesses. The Jerusalem Governorate confirmed that dozens of armored Israeli military vehicles pushed across camp boundaries before sunrise, loaded with tactical equipment, supply containers, and detailed operational maps of the area. As the incursion progressed, troops fanned out to secure key positions across multiple residential neighborhoods, kicking off a coordinated campaign of door-to-door home raids and property searches that lasted through the morning.

    Palestinian sources on the ground report that Israeli troops specifically targeted the headquarters of the Qalandiya camp’s Popular Committee, seizing the facility, and forcibly evicted multiple Palestinian families from their residential properties. One entire household was ordered to fully evacuate their home, and worshippers were blocked from holding collective dawn prayers at every mosque across the camp. Multiple civilian injuries have been confirmed in the wake of the operation: a Palestinian man sustained serious leg injuries after being hit by an Israeli military vehicle near the camp entrance, and a 53-year-old Palestinian detainee was harmed after being beaten by troops during his arrest. Journalists covering the incursion were also targeted: veteran reporter Muhammad Sumrin was severely assaulted by soldiers while on assignment, and stun grenades were fired toward other members of the press documenting the raid.

    In addition to raids and arrests, the operation included infrastructure damage: eyewitnesses confirmed that soldiers intentionally breached a perimeter wall near the camp to allow Israeli bulldozers access to the interior, after which the heavy machinery demolished a privately owned car wash located on Almatr Street. Before and during the incursion, Israeli military command distributed physical leaflets to camp residents and sent direct digital messages warning locals against any action that would “harm the security and lives of Israelis,” and urging residents to avoid confronting advancing troops. The operation also resulted in a wave of detentions, with multiple local Palestinians reporting that detainees were physically assaulted during the arrest process, according to Palestinian Red Crescent officials.

    In a public post on Facebook, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), the Israeli military body that oversees operations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, framed the raid as a counter-terrorism action targeting alleged “terrorist elements, terrorist infrastructure, and the phenomenon of weapons possession and trafficking, which poses a threat to the security of the entire region.” As of Wednesday afternoon, however, the Israeli military had not specified what specific terrorist activity the operation was responding to, and no recent attacks targeting Israelis have been traced back to the Qalandiya camp in recent months.

    The raid aligns with a broader expansion of Israeli military operations across West Bank refugee camps that has been reported in Israeli media. Following recent large-scale incursions into the Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps, Israeli security sources told local outlets that military command was considering expanding the counter-terrorism campaign to multiple additional camps across the occupied West Bank, including Qalandiya. Israeli officials have stated the ongoing campaign is intended to dismantle what they describe as armed militant infrastructure across northern and central regions of the West Bank.

    Home to more than 15,000 registered Palestinian refugees, Qalandiya is one of the most densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied Palestinian territories. Its strategic location between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, positioned just a short distance from Israeli settlements and key Israeli-controlled checkpoints and infrastructure, has made it a repeated target of Israeli military raids over the past decades of Israeli occupation.