标签： Asia

TEHRAN – In an official announcement shared Friday on the social media platform X, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi has confirmed that unimpeded passage for all commercial ships through the strategic Strait of Hormuz will remain completely open for the full duration of the ongoing ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. The declaration aligns with the terms of the 10-day truce that recently went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, a deal that has already lowered tensions across the broader Middle East region. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for global energy trade, sees roughly 20 percent of the world’s total oil shipments pass through its waters on an annual basis. This announcement comes amid a long-running backdrop of heightened geopolitical friction in the region, including prior United States blockade actions in the Hormuz area and repeated American threats to impose sanctions on nations purchasing Iranian crude oil, a situation that has repeatedly disrupted global shipping markets. China has long pushed back against unilateral American sanctions targeting Iran’s energy sector, and has maintained active diplomatic communication with the U.S. ahead of the planned visit of former President Donald Trump. The Iranian foreign minister’s clarification comes as global markets closely monitor developments in the Middle East, as any disruption to Hormuz transit would have immediate ripple effects on global energy prices and international supply chains. By explicitly guaranteeing open access for all commercial vessels during the ceasefire period, Iranian authorities have signaled their commitment to upholding the terms of the regional truce and supporting the stability of global maritime trade.

In October 2025, a routine land defense action during olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank turned into a viral international incident that has reignited global scrutiny of escalating Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities. The incident, captured in a candid photograph and full video footage, has pitted an Italian news magazine against the Israeli government, while giving a human face to a years-long crisis of displacement and intimidation in the region.

The central figure in the controversy is 35-year-old Meead Abu al-Rub, a Palestinian lawyer working with the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. On 12 October, Abu al-Rub joined a group of fellow activists and local farmers in the Suba area of Idhna, a region southwest of Hebron, to peacefully oppose the proposed confiscation of Palestinian agricultural land and support local landowners during the critical annual olive harvest. What began as a calm gathering of olive picking, traditional dabke dancing, and folk singing quickly escalated when more than 20 armed settlers, escorted and protected by over 30 Israeli soldiers, arrived at the site.

In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye, Abu al-Rub recounted the chaotic confrontation that unfolded. “Some of the settlers were wearing military uniforms and carrying weapons,” she said. “They threatened us, insulted us, and filmed us. The settler who was filming me with his phone was threatening to arrest us all, even though we had not done anything wrong and they were the ones who attacked us.” The settlers, backed by Israeli military forces that fired tear gas at the gathering, threatened to detain participants and transfer them to Al-Moskobiya, an infamous Israeli detention facility. Abu al-Rub recalled that organizers made the difficult decision to withdraw, a choice she says likely saved lives. “If we hadn’t cancelled the event and withdrawn, the settlers wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot us directly,” she explained. “They had their weapons ready, and there was no one to protect us.”

The photograph of the confrontation, captured by award-winning Italian photographer Pietro Masturzo, was selected as the cover image for an issue of major Italian current affairs magazine L’Espresso, headlined “L’Abuso” (The Abuse). The cover text accompanying the image drew a direct connection between the harassment in the West Bank and broader regional Israeli military actions: “The occupation of the West Bank was carried out with the help of soldiers collaborating with settlers. Gaza was destroyed. Expansion in Lebanon was carried out. The borders in Syria were violated. Iran was attacked. Ethnic cleansing and massacres were committed. This is how the Zionist right wing is shaping Greater Israel.”

The image quickly spread across global social media platforms, prompting an immediate sharp rebuke from Israeli officials. Jonathan Peled, Israel’s ambassador to Rome, condemned the cover, claiming it “distorts the complex reality” of the region and perpetuates harmful stereotypes and hatred against Jewish people. Israeli officials further accused the magazine of publishing a doctored, artificially generated image designed to defame the country.

Masturzo moved quickly to debunk these claims, releasing the full unedited video footage of the entire incident to coincide with the magazine’s publication. In an Instagram post addressing the growing controversy, the photographer confirmed: “Many are asking if this image was created using artificial intelligence, while others are pointing to posts claiming so. Well, no, the image in question is not a product of artificial intelligence.” L’Espresso also stood by its reporting, publishing the full clip to confirm the authenticity of the cover photograph.

For Abu al-Rub, the sudden global attention has come with heavy personal cost. As a mother of four children, ranging in age from 18 months to seven years, she now lives in quiet fear of reprisal from settlers and Israeli security forces, a reality shared by thousands of Palestinian land defenders across the West Bank, where Palestinian communities receive little to no protection from aggressive settlers, who operate with open backing from the Israeli military.

“I wasn’t afraid of them during the event, but now, after the photo’s widespread circulation, fear has crept into my heart,” Abu al-Rub said. “I’m a mother of four children… They’re making me afraid of the photo’s massive spread and the possibility of being forcibly separated from them.”

Despite this anxiety, Abu al-Rub says she has found renewed motivation in the support of her family and the international attention that has brought the crisis of settler violence to a global audience. Her own children have told her they are proud of her work, and their friends have expressed admiration for her courage standing up for Palestinian land rights. “My father instilled in me a love for my land, and I’m happy that I’ve passed this on to my children, who share the same love and sense of belonging,” she said. “When I go out to events, they ask to come with me and say, ‘We’re Palestinians too, just like you.’ This proves that our cause isn’t forgotten by the young, as Israel hopes, but is far too deeply rooted to be forgotten.”

The viral incident comes amid a documented sharp escalation in settler violence across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2026. Data published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirms that more than 580 settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties, property damage, or both have been recorded across 190 Palestinian communities since the start of the year. Between 31 March and 6 April alone, OCHA documented at least 47 separate attacks targeting 36 distinct communities.

Displacement from settler aggression and Israeli access restrictions has also accelerated dramatically this year. As of 6 April, more than 1,800 Palestinians have been newly displaced from their land in 2026 – a total that already exceeds the full-year displacement figure recorded for 2025. Abu al-Rub noted that thousands of Palestinian farmers are already blocked from accessing their own agricultural land during key harvest seasons, a deliberate pattern of displacement designed to clear land for expanding Israeli settlements.

The Palestinian ambassador to Italy has contacted Abu al-Rub to confirm the scale of global reaction to the photograph and video, noting that the incident has laid bare the daily reality of life under occupation for millions of Palestinians for an international audience that has increasingly turned its attention to the humanitarian crisis in the region.

On Friday, activists and campaigners across 19 countries took coordinated action to observe the annual Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, uniting in a global call to free more than 9,600 Palestinian detainees held in Israeli facilities and overturn a recently enacted Israeli law that enables the execution of Palestinian prisoners.

This annual observance traces its origins back to 1974, when the Palestinian National Council first designated April 17 to draw international attention to the crisis of Palestinian incarceration. The date was chosen to mark the third anniversary of the first prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian factions, which saw Mahmoud Bakr Hejazi become the first Palestinian detainee to regain his freedom. For five decades, the day has served as a global platform to amplify the stories of detainees and document the systemic challenges they face.

Updated figures from the Red Ribbons Campaign, a leading grassroots movement advocating for the release of Palestinian detainees, confirm that as of April 2025, more than 9,600 Palestinians remain behind bars in Israeli prisons. Of this population, at least 3,532 are held under administrative detention – a controversial Israeli military policy that allows indefinite detention without charge or trial, with six-month detention orders that can be renewed repeatedly. The detainee population also includes 342 minor children, 84 women, and 119 individuals serving lifelong prison sentences.

Campaign data shows a dramatic 83% surge in detentions since Israel launched its large-scale military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Prior to that offensive, just over 5,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons. “Thousands of Palestinian prisoners and hostages remain held in Israeli occupation prisons, subjected to severe violations,” the Red Ribbons Campaign said in an official statement shared with Middle East Eye.

In total, the movement organized more than 137 public events across 19 nations to mark this year’s observance, encouraging supporters to wear or display red ribbons as a visual symbol of global solidarity with detainees. “It should remind the world of the blood being shed, the freedom we seek and the urgent cause we stand for,” explained Adnan Hmidan, coordinator of the Red Ribbons Campaign. Solidarity events were held in major nations across the globe, including the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Morocco, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands, among others.

Prominent Palestinian politician and physician Mustafa Barghouti praised global supporters for their solidarity, noting that framing detained Palestinians as hostages accurately reflects their current situation. “The term ‘hostages’ accurately reflects their reality – they are forcibly held, subject to military courts lacking basic standards of justice, and repeatedly detained without charge or trial under administrative detention,” Barghouti said in comments carried by the Red Ribbons Campaign. “These are grave violations of international law carried out by an illegitimate occupation in full view of the world.”

Parallel demonstrations were also held a day earlier across occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where protesters carried banners, portraits of incarcerated loved ones, and lengths of rope to symbolize their opposition to the new execution legislation approved by Israel’s parliament last month.

Last month, Israel’s Knesset passed the execution bill by a 62-48 vote, despite widespread international condemnation and calls to withdraw the legislation. The law permits the death penalty for anyone convicted of intentionally killing a person with the intent to harm an Israeli citizen or threaten the existence of the Israeli state. Legal analysts and human rights groups warn the law’s wording is deliberately structured to target Palestinians almost exclusively: Jewish Israelis convicted of killing Palestinians face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with no eligibility for the death penalty.

The legislation has drawn fierce backlash from global and local human rights groups, which warn it enshrines systemic discrimination and violates fundamental right to life. Multiple leading Israeli human rights organizations – including Adalah, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, HaMoked, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – issued a joint statement condemning the policy, warning it would create what they called a “racialised system of capital punishment.” They added that the bill is “among the most extreme and dangerous legislative measures ever proposed by Israel against Palestinians”, establishing a “discriminatory punitive framework” that denies Palestinians equal protection under the law, fair trial guarantees, and safeguards against torture and cruel, inhumane treatment.

Widespread reports of abuse against Palestinian detainees have been well-documented by human rights groups for decades, but organizations confirm abuses have escalated dramatically since the October 2023 start of Israel’s Gaza campaign. At least 90 detainees have died in Israeli custody since that time. Last month, a group of United Nations independent experts warned that torture has become “state doctrine” in Israel, enabled by decades of official impunity and political protection for perpetrators. “Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories.

Recent revelations have further deepened concerns about systemic abuse. Earlier this week, Israeli outlet Haaretz reported that Israel’s army chief Eyal Zamir has approved the return to reserve duty of five soldiers from elite Unit 100, who were implicated in the torture and rape of a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp in 2024. All criminal charges against the soldiers were dropped last month, and no formal internal military investigation into the incident has been launched.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released a report earlier this month compiling firsthand testimonies from former Gaza detainees that documented widespread, systematic sexual abuse, including rape with foreign objects and the use of trained dogs to assault detainees. The group concluded that sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza appears to be an “organised state policy” sanctioned by Israeli authorities.

In the weeks following the April 8 announcement of a US-brokered ceasefire between Iran, the United States, and Israel, a striking contradiction has emerged in Tehran’s military actions: while pushing to expand the truce to cover Lebanon and Hezbollah, Iran has ramped up cross-border drone and missile attacks on Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region.

The latest deadly strike came on April 14, when an Iranian drone killed 19-year-old Ghazal Moulan, a female fighter with the Komala Toilers of Kurdistan, in the city of Sulaimaniyah. In a statement posted to X following the attack, Komala spokesperson Amjad Hossein Panahi condemned the killing, saying “the criminal hands of the Islamic Republic did not cease their bloodshed even under the shadow of a ceasefire.” Moulan’s funeral, held days later in Iraqi Kurdistan, drew public attention to the ongoing campaign of violence against Kurdish opposition figures.

Pattern of unrelenting attacks in the ceasefire era

Mustafa Mawloudi, deputy secretary general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI), another major opposition group, confirmed that Iranian bombardment has not paused for a single day since the ceasefire took effect. “As far as we know, there is also a ceasefire for Lebanon, but for us, the attacks have been ongoing,” Mawloudi told Middle East Eye in an interview.

The wave of strikes has hit multiple opposition camps across Iraqi Kurdistan in recent days. On the Thursday following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire that took effect at midnight, the PDKI confirmed Iranian drones targeted its camp in the town of Koya. Just hours before that strike, Komala’s base was also hit. A day earlier, both a PDKI encampment and a position held by the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) came under attack.

These recent strikes are part of a much larger escalation that predates the current ceasefire. Data collected by Kurdish independent news outlet Rojhelat Info shows that starting on February 28, Iran and its allied militias have launched nearly 700 drone and missile attacks targeting areas within Iraqi Kurdistan. Around 170 of these strikes have specifically targeted Iranian Kurdish opposition parties based in the region. To date, the campaign has killed at least 15 people total, including six opposition fighters.

This escalation follows a shifting series of statements from Trump on Iranian Kurdish opposition groups. In early March, the US president announced he would back Iranian Kurds to launch an offensive against the Tehran government, only to reverse that position days later. Just one week before the April 8 ceasefire was announced, Trump claimed Iranian Kurdish groups had received US weapons intended for anti-government protesters inside Iran — a claim all Kurdish opposition groups have repeatedly denied.

Regional leaders have pushed back against efforts to draw Kurdish groups into cross-border conflict. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq has repeatedly emphasized it will not allow its territory to be used to escalate tensions with Iran, and issued a formal statement last week confirming that multiple drones targeting the region on April 9 were intercepted, reaffirming its “firm stance against involvement in conflict or escalation.”

Analysts point out Iranian hypocrisy in the dual ceasefire policy

Foreign policy analysts say the ongoing attacks against Kurdish groups represent a clear violation of the spirit of the US-brokered ceasefire, and highlight a stark double standard in Iran’s negotiating position. Mohammed A Salih, a non-resident senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, explained that Tehran has vehemently opposed Israeli targeting of Lebanese Hezbollah, which carried out 39 days of active strikes against Israeli targets during the recent conflict. Yet Tehran continues to attack Iranian Kurdish groups that have not fired a single shot at Iranian forces during the same period.

“It also shows a deep double standard in the Iranian position as Tehran is against Lebanese Hezbollah being targeted even though Hezbollah was actively striking Israel during the 39 days of conflict,” Salih noted. “Yet it insists on attacking Iranian Kurds based in Iraqi Kurdistan even though not a single shot was fired at Iranian troops by these groups during the war.”

Targeted strikes on Kurdish opposition groups are not a new development: Tehran has launched repeated attacks on opposition bases in Iraqi Kurdistan for decades. In a major 2020 strike, Iranian missiles and drones killed at least 16 opposition members in a single attack. Analysts say the recent escalation, even amid a broader ceasefire, reflects Tehran’s long-held concern about the political and ideological influence of opposition groups inside Iran.

Hana Yazdanpanah, foreign relations coordinator for the PAK, told Middle East Eye that Iran views even relatively small Kurdish opposition groups as a potential threat to its domestic stability, and uses cross-border strikes to prevent that influence from growing. “Therefore, through these attacks, Iran wants to prevent that influence and potential from growing,” she explained.

Ranj Talabani, a former intelligence official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s Zanyari agency, echoed that analysis, saying the strikes serve as a permanent warning to opposition groups against any effort to undermine the Iranian government, now or in the future. “The regime understands that, although limited in number, these groups still have the potential to cause problems, not only overtly along the borders, but also covertly deeper in the country,” Talabani said. He added that public calls by Kurdish opposition leaders for US support have reinforced Tehran’s perception that Kurdish groups pose a more immediate threat to the regime than exiled royalist opposition led by Reza Pahlavi.

Kurdish opposition leaders say US has remained silent on attacks

Kurdish opposition officials say they have called on the US to intervene to halt the strikes, but have so far seen no action from Washington. Mawloudi said he hopes the US will take steps to stop the attacks, but added “we don’t think they have a plan like this, the US did not even condemn these attacks.”

Yazdanpanah echoed that frustration, noting that the US has the leverage to force Iran to end the campaign if it chooses to act. “If the United States warns Iran that if even a single drone is launched in the Kurdistan Region, it will be hit, then they wouldn’t dare fire a single bullet,” she said.