标签： Asia

A prominent 70-year-old Chinese artist known for politically provocative satirical work has been handed the maximum three-year prison sentence on charges of defaming China’s officially revered historical figures, according to multiple international human rights organizations. The guilty ruling was issued Tuesday by a court in northern China’s Hebei Province, which found Gao Zhen’s artwork violated the reputation of state-sanctioned heroes and undermined public interest.

Gao, who first rose to international acclaim alongside his brother Gao Qiang as a leading voice in Chinese contemporary art through the 1990s and 2000s, has become one of the most high-profile targets of Beijing’s expanding crackdown on dissenting artistic expression. The works at the center of the legal case date back more than 15 years, created years before the 2018 law under which he was charged. The most controversial piece, co-created with his brother, is *Execution of Christ*, a sculptural installation showing a squad of figures resembling Mao Zedong holding Jesus Christ at gunpoint. Two additional works were also cited in the prosecution: *Mao’s Guilt*, a life-sized sculpture of Mao kneeling in a pose of repentance, and *Miss Mao*, a satirical piece depicting the leader with exaggerated feminine features and a long Pinocchio-style nose.

After relocating to the United States in 2022, Gao returned to China to visit his studio on the outskirts of Beijing in August 2024, where he was taken into custody. He has already been held in detention for two years prior to the sentencing, and authorities additionally moved to seize all of his artwork and impose an exit ban on his wife and 7-year-old child, barring them from leaving the country.

The closed-door trial, held earlier this year in a single day, received almost no domestic media coverage within China, consistent with the government’s pattern of restricting public reporting on politically sensitive cases. Amnesty International confirmed Tuesday that Gao intends to file an appeal against his conviction. If the original verdict is upheld, he will complete his sentence in August 2027 after accounting for the time he has already served in detention.

International human rights bodies and political observers have widely condemned the sentencing as a significant escalation of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to police dissenting expression, even beyond China’s borders and applying retroactively to work created decades earlier. Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks called the ruling a deliberate attack on fundamental artistic freedom. “No artist should face criminal punishment for creating work that challenges official narratives or encourages critical reflection on history,” Brooks stated Tuesday. She added that the case illustrates how vaguely worded, politically motivated legislation is weaponized—including retroactively—to silence any person who dares to hold views divergent from the ruling party.

The United Nations Human Rights Office also raised urgent red flags about the case in comments to AFP, pointing to three core concerns: the retroactive application of criminal law, the use of severe criminal penalties to punish protected artistic expression, and the punitive collective impact on Gao’s family. Gao Qiang, who remains outside of China, told the BBC earlier this year that the outcome of the case sends an unambiguous chilling message to artists globally: “Even if a work was made 15 years ago, it can still be turned into a crime if today’s political climate changes.”

China analysts note that Gao’s case fits into a broader pattern of expanding authoritarian control by the CCP, with the party extending its regulatory and punitive reach to target citizens even when they reside abroad, and enforcing political conformity retroactively on decades-old creative work. The case has drawn renewed international attention to the 2018 law that criminalizes defamation of heroes and martyrs associated with the Communist Party, a piece of legislation that rights groups say has been systematically used to erase critical discourse about modern Chinese history.

Fresh tensions have roiled the Eastern Mediterranean after Israeli warplanes carried out multiple airstrikes last week on the Abu al-Duhur military airbase in northern Syria, a facility located roughly 70 kilometers from the Turkish border. Israel justified the attack by claiming Ankara was preparing to deploy advanced air defense systems at the site — a move Israeli officials have long framed as an unacceptable “red line,” arguing that a permanent Turkish military presence in northern Syria would curtail Israel’s freedom of operations in Syrian airspace.

The Israeli allegations have been uniformly rejected by multiple parties. Both Turkish and Syrian government officials have clarified that Turkish personnel were only present at Abu al-Duhur to carry out critical repairs to the base’s runway and control tower, with no plans for air defense deployment. This account has even been corroborated by Tom Barrack, the United States ambassador to Turkey, a longstanding NATO ally of Ankara that also maintains close strategic ties to Israel.

Breaking his silence after several days of holiday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a formal response to the strikes during a speech in Ahlat, eastern Turkey’s Bitlis province, following a cabinet meeting on Monday. In a pointed rebuke that notably avoided naming Israel or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly, Erdogan pushed back against claims that Turkey was acting out of self-serving regional interests.

“Let me state this clearly and unequivocally: We will not allow politically moribund, presumptuous incompetents to use us as fodder for their rhetoric,” Erdogan told the audience. Addressing Ankara’s partnership in Syria, he emphasized that Turkey would never forsake allies that have placed their trust in the country. “We will not stop supporting our neighbours in getting back on their feet merely because it unsettles murderous networks with the blood of innocent people on their hands,” he added. “No actor other than the nation itself can dictate Turkey’s course or set the boundaries of its foreign policy.”

Last week, Turkey’s presidency drew a direct link between the airstrikes and Israel’s upcoming October parliamentary elections, where incumbent Prime Minister Netanyahu is widely projected to underperform. Erdogan’s Monday remarks doubled down on Turkey’s rejection of accusations that it harbors a hidden anti-Israel agenda in the region, with many Israeli officials claiming Ankara is bolstering Syria’s new government to eventually use it as a proxy against the Jewish state.

“Today, I wish to reiterate one fundamental truth: Turkey has no purpose, objective or aspiration anywhere in our region other than peace, justice, stability and security,” Erdogan said. “Contrary to what some claim, we have no hidden agenda and no ulterior motives.”

The escalating standoff has prompted concern from the United States, which has pushed to de-escalate tensions. Barrack has publicly called for the creation of a trilateral cooperation mechanism between the relevant parties to prevent further friction that could destabilize the already volatile region.

The tensions have spilled into the legal sphere as well. On Friday, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced that Turkey’s justice ministry had formally requested Interpol issue Red Notices for Netanyahu and another senior Israeli official on charges of genocide. The request stems from ongoing legal proceedings connected to Israel’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla, an activist vessel that set sail earlier this year to deliver humanitarian aid to blockaded Gaza, which Israel attacked in international waters.

A new regional collective defense initiative first unveiled earlier this month, linking Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, may soon welcome a new member: Bangladesh. The South Asian nation has received a formal invitation to join the framework, which has quickly become known as the Mecca pact, according to Bangladesh’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir, who shared the update with reporters on Monday. While Kabir declined to name the party that extended the invitation, reporting from Reuters cites an anonymous source confirming that Riyadh initiated outreach to Dhaka.

Kabir noted that Dhaka views the prospect of membership through a constructive lens, explaining that participation in a security coordination body for Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East is a reasonable prospect for the country to examine. “If there is a security arrangement among Islamic nations in the Middle East, it is not unusual for us to consider participating. It is being viewed positively,” Kabir told reporters.

Similar to the collective defense principle that underpins long-standing Western military alliance NATO, the core of the Mecca pact holds that an armed aggression against any one signatory state counts as an attack against all member parties.

For Bangladesh, joining the alliance would mark a major shift from its long-held policy of neutrality in large-scale geopolitical divides, a posture carefully maintained to avoid friction between its two nuclear-armed neighbors, India and Pakistan. The country’s interim administration is currently pushing to extradite former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in 2024 after mass popular protests ousted her sitting government in Dhaka. A formal security alignment between Dhaka and Islamabad would almost certainly be interpreted as a hostile signal by New Delhi, which maintains close strategic and economic ties with Israel, a state the current Mecca pact members have increasingly distanced themselves from amid regional conflicts.

The three founding members of the pact have repeatedly stressed that the framework is strictly defensive in scope and not designed to counter any specific regional power. Still, a majority of independent geopolitical analysts have concluded the alliance is implicitly oriented toward countering Iranian influence across the Middle East. All three founding states have majority Sunni populations; while Saudi Arabia has maintained long-running tense relations with Shia-led Iran, both Turkey and Pakistan have kept relatively cordial bilateral ties with Tehran in recent years.

Pakistan has served as a critical intermediary for diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran amid the ongoing standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran blockaded in response to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign launched against Iran that initially aimed to overthrow the country’s ruling government. For Saudi Arabia, by contrast, Iranian-aligned groups have launched repeated retaliatory strikes targeting U.S. military assets hosted on Saudi territory. The ongoing regional conflict has also reignited hostilities between Riyadh and the Houthi-led government in Sanaa, which controls most of northern Yemen, along Saudi Arabia’s southern border.

While the original plan for the alliance was a three-party pact between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Middle East Eye reported that Egypt was initially identified as a high-priority candidate for expansion. Egypt, which boasts one of the largest and most capable militaries in the Arab world, has increasingly aligned with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia on a range of key regional issues, from ceasefire negotiations to end the war in Gaza to security and political developments across the African continent. An Ankara-based source with direct knowledge of the negotiations told Middle East Eye that Turkey invested significant diplomatic effort into courting Cairo, and formally submitted a proposal for Egypt’s membership. After it became clear that Cairo would not move forward with joining the pact, the founding members opted to launch the framework and pursue expansion without Egyptian participation.

As the Trump administration launches what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called a sweeping “economic onslaught” to cut off Iran’s global financial networks, one critical complication threatens to undermine the entire campaign: Washington’s fragile relationship with Beijing.

China holds the position of Iran’s largest single trading partner and the top buyer of Iranian crude oil, taking in more than 80% of Tehran’s total oil exports—most of which move through opaque, indirect shipping channels to evade existing U.S. penalties. While the White House aims to fully isolate the Islamic Republic from the global economy, it is also just weeks away from hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping for a high-stakes summit aimed at preserving a shaky bilateral trade truce.

Notably, details on how the Trump administration would pressure Beijing to cut its economic ties with Iran were entirely absent from Bessent’s recent policy announcement, leaving analysts questioning just how effective the new sanctions campaign can be when Washington must balance its goal of maximum pressure on Tehran against the risk of triggering economically costly tensions with China. Edgard Kagan, senior advisor and Freeman Chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia, noted that the deliberate omission of specifics on China was clearly crafted to avoid disrupting the upcoming summit. “For Xi, a state visit to Washington is a big deal; and for Trump, hosting it is a big deal,” Kagan explained Tuesday. This delicate balancing act will require careful navigation from both capitals, he added, with the core question remaining: can the U.S. push China to scale back its engagement with Iran enough to pressure Tehran, without pushing Beijing into open refusal to comply?

In its official response to Bessent’s newly announced “Operation Economic Outcast”, Beijing has stressed that all of its commercial cooperation with Iran falls firmly within the bounds of international law. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian reiterated that China-Iran cooperation “should not be disrupted or undermined,” and that China opposes what it calls “illegal unilateral sanctions” imposed by the U.S. “China is closely monitoring relevant developments and will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its own rights and interests,” Lin stated. Kagan characterized Beijing’s statement as a deliberate “holding response,” arguing that Chinese leaders will seek to meet the bare minimum of U.S. demands to avoid confrontation, while stopping short of fully aligning with Washington’s goals. He pointed to longstanding practices like secret ship-to-ship oil transfers that disguise the origin of Iranian crude as evidence that Beijing has long avoided complying with the spirit of U.S. sanctions, even while it avoids crossing explicit American red lines.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, outlined that China’s willingness to cooperate hinges entirely on the U.S.’s end goals. If the administration’s aim is to completely destroy Iran’s economy and force regime collapse, Beijing will reject the campaign outright. But if the goal is to pressure Iran to make concessions around security in the Strait of Hormuz and de-escalate regional tensions, Sun said China is prepared to demonstrate limited cooperation without fully severing economic ties. “China only needs to do enough to demonstrate it is cooperating, such as cut back on its oil import from Iran,” Sun explained. With the summit just weeks away, neither side has an interest in triggering a major bilateral escalation, she noted: “China needs to give U.S. something, and U.S. needs to understand and accept that it is not going to be everything U.S. asks for.”

So far, the Trump administration has declined to impose harsh penalties on major Chinese banks and businesses that maintain links to both Iran and the U.S. financial system—entities that are far more vulnerable to American sanctions than the small actors already targeted. In Monday’s announcement, the Treasury Department penalized nearly 60 Iran-linked entities connected to Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs, cyber activities, and oil trade. The action did hit a small number of China-based individuals and entities supporting Iran’s restricted programs, including a Chinese-owned crude tanker that transported millions of barrels of Iranian oil to China in 2025 and a Hong Kong firm involved in the shadow fleet that ships Iranian crude. But major Chinese financial and commercial firms have been left untouched.

Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy advisor on U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group, argues that Trump is highly unlikely to take a hardline stance against major Chinese actors ahead of Xi’s visit. “Given how keen Trump has been to maintain both a trade truce between the United States and China and his personal rapport with Xi, he seems unlikely to do a volte-face just a month before Xi’s state visit and adopt a highly confrontational posture,” Wyne said. The upcoming state visit also sets the stage for a potential return trip by Trump to China in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit, adding further incentive to avoid friction.

In his second term, Trump has adopted a less hawkish posture toward China than he held during his first term, frequently highlighting his positive personal relationship with Xi following 2024’s full-scale trade war marked by tit-for-tat escalating tariffs. The U.S. business community has broadly welcomed Xi’s upcoming visit, framing in-person high-level talks as a positive development even if major breakthrough deals are not expected.

Craig Singleton, senior director for China at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington-based think tank, summed up the current dynamic: “Beijing is betting that Washington will be reluctant to jeopardize the current leader-level dynamic by targeting major Chinese entities before the summit.”

A controversial act of vandalism by a sitting Israeli parliamentarian has triggered widespread political fallout this week, after an Israeli Knesset member from the far-right Religious Zionism party smashed a prominent Palestinian memorial in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, drawing condemnation from across the country’s political divide.

Zvi Sukkot, who chairs the Knesset’s influential Education Committee and is affiliated with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right faction, was captured on camera striking the Palestinian Martyrs’ Monument in Madama, a small village located south of Nablus, with a sledgehammer. In a video of the incident posted to his Facebook account, Sukkot justified his action by claiming the memorial honored two Palestinian militants who had killed Israeli civilians, arguing that the structure had no place standing in the region. He added that leaving the memorial intact risked radicalizing local children passing the site, encouraging them to seek martyrdom themselves.

The incident unfolded with Israeli military personnel present at the scene, despite the Israeli Defense Forces later issuing an official statement disavowing any authorization for the demolition. According to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan 11, military forces had conducted raids across multiple Palestinian villages in the broader Nablus area after Sukkot submitted a formal request to inspect a series of memorials in Beita, Burin, and Madama. The IDF clarified that the destruction of the Madama monument had never gone through required official approval protocols, and that troops on the ground moved to halt the vandalism once it became clear what was happening. In a sharply worded rebuke, the military accused Sukkot and his team of acting “in a deceptive and manipulative manner,” noting that their unauthorized actions had put Israeli soldiers at unnecessary risk. Even so, the IDF reaffirmed its longstanding policy of regularly demolishing Palestinian memorials labeled as “symbols of incitement,” framing these actions as a core component of Israel’s counterterrorism operations.

In response to the military’s criticism, Sukkot’s office said the lawmaker had moved forward independently after the army failed to act on repeated demands to remove the memorial. Footage from the scene confirms that multiple members of Sukkot’s staff joined him in the vandalism, and his spokesperson Yossi Rainer even published a photo on the social platform X showing himself holding a sledgehammer in front of the partially destroyed structure.

Local village leaders have pushed back against the IDF’s account of the incident. Rami Nassar, head of the Madama village council, told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the memorial had stood at the site for roughly 20 years without incident, despite consistent Israeli pressure to have it removed over the decades. Nassar added that threats against the monument had grown more severe in recent weeks, with unidentified Israelis seen measuring the structure several weeks prior to the attack. Contradicting the military’s claim that troops halted the demolition, Nassar said Israeli soldiers simply stood by and allowed Sukkot and his team to damage the memorial unimpeded.

Sukkot’s targeted campaign against Palestinian memorials in the area launched at least two weeks before Tuesday’s attack. Eleven days prior to the incident, he published a video filmed outside Madama calling for the mass removal of all monuments honoring Palestinian fighters across the region. “The time has come to smash these memorials,” Sukkot stated in the earlier clip, adding that every monument “in memory of the terrorists here and in other villages must be destroyed and broken.”

The release of footage from Tuesday’s vandalism has drawn fierce criticism from across Israel’s political spectrum, with opposition figures arguing that the incident is proof that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition has allowed rampant lawlessness to take hold in the occupied West Bank. “Sukkot’s behaviour is a disgrace for someone who claims to represent the public and be a leader,” veteran opposition politician and former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot wrote on X. Eisenkot charged that Netanyahu “allows anarchists” like Sukkot “to do whatever they please, endangering security in the settlements and harming Israel’s standing in the world.”

Yair Golan, leader of the Israeli opposition party The Democrats, went even further in his criticism, saying that Sukkot “should be behind bars, not in Israel’s Knesset.” “For this coalition, flames are a working method,” Golan said, against a backdrop of repeated Israeli military warnings that the incident could spark widespread escalation in the already volatile West Bank. “As long as the public is afraid and fighting amongst itself, they can continue to rule,” he added.

Even some figures within the ruling coalition voiced criticism of Sukkot’s actions, though many stopped short of full condemnation. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar noted that Sukkot and other elected lawmakers “are not the sovereign” in the occupied West Bank, emphasizing that “decisions must be made and carried out by the state and its authorities.”

Tuesday’s incident is far from the first time Sukkot has been recorded vandalizing Palestinian property. Just one month earlier, the Knesset member published footage of himself damaging infrastructure at the Islamic Orphanage Secondary School in Jerusalem’s Old City. In June, he led an incursion into a Palestinian school in the northern Israeli town of Tuba-Zangariyye, where he attempted to break into the school building using a circular saw.

On a quiet day tending to his generations-old olive grove in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian farmer Ahmed Zeidat’s routine turned into a violent confrontation that has become an all-too-common reality for communities in the Jenin area. As Zeidat cared for his trees, a group of Israeli settlers charged at him, beating him in the face and stomach before he fled the scene on his tractor, with the attackers in close pursuit. When Israeli soldiers finally stepped in to separate the parties, they made a shocking choice: they removed the settlers from the land, but placed Zeidat in custody.

When Zeidat questioned the military officer about his detention, he was given a blunt answer that laid bare the shifting territorial reality of the region: he was being held for trespassing on private Israeli land. Bewildered by the claim that his own inherited property had been reclassified, Zeidat pushed back. “This land is mine. How did it become private, and who does it belong to?” he recalled asking. The soldier’s reply left no room for ambiguity: “It belongs to us, and you’re not allowed to enter it.” After a short period in detention, Zeidat was released, but issued a permanent ban from returning to the land he had spent decades cultivating. “My land, the fruit of my labour and toil, is forbidden to me,” Zeidat told Middle East Eye. “It used to give me 600 kilos of pure olive oil. Now I look at it from afar. I can’t even look, because my heart aches.”

For Palestinian communities across Jenin and its surrounding villages, Zeidat’s experience is no longer an isolated incident. It is part of a rapidly accelerating push to expand Israeli settlements that upends a decades-old status quo in the northern West Bank. When Israel unilaterally disengaged from the region in 2005, it dismantled four local settlements – Ganim, Kadim, Homesh and Sa-Nur – leaving most Palestinian communities in the area free from regular direct confrontation with settlers. That changed entirely after the current Israeli government took office in late 2022, which has overseen a sharp uptick in settlement construction and expansion across the entire West Bank. In and around Jenin, Israeli authorities have moved to re-establish the four evacuated settlements, approve new residential sites, and build out the military infrastructure required to secure these new outposts.

Palestinian leaders and activists warn that the end goal is to encircle Jenin with a growing ring of settlements and military bases, cutting the city off from its neighboring villages and tightening Israel’s total control over both land and Palestinian movement in the region. According to Tariq Ighbaria, director of the Jenin-based Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission (CWRC), Israel has approved 11 entirely new settlements in the Jenin area in addition to reviving the four abandoned sites. Settler families have already begun moving into some of the completed sites, while construction of access roads and supporting infrastructure is ongoing across the region.

In late July alone, the Israeli military issued 15 military orders seizing nearly 200 dunams of privately owned Palestinian farmland in Jenin, local settlement monitors confirm. Israeli daily Haaretz later reported that the seized land will be used to connect two new settlements south of Jenin, Noa and Emek Dotan. What makes this seizure particularly unprecedented is its location: the land falls under Area A, a classification defined by the 1993 Oslo Accords that is supposed to be under full civilian and security control of the Palestinian Authority. Kerem Navot, an Israeli anti-settlement monitoring organization, confirmed that this marks the first time the Israeli military has used land seizure orders in Area A to advance illegal settlement expansion, rather than for explicit military purposes.

This breach of the Oslo framework extends beyond land seizures. In June, Haaretz reported that the Israeli military is constructing a permanent military base in the center of Jenin city – the first permanent military outpost built in Area A since the accords were signed. Anonymous sources told the outlet that a core purpose of the new base is to provide security for Israeli settlers returning to the region.

“The landscape of Jenin has changed significantly in recent months due to the return of settlers,” Ighbaria explained. Large swathes of prime Palestinian agricultural land, including centuries-old olive groves, have already been cleared to make way for construction sites, as bulldozers carve new access roads and military installations into the hills. “Bulldozing operations are also continuing in the mountains of Masliya and Qabatiya, while a military base is being constructed in the Jabriyat neighbourhood, classified as Area A and located in the heart of Jenin,” he added.

Ighbaria warned that the total amount of land effectively taken from Palestinian control far exceeds the acreage listed in individual seizure orders. “If 200 dunams are confiscated to construct a road linking two settlements, the road and its security perimeter could effectively lead to the seizure of hundreds of additional dunams, perhaps reaching 600 or 700,” he said. The expanding Israeli-controlled road network has already fundamentally disrupted Palestinian movement across the region, cutting off surrounding villages from Jenin city and severing traditional travel links between Jenin and nearby Palestinian cities including Nablus, Tulkarm and Tubas. For residents of multiple surrounding villages, traveling to Jenin for work, healthcare or education has become increasingly dangerous and difficult, with unregulated settler travel through agricultural land adding to the daily risk of confrontation. “What is happening represents a complete change to the geography of Jenin,” Ighbaria said, describing a growing network of connected settlements and outposts that encircle Palestinian population centers and steadily bring more land under exclusive Israeli control.

The human and economic cost of this rapid expansion is already devastating for Palestinian families whose livelihoods depend on access to their land. South of Jenin, on the Arraba Plain, vineyard owner Tariq al-Shaer was forced to prematurely harvest and sell his entire crop at a wholesale discount after receiving an official order that his 15-year-old vineyard would be demolished and bulldozed. The six-dunum farm, which is home to roughly 750 grapevines, provided a stable income for al-Shaer’s family and 15 additional local workers. “Harvesting the grapes feels like cutting a piece of my soul,” al-Shaer said. “My family and I have worked so hard on this, and no one can help us keep it. The Israeli decision has been made, and that’s final.”

Between the villages of Marqa and Qabatiya, Mohammed Abu Mualla and his brothers received a similar order to demolish their poultry farm, which is also located in Area A. “They gave us only seven days to remove it, and we were forced to do so for fear of its demolition and the destruction of its contents,” Abu Mualla said. “The notice came as a complete surprise to us.”

Land seizures have been paired with widespread demolition orders targeting Palestinian-owned commercial and residential structures, clearing space for new settlement roads and infrastructure. On August 11, Israeli bulldozers demolished 12 Palestinian commercial warehouses in the village of Anza, south of Jenin. The structures stood along a main road that Israeli authorities plan to reroute to serve settler traffic. Hisham Sadaqa, head of Anza’s village council, told Middle East Eye that the village is uniquely vulnerable due to its position along the key Jenin-Nablus road, which will form a critical link between the revived settlements.

The very next day, Israeli forces demolished 27 additional small shops in Deir Abu Daif, east of Jenin. Among the destroyed structures was a new shop built six months earlier by Mohammed Mahamid, who built the business to support his family after he became unable to work due to poor health. “Building these shops cost me 180,000 shekels ($60,000), and my health condition doesn’t allow me to find other work,” Mahamid said. “I hoped the shops would be my source of income so I could settle down, but everything is gone.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees civilian affairs in the West Bank and has long pushed for widespread annexation of Palestinian territory, openly celebrated the demolitions on social media, calling them “a step towards resuming settlement activity” in the former Ganim and Kadim settlement areas.

Political analyst and researcher Sanaa Zakarna argues that these recent developments go far beyond expanding settlement activity – they represent a deliberate dismantling of the Oslo Accords framework on the ground. By targeting Area A, which was explicitly designated for full Palestinian control, Israel is erasing the core territorial agreements that have shaped the region for nearly 30 years. Zakarna explained that Israel is leveraging current political and regional conditions to advance long-standing plans to fragment the West Bank into a series of isolated Palestinian cantons, cut off from one another and surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory.

In 2017, Smotrich published what he called “Israel’s Decisive Plan”, a policy blueprint explicitly designed to eliminate Palestinian national aspirations. A core pillar of the plan is the cantonization of the West Bank, splitting the Palestinian population into disconnected, geographically isolated enclaves. Last year, Smotrich went further, unveiling a formal proposal to annex 82 percent of the West Bank to Israel, extending Israeli sovereignty over almost the entire territory while confining the six major Palestinian population centers – Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Jericho and Hebron – into separate, disconnected cantons.

Zakarna noted that Jenin’s unique geographic position makes it a key priority for Israel’s settlement strategy. The city sits just a short distance from the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line that marks Israel’s pre-1967 border, and is surrounded by strategically critical transport routes and existing military sites. It is also the center of a thriving agricultural economy, with the fertile Marj Ibn Amer plain, extensive farmland and local stone quarries providing livelihoods for tens of thousands of residents. “Controlling the land means weakening the population’s ability to produce and imposing further economic and security restrictions on them, gradually forcing them to leave,” Zakarna said.