Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel’s army is prepared for a “large-scale operation” in the occupied West Bank after Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in a gun battle in Hebron. The Israeli army says two soldiers were killed and three injured during the shooting.
Abdollah Haji Sadeghi, a representative of the Iranian supreme leader to the IRGC, says Mojtaba Khamenei is exercising leadership and in good health.
European and Middle Eastern foreign ministers are meeting in Istanbul for security talks on the Strait of Hormuz and regional crises.
Saudi-led coalition forces say they intercepted a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis towards Khamis Mushait.
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9m ago
(13:30 GMT)
Israeli forces order families in Khirbet al-Sarou, near Jenin, to evacuate homes
Israel’s military has ordered families living in the town of Khirbet al-Sarouj, west of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, to evacuate their homes and livestock shelters within a week, according to the Wafa news agency.
The agency quoted a resident as saying Israeli forces raided the area, where there are seven family homes and 10 livestock shelters, and delivered the evacuation threat.
The families fear their land will be transformed into an Israeli settler outpost and potentially a new Israeli settlement, Wafa reports.
Israeli settlements near Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank [File: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]
19m ago
(13:20 GMT)
Israeli settlers destroy Shireen Abu Akleh memorial in Jenin
Israeli settlers have destroyed a memorial dedicated to Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh near the Ajja roundabout, south of Jenin, Wafa reports.
Armed settlers raided the area in two vehicles and destroyed the memorial, which the Ajja muncipality had put up in honour of Abu Akleh, the Palestinian news agency
Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier who shot her in the head while she was covering an Israeli military raid in Jenin in 2022.
A man visits the spot where Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11, 2022 while covering an Israeli raid, in the Jenin refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank [Zain Jaafar/AFP]
29m ago
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Yemeni forces say they targeted Houthi military supplies with drones in al-Jawf
Yemen’s government forces have announced that they have targeted military supplies that belong to the Houthis at the Huwaishan site, on the al-Jawf front, with drones.
It also announced the bombing of Houthi weapons depots in two air strikes west of Taiz province.
We will bring you more information when we have it.
Houthi fighters participating in an attack against Saudi-backed Yemeni forces in the eastern Yemeni province of Marib [File: Houthi Military Media Centre via EPA]
Berlin, Germany – Europe is entering winter with historically low gas reserves and cannot withstand further supply shocks, Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, has warned, as the US-Israel war on Iran disrupts global supply chains.
Speaking to Al Jazeera on the sidelines of an international conference in Berlin on Wednesday, Birol said all regions are being hit by energy disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz but that Europe is particularly vulnerable and will likely face rising costs of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the coming months – even if peace returns to the Gulf today.
“The best day for a ceasefire would have been yesterday,” the energy economist, whose agency advises wealthy member nations and coordinates emergency responses, said.
“Normally before the winter, European countries have a lot of gas stocks, but the gas stocks we have while we are entering this winter are much lower than historical averages,” he said, adding that Europe’s gas is competing with that of Asian countries, which are even more dependent on the Middle East.
“I think if we have a harsh winter, we may see higher prices of natural gas in Europe,” Birol said, adding that the increasingly political nature of energy adds to the uncertainty. “Life will not be easy for Europe this year and also next year.”
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European nations have long relied on imported gas to generate electricity for industries and warm homes in the freezing winter. Nearly a 10th of the continent’s LNG transited through the Hormuz Strait before the war. However, Iran’s attacks on vessels have plummeted imports.
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As the winter chill settles, the European Union’s natural gas storage is only 72 percent full, down from the usual 90 percent. The shortfall is equivalent to the energy needed to power 10 to 12 million homes, analysts say.
EU energy ministers are now mulling over whether they should ask households and businesses to ration consumption, according to news reports.
Birol said he had long thought about the dangers of relying on the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, he said, his standard question to recruits seeking to join his agency was often: What would they do if the strait shuts down today?
The fallout has hardly come as a surprise. The flare-ups in the alternative Bab al-Mandeb strait, he added, have only worsened things.
“World leaders, how do they think?” Birol, who was born in Turkiye, said in his usual measured tone.
“I am really disappointed that governments didn’t take the necessary measures. Now, everybody is in a hurry, taking measures; the Middle East countries are building new pipelines, expanding the new pipelines that are bypassing the Strait of Hormuz … but in my view, these efforts should have been done much earlier.”
Europe’s historical over-reliance to blame
The EU, whose ageing refineries have processed less crude in recent years, also faces shortages of imported refined products such as the diesel that powers the bloc’s trucking, agricultural and industrial sectors.
Birol said Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries were also behind a looming diesel scarcity. About a third of Russian deliveries have stopped coming, he said.
When the Group of Seven (G7) nations agreed to push 400 million barrels of crude and diesel from their strategic reserves in March, it was Birol who coordinated how those emergency stocks reached global markets – the third time he has had to oversee emergency stock releases since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
For years, the energy economist said, his agency warned that the bloc was too tethered to Russia’s fuel, and that it had turned away too early from nuclear-generated power, which gave countries domestic leverage.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, his warnings manifested after Moscow cut gas supplies in retaliation for sanctions. The EU plans to permanently phase out Russian gas, but amid the Gulf crisis, members like France have again stepped up orders.
Price buffers stretched
Industry experts say emergency reserves that hit the market have limited use, as some estimate only a few months will be covered.
But Birol argued that his agency recorded real impact – a $20 drop in soaring oil prices immediately after the G7 countries agreed to release 100 billion barrels of crude oil and diesel earlier this month.
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Prices are, however, on the rise again. Gas has surged by 140 percent since February, and Brent crude is trading well above $100.
Whatever happens now, the war will be felt for months, Birol pointed out, adding that it has irrevocably altered how energy will travel around the world.
It is also altering Europe’s politics, Birol noted. Russia has wielded gas as a weapon. And populist parties, from France to Germany, are capturing growing public anger to frame mainstream governments as incompetent.
“I have never ever seen the dark and long shadow of geopolitics so dominant in the energy sector,” Birol mused. “The world has gone through so many difficult periods, but this is the worst in terms of the geopolitics dominating the energy game. Energy is not currently considered a business but a political leverage. As an energy man, this worries me.”
The EU still has about 80 percent of its emergency stocks, and Birol hopes he will not have to oversee a fourth release. But the world’s supply can’t take more shocks, he said.
“I really hope that both of the straits will be unconditionally opened sometime soon; otherwise, in the energy world, we don’t have much more buffer zones to still keep the prices at a certain level (as) we have today,” he concluded.
We are currently experiencing a wave of protests across Europe and beyond. Many have been dubbed “Gen Z protests”, with young people aged roughly 13 to 29 leading demonstrations over issues that particularly affect their generation.
In France, protests started several weeks ago over deteriorating conditions in severely underfunded schools. They have been growing in strength, with between half a million and 800,000 protesters reportedly taking part in them across the country last weekend.
In India, the Cockroach movement has emerged as the strongest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s increasingly authoritarian leadership. Last week, its leader was arrested as anger grew over the removal of more than 130 million names from electoral rolls.
In Spain, anger has arisen over a broken housing system and laws that fail to protect households against eviction. First there was the forcible eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal. Then parliament voted down widely popular legislation that would protect households against evictions, prompting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to call snap elections. Maricarmen died two weeks after her eviction.
While the context in each country is different, grievances over inequality are at the centre of the current protest wave. This inequality has two aspects. One is about class and one is about generation.
Across Europe, inequality has increased significantly since the 2008 crisis. This can be seen in growing income inequality and spiralling wealth inequality. The effect on people’s lives is worsened by the erosion of the once-proud European welfare states. High-quality public services for all were once meant to offer a guaranteed minimum standard of living and a meritocracy in which everyone had the chance to succeed. But years of austerity have eroded the state’s capacity to deliver good education, healthcare, social care and other services. The gradual retreat of the state exacerbates growing income and wealth inequalities, as some can pay for better services while many cannot.
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These growing inequalities are often felt more acutely by young people and are compounded by other challenges they face. In one area after another, young people are experiencing failures in governance that give them a bleaker outlook and much worse prospects than their parents and grandparents had.
Underfunded education systems have no doubt played a significant part in the sharp decline in reading and maths skills laid bare by the most recent PISA results. A common explanation for this decline is worsening mental health and associated school absences, with social media often cited as a contributing factor.
Another driver of declining educational attainment is the rapidly increasing use of AI. These are governance failures of another kind. Efforts to regulate both social media and AI have been slow and hampered by strong lobbying from tech giants.
The AI revolution also affects young people as they seek to establish themselves in the labour market. While AI’s impact on employment is still in its infancy, it is already clear that entry-level work in particular is increasingly being done by machines.
Housing is another essential aspect of life in which young people are disadvantaged. Today’s young people spend a much higher proportion of their income on rent than any previous generation did. This is, again, a failure of governance.
On top of all this comes the climate crisis, which perhaps represents the largest governance failure of them all. The latest IPCC report illustrates starkly how much more precarious life will be for those born in 2020 than for their parents and grandparents.
More equal societies would be much better placed to withstand the instability that climate change brings as they would offer collective forms of adaptation. Instead, the increasingly unequal societies we now see will put the burden of adaptation on individuals and households.
In other words, multiple governance failures and the erosion of state capacity have created an explosive situation for young people. This is the anger being expressed on the streets of Paris, New Delhi, Rome and Madrid.
Predictably, the main government response has been repression. This follows a global trend of criminalising and repressing protest. Whether through anti-protest laws, arrests or police violence, repression is on the rise. Repression sometimes succeeds in killing off protest movements. At other times, it instead inflames them. That has certainly been the case in both France and India so far.
What is really needed are genuine efforts to address the inequalities and governance failures that motivate young people to take to the streets. Without them, political crises are bound to ensue.
A recent death in my family underscored for me the devastating impact of personal grief, illuminating the deep loss and constant state of mortality that Palestinian families endure every day.
To be Palestinian is to carry an inherited archive of loss. After nearly a century of forced displacement, military occupation and relentless aggression at the hands of a brutal colonizer, death in Palestine has not been a quiet end at the close of life. It is an ever-present shadow woven into the tapestry of daily existence.
Across generations, grief has been more than individual sorrow, an occasional isolated tragedy; it is an ongoing shared reality written into the collective memory of an entire people. For Palestinians, Israeli colonization has stolen more than land; it has robbed them of their sovereignty over mourning, honoring and burying their loved ones in peace.
For most of the world, dying young is an unbearable disruption of the natural life cycle; for Palestinians, living under systemic hardship, surviving into old age is a rare exception rather than the norm.
From the traumatic dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948, to the ongoing genocide and ecocide of Gaza, and the military occupation of the West Bank, every Palestinian family has experienced violent loss.
Forcibly displaced from ancestral villages in their youth, grandparents passed down keys to homes that were either stolen or destroyed, along with memories of family members lost to Israeli aggression. Their children in the West Bank continue to endure innumerable hardships and indignities under Israeli apartheid occupation. And in Gaza, their descendants, surrounded by death and destruction and the ever-present threat of another Israeli attack, are struggling to survive.
Long before entering a classroom, the children of Palestine absorb the vocabulary of military attacks, martyrdom and survival. The ceaseless threat of loss forces families to adapt to living with constant vigilance that is passed down from parent to child.
To truly grasp the nature of Palestinian grief, is to see that profound anguish and resentment exists alongside an extraordinary reverence for life and human dignity.
A century of national suffering has made agony a constant in daily life. In Palestine, this collective sorrow has taken on uniquely powerful, visible traditions of survival and shared resistance.
When burials are possible, entire communities come together to bare witness, offer support and share the weight of collective trauma. Oral histories, street art, literature and music carefully document the names, faces, and stories of the dead. Where physical spaces and lives are continually erased, memory becomes the ultimate sanctuary for preservation.
Writing, thinking, or speaking about death in Palestine means facing a reality where grief is both an individual sorrow and a shared national identity. In the face of continuous, devastating loss, the simple act of remembering those who have died becomes a powerful affirmation of their humanity.
The Palestinian ethos of Sumud (steadfastness) embodies this dynamic: a collective determination to remain on the land and to defy every Israeli effort to erase their existence—to live is to resist.
Grief in Palestine is non-linear. It has had no end. It does not move from denial to anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It does not follow an inevitable straight path, because the iniquitous conditions that produce it remain unaddressed.
From the graves of forced exile to the countless deaths in Palestine today, the international community has consistently failed to take decisive action. Watching Palestine die is more than witnessing agenocide; it is an indictment of the global conscience. The perpetuation of statelessness and oppressive occupation ensures that each new generation will be born into a world where untimely death remains a shadow at the door.
The abiding refusal of the Palestinian people to be subjugated or forgotten is a testament to their inspiring steadfastness. It serves as a powerful example that the pursuit of true freedom is a sacred generational responsibility, worth defending at all costs.
Palestinian endurance is far from passive survival; it is an active, daily reclamation that refuses to let their history be rewritten or justice silenced. Across generations, through the relentless wear of exile, displacement and loss, the Palestinian spirit remains anchored to the land and in an unyielding insistence on dignity and self-determination. In every quiet act of preservation and every resounding cry for liberation, they demonstrate that while Israeli brute force and unbridled cruelties inflict profound suffering, it can never erase a people whose identity, hope and humanity burn so undauntedly bright.
