In Gaza, everyone is struggling to survive. For disabled people in Gaza, that struggle is multiplied. Rabab Nawfal and Suha Maqat, both wheelchair users, were champion athletes on Palestine’s national teams before Israel’s US-backed genocidal war. Two days before it began, they were playing qualifiers to represent Palestine abroad.
In this TRNN documentary report, they describe living through famine, fleeing bombardment in wheelchairs that no longer work, and asking for help that never comes. With 81% of Gaza’s roads damaged or destroyed and the UN documenting thousands of amputations, Israel is not only making life impossible for disabled Palestinians; it is creating a new generation of them.
Editor’s Note: This documentary report was filmed in Gaza City three weeks before the ceasefire in Gaza was shakily implemented beginning on October 10, 2025. Since the “ceasefire” began, Israeli forces have killed over 1,300 Palestinians, including 301 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Credits:
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
I’m in a wheelchair—how am I going to escape?
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
There were days when we ate animal food, bird food.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
I lost my eye. What more do you want?
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
My dreams have been shattered.
Narrator:
In Gaza, everyone is struggling to survive. But for people with disabilities, that struggle is multiplied. Rabab Nawfal and Suha Maqat – both wheelchair users – were champion athletes before this war.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
I’m one of those people who didn’t go to the south. I lived through famine twice. I lived it twice. No one asked after me. There were days when we didn’t eat anything. There were days when we ate animal food, bird food. We ate everything—animals, birds. Even those things were expensive, and then they were cut off. The day they were cut off, we stopped eating anything.
Ramadan came during the famine. We didn’t eat anything. A long day passed, and we didn’t eat anything. We used to crave drinking water. We used to crave a piece of bread. We were hoping that the famine would never come back. But unfortunately, it did—and it’s still coming back.
We’ve suffered a lot in life. I was abandoned. No one took responsibility for me. My mother and father used to take care of me, but they left. These days, my brother takes care of me—and he is injured. My life is ruined. No one is with me. No one cares. And the one person standing by me is injured. He can barely carry his own family.
When we were displaced, he couldn’t help us. He wasn’t able. For people with disabilities like me, it’s been difficult to live through this war. Those who are not disabled can maybe manage their lives. They can move, walk long distances—but I can’t.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
The closest people to me abandoned me—they didn’t stand by me. They left me to fend for myself. I feel like I live in a forest with wolves and monsters. I can’t. I try to make things work,
but I can’t. I’m mentally exhausted. The circumstances of this war are incredibly difficult. Even the word displacement is difficult for the injured and disabled.
When we left, my brother was injured and my sister was in a bad state. Even though he was injured, he was pushing my sister, as I pushed myself along. I got stuck in the sand, and they wanted to bomb the building next to us. It was the most difficult moment. I said to myself, now I’m going to be killed. It was the hardest moment of my life.
I thought—how will I escape? How will I, in my wheelchair, escape? How am I going to get out? My brother was injured and couldn’t carry me. I thought, I’m done; there’s no life for me anymore. That’s it. I’m going to be killed.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
The hardest thing I’ve experienced in this war has been displacement. I woke up one day and saw the Israelis in front of us. I was all by myself. I rushed out, but I couldn’t continue. There was a lot of shelling, shooting, bombs. It was a miracle I got out alive. It happened again and again—the same scenario repeated a thousand times.
Narrator:
Both Suha and Rabab rely entirely on their wheelchairs to move. Without them, the most basic tasks become impossible. Israel’s blockade has meant that access to this crucial item has been cut off.
Even with functioning wheelchairs, with 81% of roads in Gaza now damaged or destroyed, access and movement is extremely limited.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
There are no wheelchairs in Gaza. And without a wheelchair, I can’t move. The wheelchair takes me to my medicine, my food, my drink—I need it for everything. Right now, my chair is broken. I’ve lost all means of life.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
As you can see, my chair is broken. I push myself in it, I fall off all the time, I cut and bruise my legs. If someone kind is around, then I can move. Otherwise, I can’t.
We requested wheelchairs, but it was no use. We asked and asked, and they said no. Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
My life before the war was very beautiful. I was a champion of Palestine’s disabled national team for strength games—basketball, tennis. I used to do all kinds of sports that suited my disability. I was a success story. I was a hero. These days, I feel worthless. Nothing in life. I can’t even get from here to there. I can’t move from here to there in a wheelchair. My life is
gone. There is no life.
These days, we only dream of having the most basic things: flour, water. The simplest things—we can’t get. Drinking water—we can’t get it.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
Suha before is different from Suha today. I used to be a champion of Palestine. Today, I’m nothing. Today, just a daughter who needs her mother—who needs her mother to help her.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
Two days before the war, we were playing qualifiers to represent Palestine internationally. But we didn’t manage it. On the day of the championship, the war erupted. So our dreams are gone. All our dreams are gone. My dreams have been shattered.
I wanted to raise my son. I wanted to raise him well and teach him. Before the war, I wanted to enroll him in karate. I wanted him to become something. I couldn’t. I wanted him to be into sports like me—to become a doctor. I wanted him to grow up and help me in the future. But my dreams were shattered. I couldn’t do any of it. I can’t do anything.
Narrator:
According to the UN 4,800 amputations of limbs had been documented since the beginning of the war. Ten children were losing one or both legs every day. Gaza had become home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history. Not only is Israel making the lives of existing disabled people impossible, it is also creating an entirely new generation of people with disabilities.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
Gaza has become a city of ghosts. There is no life in Gaza. As you can see—look at how people are living. On sand! How can people live on sand? How can they occupy Gaza? How?
We want peace of mind. We don’t want to lose any more loved ones. We’ve lost enough. Is it not enough that I lost my eye? What’s left? What more do you want? I lost my eye—what more do you want? What else should I lose? Nothing’s left. There’s nothing left in this world that I can lose. My family has left. I wish I could see my mother. See my father.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
Life has become unbearable. No matter how much I talk, I can’t describe what I am feeling or the life we are living. I used to be someone. Now I am nothing.
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Health is always a prominent topic at Belgium’s ManiFiesta, a two-day festival organized by the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) in the beginning of September. Discussions range from the organization of health services or workshops led by progressive health organizations like Medics for the People (MPLP-GVHV) and Viva Salud. This September, the program covered local priorities such as health coverage and hospital reform – along with Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza’s healthcare system and the threat of militarization across Europe.
Addressing the question of why health workers should be concerned by Europe’s armament drive, Juliette Mattijsen of the People’s Health Movement (PHM), Nadja Rakowitz of the Association of Democratic Doctors (vdää*) in Germany, and Tim Joye of Medics for the People emphasized the different ways hospitals, health centers, and medical studies are being reshaped.
Not only are governments imposing cuts on health budgets to enable increased defense spending, as Mattijsen illustrated – some are structurally changing what the health system is supposed to be about.
As the Merz administration in Germany rushes to build Europe’s mightiest army, Rakowitz explained, it is tabling plans for underground hospitals and an overhaul of triage systems. The goal of these reforms is supposedly to ensure wounded soldiers – from a battlefield that still only exists in the imagination of regional politicians – are cared for swiftly and returned to combat as soon as possible. In Belgium, Joye added, plans are being circulated to introduce war medicine into medical school curricula, and professional congresses have made this their topic of choice.
If European governments have their way, the speakers warned, health systems in the region will increasingly lose their focus on patients and add further strain on service provision. To prevent this, the panel suggested, health workers themselves – nurses, doctors, dentists, and others – must mobilize and actively oppose this dangerous trend.
At another panel hosted by Viva Salud, the focus shifted to Palestine. Gaza’s health services have been militarized by the Israeli occupation, which has turned health infrastructure and workers into direct targets.
Sama Jaber of the Awda Association and Hanne Bosselaers, a Medics for the People general practitioner who participated in the 2025 solidarity flotillas to Gaza, focused their interventions on the relevance of organizing and providing healthcare under occupation.
In Palestine, Jaber pointed out, the formation of medical practitioners is a collective feat. By persevering in their work during a genocide, health workers in Gaza are now giving back to the communities who accompanied them along the way. “Being a health worker in Palestine today means sharing genocide conditions, but also upholding the right to health,” she said.
For Bosselaers, the steadfastness of Palestinian comrades has been an inspiration since her first visits to Gaza approximately 15 years ago and the twinning process she supported with a health center in Beit Hanoun. Today, she emphasized, Israeli attacks have leveled Beit Hanoun to the ground – yet health workers have not given up their work.
Doctors and other health workers in Europe need to recognize this unbreakable spirit, Bosselaers said, and support their peers by joining movements at home. This should mean standing by Palestinians’ demands for liberation, she added, but also joining networks struggling against other forms of attack on healthcare: opposing commercialization, austerity, and militarization.
Health workers around the world should direct their efforts into directly supporting the health system in Palestine, the panelists pointed out. This does not mean replacing hospitals with large international NGO operations or flying in and taking over, Bosselaers insisted, as is often seen in humanitarian medicine. Instead, she and Jaber suggested, the priority should be mobilizing against the occupation and campaigning for an end to Israel’s impunity.
In this, they echoed Palestinian physician and political leader Mustafa Barghouti, who addressed the panel through a video message. Barghouti invited health workers in Europe to stand firm in their support of Gaza, particularly by supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns. By doing so, he said, they will also recognize the efforts of their peers in Palestine, who are doing more than healthcare today, “helping people persevere in their steadfastness.”
As the genocide continues, Barghouti insisted, health workers in occupied Palestine know their efforts are directed at supporting people in remaining on their land – starting from the most common health procedures. “If you help a woman safely deliver a baby,” he said, “you’re helping her stay in Palestine.”
People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.
The lethal repercussions of Israel’s three-year genocidal aggression on Gaza continue to unfold. Aside from Israel’s ongoing military assaults after the nominal ceasefire deal, the humanitarian crisis inflicted by the genocide – affecting food, sanitation, medication, and shelter – has become another driver of persistent fatalities.
At least 21 Palestinians, including 12 children, died in the collapse of the Al-Saadah building in Gaza City on Wednesday, September 16, while 45 people were rescued from under the rubble.
According to media reports, the building, already damaged by Israeli airstrikes, was housing 100 displaced people, amid a deepening shelter crisis caused by Israel’s ongoing restrictions on reconstruction materials and humanitarian aid.
Hamas issued a statement, holding Israel “responsible for this disaster,” and affirming that “the building collapse represents a new chapter in the catastrophic humanitarian repercussions of the war.”
The Palestinian movement pointed out that the massive home and neighborhood destruction has forced thousands of displaced people to take refuge in ruined structures.
It further cautioned that the severe shortage in heavy machinery for clearing debris and conducting rescue operations endangers more lives.
Hamas also urged mediators, the US administration, and relevant international bodies to take immediate action to lift restrictions blocking the entry of necessary rescue equipment and vehicles, and to secure safe shelter for the displaced population.
Meanwhile, the Gaza-based Ministry of Public Works and Housing warned that roughly 3,000 buildings across the war-ravaged enclave are currently deemed dangerous or at risk of collapse, which in turn poses a significant threat to thousands of inhabitants.
L'essentiel de l'actualité, passé au crible par les cinq plumes du Courrier. Dans votre boîte, chaque jour ouvré.
Gratuit. Vous restez libre de partir quand vous voulez.
JE M'INSCRIS lecourrierdesstrateges.frLe régime applicable est la section 36 de l'Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. § 2776). Toute vente d'armement à Israël supérieure à cent millions de dollars doit être notifiée au Congrès quinze jours avant sa conclusion. Le texte autorise le président à écarter ce délai en informant le Congrès qu'« une urgence existe ». La procédure a déjà été employée sous l'administration actuelle : le secrétaire d'État a signé en 2025 une déclaration de ce type pour accélérer la livraison d'environ quatre milliards de dollars de munitions, puis pour une vente de plus de vingt mille bombes évaluée à quelque six cent cinquante millions.
Les comptes rendus disponibles divergent sur le point de savoir si la vente du 15 septembre a été notifiée selon la procédure ordinaire ou conclue au titre de l'urgence. Le sénateur Chris Van Hollen a annoncé son intention de rassembler une opposition à l'opération.
Deux grands formats par jour. Les cinq plumes du Courrier. La série Sécession, le dimanche.
Le monde commente. Vous, vous comprenez.
S'ABONNER lecourrierdesstrateges.frLa complicité dans le génocide est prévue à l'article III, alinéa e, de la convention du 9 décembre 1948.
La Cour internationale de justice en a fixé le standard dans son arrêt Bosnie-Herzégovine c. Serbie-et-Monténégro du 26 février 2007. Une assistance ne peut être qualifiée de complicité que si l'auteur de cette assistance a agi en connaissance de l'intention spécifique — le dolus specialis, l'intention de détruire un groupe comme tel — de l'auteur principal. La fourniture de moyens, même massive, ne suffit donc pas : il faut établir un état de connaissance portant sur l'intention d'autrui. Aucune juridiction internationale n'a à ce jour retenu cette qualification contre un État fournisseur d'armement.
L'article premier de la même convention impose aux États de prévenir le génocide. La Cour a précisé, dans le même arrêt de 2007, qu'il s'agit d'une obligation de comportement et non de résultat. Elle naît dès l'instant où un État apprend, ou aurait normalement dû apprendre, l'existence d'un risque sérieux de commission d'un génocide. Elle lui impose alors de mettre en œuvre les moyens raisonnablement à sa disposition susceptibles d'y contribuer.
C'est sur ce fondement, et non sur celui de la complicité, que le Nicaragua a saisi la Cour contre l'Allemagne en 2024, au sujet de ses transferts d'armement vers Israël. La Cour a refusé d'indiquer des mesures conservatoires le 30 avril 2024 ; elle n'a pas rayé l'affaire de son rôle. L'Allemagne a soulevé des exceptions préliminaires, et les audiences publiques se sont tenues du 7 au 10 septembre 2026. L'arrêt sur la compétence est en délibéré.
La newsletter vous donne le matin. Le fil vous donne l'instant.
Gratuit, et en continu.
REJOINDRE LE FIL t.me/resterlibreDans l'instance Afrique du Sud c. Israël, la Cour a rendu le 26 janvier 2024 une ordonnance retenant le caractère plausible des droits invoqués, puis d'autres ordonnances de mesures conservatoires. Israël a déposé son contre-mémoire le 12 mars 2026. Par ordonnance du 21 mai 2026, la Cour a fixé au 22 novembre 2027 la date limite de l'étape procédurale suivante. Aucune décision au fond n'interviendra avant plusieurs années.
Les États-Unis ont déposé dans cette instance, le 12 mars 2026, une déclaration d'intervention aux côtés d'Israël.
La commission d'enquête internationale indépendante du Conseil des droits de l'homme des Nations unies a conclu, dans son rapport du 16 septembre 2025, qu'un génocide était commis dans la bande de Gaza, retenant quatre des cinq actes énumérés par la convention. Elle a recommandé aux États membres de cesser les transferts d'armes susceptibles de servir à la commission d'actes génocidaires. Une commission d'enquête n'est pas une juridiction et ses conclusions n'ont pas d'autorité de chose jugée. Elles sont en revanche publiques et datées, ce qui les rend opposables sur le terrain de la connaissance du risque.
La qualification de complicité suppose une preuve que nul n'a encore rapportée devant une juridiction internationale. Celle de manquement à l'obligation de prévenir repose sur un critère de connaissance dont le point de départ est documenté. Les deux fondements coexistent dans les écritures déposées à La Haye. Leur examen au fond n'est pas attendu avant la fin de la décennie.
Un média libre vit de ses lecteurs. Un pourboire ponctuel, sans compte ni engagement, quand le cœur vous en dit.
Vous donnez ce que vous voulez. Vous restez libre.
LAISSER UN POURBOIRE merci !
At the end of August, at the Silverbird Cinema in the Accra Mall in Ghana, two Israeli feature films were screened alongside Ghanaian student productions.
For the second year running, the seats for this Israeli film festival were empty. Ordinary Ghanaians declined the Israeli Embassy’s films, and a peaceful demonstration outside held placards for Palestine and against the continued killing of civilians in Gaza.
There is another screen Ghanaians must refuse to look away from, protestors asserted. The screens on which we have watched Gaza reduced to rubble, families displaced again and again, hospitals and schools destroyed, and children carried from the wreckage of a war that, despite the ceasefire announced in October 2025, has not stopped killing them.
However, something else walked through the doors of the film festival: schoolchildren. In uniform. On a Sunday.
Students from Achimota School and Accra Girls Senior High School, two of Ghana’s most prominent public secondary schools, were brought into an embassy-sponsored event at the center of a serious political controversy. Those of us who were there saw them. We have photographs and videos. The question Ghana must now answer is not about cinema. It is about who sent our children, and why.
Last year, the Embassy staged a week-long Israeli Film Festival at the same venue and called it an exercise in “dialogue and mutual understanding.” Nearly 400 Ghanaian organizations, student movements, trade unions, faith communities, civil-society groups, signed one statement calling for a boycott. Protesters gathered outside. Sponsors pulled out. The Embassy still declared the event a success.
The veteran editor Kwesi Pratt Jnr., who joined the picket, recalled what that “success” looked like a year ago for the “Alhaji and Alhaji” program:
“This is the first time in my life that I’ve seen 400 organizations come together to sign one statement calling for a boycott of the film festival. I joined the picket at the Silverbird Cinema, and a few, very, very few, prominent Ghanaians, including Afenyo-Markin, attended in spite of the protest. But it was a fiasco. The room was empty. Ghanaians rejected the film festival completely.”
So the Embassy returned smaller: two Israeli films on a single Sunday, free entry, free popcorn, raffle prizes, and an invitation aimed squarely at young people. When adults again refused to fill the room, uniformed students appeared. If Ghanaian adults will not lend legitimacy to this event, should Ghanaian children be made to supply it?
The timing makes it harder to dismiss as a routine outing.
President John Dramani Mahama has publicly described what is happening in Gaza as genocide. The Israeli Ambassador to Ghana has publicly rejected that position and defended his government’s conduct. He is entitled to make his case, but he is a guest of a sovereign state, not the author of its policy.
Against that backdrop, the presence of uniformed students inside an embassy program, days after this very public disagreement, demands an accounting. Pratt put the question bluntly:
“At the time that the ambassador was attacking our president, some authorities in our secondary schools decided to side with [the embassy]. What judgment was exercised by the school authorities when they agreed to bus their students to this film festival? What were they expecting? What checks did they do on the quality of the films?”
Those are the right questions, and they are not rhetorical. They have not yet been answered and there has been no investigation.
None of this is an accusation against the children. They may have had little understanding of the political purpose around the event. The responsibility belongs to the adults who placed them there.
Ghana rejected the Israeli film festival not because cinema or cultural exchange is evil. Not because Israeli artists have no right to make films. The rejection is not an attack on Jewish people. Antisemitism is hatred and must also be rejected.
The problem is that this festival is not an example of artists meeting freely across borders. It is an Israeli Embassy-backed initiative staged while the Palestinian people continue to pay with their lives. Amid the killing of civilians and the destruction of Palestinian life, the use of state diplomacy to manufacture an appearance of normality while those questions remain unresolved is nothing less than political soft power.
Ghanaian children are not diplomatic props, and Ghanaian schools must never become extensions of a foreign embassy. Teach them, yes. Teach them the Holocaust, the Nakba, occupation and international law, and give them the evidence to think critically. That is education. Busing uniformed children into a controversial embassy function, and letting their presence become evidence of Ghanaian acceptance, is the opposite.
That is why the demand is simple, and now directed at the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service: did you know? If yes, explain. If not, investigate. And if any official bypassed procedure or abused authority to place schoolchildren inside a foreign government’s public-relations exercise, hold them accountable.
There is a longer tradition at stake. Ghana is the country from which Kwame Nkrumah declared that our independence was meaningless unless linked with the total liberation of Africa. Africa understands what cultural normalization is for: domination has rarely arrived only with rifles. It seeks respectability, the reception, the festival, the partnership, until oppression becomes a disagreement to be discussed politely while business continues.
Palestine poses that old question to the African conscience once more. And a small part of the answer is being written by who walks into a cinema in Accra Mall, and who is made to walk in.
For the second year, the empty seats have spoken. Now Ghana’s own institutions must speak. Our children deserve education, not enlistment. And a sovereign state deserves to decide, in the light of its own conscience, what its schools lend themselves to.
Stay away. Let the empty seats speak, for the Palestinian child who will never again enter a classroom, and for the proposition that human life is worth more than diplomatic image-building.
At the end of August, the Greek government signed the “Achilles Shield” agreement – a €3 billion “defense” deal with Israel. Under the terms, Israeli companies including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will develop and build anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic systems for Greece.
“This is the largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history of the State of Israel,” the occupation’s Ministry of Defense stated. “Greece’s choice of Israeli technology as the backbone of its most ambitious air defense buildup program in the past decade reflects the depth of trust built between the two countries.”
“Under the deal, Israel will build Greece a comprehensive, multi-layered air defense array, drawing entirely on Israeli-made systems and on the extensive operational experience Israel’s defense establishment has gained during the war.”
The “war” in the statement being the genocide Israeli forces have been conducting in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
According to journalist Vangelis Ilias, the new deal should be contextualized within broader trends of Greek capital and subsequent governments deepening ties with the occupation power. While the current Mitsotakis administration did not initiate this trend, he says, it deepened it both before and since the genocide in Gaza began. “Over the past 6-7 years, we have witnessed an influx of Israeli investment funds into Greece, both in the real estate sector and through the acquisition of former public – but not exclusively public – companies in various sectors of the economy, one of which is defense.”
Israeli real estate investments in Greece have already had a notable impact on people’s everyday lives, driving up rents and making housing more unaccessible. Endeavors in the defense sector might have been more lowkey, Ilias adds, but they are widespread and expanding under the sight of NATO and European institutions. “In the south of the country, in Kalamata, there is a large Greek Air Force base that also falls under the NATO umbrella as an International Pilot Training Center,” he says, emphasizing the presence of Elbit Systems in the area.
Israeli companies have also purchased local military enterprises, including Intracom Defense, operating in electronic warfare and drone production. “Through this acquisition, the Israeli state-owned company IAI gained access to the European Defense Fund (EDF), an EU mechanism intended exclusively for financing European defense procurement programs – something that was made possible only thanks to the active support of the Greek government,” Ilias adds.
“[Achilles Shield] has been promoted by the domestic media and the elite as an agreement that shields Greece,” he adds. “[Under the claim] that the money being spent, while not going to healthcare and education, or toward supporting the incomes of citizens who are still trying to recover from the years of economic crisis, protects us from those who seek to harm the country, with Turkey always implied in this context,” he explains.
“In this era of crises, military buildup, and preparations for a full-scale war, they are trying to present this not only as something reasonable but also as something necessary, where strategic agreements between states take precedence over the needs of the people and international law, overlooking genocides or the ethnic cleansing of an entire people.”
While Greek officials described the deal as a breakthrough for Greek sovereignty, critics have warned of dangers on several fronts. To begin with, in the announced distribution of funds, local industry expects only €750 million of the total €3 billion. The rest goes to Israeli arms companies making the genocide in Gaza technically feasible.
And despite the amount of money being spent, parts of the agreement have been presented inconsistently to the public. “We’re talking about a complex system of sophisticated weapons utilizing artificial intelligence, with a central control unit that operates based on computer code, Ilias emphasizes. “There has been extensive debate over whether this code will belong to Israel or be controlled by Greece. So far, the government’s responses to a barrage of questions from the opposition have been neither reassuring nor consistent. This remains to be clarified.”
The expenditure has been heavily criticized by left movements, including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in the context of EU armament taking place at the expense of labor rights and social services. “Costing more than €3 billion, this agreement forms part of the broader ‘2030 Agenda’ arms program serving NATO’s needs, for which our people are paying dearly – tens of billions of euros – at the expense of their rights and needs,” the KKE pointed out.
Like most other EU governments, the Mitsotakis administration has announced harmful labor and social reforms just as it committed billions for Israeli arms producers. This new-old austerity agenda has met widespread resistance. Recently, tens of thousands demonstrated in Thessaloniki demanding dignified wages and pensions, efficient public healthcare, and investments in education. “Not one euro for imperialist wars,” they insisted.
The “Achilles Shield” deal also adds to the case made by academics and activists worldwide that Israel is using the Gaza genocide to market its weapons. This is apparent not only from the purchase list, but from official statements as well. The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced similar deals are part of a broader strategy “to expand defense exports as a central tool for strengthening the IDF’s force buildup, influencing Israel’s foreign policy standing worldwide, and bolstering the Israeli defense industry and economy.”
Critics have argued that Greece’s arms deal risks making the country captive to Israel’s defense industry and alienating it from other countries in the region. “In practice, strategic relations with the murderous state of Israel, together with joint military preparations, are adding fuel to the fire of imperialist rivalries in the region, as well as the conflicts between the bourgeois classes of Turkey and Israel, and of Greece and Turkey, in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, with the peoples being the victims,” the KKE emphasized.
“Greece’s ruling class has made a strategic choice to align itself closely with the Western alliance,” Ilias says, referencing events since the Greek Civil War. “It is particularly worth noting that, as a result, the Greek people have borne the brunt of the bloodshed.”
And while the post-Civil War regime attempted to crush “the popular and anti-imperialist movement that existed in the country,” he concludes, they did not succeed.
“This is partially why we still see today such a stark contrast between the ruling class and the organized, collective reactions of significant segments of the Greek people throughout the country against the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. These reactions are multifaceted, with segments of the working class – beyond just the youth – actively participating.
As Israeli plans emerge to expel all two million Palestinians from Gaza and Itamar Ben-Gvir shares what can only be described as genocidal AI fantasy videos on X, Mouin Rabbani, non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, says Israeli election season means everyone from Ben-Gvir to Israel Katz to Bezalel Smotrich to Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to one-up the other, with the most extreme proposals for the mass forcible transfer of Palestinians from their homeland, all to score points with voters. Rabbani says the global impunity Tel Aviv has enjoyed for decades has taught Israel there’s no cost and no accountability for war crimes against humanity, all with unflinching US support.
Without ruling out Trump greenlighting Israel to “march into Gaza City to load families onto trucks bound for the Egyptian Sinai,” Rabbani says the more likely scenario is Israel continuing to make Gaza unfit for human habitation, leaving Palestinians a “choice” between leaving or eventual death. In Zionist parlance, that’s called voluntary transfer.
Rabbani explains how the “Board of Trump” is camouflage enabling Israel to continue annihilating Gaza, comparing this to the Oslo Accords of 1993, which set the same double-standard pattern: Palestinians held to the letter of the agreement while Israel keeps expanding settlements unchecked — a pattern Rabbani says is playing out in Lebanon today, too.
But Western governments are finding it increasingly impossible to ignore changing public sentiment on Palestine — from last summer’s wave of Palestine recognitions to the UK’s new settlement ban. The task now, Rabbani says, is making sure these first steps become binding policy to end the genocide, not just symbolic gestures.
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This article was originally published by Truthout on Sept. 03, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted this week that Israel’s goal for Gaza is the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in “every way possible,” despite denying allegations of ethnic cleansing for years.
“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Katz said at a conference hosted by Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday, per a translation by France 24. Israel “is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”
This plan would amount to ethnic cleansing, something that Palestinians and human rights advocates have long said Israel is carrying out in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In a report earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Office warned that Israel was carrying out policies consistent with ethnic cleansing between 2024 and 2025, including famine, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and overall imposing conditions “incompatible with [Palestinians’] continued existence in Gaza as a group.”
Katz said that Israel is “seeking Trump’s support” for the idea because no country will take in Palestinians without the approval of the U.S.
The White House has not commented on the plan. When Donald Trump took office last year, he proposed a plan for forced displacement of the entire population of Gaza, dubiously framing it as “voluntary.”
The administration’s stance has since evolved, however. In July, Trump’s “Board of Peace” announced a plan that would still implement colonial control over Gaza, but that would transition power over the Strip to a Palestinian board and demand Israel withdraw its troops from the Strip.
In a rare break with the U.S. last month, Netanyahu announced that he would not be supporting that plan. Keeping with his usual practice of introducing unworkable provisions into negotiations, he said that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas was totally disarmed.
Disarmament — which critics say would still give Israel massive power over Gaza — was already included in the Board of Peace’s 15-point plan. But Netanyahu seems determined to ensure Israel can still carry out its genocide and occupation in Gaza, pledging again on Wednesday that Israel is “not retreating.”
“We control 60 percent of the Strip, and we are not stopping, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us, day in and day out,” he reportedly said.
Trump also previously vowed to end aid to Israel if it annexed the West Bank, however, despite Israel’s ongoing annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory.
The Israeli officials’ remarks were made just weeks before critical Israeli elections in October, in which Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are hoping to retain far right control of the state.
Politicians in Netanyahu’s caucus have been openly calling for cruelty toward Palestinians as a campaign strategy. This week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted then deleted an AI-generated video that showed a line of Palestinians on a conveyor belt being loaded into a detention facility operated by Ben-Gvir. The Palestinians are then shown leaving the facility emaciated, with the politician seemingly showing off Israel’s systematized policy of starvation of Palestinians.
Israeli officials have denied allegations of ethnic cleansing for years.
“The charge of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Israel is false and dangerous. It is not a legal definition but a political label, used to inflame tensions, spread hate, and fuel antisemitism,” said Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, last year. “Israel does not deport Palestinians because of their identity. Israel has, rather, temporarily removed non-combatant populations from war-zones in order to guarantee their safety.”
The statement was made in response to a September 2025 report released by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) saying that Israel was deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure and starving Palestinians with the goal of ethnic cleansing.
“After our trip to the Gaza-Egypt border last year, [Merkley] & I released a report entitled, ‘The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.’ Now the Israeli Min[ister] of Defense confirmed that’s the goal,” said Van Hollen on Wednesday. “We must end our complicity.”
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