A smog-choked province in eastern Pakistan has issued a rare plea for cross-border collaboration with India, as major cities in both countries endure severe air pollution that risks the health of millions.

Officials in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province of 127 million people, have drafted a letter to the Indian government to open a dialogue on the issue, Punjabi Secretary for Environment and Climate Change Raja Jahangir Anwar said on Monday.

“We are suffering in Lahore in a way due to the eastern wind corridor coming from India,” he said. “We are not blaming anyone, it’s a natural phenomenon.”

Pollution in northern India and eastern Pakistan ramps up each winter, when an ominous yellow haze blankets the skies due to a combination of farmers burning agricultural waste, coal-fired power plants, traffic and windless days.

India and Pakistan have for decades navigated fraught and at times hostile relations, but as the issue of toxic air worsens, the neighbors are being forced to confront their shared responsibility – and fate – when it comes to the climate.

Lahore, home to more than 14 million people, saw its air quality index surpass a record 1,900 in one part of the city on Saturday, according to IQAir, which tracks global air quality. That’s more than six times the level considered hazardous to health.

The extreme pollution prompted Lahore officials to close primary schools for one week and place restrictions on barbecue restaurants, motorcycle rickshaws, and construction activities.

In India, air quality in Delhi – which frequently trades places with Lahore as the most polluted city in the world – hit hazardous air quality levels above 500 Saturday and Sunday, partly due to people disregarding a local fireworks ban as they celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. However, warmer, breezier weather helped to mitigate the smog.

Breathing polluted air leads to increased risk of a host of diseases, including lung cancer, stroke, and heart disease, according to the World Health Organization. Experts say India’s air pollution is so bad that smog could take years off the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

“This is not just a political issue, this is a humanitarian issue,” Punjab’s Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz said last week. “The winds don’t know there’s a border in the middle.”

Air quality worsens in the winter because colder and drier air traps pollution, rather than whisking it away, as warm air does.

The beginning of winter also coincides with stubble burning season, a time when farmers intentionally set fire to crop debris to clear their fields, sending smoke billowing in the skies.

Both India and Pakistan have tried to clamp down on the practice, but it is still widespread.

Last month, India’s Supreme Court condemned the governments of India’s Punjab and Haryana states for failing to crack down on illegal stubble burning. Local officials claim they have reduced the practice significantly in recent years.

Pakistan’s Punjab is providing subsidized super-seeders to farmers to offer alternative methods for disposing of crop residue.

Maumere, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said Monday that at least six people have died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores.

The eruption at Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki just after midnight on Monday spewed thick brownish ash as high as 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air and hot ashes hit a nearby village, burning down several houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, said Firman Yosef, an official at the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post.

The Disaster Management Agency lowered the known death toll from an earlier report of nine, saying it had received updated information from local authorities. It said that information was still being collected about the extent of casualties and damage, as local media reports said more people were buried in collapsed houses.

Authorities also raised the danger level and widened the danger zone for Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki on Monday, following a series of eruptions that began last week.

The country’s volcano monitoring agency increased the volcano’s alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) radius after midnight on Monday as eruptions became more frequent.

The agency said at least 10,000 people have been affected by the eruption in Wulanggitang District, in the six nearby villages of Pululera, Nawokote, Hokeng Jaya, Klatanlo, Boru and Boru Kedang.

In Ile Bura District, 4 villages were affected, namely Dulipali Village, Nobo, Nurabelen and Riang Rita, while in Titehena District it affected four villages, namely Konga Village, Kobasoma, Bokang Wolomatang and Watowara.

He said volcanic material was thrown up to 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from its crater, blanketeing nearby villages and towns with tons of volcanic debris and forcing residents to flee.

A nun in Hokeng village died and another was missing, said Agusta Palma, the head of the Saint Gabriel Foundation that oversees convents on the majority-Catholic island.

“Our nuns ran out in panic under a rain of volcanic ash in the darkness,” Palma said.

Photos and videos circulated on social media showed tons of volcanic debris covering houses up to their rooftops in villages like Hokeng, where hot volcanic material set fire to houses.

It’s Indonesia’s second volcanic eruption in as many weeks. West Sumatra province’s Mount Marapi, one of the country’s most active volcanos, erupted on Oct. 27, spewing thick columns of ash at least three times and blanketing nearby villages with debris, but no casualties were reported.

The number of new marriages recorded in China is on course to fall to the lowest level in decades this year, official data shows, as the country’s demographic crisis deepens despite a sweeping government campaign to boost matrimony and encourage births.

Plummeting marriages – and births – pose a major challenge to Beijing, which is increasingly worried about the impact of a shrinking workforce and aging population on the country’s slowing economy.

Some 4.74 million Chinese couples registered their marriages in the first three quarters of 2024, a decrease of 16.6% from the 5.69 million recorded in the same period last year, according to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs on Friday.

The decline is consistent with a falling trend from a 2013 peak of more than 13 million new marriages, and in line with predictions by Chinese demographic experts that the number of marriages in 2024 will drop to the lowest level since the 7.2 million recorded in 1980.

A rebound in marriages last year after stringent Covid restrictions were lifted appears to be an anomaly largely driven by pent-up demand.

China’s population has shrunk for two years in a row and its birth rate last year was the lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. In 2022, the country was surpassed by India as the world’s most populous nation.

Chinese officials see a direct link between fewer marriages and falling births in the country, where social norms and government regulations make it challenging for unmarried couples to have children.

To reverse the decline, Chinese officials have rolled out a raft of measures, from financial incentives to propaganda campaigns, to nudge young people to tie the knot and have children.

Officials have organized blind dating events, mass weddings, and attempted to curtail the tradition of large “bride price” payments from the groom to his future wife’s family that put marriage out of reach for many poor men in rural areas.

Since 2022, China’s Family Planning Association has launched pilot programs to create a “new-era marriage and childbearing culture,” enrolling dozens of cities to promote the “social value of childbearing” and encouraging young people to get married and give birth at an “appropriate age.”

But so far, these policies have failed to convince Chinese young adults who are grappling with high unemployment, the rising cost of living and a lack of more robust social welfare support amid the economic slowdown.

Many are postponing marriage and childbirth – and a growing number of young people even choose to eschew them entirely.

The decline in both marriages and births is partly due to decades of policies designed to limit China’s population growth, which resulted in fewer young people of marriageable age, according to Chinese officials and sociologists.

In 2015, China announced an end to its decades-long one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children, then increased that to three children in 2021 – but both marriage and birth rates continued to drop.

The stubborn downward trend is also a result of changing attitudes to marriage, especially among young women who are becoming more educated and financially independent.

Faced with widespread workplace discrimination and patriarchal traditions – such as the expectation for women to be responsible for childcare and housework – some women are growing disillusioned with marriage.

Since 2021, China has mandated a 30-day “cooling-off” period for people filing for divorce, despite criticism that it could make it harder for women to leave broken or even abusive marriages. In the first nine months of this year, some 1.96 million couples registered for divorces, a slight decline of 6,000 year-on-year, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

China isn’t the only country struggling with falling rates of marriage and birth. In recent years, Japan and South Korea have also introduced measures to encourage births – such as financial incentives, cash vouchers, housing subsidies and more childcare support – with limited success.

Angry residents booed and threw eggs at Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia as they visited the Valencia region, where more than 200 people have died in devastating floods.

The king faced chants of “murderers” as he hard-hit visited Paiporta, just outside of Valencia city, along with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and regional governor Carlos Mazon, where locals accuse authorities of a lax response to the disaster.

After they posed for a photo, the crowd began hurling insults at the king, Mazon and Sanchez. The crowd surged forwards as security opened umbrellas to try and protect them from projectiles.

Confronted by one resident, Felipe remained calm and lowered his umbrella to listen to him as police struggled to control those gathered. Queen Letizia also also spoke with furious residents and seemed visibly shaken, holding her head in her hands.

The Royal Family’s social media channel released video in the aftermath of the protest, showing the king and queen embracing distraught residents. One man fell weeping into the king’s arms and in another shot, the King is seen hugging two crying women.

It is unusual for a Spanish king to face such fierce anger up close. Felipe is a relatively popular figure, who ascended the throne after the abdication of his father.

The anger appeared largely directed at Sanchez and Mazon, who left early even as the king insisted on staying on despite the chaos.

Sanchez’s office in a statement said that the prime minister had been taken away, following security protocol. In a statement on X, Mazon said he understood the anger and praised the “exemplary” conduct of the king.

At least 214 people are now confirmed dead from the floods and the toll may climb higher. Among the latest victims was a 70-year-old woman whose body was found more than 12 kilometers (seven miles) from her house

The slow and uncoordinated response to the crisis has infuriated many in Valencia. Text alerts came hours after warnings of flooding from the weather service.

On Saturday, Sanchez ordered 5,000 more troops to help with salvage efforts in flooded areas, calling the storm the “worst natural disaster” in the county’s history.

He addressed the anger and frustration at the slow response by authorities, admitting it was “not enough”.

Part of the problem has been political. Mazon and Sanchez are from different parties, and under Spain’s political system, Spain’s federal government cannot release emergency funds and resources without the authorization from a regional government. That didn’t happen until Saturday, four days after the floods hit.

Thousands of volunteers meanwhile have answered the provincial government’s call for help to clear flood debris. Authorities seemed unprepared and overwhelmed, quickly running out of supplies and scrambling to find more buses to transport people.

Volunteers waited hours only to be turned away, frustrating many. Pedro de Juan, 18, had only seen scenes like this in the movies but he showed up before 7 a.m. to board the volunteer buses. He voiced the frustration many are feeling.

“The military and police are helping but not as much as we hoped and they are days late.”

A female student stripped to her underwear outside her university in Iran in what some student and rights groups say was a protest against the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

A video circulating on social media and shared by rights group Amnesty International shows the woman sat outside the university in her underwear and with her hair uncovered.

She gestures toward her fellow students, many of whom are female and wearing headscarves, before strolling around the premises.

Another video shows her walking down a road, still in a state of undress, before a group of men surround her, bundle her into a car, and drive away.

Amnesty said Saturday the woman had been “violently arrested” after she protested the “abusive enforcement” of the dress code at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University.

The woman had previously been harassed by members of the Basij, an Iranian volunteer paramilitary group, inside the university’s grounds, according to an Iranian student social media channel, the Amir Kabir newsletter,. It claimed members of the force had ripped her headscarf and torn her clothes.

Citing eyewitnesses, state-run Fars news agency reported that the student took off her clothes after two security personnel “calmly talked” to her and warned her about flouting the dress code.

The university’s public relations director said the woman was suffering from mental health issues.

Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said on X that she would be “monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities’ response.”

The wearing of a hijab (or headscarf) in public is mandatory for women under Iran’s strict interpretation of Islamic law that is enforced by the country’s so-called morality police.

Iranian women can be subjected to harsh punishment, even for minor infractions.

Protests erupted across Iran in 2022 against the dress code following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of the morality police after being arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.

The subsequent violent crackdown by the Iranian regime killed hundreds of people. Since then, many Iranian women have protested by removing their headscarves in public.

Amnesty called for the immediate and unconditional release of the Azad University student and demanded she be given access to her family and lawyer.

“Allegations of beatings and sexual violence against her during the arrest need independent and impartial investigations,” the human rights campaigners said in a statement on X. “Those responsible must (be) held to account.”

Azad University’s public relations director Amir Mahjob said in a post on X that the university’s security team had intervened “after the indecent act by one of the students” and had taken her to a police station.

In a later post citing a police report, he said the student “was under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder.”

He also said the student was a mother-of-two, separated from her husband, and that he hoped her family’s reputation would not suffer from online “rumors.”

Furniture giant IKEA has agreed to pay 6 million euros ($6.5 million) towards a government fund compensating victims of forced labor under Germany’s communist dictatorship, in a move campaigners hope will pressure other companies to follow.

Political as well as criminal prisoners in Germany during the Cold War era were forced to build flatpack furniture for IKEA. The revelations came to light in Swedish and German media reports more than a decade ago, prompting the company to commission an independent investigation.

Prisoners were producing furniture for IKEA, a global giant in the home furnishings industry, as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, the investigation conducted by auditors Ernst & Young found. IKEA representatives at the time were likely aware that political prisoners were being used to supplement labor, the report found.

The former East Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1949 until 1990, which installed a rigid communist state known as the German Democratic Republic, or GDR. Tens of thousands of its prisoners were forced into factory work, making it a key location for cheap labor that many Western companies are understood to have benefitted from.

Many of the GDR’s political prisoners would have been incarcerated for the simple “crime” of opposing the one-party communist state. Opposition to the state was stamped out by East Germany’s feared Stasi secret police, which spied on almost every aspect of people’s daily lives.

In a statement this week, IKEA Germany announced it would voluntarily put 6 million euros towards the new government fund established to provide compensation to victims of the East German dictatorship.

After decades of campaigning by victim groups, Germany’s ruling coalition government proposed in 2021 to set up the hardship fund. The German parliament will vote on its establishment in the coming weeks, although this step is seen as a mere formality.

The IKEA statement adds that the payment is the result of years-long conversations between the company’s German branch and the Union of Victims’ Associations of Communist Dictatorship (UOGK) — an organization that describes itself as working to ensure those wrongly convicted in communist Germany receive justice in today’s constitutional state.

“We have given our word to those affected that we will participate in providing support. We therefore welcome the implementation of the hardship fund and are pleased to be able to keep our promise.”

IKEA’s landmark payment is the first of its kind. The move has been welcomed by organizations that advocate for victims.

Dieter Dombrowski, the chairman of UOGK, described the development as “groundbreaking.”

“After it became known that the company was involved in forced prison labor, IKEA accepted our invitation to talk. Together we have taken the path of enlightenment and IKEA has met those affected on an equal footing.”

“We hope that other companies will follow IKEA’s example,” Dombrowski added.

According to UOGK, IKEA is one of many companies that benefitted from forced prison labor in communist Germany. Former UOKG chairman Rainer Wagner warned in 2012 that IKEA is “just the tip of the iceberg” as he called for companies to compensate former prisoners who still bear the psychological scars of incarceration and forced labor.

Evelyn Zupke, special representative for GDR victims in the German parliament, said: “IKEA’s pledge to support the hardship fund is an expression of a responsible approach to dealing with dark chapters in the company’s own history.

“We can’t undo what prisoners had to suffer in the GDR’s prisons, but we can treat them with respect today and support them.”

Midway through the documentary “No Other Land,” journalist and activist Basel Adra recounts a 2009 visit to his village by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In a navy suit and crisp tie, surrounded by security detail and photographers, Blair walked through the village for seven minutes, Adra says in a voice-over.

He visits the local school, Adra says. He passes by Adra’s family’s home. He nods along to something someone says off camera, the footage shows. He shakes a hand. He smiles.

Months later, after Blair returns to the UK, Israel cancels the demolition orders held for the school and home in the street he visited, Adra says. In the mere handful of minutes, Blair accomplished what villagers had been trying to do for years.

“This,” Adra says, “is a story about power.”

“No Other Land” tells of the continued demolition of Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages in the Hebron mountains of the West Bank where Adra and his family still live. But as we see the demolition — the local playground torn down, his family moving their beds and other belongings into a cave, his brother shot and killed by soldiers, attacks by Jewish settlers — Adra and the rest of the filmmakers also show us a community trying to survive.

Adra’s filming begins in 2019 and stretches until 2023, chronicling the Israeli government’s attempt to evict the villagers by force, having claimed the land for a military training facility and firing range in 1981. (During the lengthy legal battle, before the Israeli supreme court ruled in favor of demolishing homes in the villages in 2022, Israeli prosecutors argued that Palestinian residents only began squatting in the area when it was declared a firing range, after previously using the land as seasonal pasture. Residents countered, saying the IDF had blown up Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta decades earlier, in 1966).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What motivated you to pick up the camera in the first place? Was making a documentary always the goal?

Basel Adra: No, it wasn’t. It was documenting. To document the things around me was the goal, and it always felt important to catch the incidents that’s happening around us as evidence of the reality of what’s happening. And then, after years, the guys joined, and we decided together that we want to make a movie.

Yuval Abraham: I came here as a journalist, so documenting was part of the job. It’s something that I believe in. I came into journalism out of realizing that there is so much that is not being told in the land that we live in that needs to be told. But for me, the act of documenting, whether it’s by writing or by filming, always has a purpose or an audience in mind, most of the time. Whereas for Basel, it’s also that, but as he said, it’s also the way to survive when you’re being attacked, or when your community is.

You started filming this in 2019 and you wrapped it up before the events of October last year. Do you think the film has changed or taken on new meaning because of what’s happened since then?

Abraham: Of course, the movie meets the audience at the moment where the audience is. Now, Palestine and Israel are on the news 24/7 for the past year. To me, the film is showing the reality on the ground before October, and it’s showing essentially the decades-long occupation of Palestinians. And I think one of the reasons why we made the movie is, for me, is because — October 7 is an atrocity — but the world was not paying attention, almost at all, to the violent life that Palestinians are living under for decades before October.

This adds so much urgency for me to the film right now. It’s clear that, to anybody who watches our film and looks at the reality of the farmers in Masafer Yatta, living under Israeli military control is not something sustainable and it’s not something just. It’s not something that can continue. Me and Basel were born in the ‘90s. If we would have reached a political solution then, imagine how many more people would be alive today? And it’s unfortunate that people are now talking about the need for political change only after, in a way, human beings are paying with their blood.

I know with the recent escalation, you had to cut your time in the US short. How did it feel to go from touring this documentary all over the world, getting awards, etc., to zooming back home to Palestine and Israel?

Adra: It’s different. It’s not easy to go to the festivals and succeed, and journalists talk about it, the audience wants to see it, and it’s been sold out in many festivals. But coming back to the reality here, it’s sad to see that the situation is going, changing to be worse than it was even before.

It’s very hard to speak about the power now of documentary and footage, when there is so much footage. You can now Google. I mean, just open Twitter and open Facebook, you see so much endless footage of violence and nothing is changing.

Yuval Abraham

Abraham: It’s a question that we always ask ourselves: What can we do to cause change? To end the occupation, to reach a political movement? Now, I think after really a year, it’s hard not to talk about Gaza, honestly, because you see every single day, literally, houses filled with families being bombed and little children obliterated or burnt alive. And now in the north of the Gaza Strip, there is an ethnic cleansing. It’s one of the biggest atrocities of our age and time, and the atrocities of October 7 cannot justify what has been going on every single day since.

What kind of footage do people need to see for the United States to change its foreign policy in a way which would be constructive for the people who are living here, in a way which will push us towards some kind of political solution?

Those of us who want to see a future where this oppression ends have to call for a change. And so can our film do that? I don’t think it can do that. It’s very hard to speak about the power now of documentary and footage, when there is so much footage. You can now Google. I mean, just open Twitter and open Facebook, you see so much endless footage of violence and nothing is changing. It’s a complicated position that we are in, so I don’t know what can change.

So, you don’t necessarily feel hope that things can change, because there’s footage everywhere?

Abraham: This is why we made a documentary, because there is a difference between just posting a random instance of violence to watching our film, which tells a very strong human story of a community for four years, trying to survive on their land. We hope that watching a film will have some kind of impact that these videos that we post on social media does not have.

At the end of the day, we’re not powerful people, and if the people who have power are not using their power to change the reality, then things are not going to change. We can make a million documentaries about it, but they’re not going to change their reality.

When was the moment where you decided, ‘I’m done waiting on other journalists; I’m going to tell my own story?’

Adra: Well, this is like back in the beginning, of documenting what’s going on. What I saw, like the missions happening, the attacks are happening here in Masafer Yatta. But it’s not a story, even, it’s a routine in our lives. So there I started using social media, writing articles and filming what is happening.

Abraham: There are times in history when policy becomes invisible to the people because it happens so much. It’s just routine. It’s part of the routine oppression. I think of South Africa, for example. There were times when it was just considered normal, under the apartheid regime, to have certain people who cannot vote for the main government. It was just normal. You didn’t need to report about it. And this is what’s really happening here in Masafer Yatta. Yesterday, houses were demolished. Was it reported anywhere? It’s not going to be reported, because this is the day-to-day life, the routine life, under the military occupation.

One of the challenges we face as journalists or even as activists, is how to take a policy that is a routine, that the people are not able to see, and to make them see it. And this is one reason to make the film, to make this policy a story that will be so strong that will show the human aspects of it in such a powerful way that people will be interested to see it.

I’ve heard some places have been hesitant to maybe distribute the documentary theatrically. Is that something that you have run into?

Adra: Yeah, we still don’t have a distributor in the US, we think it’s because of the subject, they’re not taking it. We wish this will change in the future, because we really want the movie to be shown around the US, and we want millions of people to see it.

What are you hoping the impact will be? 

Adra: We want political change for the situation here.

Abraham: Change is possible, especially if there is willingness from the US leaders to allow us to reach the point of change. The United States is very much complicit in what we are seeing in our movie. For a better future for Palestinians and for Israelis, we need change in US foreign policy, and we hope that the film will contribute to that.

Like that moment with Blair, for example. 

Abraham: It just gives you an example of people’s lives here are getting ruined, and for people in power who are sitting in Washington, DC or in New York or in London, to change that is a matter of lifting their finger to exert pressure on Israel to stop.

Of course, in the long term, we hope that the film — and not only our film, activism and work that we are doing on the ground and abroad — will lead to an end to this occupation, and to a political solution that is based on Palestinians having freedom, and Palestinians and Israelis both having political and individual rights. And the way to do that is the US changing their foreign policy. That is one of the main things that need to change, and if our film can contribute to that, even just a little bit, then I’m very, very happy that we made it.

Benjamin Netanyahu sat down for his regular cabinet meeting and had some words for a new ally – and an old enemy.

“Last week I met with US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley,” the Israeli prime minister told his colleagues. “I thanked her, on your behalf as well, for her decisive words in favor of the state of Israel – and against the anti-Israel obsession at the UN.”

“It is time UNRWA be dismantled,” he declared.

It was June 2017: the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. The possibilities for Netanyahu – who once bunked in the childhood bed of Trump’s son-in-law – seemed endless. In a few months, the American president would buck decades of foreign policy precedent and move his country’s embassy to the disputed city of Jerusalem.

In the case of UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees – Netanyahu would not get his wish so quickly. It would take another eight years.

The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, on Monday voted through legislation to ban UNRWA from Israel and prohibit any contact between it and Israeli officials. The two laws do not mean the immediate end of the agency. Nor do they technically prevent it from working in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. But given the near-inextricable link between the agency’s ability to function there and the Israeli authorities, they almost certainly mean the end of UNRWA’s operation as we know it.

There are as many opinions on why UNRWA, which provides services and aid to millions of Palestinians across the Middle East, was banned as there are people to ask.

Many point to allegations by the Israel Defense Forces that a handful of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the October 7 massacre, which saw 1,200 people killed and around 250 taken hostage. In a country still reeling from the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, this has been a potent and impossible to ignore argument against UNRWA.

Others see the move as another step in the erosion of Palestinian rights and the removal of their distant but long-promised right to return to the villages, now in Israel, from which they and their ancestors were violently evicted when the Jewish state was created in 1948.

In any case, the head of UNRWA has said that the legislation “will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell.”

‘Low-hanging fruit’

Boaz Bismuth, a Likud member of Knesset, wrote one of the two bills to ban UNRWA, which passed 92 to 10. In the wake of October 7, he believed that dismantling the agency was urgent.

“I did not see December ’49,” when UNRWA was created, he insisted. Nor, he said, was he motivated by the claim that UNRWA perpetuates Palestinian refugee status. “All this is totally irrelevant for me. What was relevant for me in my bill was the fact that they participated on the 7th of October massacre, and this is why they will not work in Israel anymore.”

The Israeli government in January said that 12 UNRWA staff members in Gaza had participated in the Hamas-led attack on Israel, and later added more to that list. The agency immediately fired most of the individuals concerned. A UN investigation found that nine employees “may have” been involved in the October 7 attack.

The Washington Post in February obtained CCTV footage from Kibbutz Be’eri on October, which it said showed one of the UNRWA employees accused by Israel of involvement, carrying the corpse of an Israeli man killed by Hamas militants.

UNRWA to this day maintains that Israel never provided it with evidence against its former employees. The agency says it had regularly provided Israel with a full list of its staff members, and has accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about ties to Hamas.

But Bismuth said that “for me, UNRWA equals Hamas” – and his view is widespread in Israel. In a country where Netanyahu is politically ascendant against the odds, supporting his party’s legislation was plain old good politics.

“UNRWA was low-hanging fruit for this Israeli government,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime American policymaker in the Middle East who was a key player in the last serious round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, in 2000.

A long history

UNRWA is nearly as old as Israel itself. The violence surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948 displaced close to a million Arabs from their homes in what had been British-mandate Palestine – an event Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”

The UN General Assembly, which had consented to Israel’s creation, declared that all the displaced Arabs should be allowed to return “at the earliest practicable date.” A year later, it created UNRWA “to prevent conditions of starvation and distress.”

To Israelis, UNRWA is an anachronism that represents the unrealistic and distant dream of millions of Palestinians to return to their homes in what is now Israel. That is what Netanyahu means when he says the agency “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem.” Philippe Lazzarini, the Swiss commissioner-general of UNRWA, has made clear that even if his agency were dissolved, it “will not strip the Palestinians from their refugee status.”

Israelis have long accused UNRWA of perpetuating anti-Israel ideology in schools they run. A UN-commissioned inquiry found that examples in textbooks of anti-Israel bias were “marginal” but nonetheless constituted “a grave violation of neutrality.”

Israeli leaders believe that Palestinians do not deserve their own refugee agency and should permanently resettle where they now live – assisted, if need be, by the agency responsible for all other refugees in the world, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.

“What makes Palestinian refugees different is that they’re not seeking refuge in a third country,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights lawyer. “They want to go home.”

‘What more do they want?’

Saleh Shunnar, displaced from his home in Gaza by the year-long war, knows what it means to be a refugee.

“Israel has always wanted to do this,” he said, speaking from a tent encampment in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza. “If they shut down UNRWA, that means there is no Palestinian refugee cause. They took away the Palestinian cause.”

Those fears run deep for many Palestinians. But concerns about the impact on so-called final status negotiations are “tethered to a galaxy far, far away, rather than to the realities back here on planet earth,” said Miller, the former American negotiator.

“I can understand why the Palestinians would regard this as a systematic first step to undermine the right of return,” he said. But the issues facing any negotiations over a Palestinian state are so numerous and so fraught that the right of return is far down the long list of obstacles, he said.

That is particularly the case when so many Palestinians face an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.

“These are the simplest of needs,” Deir Al-Balah resident Ghalia Abd Abu Amra said of the aid she receives. “What more do they want to take from us than what they already have? Our homes are gone, now they want to take UNRWA too?”

The massive tent camps for internally displaced Gazans have steadily become entrenched. Cloth walls become tarpaulin. Mud floors are replaced with wood. This transformation has been happening for decades across the 58 refugee camps run by UNRWA in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the region, as tent camps became residential blocks.

For millions of Palestinians, UNRWA functions as a parallel government. It is a vast organization that provides services that governments – whether in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza, or the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – are unable or unwilling to provide. It educates half a million students. It employs 3,000 medical professionals. It helps feed nearly two million people.

“UNRWA has saved Israeli taxpayers billions of dollars over the last 57 years,” said Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer who sits on the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “Israel, as the occupying power under the fourth Geneva Convention, is responsible for the care, protection, and the provision of services to persons under occupation.”

“The international community has been doing that by its financial support for UNRWA,” he told journalists in New York. “So if UNRWA is kicked out, the cost for the Israeli taxpayer is going to be ginormous. So this is a decision that is bad for the Palestinians and ridiculous for Israeli taxpayers.”

Bismuth, the Knesset member who authored the UNRWA legislation, said that Israel would step in.

“You will not have a vacuum,” he said. “I feel good with my bill. Because all the services that they got – not only will they continue to get it, but we will even upgrade it.”

Indeed, UNRWA’s benefit to Israel had long been recognized by those in the government responsible for Palestinian affairs, said Nadav Tamir, a former diplomat who now serves as executive director of J Street Israel, a left-wing lobby group. He characterized their view as: “‘Of course UNRWA is problematic, but we don’t have another option, we need someone to take care of the issues.’” Before October 7, he explained, politicians could not overcome the “realpolitik” that UNRWA was an asset in taking a problem off Israel’s plate.

What that will look like remains a mystery to most. Miller is blunt: “Israelis don’t have a long-term solution.” In conversations with UNRWA staff members in the refugee camps around Jerusalem – who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak with the media – confusion reigned.

No one knows whether, when the legislation fully go into effect in three months, schools will remain open or medicine will be delivered. Tens of thousands of Palestinians who work for the agency could soon be unemployed.

“Most Israelis don’t really know the facts,” Tamir said. “They don’t really understand that there is no alternative. They think, ‘Oh, we can just bring another organization, or we could somehow do it on our own.’”

Even if the Israeli leadership decides that it can cast aside the moral issue of providing for Palestinian civilians, shutting down services for millions poses a threat for Israel itself.

“It’s a strategic issue that will promote more terrorism and of course all kind of epidemics that are not stopping at the border,” Tamir said. “So people who really know the situation I think are concerned. But most people and most politicians don’t really care about the reality. It’s all about the perception.”

Zeena Saifi, Abeer Salman, Mohammed Al-Sawalhi, and Shira Gemer contributed to this report.

Russia is watching US policy like a hawk.

That was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s message to reporters last week in Kyiv as he answered a question about Moscow’s willingness to negotiate. “It depends on the elections in the United States,” he said.

If elected, Kamala Harris is expected to largely continue the policies of the Biden administration, which have been supportive of Ukraine despite some friction points, like the use of Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia.

Taking a drastically different position, Donald Trump has suggested he will end support for Kyiv’s war effort and claimed he could settle the war “in one day.” Terms of a peace plan floated by his vice-presidential nominee JD Vance are strikingly similar to Putin’s wish list.

American policy is at a crossroads, but that won’t necessarily translate to a turning point in peace negotiations, analysts say.

That’s because nothing suggests Russia is ready to come to the table, regardless of who ends up in the White House.

“What [Trump] thinks he can do, what leverage he has, is unclear at this point – but I don’t think it’s a quick process,” said Thomas Graham, a Russian foreign policy expert and distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A reduction in US aid spending could very well translate to changes on the battlefield, though, experts say.

Those cracks could come in the form of a Trump administration reducing US aid and taking a lesser role in NATO, or a split US Congress, among other factors. Financial pressures on European allies also play a role, as well as rifts in NATO, with pro-Russian leaderships in member states such as Hungary and Slovakia.

“Absent Western unity, absent a clear demonstration that the West and Ukraine have a common vision of what they’re trying to achieve… Putin has no reason to reconsider what he is doing in Ukraine at this point,” Graham added.

The scope of the war is also too large for a simple negotiation between Moscow and Kyiv, experts say. They argue it’s a much broader conflict between Russia and the West.

For Putin, “Ukraine is just a means to an end, and the end is to further limit US influence in international affairs,” said John Lough, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the London think tank Chatham House.

“When [Trump’s] advisers explain to him what’s really going on here and the fact that China has played a key role in sustaining Russia’s ability to continue fighting this war… he may feel suddenly very strongly that he’s not so well disposed to Putin,” Lough said, adding that Beijing will perceive any concessions “as a further indication of US weakness.”

That goes against Trump’s tough rhetoric on the threat posed by China.

Attritional war playing into Putin’s hands

Ukraine is already outmanned, and Putin appears ready to accept a high number of casualties. More than 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, according to NATO.

“The enemy is increasing its troops to drive the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of the Kursk region at any cost,” said Oleh Shiryaev, commander of the 225th Separate Assault Battalion that is fighting in Ukraine’s surprise incursion across the Russian border. “Russia’s main element in this war is the number of its troops – these are meaty assaults and offensive actions. They do this in all parts of the frontline.”

But Kyiv knows that’s not enough. On Wednesday, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to extend martial law and the draft for an additional 90 days. There are plans to call up an additional 160,000 people, the National Security Council announced.

Ukraine needs support for both its infantry and its equipment coffers, servicemen said.

“We have ammunition, but as artillerymen say, there is never enough,” said 15th Brigade National Guard Spokesman Vitaliy Milovidov, who is fighting in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces continue to make incremental gains.

If a potential Trump administration cuts US aid, Ukraine would become increasingly outgunned.

European nations are scrambling to increase ammunition production for Ukraine to prevent backsliding, in the event that US support drops off.

But even if US policy continues along the current trajectory, Kyiv’s Western allies don’t appear willing to send the level of resources needed to make major battlefield gains.

“My hunch is that this is going to continue, at a lower intensity possibly, but for a long time,” Chatham House’s Lough added. “A Harris administration certainly wouldn’t sell out the Ukrainians, but it would really test their Ukrainian resolve and whether they are prepared to continue to fight this attritional war.”

That’s why Putin’s strategy also appears aimed at demoralizing Ukraine’s population.

Russia has repeatedly attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure. It has also hammered Ukraine’s energy grid, which exacerbates problems for everyday Ukrainians who will face a winter marred by lack of heating and water.

Analysts say the Ukrainian population is certainly exhausted, but they too don’t appear ready to settle in any way. After the mass killings of civilians in Bucha and Mariupol, the brutal treatment of Ukrainian prisoners in Russian custody, and the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children by the Russian state, they know the brutal realities of Russian occupation.

Zelensky, meanwhile, continues to call for support from both parties. If Trump “just wants to force Ukraine to give up everything and thus reach a deal with Russia, I don’t think that’s possible,” he said Thursday.

The Israeli military says it has captured a senior Hezbollah operative in an amphibious special forces raid in northern Lebanon.

The official added that the seized operative was now being investigated by Unit 504 – an intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported Saturday that eyewitnesses had seen “an unidentified military force carrying out a landing operation on ​​the Batroun beach” at dawn the day before.

The troops “moved with all their weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, where they kidnapped the citizen Imad Amhaz and took him to the beach, (then) left by speedboats to the open sea,” NNA reported.

The Lebanese government said its security services were investigating “an incident that took place in the Batroun area,” at dawn Friday.

The raid comes a little more than a month after Hezbollah said it had targeted a naval base on Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast that houses an elite Israeli naval commando unit – thought to be a reference to Shayetet 13.

Hezbollah claims that attack took place on September 23. Asked at the time for comment, the IDF said “no injuries were reported” – but it did not confirm that the naval base had been targeted.