Indonesian military forces have again bombed Kiwirok, the site of a massacre in 2021 that killed more than 300 West Papuan civilians, amid worsening violence, alleges a Papuan advocacy group.
“While President Prabowo talks about promoting peace in the Middle East, his military is trying to wipe out West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) leader Benny Wenda.
“Evidence gathered by villagers in the Star Mountains shows the Indonesian military using Brazilian fighter jets to target houses, gardens, and cemeteries.”
He said in a statement the village had been destroyed and more civilians had become displaced in their own land, adding to more than 100,000 internal refugees.
The ULMWP website showed images from the attack.
Wenda said the bombing showed again “how the whole world is complicit in the genocide of my people”.
“Now, it is Brazilian jets that children in Kiwirok see before their homes are destroyed,” Wenda said.
West Papua was being facing several “colonial tactics to crush our spirit and destroy our resistance”.
“What is happening in Kiwirok is happening in different ways across West Papua,” Wenda said. He cited:
Riots and demos happening in Jayapura after a peaceful demonstration calling for the release Papuan political prisoners was violently crushed;
Indonesia occupying churches in Intan Jaya in violation of international law as they deployed soldiers for a new military base;
Indonesian military killing civilian Sadrak Yahome after anti-racism protests in Yalimo, which happenedfollowing Indonesian settlers racially abusing a Papuan student;
Militarisation happening across the Highlands, with more than 50 villages having being occupied by the TNI [Indonesian military] since August;
West Papuans being called “monkeys” by Indonesian settlers in Timika; and
A 52-year-old man being killed by police during a protest against the transfer of political prisoners in Manokwari.
The documentary Hostage Land. Video: Paradise Broadcasting
“It isn’t a coincidence that this escalation is happening while Indonesia is increasing environmental destruction in West Papua, trying to steal our resources and rip apart our forest for profit and food security,” Wenda said.
“In Raja Ampat, Merauke, Intan Jaya, and Kiwirok, new plantations and mines are killing our people and land.”
Wenda appealed to Pacific leaders to stand for West Papua as “the rest of the world stands for Palestine”.
“The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) must respond to this escalation — Indonesia is spilling Pacific and Melanesian blood in West Papua.
“They must not bow to Indonesian chequebook diplomacy.”
It’s bizarre how little mainstream attention is given to the fact that the President of the United States has repeatedly confessed to being bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli, especially given how intensely fixated his political opposition was on the possibility that he was compromised by a foreign government during his first term.
During a speech before the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) on Monday, President Donald Trump once again publicly admitted that he has implemented Israel-friendly policies at the behest of Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, this time adding that he believes Adelson favours Israel over the United States.
Here’s a transcript of Trump’s remarks:
“As president, I terminated the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and ultimately, I terminated Iran’s nuclear program with things called B2 bombers. It was swift and it was accurate, and it was a military beauty. I authorized the spending of billions of dollars, which went to Israel’s defense, as you know. And after years of broken promises from many other American presidents — you know that they kept promising — I never understood it until I got there. There was a lot of pressure put on these presidents. It was put on me, too, but I didn’t yield to the pressure. But every president for decades said, ‘We’re going to do it.’ The difference is I kept my promise and officially recognized the capital of Israel and moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem.
“Isn’t that right Miriam? Look at Miriam. She’s back there. Stand up. Miriam and Sheldon [Adelson] would come into the office and call me. They’d call me — I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else, I guess. Look at her sitting there so innocently — got $60 billion in the bank, $60 billion. And she loves, and she, I think she said, ‘No, more.’ And she loves Israel, but she loves it. And they would come in. And her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him. It was a very aggressive, very supportive of me. And he’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you? I’d say ‘Sheldon, I’m the president of the United States. It doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in. But they were very responsible for so much, including getting me thinking about Golan Heights, which is probably one of the greatest things ever happened. Miriam, stand up, please. She really is, I mean, she loves this country. She loves this country. Her and her husband are so incredible. We miss him so dearly. But I actually asked her, I’m going to get her in trouble with this. But I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means — that might mean Israel, I must say, we love you. Thank you, darling, for being here. That’s a great honor. Great honor. She’s a wonderful woman. She is a great woman.”
Speaking in Israel, Trump suggests he moved the embassy to Jerusalem as a promise to the Adelsons, who he says have paid more visits to the White House than anyone he can think of.
He then says he asked Miriam if she loves Israel or America more and she refused to answer. Insane pic.twitter.com/jg9VXciRgg
Sheldon Adelson reportedly gave Trump and the Republicans more than US$424 million in campaign funding from 2016 up until his death in 2021. His widow Miriam continued her husband’s legacy and poured a further $100 million into Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
On the 2024 campaign trail Trump also admitted to being controlled by Adelson cash.
“Just as I promised, I recognize Israel’s eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem. Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
“You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there. And they were always after — and as soon as I’d give them something — always for Israel. As soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else. I’d say, ‘Give me a couple of weeks, will you, please?’ But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it.
“You know, for 72 years they’ve been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn’t have the nerve. But I said, ‘You know what?’ I said to David Friedman, ‘Give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less on the Golan Heights.’ And he did. And I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?”
Take note of which Trump comments provoke controversy, and which don’t. Trump said this week that he “gave” the Golan Heights to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, his top funders, who came to the White House “almost more than anybody.” Not a peep about this brazen admission of graft pic.twitter.com/MaJLFnH7oi
Legitimising Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem were two of the most controversial moves Trump made in Israel’s favour during his first term, which have now been eclipsed by his backing of the genocide in Gaza and his bombings of Iran and Yemen.
And here he is openly admitting that his billionaire Zionist megadonors have been using the access their donations bought them to push him to take drastic action in favour of Israel.
Just imagine for a second if someone had leaked documents to the press proving that Trump and received extensive financial backing from a Russian oligarch to whom he doled out favors of immense geopolitical consequence.
It would be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics, bar none. But because it’s an Israeli oligarch, he can admit to it openly and repeatedly without anyone batting an eye.
During Trump’s first term his political rivals spent years pushing a bogus conspiracy theory that he was controlled by Vladimir Putin, despite his having spent that entire term aggressively ramping up cold war hostilities against Russia. Entire political punditry careers were birthed trying to create a scandal out of a narrative that could be plainly seen as false just by looking at the movements of the US war machine and Washington’s actions against Moscow.
Trump: I am bought and owned by Miriam Adelson, the world’s richest Israeli.
Democrats: Trump is a Putin puppet.
Trump: I do whatever she says.
Democrats: A Russian secret agent.
Trump: I’m controlled by the Israelis.
Democrats: He’s suspiciously close with many dictators,…
But here’s Trump openly admitting to bending over backwards to give an Israeli oligarch whatever she wants because she gave his campaign huge sums of money, while pouring weapons into Israel to facilitate its mass atrocities and engaging in acts of war on Israel’s behalf. And it barely makes a blip in mainstream Western politics or media.
This is because mainstream Western politics and media understand that we are living in an unofficial oligarchic empire to which both the US and Israel belong. They never acknowledge it, they never talk about it, but all high-level politicians, pundits and operatives in the Western world understand that they serve a globe-spanning power structure run by a loose alliance of plutocrats and empire managers.
They understand that states like Israel are a part of said power structure, while states like Russia, China and Iran are not. So they spend their time normalising the corruption and abuses of imperial member states while facilitating the empire’s efforts to attack and undermine the states which have successfully resisted being absorbed into the imperial power umbrella.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the only thing I like about Donald Trump is his infantile tendency to say the quiet part out loud. He advances the same kinds of abuses as his predecessors who were no less corrupt and controlled, but he exposes the underlying mechanics of those abuses in ways that more refined presidents never would.
Pacific leaders believe climate experts are missing an opportunity to incorporate indigenous knowledge into adaptation measures.
The call has been made as hundreds of scientists, global leaders, and climate adaptation experts around the globe gather at the Adaptation Futures Conference in Christchurch.
At the conference’s opening session, Tuvalu’s Environment Minister Maina Talia explained how sea level rise was damaging agricultural land and fresh groundwater is becoming saline.
“The figures are alarming, this is not just for Tuvalu and this is not a Tuvaluan problem, it’s not even a small island developing states problem, it’s a global economic bomb,” he said.
Incorporating indigenous knowledge into climate adaptation has been a major focus of the event.
Talia told RNZ Pacific he feels adaptation is generally presented in a Western lens.
“We need to decolonise our mind, decolonise our soul, in order to integrate community-based adaptation measures.”
Flagship adaptation projects
The highest elevation in Tuvalu is only four and a half metres. A 2023 report from NASA found much of Tuvalu’s land would be below the average high tide by 2050.
To combat rising seas the government has started reclaiming land, which is one of the island nation’s flagship adaptation projects.
Talia said a “decolonisation approach” gave communities ownership of the work being done.
“It’s all informed by our elders, informed by our youth, informed by our women in society, we cannot come with the idea that this is how your adaptation measures should look like.”
Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) director-general Sefanaia Nawadra, on a similar line, said the “biggest difference” of incorporating indigenous-led solutions was giving people a sense of ownership.
“It’s management by compliance rather than management by regulation, where you’re using a stick to say, ‘ok, if you don’t do this, you will be penalised’.”
‘Like a cheat code’
Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change president Cynthia Houniuhi said those on the front line of the adverse effects of climate change are often indigenous people, which is almost always the case in the Pacific.
“Who knows the place better than the ones that have lived there, so imagine that experience informs the solution, that’s the best way, it’s kind of like a cheat code.”
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) head of adaptation Youssef Nassef said it is not always clear how national adaptation plans included input from indigenous people.
He also said climate knowledge is not always accessible to those who need it most.
“We create knowledge, we put them in peer-reviewed publications but are the people who are actually needing it on the frontlines of climate change impacts really receiving that knowledge.”
Pacific climate activists are coming off a high after a top UN court found failing to protect people from the adverse effects of climate change could violate international law.
ICJ advisory opinion
Houniuhi was one of the students who got the advisory opinion in July from the International Court of Justice.
But she told those attending the conference it meant nothing if not acted upon.
“We must continue this same energy, momentum and drive into the implementation of the ruling. As one of our mentors rightly said, ‘the law has now caught up to the science, what we now need is for policy to catch up to the law’.”
Houniuhi said the advisory opinion provided “more weight to influence demands”. She expected the advisory opinion to be used as a negotiating tool by Pacific leaders at COP30 in Brazil next month.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.
Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”
It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.
I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.
Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.
Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.
To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.
‘Best weapons’
As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”
There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.
But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.
In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.
During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.
Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.
To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.
‘Path of terror’
This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.
Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.
I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.
When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”
And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.
Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.
Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”
It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.
I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.
Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.
Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.
To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.
‘Best weapons’
As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”
There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.
But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.
In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.
During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.
Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.
To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.
‘Path of terror’
This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.
Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.
I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.
When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”
And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.
Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
Pacific Media Watch supports the call by the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for justice for the victims of crimes against journalists in Gaza, and its demand for immediate access to the Palestinian enclave for exiled journalists and foreign press. The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, confirmed on Friday, 10 October 2025, came after two years of unprecedented massacres against the press in Gaza.
Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists, including at least 56 slain due to their work.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court, has called in a statement for justice for the victims, and the urgent evacuation of media professionals who wish to leave.
The ceasefire agreement in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan has so far failed to produce an end to the media blockade imposed on the besieged Palestinian territory.
According to RSF information, several bombings struck the north of Gaza on the day the agreement was announced, 9 October. One of them wounded Abu Dhabi TV photojournalist Arafat al-Khour while he was documenting the damage in the Sabra neighbourhood in the centre of Gaza City.
While the agreement approved by the Israeli government and Hamas leaders allows humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, it does not explicitly mention authorising access for the foreign press or the possibility of evacuating local journalists.
‘Absolute urgency’
Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East Desk, said in a statement: “The relief of a ceasefire in Gaza must not distract from the absolute urgency of the catastrophic situation facing journalists in the territory.
“Nearly 220 of them have been killed by the Israeli army in two years, and the reporters still alive in Gaza need immediate care, equipment and support. They also need justice — more than ever.
“If the impunity for the crimes committed against them continues, they will be repeated in Gaza, Palestine and elsewhere in the world. To bring justice to Gaza’s reporters and to protect the right to information around the world, we demand arrest warrants for the perpetrators of crimes against our fellow journalists in Gaza.
“RSF is counting on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to act on the complaints we filed for war crimes committed against these journalists. It’s high time that the international community’s response matched the courage shown by Palestinian reporters over the past two years.”
Since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists in the besieged territory. At least 56 of these victims were directly targeted or killed due to their work, according to RSF, which has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the past two years, seeking justice for these journalists and end impunity for the crimes against them.
In addition to killing news professionals on the ground and in their homes, the Israeli army has also targeted newsrooms, telecommunications infrastructure and journalistic equipment.
Famine hits journalists
Famine continues to afflict civilians in the Strip, including journalists, yet aid is barely trickling in and all communication services have been destroyed by two years of bombing.
On October 9, Israeli authorities and Hamas leaders reached a 20-point ceasefire agreement in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, as part of Donald Trump’s plan to establish “lasting peace” in the region.
This is the second ceasefire in Gaza since 7 October 2023, the first put in place at the beginning of the year and broken in March 2025, shortly after a strike killed the renowned Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat.
Israel is ranked 112th among the 180 nations surveyed by the annual RSF World Press Freedom Index and Palestine is 163rd.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
As part of a never-ending rollercoaster of instability in French politics, the latest appointment of a Minister for Overseas has caused significant concern, including in New Caledonia.
In the late hours of Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron approved the latest Cabinet lineup submitted to him by his Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
A week earlier, Lecornu, who was appointed on September 9 to form a new government, made a first announcement for a Cabinet.
But this only lasted 14 hours — Lecornu resigned on Monday, October 6, saying the conditions to stay as PM were “not met”.
After yet another round of consultations under the instructions by Macron, Lecornu was finally re-appointed prime minister on Friday, 10 October 2025.
The announcement of his new Cabinet, approved by Macron, came late on October 12.
His new team includes former members of his previous cabinet, mixed with a number of personalities described as members of the civil society with no partisan affiliations.
The new Minister for Overseas is a newcomer to the portfolio.
Naïma Moutchou, 44, replaces Manuel Valls, who had worked indefatigably on New Caledonia issues since he was appointed in December 2024.
Valls, a former Socialist Prime Minister, travelled half a dozen times to New Caledonia and managed to bring all rival local politicians (both pro-France and pro-independence) around the same table.
The ensuing negotiations led to the signing of a Bougival agreement (signed on July 12, near Paris), initially signed by all local parties represented at New Caledonia’s Congress (Parliament).
The text, which remains to be implemented, provides for the creation of a “State of New Caledonia” within France, as well as a dual French-New Caledonian nationality and the short-term transfer of such powers as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia.
However, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has since rejected the Bougival deal, saying it was not compatible with the party’s demands of full sovereignty and timetable.
Since then, apart from the FLNKS, all parties (including several moderate pro-independence factions who split from FLNKS in August 2024) have maintained their pro-Bougival course.
Manuel Valls, as Minister for Overseas, was regarded as the key negotiator, representing France, in the talks.
Who is Naïma Moutchou? However, Valls is no longer holding this portfolio. He is replaced by Naïma Moutchou.
A lawyer by trade, she is an MP at the French National Assembly and member of the Horizon party led by former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
She is also a former deputy Speaker of the French National Assembly.
Unlike Valls, as new Minister for Overseas she is no longer a Minister of State.
She took part in a Parliamentary mission on New Caledonia’s future status in 2021-2022.
Valls’s non-reappointment lamented In New Caledonia’s political spheres, the new appointment on Monday triggered several reactions, some critical.
Virginie Ruffenach, leader of the pro-France Rassemblement-Les Républicains (LR, which is affiliated to the National French LR), expressed disappointment at Vall not being retained as Minister for Overseas.
She said the new appointment of someone to replace Valls, the main actor of the Bougival agreement, did nothing to stabilise the implementation of the deal.
The implementation is supposed to translate as early as this week with the need to get the French cabinet to endorse the deal and also to put an “organic law” up for debate at the French Senate for a possible postponement of New Caledonia’s local elections from no later than 30 November 2025 to mid-2026.
Referring to those short-term deadlines, FLNKS president Christian Téin, who is still judicially compelled to remain in metropolitan France pending an appeal ruling on his May 2024 riots-related case, sent an open letter to French MPs, urging them not to endorse the postponement of the local elections.
Téin said such postponement, although already endorsed in principle by local New Caledonian Congress, would be a “major political regression” and would “unilaterally put an end to the decolonisation process initiated by the (1998) Nouméa Accord”.
The pro-independence leader insists New Caledonia’s crucial local elections should be held no later than 30 November 2025, as originally scheduled.
He said any other move would amount to a “passage en force” (forceful passage).
An earlier attempt, during the first quarter of 2024, was also described at the time as a “passage en force”.
It aimed at changing the French Constitution to lift earlier restrictions to the list of eligible voters at local elections.
Following marches and protests, the movement later degenerated and resulted in the worst riots that New Caledonia has seen in recent history, starting on 13 May 2024.
The riots caused 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in material damage, a drop of 13.5 percent of the French Pacific territory’s GDP and thousands of unemployed.
“With the current national cacophony. We don’t know what tomorrow will be . . . but the crucial issue for New Caledonia is to postpone the date of (local) elections to implement the Bougival agreement. Otherwise we’ll have nothing and this will become a no man’s land”, Ruffenach said on Monday.
“Even worse, there is the nation’s budget and this is crucial assistance for New Caledonia, something we absolutely need, in the situation we are in today.”
Wallisian-based Eveil Oceanien’s Milakulo Tukumuli told local public broadcaster NC la Première one way to analyse the latest cabinet appointment could be that New Caledonia’s affairs could be moved back to the Prime Minister’s office.
New Caledonia back to the PM’s desk? Under a long-unspoken rule installed by French Prime Minister Michel Rocard (after he fostered the 1988 historic Matignon Accord to bring an end to half a decade of quasi-civil war), New Caledonia’s affairs had been kept under the direct responsibility of the French PM’s office.
This lasted for more than 30 years, until the special link was severed in 2020, when Lecornu became Minister for Overseas, a position he held for the next two years and became very familiar and knowledgeable on New Caledonia’s intricate issues.
“Lecornu is now Prime Minister. Does this mean New Caledonia’s case will return to its traditional home, the PM’s office?”, Tukumuli asked.
During an interview on French public service TV France 2 last week, Lecornu described New Caledonia as a “personal” issue for him because of his connections with the French Pacific territory when he was Minister for Overseas between 2020 and 2022.
“Some 18,000 kilometres from here, we have an institutional situation that cannot wait”, he said at the time.
A moderate pro-France politician, Philippe Gomès, for Calédonie Ensemble, on social networks, published an emotional public farewell letter to Valls, expressing his “sadness”.
“With you, (the French) Overseas enjoyed a consideration never seen before in the French Republic: that of a matter of national priority in the hands of a Minister of State, a former Prime Minister”,” he said.
Gomès hailed Valls’s tireless work in recent months to a point where “those who were criticising you yesterday were the same who ended up begging for you to be maintained at this position”.
Valls reacts during handover ceremony “Your eviction from the French cabinet, at a vital moment in our country’s history, at a time when we need stability, potentially bears heavy consequences, especially since it now comes as part of a national political chaos for which New Caledonia will inevitably pay the price too”, Gomès said.
In recent days, as he was still caretaker Minister for Overseas, Valls has published several articles in French national dailies, warning against the potential dangers — including civil war — if the Bougival agreement is dropped or neglected.
Lecornu also stressed, during interviews and statements over the past week, that New Caledonia, at the national level, was a matter of national priority at the same level as passing France’s 2025 budget.
Speaking on Monday during a brief handover ceremony with his successor Moutchou, Valls told public broadcaster Outremer la Première that he was “very sad” not being able to “complete” his mission, including on New Caledonia, but that he did not have any regrets or bitterness.
He said however that he would make a point of “continuing to discuss” with the FLNKS during the month of October to possibly prepare some amendments “without changing the big equilibriums of the Constitutional and the organic laws”.
Race against time As part of the Bougival text’s implementation and legal process, a referendum is also scheduled to be put to New Caledonia’s population no later than end of February 2026.
Lecornu is scheduled to deliver his maiden speech on general policy before Parliament on Wednesday, October 15 — if he is still in place by then.
On Monday, two main components of the opposition, Rassemblement National (right) and La France Insoumise (left) have already indicated their intention to each file a motion of no confidence against Lecornu and his new Cabinet.
Following consultations he held last week with a panel of parties represented in Parliament, Lecornu based his advice to President Macron on the fact that he believed a majority of parties within the House were not in favour of a parliamentary dissolution and therefore snap elections, for the time being.
Following a former dissolution in June 2024 and subsequent snap elections, the new Parliament had emerged more divided than ever, split between three main blocks — right, left and centre.
Since last week’s developments and the latest Cabinet announcement on Sunday, more rifts have surfaced even within those three blocks.
Some LR politicians, who have accepted to take part in Lecornu’s latest Cabinet, have been immediately excluded from the party.
On the centre-left, the Socialist Party has not yet indicated whether it would also file a motion of no confidence, but this would depend on Lecornu’s position and expected concessions on the very controversial pension scheme reforms and budget cuts issue.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
As we’ve reported, the Gaza ceasefire deal is in effect. Phase one of the US.-backed 20-point plan is underway. Hamas has released all 20 living captives. Israel has released almost 2000 Palestinians in Ramallah and now in Khan Younis in Gaza.
Yesterday, President Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset and then co-chaired a so-called peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not among the 20 or more world leaders who attend. He was invited but said he was not going.
For more, we’re joined by the Israeli historian, author and professor Ilan Pappé, professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and the chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation. Among his books, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, almost 20 years ago, and Gaza in Crisis, which he co-wrote with Noam Chomsky. His new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions That Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.
We thank you so much for being with us. Professor Pappé, if you could start off by responding to what has happened? We’re watching, in Khan Younis, prisoners being released, Palestinian prisoners, up to 2000, and in the occupied West Bank, though there families were told if they dare celebrate the release of their loved ones, they might be arrested.
And we saw the release of the 20 Israeli hostages as they returned to Israel. Hamas says they’re returning the dead hostages, the remains, over the next few days. Israel has not said they will return the dead prisoners, of which it’s believed there are nearly 200 in Israeli prisons.
Your response overall, and now to the summit in Egypt?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes. First of all, there is some joy in knowing that the bombing of the people in Gaza has stopped for a while. And there is joy knowing that Palestinian political prisoners have been reunited with their families, and, similarly, that Israeli hostages were reunited with their families.
But except from that, I don’t think we are in such an historical moment as President Trump claimed in his speech in the Knesset and beforehand. We are not at the end of the terrible chapter that we have been in for the last two years.
And that chapter is an Israeli attempt by a particularly fanatic, extremely rightwing Israeli government to try and use ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza to downsize the number of Palestinians in Palestine and impose Israel’s will in a way that they hope would be at least endorsed by some Arab governments and the world.
So far, they have an alliance of Trump and some extreme rightwing parties in Europe.
And now I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with the Palestinians. And what you told us about the way that the celebrations were dealt with in the West Bank and the incineration of the sanitation center shows you that nothing has changed in the dehumanisation and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people and as a country.
I hope the world will not stand by, because up to now it did stand by when the genocide occurred in Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: We have just heard President Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset. He followed the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu. I’m not sure, but in listening to Netanyahu, I don’t think he used the word “Palestinian.” President Trump has just called on the Israeli president to pardon Netanyahu.
Your thoughts on this, and also the possibility of why Netanyahu has not joined this summit that President Trump is co-chairing? Many are speculating for different reasons — didn’t want to anger the right, that’s further right than him. Others are saying the possibility of his arrest, not on corruption charges, but on crimes against humanity, the whole case before the International Criminal Court.
ILAN PAPPÉ: It could be a mixture of all of it, but I think at the center of it is the nature of the Israeli government that was elected in November 2022, this alliance between a very opportunistic politician, who’s only interested in surviving and keeping his position as a prime minister, alongside messianic, neo-Zionist politicians who really believe that God has given them the opportunity to create the Greater Israel, maybe even beyond the borders of Palestine, and, in the process, eliminate Palestinians.
I think that his consideration should all — are always about his chances of survival. So, whatever went in his mind, he came to the conclusion that going to Cairo is not going to help his chances of being reelected.
My great worry is not that he didn’t go to Cairo. My greatest worry is that he does believe that his only chance of being reelected is still to have a war going on, either in Gaza or in the West Bank or against Iran or in the north with Lebanon.
We are dealing here with a reckless, irresponsible politician, who is even willing to drown his own state in the process of saving his skin and his neck. And the victims will always be, from this adventurous policy, the Palestinians.
I hope the world understands that, really, the urgent need of — and I’m talking about world leaders rather than societies. You already discussed what is the level of solidarity among civil societies. But I do hope that political elites will understand — especially in the West — their role now is not to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians.
Their role now is to protect the Palestinians from destruction, elimination, genocide and ethnic cleansing. And nothing of that duty, especially of Europe, that is complicit with what happened, and the United States, that are complicit with what happened in the last two years — nothing that we heard in the speeches so far in the — in preparation for the summit in Egypt, and I have a feeling that we won’t hear anything about it also later on.
There is a different way in which our civil societies refer to Palestine as a place that has to be saved and protected, and still this irrelevant conversation among our political elites about a peace deal, a two-state solution, all of that, that has nothing to do with what we are experiencing in the way that the Israeli government thinks it has an historical moment to totally de-Arabise Palestine and eliminate and expunge the Palestinians from history and the area.
AMY GOODMAN: Ilan Pappé, I want to thank you for being with us, Israeli historian, professor of history, director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation. His new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions That Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.
Pesi Siale Fonua, a veteran Pacific journalist and the publisher-editor of Tonga’s leading news website Matangi Tonga Online, has died at the age of 78.
Fonua’s family announced his passing on Monday.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Pesi Siale Fonua (78), well known Pacific Islands journalist, publisher of Matangi Tonga Online, and beloved husband, father and grandfather, who died on 12 October 2025, at Vaiola Hospital in Tonga,” his family stated.
“Arrangements for the funeral and for friends and family to pay their respects will be shared in the coming days.”
Fonua and his wife, Mary, started the Vava’u Press Limited in 1979, initially as a quarterly magazine before transitioning to an online news service.
Matangi Tonga Online is known as an independent news agency that “has no allegiance to government, or to any political body”.
Tributes are pouring in for the “towering figure in Pacific journalism” from friends and colleagues.
Mapa Ha’ano Taumalolo said Fonua “was firm, immovable, and impartial” as a journalist.
“He never feared those in power when it came to asking hard questions. He had a very soft voice, but his questions were hard as a rock. I can’t recall if he was ever sued in court for defamation throughout his media career. Rest in peace, Legend,” Taumalolo wrote in a Facebook post.
Matangi Tonga journalist Linny Folau described her former boss and mentor for over two decades as “humble and gentle giant with an infectious laugh, funny and always up for a cold beer”.
ABC Pacific’s Tongan journalist Marian Kupu said Fonua “shaped generations of Tongan journalism”, describing him as “a steady voice of truth and a teacher”.
“He played a major role in shaping and upholding the foundations of journalism in Tonga, paving the way for many of us who followed,” she said.
New Zealand journalist and editor of The Pacific Newroom Facebook group Michael Field said Fonua was “a towering figure in Pacific journalism and culture: gracious, funny, always well informed, a proud Tongan and inspiring editor”.
RNZ Pacific senior jouralist Iliesa Tora said Fonua was a great journalist “who wrote it like it was . . . straight up and uncensored”.
Tonga Media Association (TMA) also expressed its condolences.
“Pesi spoke at our class at Queen Salote College (QSC), in 1987, on why, how and the challenges of becoming a journalist,” TMA president Taina Kami Enoka said.
‘”I was hooked. I taught at QSC for a year and joined Tonga Chronicle or Kalonikali Tonga in December, 1990. Rest in Peace, Pesi Fonua. You will be dearly missed. ‘Ofa atu, Mary and family.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two leftwing opposition members of the Knesset protested in the middle of US President Donald Trump’s historic and rambling speech praising the Gaza ceasefire and his administration in West Jerusalem today.
MK Ayman Odeh, a lawyer and chair of the mainly Arab Hadash-Ta’al party, was escorted out of the Knesset plenum after holding up a protest sign calling on Trump to “recognise Palestine”.
It was a day filled with emotion as Hamas released the 20 last living Israeli captives and the Israeli military began freeing 2000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them held without charge.
Lawmaker Odeh is a strong advocate for Palestinian statehood, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyaho’s government opposes.
Ofer Cassif, the party’s only Jewish MK, also tried to hold up a protest sign and was removed from the chamber.
After the interruption, President Trump quipped: “That was very efficient” — and then carried on with his speech.
Previously, Odeh posted on his X account: “The amount of hypocrisy in the plenum is unbearable.
‘Crimes against humanity’
“To crown Netanyahu through flattery the likes of which has never been seen, through an orchestrated group, does not absolve him and his government of the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, nor of the responsibility for the blood of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian victims and thousands of Israeli victims.
“But only because of the ceasefire and the overall deal am I here.
“Only ending the occupation, and only recognising the State of Palestine alongside Israel, will bring justice, peace, and security to all.”
The brief interruption did not deflect from Trump’s speech that was effusive in its praise for Israel, the country’s leadership, the hostages and their families, and its military and so-called “victory” in Gaza.
הוציאו אותי מהמליאה רק כי העליתי את הדרישה הפשוטה ביותר, דרישה שכל הקהילה הבינלאומית מסכימה עליה:
“The choice for Palestinians could not be more clear,” the US president argued.
“This is their chance to turn forever from the path of terror and violence — it’s been extreme — to exile the wicked forces of hate that are in their midst, and I think that’s going to happen,” Trump said.
Palestinians welcome the release of prisoners. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Tear gas fired An Israeli armoured vehicle fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinians gathered near Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, where hundreds had assembled to await the release of prisoners,
Earlier, the Israeli military, in a post on X, reported that the International Red Cross had transferred the final 13 captives held by Hamas to Shin Bet forces in the Gaza Strip, after an earlier group of seven had been released.
Al Jazeera Arabic, citing Palestinian sources, also reported that the handover of all 20 living captives had now been completed.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Adeh reported from Amman, Jordan, because Al Jazeera is banned from reporting from Israel and the Occupied West Bank, that the Israeli Broadcasting Authority had confirmed that the Red Cross had received the remaining 13 living Israeli captives.
“They will soon be handed over to the custody of the Israeli military, which, of course, is still present in 53 percent of Gaza,” she said.
“That means that we are in the process of concluding the release of all living Israeli captives, and that is all happening as US President Trump arrived in Israel.
“These are important developments, and the choreography is not coincidental.”
Remaining in Gaza were the bodies of 28 Israeli captives, and it was not clear how many of them will be released today.
As part of the ceasefire, the Israeli military were releasing almost 2000 Palestinian prisoners — including 1700 who had been kidnapped from Gaza, and 250 Palestinians serving life or long sentences.
President Trump was due to fly to the Sharm el-Sheikh respirt in Egypt later today for a summit aimed at advancing Washington’s plans for Gaza and the region.
Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons in harsh conditions. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Commons
AMY GOODMAN:Israel’s government has approved the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, that includes a pause in Israeli attacks and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons — 20 living hostages were freed today coinciding with President Trump’s visit to Israel and Egypt.
According to the deal, 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1700 people from Gaza detained in the last two years — and described as “forcibly disappeared” by the UN — would be released.
Hamas has demanded the release of prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, but his name was reportedly secretly removed from the prisoner exchange list by Israel.
Meanwhile, the US is sending about 200 troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire deal.
The Israeli military on Friday confirmed the ceasefire had come into effect as soldiers retreated from parts of Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including families that had been forced to the south, began their trek back to northern Gaza after news that Israeli forces were withdrawing.
Returning Gaza City residents made their way through mounds of rubble and destroyed neighborhoods, searching for any sign of their homes and belongings. Among them, Fidaa Haraz.
FIDAA HARAZ: [translated] I came since the morning, when they said there was a withdrawal, to find my home. I’m walking in the street, but I do not know where to go, due to the extent of the destruction.
I swear I don’t know where the crossroads is or where my home is. I know that my home was leveled, but where is it? Where is it? I cannot find it.
What is this? What do we do with our lives? Where should we live? Where should we stay? A house of multiple floors, but nothing was left?
AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera reports Israel’s army said it would allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks carrying food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities daily into Gaza, through coordination with the United Nations and other international groups.
On Thursday, the exiled Hamas Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya declared an end to the war.
KHALIL AL-HAYYA: [translated] Today, we announced that we have reached an agreement to end the war and aggression against our people and to begin implementing a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the entry of aid, the opening of the Rafah crossing in both directions and the exchange of prisoners.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today in Israel.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Today, we mark one of the greatest achievements in the war of revival: the return of all of our hostages, the living and the dead as one. …
This way, we grapple Hamas. We grapple it all around, ahead of the next stages of the plan, in which Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarised.
If this can be achieved the easy way, very well. If not, it will be achieved the hard way.
AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, President Trump hailed his administration’s ceasefire plan during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday as concerns mount regarding potential US and foreign intervention in the rebuilding of Gaza.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Gaza is going to be slowly redone. You have tremendous wealth in that part of the world by certain countries, and just a small part of that, what they — what they make, will do wonders for — for Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and a former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). She has just recently written a piece for The Guardian. It is headlined “A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it.” And Amjad Iraqi is a senior Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, joining us from London.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Diana Buttu, let’s begin with you. First, your response to the ceasefire-hostage deal that’s just been approved by the Israeli government and Hamas?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, first, Amy, it’s really quite repulsive that Palestinians have had to negotiate an end to their genocide. It should have been that the world put sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide, rather than forcing Palestinians to negotiate an end to it. At the same time, we’re also negotiating an end to the famine, a famine that Israel, again, created.
Who are we negotiating with? The very people who created that famine. And so, it’s really repugnant that this is the position that Palestinians have been forced to be in.
And so, while people here are elated, happy that the bombs have stopped, we’re also at the same time worried, because we’ve seen that the international community, time and again, has abandoned us.
Everybody is happy that the Israelis are going home, but nobody’s talking about the more than 11,000 Palestinians who are currently languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped. Many of them are hostages picked up after October 2023, being held without charge, without trial, and nobody at all is talking about them.
So, while people are happy that the bombs have stopped, we know that Israel’s control has not at all stopped. And Israel has made it clear that it’s going to continue to control every morsel of food that comes into Gaza. It’s going to control every single construction item that comes into Gaza.
And it’s going to continue to maintain a military occupation over Gaza.
This is not a peace agreement. This is not an end to the occupation. And I think it’s so important for us that we keep our eyes on Gaza and start demanding that Israel be held to account, not only for the genocide, but for all of these decades of occupation that led to this in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the exchange of hostages, Israeli hostages, dead and alive, and Palestinian prisoners? According to the Hamas Gaza chief, I believe they’re saying all women and children, Palestinian women and children, picked up over these last two years — or is it beyond? — are going to be released. And then, of course, there are the well over 1000 prisoners who are going to be released.
DIANA BUTTU: No, not quite. So, there are 250 who are political prisoners who are going to be released, and that list just came out about a little over an hour ago.
But there are also 1700 Palestinians, solely from Gaza, who are going to be released. And these were people — these are doctors, these are nurses, these are journalists and so on, who were — who Israel picked up after 7 October, 2023, and has been holding as hostages.
These are the people that are going to be released. There are still thousands more, Amy, that are from the West Bank, that we do not know what is going to happen to them.
And so, while the focus is just on the people in Gaza — and again, there is no path for freeing all of those thousands of Palestinians who are languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped.
What’s going to happen to them? Who’s going to be focusing on them? I don’t think that it’s going to be this US administration.
AMY GOODMAN:I want to talk about the West Bank in a minute. More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank just over the last two years. But I first want to get Amjad Iraqi’s response to this deal that has now been signed off on.
I mean, watching the images of tens of thousands, this sea of humanity, of Palestinians going south to north, to see what they can find of their homes in places like Gaza City, not to mention who’s trapped in the rubble. We say something — well over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, but we don’t know the real number. It could be hundreds of thousands?
AMJAD IRAQI: Indeed, Amy. And to kind of continue off of Diana’s points, this is a deal that really should have been made long, long time ago. We’ve known that the parameters of this truce have been on the table for well over a year, if not since the very beginning of the war, what they used to define as an all-for-all deal, the idea that Hamas would release all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire.
And the reasons for the constant foiling of it are quite evident. And it’s important to recognise this not for the sake of just lamenting the lives, the many lives, that have been lost and the massive destruction that could have been averted, but it needs to really inform the next steps going forward.
The biggest takeaway of what’s happening right now is that in order for a ceasefire to be sustained, in order for Gaza to be saved from further military assault, you need massive political pressure.
And we’ve seen this really build up in the past weeks and months. You saw this, for example, from European governments, which, even through the symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood, was very much venting their frustration with the Israeli conduct in the war, the fact that the EU was actually starting to contemplate more punitive measures against Israel, such as partial trade suspensions, potential sanctions against Israel.
We saw this building up over the past few weeks. Arab states have started to use much of their leverage, especially after Israel’s strike on Doha or on Hamas’s offices in Doha. We started seeing Gulf and other Arab and Muslim states come forward to President Trump at the UN saying that Israel aggression cannot continue like this.
And most crucially is, of course, President Trump himself and Washington finally saying that it needs to put its foot down to stop this war, which we’ve heard repeatedly from Trump himself.
But this is really the first time since the January ceasefire agreement where Trump has really insisted that this come to an end.
Now, this — now there’s much to be sort of debated about the Trump plan itself, but this aspect of the truce cannot continue, and certainly cannot save Palestinian lives, unless that pressure is maintained.
The concern now is that that pressure will recede or alleviate, because there’s now a deal that’s signed. But, actually, in order to enforce it, that pressure really needs to be maintained.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think was the turning point, Amjad? The bombing of Qatar?
Now, I mean, The New York Times had an exposé that Trump knew before, not just in the midst of the bombing, that Israel was bombing their ally to try to kill the Hamas leadership. But do you think that was the turning point?
AMJAD IRAQI: It certainly might have expedited, I think, a lot of factors that were already building up. As I said, pressure had been mounting against Israel for quite a while.
There was really outrage, not just at the continuance of the military assaults, but the policy of starvation, which was very evident on the ground, and Israel’s complete refusal to let in aid, its failed project with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
So, this had all been building, but I do think the strike on Doha really pushed Arab states to say that enough is enough. To see them really meet all together with President Trump and create a bit more of a united position to insist that this really couldn’t go on, I think, has really signalled that Israel really crossed a certain line geopolitically.
Now, of course, that line should have been recognised as being crossed well before because of the facts on the ground in Gaza, but I do think that this has helped to kind of push things over the edge a bit more assertively.
There are also speculations about Trump, of course, trying to have his name in for the Nobel Peace Prize, and potentially other factors. But I do think that the timing of this, again, regardless of what ended up pushing it over the line, it is unfortunate that it has really taken this long.
And it’s really up to global powers and foreign governments to recognise that in order to make sure that this stays, that they really need to keep that pressure up.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Amjad Iraqi, the core demand of the ceasefire is that Hamas disarm and end its rule. What security guarantees is Hamas seeking for its own members to lay down their arms and not face a wave of arrests or assassinations?
How is this going to work? And talk about who you see running Gaza.
AMJAD IRAQI: So, these things are still a bit unclear. So, throughout the ceasefire talks, Hamas has kept insisting about the idea of US guarantees that Israel will not end the war.
But there’s never really any clear, concrete way to prove this. And as we’ve seen before, like in the January ceasefire deal and in much of the ceasefire talks, even if President Trump expresses his desire to see an end to the war, oftentimes he would still hand the steering wheel to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And if Netanyahu decided that he wanted to thwart the ceasefire talks, if he wanted to relaunch military assaults, and the Israeli military and the government would back it, then Trump and Washington would fall into line and amplify those calls, and even President Trump himself would sort of cheer on the military assaults.
And so, this factor has certainly weighed a lot on Hamas, but I do think there’s a culmination of pressure, the fact that Arab states have insisted on Hamas to try to show, at least signal, certain flexibility, even though many of its demands have been quite consistent throughout the war.
But the fact that I think Hamas is now feeling that there’s also a bit more pressure on Israel to actually ensure that they at least try to take the gamble that they will not return to war.
And in regards to decommissioning and disarmament, publicly Hamas has placed a red line around this right to bear arms. But historically, and even recently, they do say that they are willing to have conversations about decommissioning, as long as it’s tied to a political framework, especially one that’s tied to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Now, one can really debate how much this process is actually quite feasible, and obviously the Israeli government and much of the Israeli public is quite adamant in its opposition against Palestinian statehood, but Hamas may at least offer some space for those conversations to be had.
There are discussions about it potentially giving up what it might describe as its larger or more offensive weaponry, like rockets or anti-tank missiles. And there’s bigger questions around firearms.
But I think it’s important to put this question not as a black-and-white issue, as something that has to come first in the political process, as Israel is demanding, but one that requires trust building and confidence building in the rubric of a process of Palestinian self-determination.
This is important not just in the case of Palestine, but across many conflicts around the world where the question of decommissioning, about establishing one rule, one gun, one government for a society, requires that kind of process. So, it shouldn’t just be a policy of destroying and military assaults and so on. You do need to engage in these questions in good faith.
AMY GOODMAN: There are so many questions, Diana Buttu, in this first stage of the ceasefire-hostage deal, is really the only one that Netanyahu addressed in his speech.
You’re usually in Ramallah. You spend a lot of time in the West Bank. Where does this leave the Palestinian Authority? I don’t think the West Bank is talked about in this deal.
And what about the fact that we’re looking at pictures of Netanyahu surrounded by Steve Witkoff on one side and Jared Kushner, who has talked about — as we know — famously referred to Gaza as “very valuable” waterfront property?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, I think that this plan was really an Israeli plan, and it was repackaged and branded as a Trump plan. And you can see just in the text of it and the way that all of the guarantees were given to the Israelis, and none given to the Palestinians, it’s really an Israeli plan.
But beyond that, it’s important to keep in mind that when Trump was going around and talking about this plan, that he consulted with everybody but Palestinians. He didn’t talk to Mahmoud Abbas. He didn’t even let Mahmoud Abbas go to the UN to deliver his speech before the UN.
I’m pretty certain he didn’t speak to the UN representative, Palestine’s representative to the UN. And so, this is — once again, we’ve got a plan in which people are talking about Palestinians, but never talking to Palestinians. So, again, this is very much an Israeli plan repackaged as a Trump plan and branded as a Trump plan.
In terms of them looking at Gaza as being prime real estate, this is not at all different from the way that they’ve done it in the past, and this is not at all the way that Israel has looked at Palestine.
And this is because this is the way that colonisers look at land that isn’t theirs. They ignore the history of the place.
Gaza has an old history. It has some of the oldest churches, I think the second-oldest church in the world. It has some of the oldest mosques. It has an old civilization.
We want Gaza to be Gaza. We don’t want it to be Dubai or any other place. We want it to be Gaza. And so, the idea of somehow turning it into prime real estate, this is the mentality of somebody who’s coming from outside.
This is the way that colonisers think. This isn’t the way that the Indigenous think. And so, you can see in this plan that it’s not only the idea of the outside coming in, but they certainly didn’t consult Palestinians at all.
As for what’s going to happen to the Palestinian Authority, it’s clear that they don’t want the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and it’s clear that they do want to have a foreign authority in the Gaza Strip.
But once again, Amy, when is it that Palestinians get to decide our own future? Are we really going back to the era of colonialism, when other people get to decide our future? And that’s what this plan is really all about.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to be continuing to cover this story. President Trump is going to be there for the signing of the ceasefire in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on Monday, and the hostages and prisoners are expected to be released on Monday or Tuesday.
Diana Buttu, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Amjad Iraqi, Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group.
While speaking to reporters at the Kolkata airport on October 12 on the alleged ‘gang rape’ of a medical student in Durgapur, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that the alleged assault took place at 12.30 am and asked why the victim was out of the campus so late.
The second-year MBBS student, originally from Odisha, was allegedly gang-raped on Friday, October 10, evening outside the institute campus in Durgapur, about 170 km from Kolkata. At the time of this report being written, three individuals were arrested in the case, identified as Apu Bauri (21), Firdous Shiekh (23), and Sheikh Riazuddin (32).
Coming close on the heels of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata in August 2024 and the alleged rape of a student at the South Calcutta Law College in June this year, the Durgapur incident saw all Opposition parties coming down heavily on the Mamata Banerjee-government.
When asked to comment about the incident before she boarded a flight for flood-hit north Bengal, Banerjee urged private colleges to take responsibility of their students’ safety. Her words, which immediately triggered an outrage from the Opposition, were as follows:
“….if in Bengal anything happens to women, we do not allow anything to be considered as a casual case. It’s a serious case we consider. And that girl.. it’s shocking.. she was studying in a private medical college. So all the private medical college.. whose responsibility? How they came out in the night at 12.30? And it happens in the… so far I know… in the forest area. At 12.30… I do not know what happened. Investigation is on. I am shocked to see the incident. But private medical colleges also should take care for their students. And specially the girl child… at night time… they should not be allowed to come out in the outside. They have to protect themselves also…” (sic)
She also said, “Nobody will be excused. Whoever is guilty will be strictly punished.”
#WATCH | Kolkata, WB: On the alleged gangrape of an MBBS student in Durgapur, CM Mamata Banerjee says, “This is a private college. Three weeks ago, three girls were raped on the beach in Odisha. What action is being taken by the Odisha government?… The girl was studying in a… pic.twitter.com/ugQrQwNeW7
Multiple sources confirm that the alleged gang rape occurred between 8 and 9.30 pm on October 10.
1. Press Release by the medical college:
The institute where the survivor was a second-year MBBS student published a press note detailing the timing of the incident based on CCTV footage available with them.
According to the statement, the survivor left the campus for dinner with another student around 7:58 pm. Following this, “One of them returned at 8:42 pm, but after loitering around the main exit area for around 5-6 minutes, he stepped out again at about 8:48 pm. The two then returned together at 9:29 p.m. The female student proceeded toward the Girls Hostel at around 9:31 pm. Later, it came to light that the female student, while she was outside campus, bad endured an assault — an occurrence she has herself claimed and reported.”
2. Police complaint by survivor’s father
Alt News accessed the police complaint submitted by the student’s father at New Township police station under Asansol-Durgapur Commissionerate on October 11, on the basis of which a case (No. 131/25 dated 11.10.2025) under section 70(1)/3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita was lodged. The complaint was signed as ‘Received’ by an officer at the station.
According to the complaint, the alleged assault took place a little after 8 pm on October 10. Alt News is in possession of the document but we won’t publish it in the interest of the survivor and the investigation.
3. In an interview, the survivor’s father mentioned that time of the incident as around 9-9:30 pm. He said a friend of her daughter took her near the gate for eating ‘gupchup’ (panipuri) when two or three more people arrived. “Seeing this, the friend fled leaving the girl alone. She was raped after this.”
To sum up, the claim by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee that the victim had stepped out of the college campus at 12.30 in the night is false. In a conversation with media persons on October 12, she mentioned at least twice that the alleged assault had taken place at 12.30 am.
Within hours of being named the Nobel Peace laureate for 2025, María Corina Machado called on President Trump to step up his military and economic campaign against her own country — Venezuela.
The curriculum vitae of the opposition leader hardly lines up with what one would typically associate with a Peace Maker. Nor would those who nominated her, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and recent US national security advisor Mike Waltz, both drivers of violent policies towards Venezuela.
“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness,” said the Nobel Committee statement.
Let’s see if María Corina Machado passes that litmus test and is worthy to stand alongside last year’s winners, Nihon Hidankyo, representing the Japanese hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “honoured for their decades-long commitment to nuclear disarmament and their tireless witness against the horrors of nuclear war”.
Machado supports Israel, would move embassy Machado is a passionate Zionist and supporter of both the State of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally. She has not been silent on the genocide; indeed she has actively called for Israel to press ahead, saying Hamas “must be defeated at all costs, whatever form it takes”.
>If Machado achieves power in Venezuela, among her first long-promised acts will be the ending of Venezuela’s support for Palestine and the transfer of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The smiling face of Washington regime change The Council on American-Islamic Relations, US’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, called Machado a supporter of anti-Muslim fascism and decried the award as “insulting and unacceptable”.
2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado . . . “It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation,” warns a history professor. Image: Cristian Hernandez/ Anadolu Agency
Venezuelan activist Michelle Ellner wrote in the US progressive outlet Code Pink:
“She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatisation, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.
“Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help ‘liberate’ Venezuela with bombs under the banner of ‘freedom.’
She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.”
Legitimising US escalation against Venezuela Ellner said she almost laughed at the absurdity of the choice, which I must admit was my own reaction. Yale professor of history Greg Grandin was similarly shocked.
“It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation.”
What Grandin is referring to is the prize being used by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration to legitimise escalating violence against Venezuela — an odd outcome for a peace prize.
Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World says Machado “has consistently represented a more hardline in terms of economics, in terms of US relations. That intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.
“They didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but they have given it to the next best thing as far as Marco Rubio is concerned — if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela.”
The Iron Lady wins a peace prize? Rubio has repeatedly referred to Machado as the “Venezuelan Iron Lady” — fair enough, as she bears greater resemblance to Margaret Thatcher than she does to Mother Teresa.
This illogicality brought back graffiti I read on a wall in the 1970s: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”. Yet someone at the Nobel Committee had a brain explosion (fitting as Alfred Nobel invented dynamite) when they settled on Machado as the embodiment of Alfred Nobel’s ideal recipient — “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Machado, a recipient of generous US State Department funding and grants, including from the National Endowment for Democracy (the US’s prime soft power instrument of regime change) is praised for her courage in opposing the Maduro government, and in calling out a slide towards authoritarianism.
Conservatives could run a sound argument in terms of Machado as an anti-regime figure but it is ludicrous to suggest her hard-ball politics and close alliances with Trump would in any way qualify her for the peace prize. Others see her as an agent of the CIA, an agent of the Monroe Doctrine, and as a mouthpiece for a corrupt elite that wants to drive a violent antidemocratic regime change.
She has promised the US that she would privatise the country’s oil industry and open the door to US business.
“We’re grateful for what Trump is doing for peace,” the Nobel winner told the BBC. Trump’s recent actions include bombing boatloads of Venezuelans and Colombians — a violation of international law — as part of a pressure campaign on the Maduro government.
Machado says she told Trump “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what he’s doing, not only in the Americas, but around the world for peace, for freedom, for democracy”. The dead and starving of Gaza bear witness to a counter narrative.
Rigged elections or rigged narratives? Peacemakers aren’t normally associated with coup d’etats but Machado most certainly was in 2002 when democratically elected President Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown. Machado was banned from running for President in 2024 because of her calls for US intervention in overthrowing the government.
Central to both Machado’s prize and the US government’s regime change operation is the argument that the Maduro government won a “rigged election” in 2024 and is running a narco-trafficking government; charges accepted as virtually gospel in the mainstream media and dismissed as rubbish by some scholars and experts on the country.
Alfred de Zayas, a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy who served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order, cautions against the standard Western narrative that the Venezuelan elections “were rigged”.
The reality is that the Maduro government, like the Chavez government before it, enjoys popularity with the poor majority of the country. Delegitimising any elected government opposed to Washington is standard operating procedure by the great power.
Professor Zayas led a UN mission to Venezuela in 2017 and has visited the country a number of times since. He has spoken with NGOs, such as Fundalatin, Grupo Sures, Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos, as well as people from all walks of life, including professors, church leaders and election officials.
“I gradually understood that the media mood in the West was only aiming for regime change and was deliberately distorting the situation in the country,” he said in an article in 2024.
I provide those thoughts not as proof definitive of the legitimacy of the elections but as stimulant to look beyond our tightly curated mainstream media. María Machado is Washington’s “guy” and that alone should set off alarm bells.
Michelle Ellner: “Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.”
“Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”. Matthew 5:9.
Amen to that.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
The global peak journalism body has condemned the targeting, harassment, and censorship by lobby groups of Australian journalists for reporting critically on Israel’s war on Gaza.
The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Australian affiliate, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), said in a statement they were attempts to silence journalists and called on media outlets and regulatory bodies to ensure the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and access to information were upheld.
In a high-profile case, Australia’s Federal Court found on June 25 that Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf was unlawfully dismissed by the national public broadcaster, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), for sharing a social media post by Human Rights Watch relating to violations by Israel in Gaza, reports IFJ.
Lattouf was removed from a five-day radio presenting contract in Sydney in December 2023, with the judgment confirming her dismissal was made to appease pro-Israel lobbyists.
On Seotember 24, the ABC was ordered to pay an additional $A150,000 in compensation on top of A$70,000 already awarded.
In a separate incident, Australian cricket reporter Peter Lalor was dropped from radio coverage of Australia’s Sri Lanka tour by broadcaster SEN in February after he reposted several posts on X regarding Israeli attacks in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
“I was told in one call there were serious organisations making complaints; in another I was told that this was not the case,” said Lalor in a statement.
Kostakidis faces harassment
Prominent journalist and former SBS World News Australia presenter Mary Kostakidis has also faced ongoing harassment by the Zionist Federation of Australia, with a legal action filed in the Federal Court under Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act for sharing two allegedly “antisemitic” posts on X.
Kostakidis said the case failed to identify which race, ethnicity or nationality was offended by her posts, with a verdict currently awaited on a strikeout order filed by Kostakidis in July.
The MEAA said: “MEAA journalists are subject to the code of ethics, who in their professional capacity, often provide critical commentary on political warfare.
“These are the tenets of democracy. We stand with our colleagues in their workplaces, in the courtrooms, and in their deaths to raise our voices against the silence.”
The IFJ said: “Critical and independent journalism in the public interest is more crucial than ever in the face of incessant pressure from partisan lobby groups.
“IFJ stands in firm solidarity with journalists globally facing harassment and censorship for their reporting.”
Journalist killed in Gaza City
Killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi . . . gained prominence for his videos covering Israel’s two-year war on Gaza Image: Abdelhakim Abu Riash/AJ file
Meanwhile, gunmen believed to be part of Israeli-linked militia, have killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, south of Gaza City, after the ceasefire, reports Al Jazeera.
Social media posts showed people bidding farewell to the 28-year-old who had been bringing news about the war over the last two years through his widely watched videos, the channel said.
Several people accused of attacking returnees to Gaza City by colluding with Israeli forces were killed during clashes in the area where Aljafarawi was shot dead, sources told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera said that more than 270 Palestinian journalists had been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.
BREAKING: Prominent Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi has been killed by gunmen in Gaza City’s al-Sabra neighbourhood, making him one of more than 270 journalists killed since Israel’s war began in 2023.
A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed — ending colonisation; freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags (also tortured, nearly 100 have died under torture in the last two years); return of the millions of refugees; and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
That is why this global uprising (intifada) will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained.
Here are brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza:
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh during his visit to Aotearoa New Zealand last year . . . “what is needed — ending colonisation, freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags , return of the millions of refugees, and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Image: David Robie/APR
1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict? The West Bank has been illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds of new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).
2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza?
It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the belligerent occupier — “Israel” — has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the United Nations was conditional on respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949.
This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0 percent confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.
3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple ceasefire attempts?
Simply put because colonisation can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonisation entity is the active face of colonisation. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonisation with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.
Israeli military occupation on the environment. Video: Greenpeace
4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken on Palestinian society? It is now well documented from UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even the Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, medicide,
and veriticide. (More at: ongaza.org )
5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages? The terrorist organisation that deceptively calls itself “IDF” (Israeli Defence Forces) was not interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue).
The IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
on 7 October 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonisers (living on stolen Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the more than 11,000 political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. (Again see ongaza.org )
6. How significant was international involvement — particularly from the US — in reaching the final agreement?
This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda.
Under the influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save
“Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump was blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!
7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace deal into a sustainable, lasting solution?
Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the international conventions (Geneva Convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. (For more: bdsmovement.net )
8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war? Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, a botanic garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment), for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.
Conflict, colonisations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background.
9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis?
What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilising for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice).
What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonisation and genocide.
About 8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to Zionism and Western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).
Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Bedouin in cyberspace; a villager at home; professor, founder and (volunteer) director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Occupied Palestine.
The bombs have indeed stopped, but our suffering continues. Our reality has not changed. We are still under siege.
Israel still has full control over our air, land and sea; it is still blocking sick and injured Palestinians from leaving and journalists, war crimes investigators and activists from going in.
It is still controlling what food, what medicine, and essential supplies enter.
The siege has lasted more than 18 years, shaping every moment of our lives. I have lived under this blockade since I was just three years old. What kind of peace is this, if it will continue to deny us the freedoms that everyone else has?
‘Deal’ overshadowed flotilla kidnap
The news of the ceasefire deal and “the peace plan” overshadowed another, much more important development.
Israel raided another freedom flotilla in international waters loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza, kidnapping 145 people on board — a crime under international law. This came just days after Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, detaining more than 450 people who were trying to reach Gaza.
These flotillas carried more than just humanitarian aid. They carried the hope of freedom for the Palestinian people. They carried a vision of true peace — one where Palestinians are no longer besieged, occupied and dispossessed.
Many have criticised the freedom flotillas, arguing that they cannot make a difference since they are doomed to be intercepted.
I myself did not pay much attention to the movement. I was deeply disappointed, having lost hope in seeing an end to this war.
But that changed when Brazilian journalist Giovanna Vial interviewed me. Giovanna wrote an article about my story before setting sail with the Sumud Flotilla. She then made a post on social media saying: “for Sara, we sail”. Her words and her courage stirred something in me.
Afterwards, I kept my eyes on the flotilla news, following every update with hope. I told my relatives about it, shared it with my friends, and reminded anyone who would listen how extraordinary this movement was.
‘She became the light’
I kept wondering — how is it possible that, in a world so heavy with injustice, there are still people willing to abandon everything and put their lives in danger for people they had never met, for a place, most of them had never visited.
I stayed in touch with Giovanna.
“Until my last breath, I will never leave you alone,” she wrote to me while sailing towards Gaza. In the midst of so much darkness, she became the light.
This was the first time in two years I felt like we were heard. We were seen.
The Sumud Flotilla was by far the biggest in the movement’s history, but it was not about how many boats there were or how many people were on board or how much humanitarian aid they carried. It was about putting a spotlight on Gaza — about making sure the world could no longer look away.
“All Eyes on Gaza,” read one post on the official Instagram account of the flotilla. It stayed with me, I read it on a very heavy night when the deafening sound of bombs in Gaza City was relentless. It was just before I had to flee my home due to the brutal Israeli onslaught.
Israel stopped flotillas, aid
Israel stopped the flotillas. They abused and deported the participants. They seized the aid. They may have prevented them from reaching our shores, but they failed to erase the message they carried.
A message of peace. A message of freedom. A message we had been waiting to hear for two long, brutal years. The boats were captured, but the solidarity reached us.
I carry so much gratitude in my heart for every single human being who took part in the freedom flotillas. I wish I could reach each of them personally — to tell them how much their courage, their presence, and their solidarity meant to me, and to all of us in Gaza.
We will never forget them. We will carry their names, their faces, their voices in our hearts forever.
To those who sailed toward us: thank you. You reminded us that we are not alone.
And to the world: we are clinging to hope. We are still waiting — still needing — more flotillas to come. Come to us. Help us break free from this prison.
The bombing has stopped now, and I can only hope that this time it does not resume in a few weeks. But we still do not have peace.
Governments have failed us. But the people have not.
One day, I know, the freedom flotilla boats will reach the shore of Gaza and we will be free.
Sara Awad is an English literature student, writer, and storyteller based in Gaza. Passionate about capturing human experiences and social issues, Sara uses her words to shed light on stories often unheard. Her work explores themes of resilience, identity, and hope amid war. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
Of 42 referendums, 17 voted to retain Māori Wards in Aotearoa New Zealand’s local elections yesterday, which suggests something about where we are at as a nation — but you already knew that right?
We all know that it’s only recently that we’ve been attempting to teach New Zealand history in our schools.
As a consequence few people understand it — and even less understand Te Tiriti, and our obligations to it — and things like “active protection” not being based on race, but being based on a constitutional foundation which protects the interests of our indigenous.
They are not just the same as some other minority.
There’s a special status to this and we would like to think we can independently maintain it in a so called “liberal democracy” but, as you know, the guardrails are shaky and under neoliberal attack.
We know Education Minister Erica Stanford is working with Atlas plants and one-eyed folk to dilute that effort, and we know history and social sciences are under attack under this government.
They pull the funding for the humanities. That’s the fact.
Not always equitable
While the electoral system may be formally equal (one person, one vote), it does not always lead to equitable outcomes for groups with distinct cultural, historical, and political status — such as Māori.
You try to talk fairness to your average rightwing, under-educated Act voter and they will tell you about fairness based on their own victimhood and “equality” not “equity”.
While Māori are guaranteed representation through the Māori electoral roll at the national level — Māori seats in Parliament — Māori wards are the local government equivalent to me.
Without Māori wards, Māori communities often lack meaningful say in local decisions affecting their lands, resources, and wellbeing, especially given the legacy of colonisation and ongoing disparities.
Nobody at Hobson’s Pledge cares much about that because it does not effect them. Self interest is their bottom line.
Without dedicated representation, Māori voices are often sidelined or overruled as we all have seen, many times and here we go again — as Code Brown is rife in Auckland and celebrations begin with no real mandate after such a low turnout.
Code Brown will tell you otherwise that these results are all about the public voting for “doing a good job” and not “just a pretty face” but in reality it’s about disconnection and the cost of living crisis and double digit rates increases in 18 councils, and who bothers to vote?
Many new mayors
In 18 councils which gave ratepayers a double digit rate increase, 13 elected new mayors — just like that!
Overall, out of 66 mayoral races, 31 councils elected a new mayor
Māori wards ensure there are elected representatives directly accountable to Māori constituents, strengthening democracy, but we’ve seen the erosion of it under this government.
We have all seen how they are pushing all things Māori backwards in a dedicated ideological push to clear the way for foreign investment — and that’s the battle.
Act picked up 10 candidates — but much of that is about who votes, and rather than a swing to the right it’s about rates and low turnout.
Ratepayers tend to get out and vote more than renters, according to Code Brown as we stare at voter turnout in 2025 which appears significantly down compared to 2022 in major cities.
Auckland dropped from about 35.5 percent to about 23 percent. Wellington dropped from 45 percent to around 36 percent. Christchurch also dropped, though somewhat less sharply — and while that’s preliminary, it’s a statement.
Nationwide turnout drops
Overall, the nationwide turnout is looking lower — around 36 percent preliminary results for the 2025 local elections, and offical counts will be known on Friday, October 17.
So in the end, we need to vote out the central government which gave us upward pressure on rates with unaffordable water infrastructure reform — while trying to blame councils — attacked Māori on many fronts; and eroded progress towards a proper constitutional transformation .
After a recent byelection and now this result — there’s a message to people who do not vote . . . and it’s about the outcomes. You either vote or you get screwed.
I’m sure you already can see the need as some suggest voting should be compulsory like in Australia – and we all saw the gerrymandering by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith about enrolment dates.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.
A long-time broadcaster, sports commentator, and former councillor, Fauono has been a visible advocate for inclusion, youth opportunity, and safer communities across the Wellington region.
Also in Hutt City, Mele Tonga-Grant won a council seat in the at-large race by a margin of just one vote, 7759 to 7758 over independent candidate Kath McGuinness, one of the tightest results in the country.
The result remains provisional, with preliminary results due on Monday and the final count, including special votes, to be confirmed on Friday.
In the Hutt Valley, Pacific representation also continues at the community level. In the Wainuiomata Community Board election, Lesa Bingley (Independent) received 2264 votes, followed by Vatau Sagaga with 2097 and Lahraine Sagaga (Independent) with 1914.
Their results reflect a strong Pacific presence among local candidates contributing to grassroots leadership across the Wellington region.
Poriua In neighbouring Porirua, Kylie Wihapi (Māori Ward) and Izzy Ford (Onepoto General Ward) have both been re-elected as city councillors, the incumbent councillors from the previous term. Their wins add to Porirua’s long tradition of strong Pasifika and Māori civic leadership. Both are community advocates known for their work in health, housing, and youth empowerment.
Dunedin In Ōtepoti, Marie Laufiso (Building Kotahitaka) has been re-elected to the Dunedin City Council. First elected in 2016, Laufiso has chaired several council committees, including Community Services, Grants, and the Social Wellbeing Advisory Group. A strong advocate for social equity, sustainability and collective care, she continues to ensure Pacific and community perspectives remain part of local decision-making in Dunedin.
Nelson In Nelson, Matty Anderson (Independent), who is of Niuean and Pākehā heritage, has been re-elected to the Central Ward alongside Lisa Austin, Pete Rainey and James Hodgson. A former Navy serviceman and community advocate, Anderson has worked across disability, youth, Pacific, migrant and homelessness support. He continues to promote inclusion, grassroots engagement and positive civic participation across the city.
Waitaki In Ōamaru, Mata’aga Hana Melania Fanene-Taiti has been elected to the Waitaki District Council, representing the Ōamaru Ward. A New Zealand-born Samoan with family ties to Vaiee, Moata’a and Saleimoa in Samoa, she holds the matai title Mata’aga from her mother’s village of Vaiee. Fanene-Taiti’s election reflects a new generation of Pasifika voices stepping into civic leadership in smaller centres, with a focus on inclusion, wellbeing and community representation beyond the main cities.
National significance The 2025 local elections have seen a rise in Pasifika representation across Aotearoa, with both returning leaders and new candidates elected to councils nationwide.
Fauono’s election as New Zealand’s first Pacific mayor marks a significant milestone in local government, reflecting the growing participation of Pasifika communities in civic life.
Saturday’s progress results indicate a tight race for several seats. Preliminary results will be released on Monday, with final results confirmed on Friday once the special votes have been counted.
Mary Afemata is a reporter with Pacific Media Network. LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a member of LDR.
Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is vital to nation-building. It empowers Filipinos to make informed decisions by fostering critical thinking, strengthening media awareness and encouraging responsible digital use.
This call was echoed last week when United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and MediaQuest’s THINKaMuna campaign representatives came together for a small but meaningful gathering.
The event underscored their shared commitment, with discussions centering on projects to push MIL forward in the Philippines.
“Most young people today turn to social media as their first source of news,” said UNESCO Jakarta director Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa.
“With AI making it harder to tell what’s fake from what’s true, it’s even more important for all generations to think critically and share information responsibly.”
They are making this happen in several ways.
Explainer videos
The UNESCO-THINKaMuna partnership has rolled out three of six digital episodes so far — Cognitive Biases in July, Critical Thinking in August and Tech Addiction in September.
Each is short, visually appealing and easy to understand, perfect for audiences with short attention spans.
“Most MIL materials are very academic because they were made for schools,” shared MediaQuest corporate communications consultant Ramon Isberto.
“We want ours to be different — playful and something people can casually talk about in their neighbourhoods.”
This approach has brought the digital episodes closer to audiences, helping them reach nearly five million views.
“In the Philippines, MediaQuest is our first media partner piloting media literacy in different ways and integrating it,” added UNESCO Jakarta program specialist Ana Lomtadze.
“Our mission is really about reaching out in new, innovative ways and showing audiences how and why they should discern information and check their sources.”
Taking MIL to classrooms While UNESCO provides guidance, Katsuno-Hayashikawa noted that implementation depends on local, on-the-ground initiatives.
THINKaMuna recognises this, which is why they are distributing 1000 MIL journals to schools across the country.
“A substantial percentage of grade school and high school students are not functional readers – they can read, but don’t fully understand what they’re reading,” explained Isberto.
To address this, the journals are filled with visuals to ensure the message comes across. Workshops for senior journalists and the MILCON 2025 are also in the works to complete the offline component of the collaboration.
“Society exists because we communicate and learn from each other,” Isberto said.
“Today, media and information literacy is our way of continuing that conversation.”
This brutal war on Palestinians has not just unleashed Israel’s demons. It has unmasked our own regimes, as they crack down on humanitarian activism. Jonathan Cook reflects on Israel’s war on Gaza as the fragile ceasefire takes hold.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
Anniversaries are often a cause for celebration. But who could have imagined back in October 2023 that we would now be marking the two-year anniversary of a genocide, documented in the minutest detail on our phones every day for 24 months? A genocide that could have been stopped at any point, had the US and its allies made the call.
This is an anniversary so shameful that no one in power wants it remembered. Rather, they are actively encouraging us to forget the genocide is happening, even at its very height.
Israel’s relentless crimes against the people of Gaza barely register in our news any longer.
There is a horrifying lesson here, one that applies equally to Israel and its Western patrons. A genocide takes place — and is permitted to take place — only when a profound sickness has entered the collective soul of the perpetrators.
For the past 80 years, Western societies have grappled with — or, at least, thought they did — the roots of that sickness.
They wondered how a Holocaust could have taken place in their midst, in a Germany that was central to the modern, supposedly “civilised”, Western world.
They imagined — or pretended to — that their wickedness had been extirpated, their guilt cleansed, through the sponsorship of a “Jewish state”. That state, violently established in 1948 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, served as a European protectorate on the ruins of the Palestinian people’s homeland.
Desperate to control
The Middle East, let us note, just happened to be a region that the West was desperate to keep controlling, despite growing Arab demands to end more than a century of brutal Western colonialism.
Why? Because the region had recently emerged as the world’s oil spigot.
Israel’s very purpose — enshrined in the ideology of Zionism, or Jewish supremacism in the Middle East — was to act as a proxy for Western colonialism. It was a client state planted there to keep order on the West’s behalf, while the West pretended to withdraw from the region.
This big picture — the one Western politicians and media refuse to acknowledge — has been the context for events there ever since, including Israel’s current, genocidal endgame in Gaza.
Two years in, what should have been obvious from the start is becoming ever-harder to ignore: the genocide had nothing to do with Hamas’s one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The genocide was never about “self-defence”. It was preordained by the ideological imperatives of Zionism.
Hamas’s break-out from Gaza — a prison camp into which Palestinians had been herded decades earlier, after their expulsion from their homeland — provided the pretext. It all too readily unleashed demons long lurking in the soul of the Israeli body politic.
And more importantly, it released similar demons — though better concealed — in the Western ruling class, as well as parts of their societies heavily conditioned to believe that the interests of the ruling class coincide with their own.
“History repeats itself,” as the saying goes, “first as tragedy, then as farce.”
The same could be said of “peace processes”. Thirty years ago, the West force-fed Palestinians the Oslo Accords with the promise of eventual statehood.
Oslo was the tragedy. It led to an ideological rupture in the Palestinian national movement; to a deepening geographic split between an imprisoned population in the occupied West Bank and an even more harshly imprisoned population in Gaza; to Israel’s increasing use of new technologies to confine, surveil and oppress both sets of Palestinians; and finally, to Hamas’s brief break-out from the Gaza prison camp, and Israel’s genocidal “response”.
Now, President Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” offers the farce: unapologetic gangsterism masquerading as a “solution” to the Gaza genocide. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — a war criminal who, alongside his US counterpart George W Bush, destroyed Iraq more than two decades ago — will issue diktats to the people of Gaza on Israel’s behalf.
Gaza, not just Hamas, faced an ultimatum: “Take the deal, or we will put you in concrete boots and sink you in the Mediterranean.”
Surrender document
Barely veiled by the threat was the likelihood that, even if Hamas felt compelled to sign up to this surrender document, Gaza’s people would end up in concrete boots all the same.
Gaza’s population has been so desperate for a respite from the slaughter that it would accept almost anything. But it is pure delusion for the rest of us to believe a state that has spent two years carrying out a genocide can be trusted either to respect a ceasefire or to honour the terms of a peace plan, even one so heavily skewed in its favour.
The farce of Trump’s peace plan — his “deal of the millennium” — was evident from the first of its 20 points: “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.”
The document’s authors no more wonder what might have “radicalised” Gaza than Western capitals did when Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, broke out of the prison enclave with great violence on 7 October 2023.
Were the people of Gaza simply born radical, or did events turn them radical? Were they “radicalised” when Israel ethnically cleansed them from their original lands, in what is now the self-declared “Jewish state” of Israel, and dumped them in the tiny holding pen of Gaza?
Were they “radicalised” by being surveilled and oppressed in a dystopian, open-air prison, decade upon decade? Was it the experience of living for 17 years under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade that denied them the right to travel or trade, and forced their children on to a diet that left them malnourished?
Or maybe they were radicalised by the silence from Israel’s Western patrons, who supplied the weaponry and lapped up the rewards: the latest confinement technologies, field-tested by Israel on the people of Gaza.
Gaza most extreme
The truth ignored in the opening point of Trump’s “peace plan” is that it is entirely normal to be “radicalised” when you live in an extreme situation. And there are no places on the planet more extreme than Gaza.
It is not Gaza that needs “deradicalising”. It is the West and its Israeli client state.
The case for deradicalising Israel should hardly need stating. Poll after poll has shown Israelis are not just in favour of the annihilation their state is carrying out in Gaza; they believe their government needs to be even more aggressive, even more genocidal.
This past May, as Palestinian babies were shrivelling into dry husks from Israel’s blockade on food and aid, 64 percent of Israelis said they believed “there are no innocents” in Gaza, a place where around half of the population of two million people are children.
The figure would be even higher were it reporting only the views of Israeli Jews. The survey included the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinians — survivors of mass expulsions in 1948 during Israel’s Western-sponsored creation. This much-oppressed minority has been utterly ignored throughout these past two years.
Another survey conducted earlier this year found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews favoured the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. More than half, 56 percent, also supported the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel — even though that minority has kept its head bowed throughout the genocide, for fear of reaping a whirlwind should it speak up.
In addition, 47 percent of Israeli Jews approved of killing all the inhabitants of Gaza, even its children.
Netanyahu’s crimes
The crimes overseen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is so often held up by outsiders as some kind of aberration, are entirely representative of wider public sentiment in Israel.
The genocidal fervour in Israeli society is an open secret. Soldiers flood social media platforms with videos celebrating their war crimes. Teenage Israelis make funny videos on TikTok endorsing the starvation of babies in Gaza. Israeli state TV broadcasts a child choir evangelising for Gaza’s annihilation.
Such views are not simply a response to the horrors that unfolded inside Israel on 7 October 2023. As polls have consistently shown, deep-seated racism towards Palestinians is decades old.
It is not former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who started the trend of calling Palestinians “human animals”. Politicians and religious leaders have been depicting them as “cockroaches”, “dogs”, “snakes” and “donkeys” since Israel’s creation. It is this long process of dehumanisation that made the genocide possible.
In response to the outpouring of support in Israel for the extermination in Gaza, Orly Noy, a veteran Israeli journalist and activist, reached a painful conclusion last month on the +972 website: “What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.”
And she noted that this problem derives from an ideology with a reach far beyond Israel itself: “The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”
As the genocide has unfolded week after week, month after month — ever-more divorced from any link to 7 October 2023 — and Western leaders have carried on justifying their inaction, a much deeper realisation is dawning.
Demon in the West
This is not just about a demon unleashed among Israelis. It is about a demon in the soul of the West. It is us — the power bloc that established Israel, arms Israel, funds Israel, indulges Israel, excuses Israel — that really needs deradicalising.
Germany underwent a process of “denazification” following the end of the Second World War — a process, it is now clear from the German state’s feverish repression of any public opposition to the genocide in Gaza, that was never completed.
A far deeper campaign of deradicalisation than the one Nazi Germany was subjected to, is now required in the West — one where normalising the murder of tens of thousands of children, live-streamed to our phones, can never be allowed to happen again.
A deradicalisation that would make it impossible to conceive of our own citizens travelling to Israel to help take part in the Gaza genocide, and then be welcomed back to their home countries with open arms.
A deradicalisation that would mean our governments could not contemplate silently abandoning their own citizens — citizens who joined an aid flotilla to try to break Israel’s illegal starvation-siege of Gaza — to the goons of Israel’s fascist police minister.
A deradicalisation that would make it inconceivable for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or other Western leaders, to host Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who at the outset of the slaughter in Gaza offered the central rationale for the genocide, arguing that no one there — not even its one million children — were innocent.
A deradicalisation that would make it self-evident to Western governments that they must uphold the World Court’s ruling last year, not ignore it: that Israel must be forced to immediately end its decades-long illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that they must carry out the arrest of Netanyahu on suspicion of crimes against humanity, as specified by the International Criminal Court.
A deradicalisation that would make it preposterous for Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s Home Secretary, to call demonstrations against a two-year genocide “fundamentally un-British” — or to propose ending the long-held right to protest, but only when the injustice is so glaring, the crime so unconscionable, that it leads people to repeatedly protest.
Eroding right to protest
Mahmood justifies this near-death-knell erosion of the right to protest on the grounds that regular protests have a “cumulative impact”. She is right. They do: by exposing as a sham our government’s claim to stand for human rights, and to represent anything more than naked, might-is-right politics.
A deradicalisation is long overdue — and not just to halt the West’s crimes against the people of Gaza and the wider Middle East region.
Already, as our leaders normalise their crimes abroad, they are normalising related crimes at home. The first signs are in the designation of opposition to genocide as “hate”, and of practical efforts to stop the genocide as “terrorism”.
The intensifying campaign of demonisation will grow, as will the crackdown on fundamental and long-cherished rights.
Israel has declared war on the Palestinian people. And our leaders are slowly declaring war on us, whether it be those protesting the Gaza genocide, or those opposed to a consumption-driven West’s genocide of the planet.
We are being isolated, smeared and threatened. Now is the time to stand together before it is too late. Now is the time to find your voice.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.
Three New Zealanders, who were detained in Israel, after taking part in an international flotilla heading to Gaza, claim they were treated like animals.
Rana Hamida, Youssef Sammour and Samuel Leason arrived at Auckland International Airport this afternoon, and were greeted by a crowd of supporters and loved ones.
Among the supporters were Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson and MP Ricardo Menéndez March.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the claims were “complete lies”, and the detainees rights were upheld, but Hamida and Sammour claimed conditions were harsh.
“We were there for almost a week, more or less, and we were treated like crap, to be honest,” Sammour said. “We were treated like animals.”
Hamida said: “It was a violation of what humanitarian law is.”
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson and Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March at Auckland Airport today. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
Guards refused medicine
Sammour said one of their fellow prisoners was diabetic, but the guards refused to give him his insulin, but Hamida admitted the hardship they faced was just a fraction of that experienced by the occupants of Gaza.
People gathered at Auckland Airport to welcome home the New Zealanders who were on the flotilla to Gaza. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
The flotilla, a group of dozens of boats carrying 500 people — including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg — had been trying to break Israel’s blockade.
Leason’s father, Adi Leason, earlier told RNZ’s Midday Report he was “immensely proud” of his 18-year-old son.
Samuel Leason hugging his father Adi Leason. Image: Marika Khabazi/RNZ
“We’ve been going to mass every Sunday for 18 years with Samuel, and he must have been listening and taking something of that formation on board. It’s lovely to see a young man with a deep conscience caring so deeply about people who he will never meet and to put himself in harm’s way for them.”
Samuel Leason felt a mix of relief and anger upon returning to New Zealand. He said it was amazing to see his family again, but he felt frustrated that the New Zealand government did not do more to intervene.
The trio said they had not been discouraged and planned to mobilise more than ever.
Amnesty International is asking the New Zealand government to create a new humanitarian visa for Pacific people impacted by climate change.
Kiribati community leader Charles Kiata said life on Kiribati was becoming extremely hard as sea levels rose and the country was hit by more severe storms, higher temperatures and drought.
“Every part of life, food, shelter, health, is being affected and what hurts the most is that our people feel trapped. They love their home, but their home is slowly disappearing,” Kiata said.
Crops are dying and fresh drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce for the island nation.
Kiata said in New Zealand, overstayers were anxious they would be sent back home.
“Deporting them back to flooded lands or places with no clean water like Kiribati is not only cruel but it also goes against our shared Pacific values.”
Amnesty International is also asking the government to stop deporting overstayers from Kiribati and Tuvalu, who would be returning to harsh conditions.
Duty of care
The organisation’s executive director, Jacqui Dillon said she wanted New Zealand to acknowledge its duty of care to Pacific communities.
“We are asking the New Zealand government to create a new humanitarian visa, specifically for those impacted by climate change and disasters. Enabling people to migrate on their terms with dignity.”
She said current Pacific visas New Zealand offered, such as the Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) and the Pacific Access Category (PAC), were insufficient.
“Those pathways are in effect nothing short of a discriminatory lottery, so they don’t offer dignity, nor do they offer self-agency.”
The organisation interviewed Alieta — not her real name — who has a visual impairment. She decided to remove her name from the family’s PAC application to enable her husband and six-year-old daughter to migrate to New Zealand in 2016.
It has meant Alieta has only seen her daughter once in the past 11 years.
“I would urge all of us to think about that and say, if our feet were in those shoes, would we think that that was right? I don’t think we would,” Dillon said.
Tuvalu comparison
Tuvaluan community leader Fala Haulangi, based in Aotearoa, wants the country to adopt something like the Falepili Union Treaty which the leaders of Tuvalu and Australia signed in 2023.
It creates a pathway for up to 280 Tuvalu citizens to go to Australia each year to work, live, and study.
This year over 80 percent of the population applied to move under the treaty.
Haulangi said the PAC had too many restrictions.
“PAC (Pacific Access Category Visa) still comes with conditions that are very, very strict on my people, so if [New Zealand has] the same terms and conditions that Australia has for the Falepili Treaty, to me that is really good.”
In the past, Pacific governments have been worried about the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme causing a brain drain.
Samoa paused scheme
In 2023, Samoa paused the scheme, partially because of the loss of skilled labour, including police officers leaving to go fruit picking.
Haulangi said it’s not up to her to tell people to stay if a new and more open visa is available to Pacific people.
“Who am I to tell my people back home ‘don’t come, stay there’ because we need people back home.”
Dillon said some people will stay.
“All we’re simply saying is give people the opportunity and the dignity to have self-agency and be able to choose.”
Charles Kiata from Kiribati said a visa established now would mean there would be a slow migration of people from the Pacific and not people being forced to leave as climate refugees.
He said people from Kiribati had strengths they could be proud of and could partner with New Zealand.
“It’s a win-win for both of us; our people come to New Zealand to contribute economically and to society.”
RNZ Pacific has approached New Zealand’s Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford for comment.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Hooton wrongly suggested an out of date way of viewing international law justified Peters as he emphasised the horror endured by Israel and did not recount the genocide with at least 67,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, unfolding as the mind conditioning of New Zealanders continued along the same path we’ve been sleeping under.
Hooton neglected to mention the failure of NZ First to include official advice in their cabinet paper, the secrecy and delay over the decision, and the words of the Israeli Finance Minister just this morning.
He also said in August 2025 that plans to build more than 3000 homes in a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.
The so-called E1 project between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement has been frozen for decades amid fierce opposition internationally. Building there would effectively cut off the West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem, the planned capital for the state of Palestine.
Smotrich is not welcome in New Zealand — but travel bans is all Christopher Luxon’s coalition government will do as they bow low before the US and Israel — calling that “Sucking up” . . . “Independence”.
We suck up independently and clap ourselves – or at least Act do.
Japan threatens sanctions
As reported yesterday, Japan has threatened to sanction Israel if they mess with the possibility of Palestinian Statehood, but back in New Zealand we are busy festering over whether it is okay to protest outside a house — be it — an apartment block which houses a political party office and residential apartments in the same building or not.
Sticking points include a hefty 3 month prison sentence and $2000 fine but some say that this is all a distraction from our obligations to act against an unfolding genocide and from the dire state of the economy for those who are not wealthy and sorted.
Khalil al-Hayya, the head of Hamas’s negotiating team, has said the group has received guarantees from the US and mediators that an agreement on a first phase of a ceasefire agreement means the war in Gaza “has ended completely”.
We will see how Israel plays this — but levels of scepticism are sky high and many have no faith in Netanyahu because he had been offered the return of hostages a year ago and chose to ignore it.
Perhaps Israel will “behave while International Eyes” are on it but time will tell . . . whether spots have changed on the leopard.
In the meantime vote in your local elections — you only have one day to go — and when it comes to the next General Election – you know what to do.
This article is extracted from Gerard Otto’s Friday Morning Coffee column with permission. Matthew Hooton visited Israel and Palestine in 2017 as a guest of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. The Australian news site Crikey publishes a list of politicians and journalists who have travelled to Israel on junkets.
In the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan, Israel is required to withdraw to the agreed “yellow line” within 24 hours, after which a 72-hour period will begin for the handover of Israeli 48 captives (20 believed to be still alive) in exchange for 2000 Palestinian prisoners. Image: CC Al Jazeera
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has released a flurry of statements in the last couple of hours, claiming that the announced agreement over the first phase of the ceasefire in the war on Gaza is because of Israel’s military pressure.
It’s because of Israel’s continuous military activity. It’s because of the objectives that Netanyahu had outlined at the beginning of the war — that’s why they reached this point.
But the reality on the ground shows a much different story.
Most of the captives who were released from the Gaza Strip were done through diplomatic means, through these ceasefire deals or through direct negotiations with the Americans.
It wasn’t really due to these advanced military operations that the army and the government alike were touting.
Netanyahu is not just under pressure internationally but domestically from the family members of those captives who have been held for two years and a day, and who have been advocating for their release every week – protesting, taking to the streets, saying they have no faith in their own leadership.
If you look on social media and if you see the statements from their family members, if you see anything relating to the captives and their families from the last week or so, it has all been thanks to President Trump. It’s all thanks to the US envoy, Steve Witkoff.
There has been no praise or thanks to the prime minister because this is a population that believes Netanyahu got in the way of many deals — such as back in July 2024, when mediators said they were at the finish line.
But at the 11th hour, Netanyahu decided to insert new conditions and essentially reneged on the entire ceasefire agreement.
Jubilation in Gaza over the ceasefire deal is announced. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Salhut reported later:
“In a few hours time, the Israeli government is going to convene and they are going to vote on this ceasefire agreement.
“After they vote, the Israeli military will then withdraw to one of those lines that were presented in the map that President Trump posted on his social media.
“Then, 72 hours after that, the captives are going to be released by Hamas. We are hearing from the Americans that it could take place on Monday.
“President Trump has been talking about Israel’s international isolation, about how they’ve become a pariah state. But they are not just isolated on a political level; it is also economic. It is also through cultural forums. It’s also a lot of different spaces in the world.”
Al Jazeera is reporting from Amman, Jordan, because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.
I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan. This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable,…
— Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) October 8, 2025
Celebrations in Gaza after the announcement of reaching a ceasefire agreement.
The war in Gaza has ended, and the hostages will be released 72 hours after the Israeli Cabinet approves the agreement. pic.twitter.com/9hFzbCpvGk
New Zealand advocacy and protest group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has “cautiously welcomed” the Gaza ceasefire and proposed exchange of hostages between Israel and the liberation movement Hamas.
At least 7000 Palestinians are being held in detention without trial by Israel while about 20 Israeli soldiers are held by Hamas.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal said the deal was a reprieve from Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
“It’s been two years of mass bombing and starvation. It’s the worst atrocity of the 21st century,” he said in a statement.
“The real tragedy is that the main elements of this ceasefire deal were already agreed to nine months ago in January. Israel was forced to let Palestinians return to Gaza City, and lower the intensity of its attacks.
“Within a few weeks, the Israelis scuttled the agreement, shut off all food and intensified their attacks and are now ethnically re-cleansing Gaza City.
“Expulsion is still the Israeli government’s aim. Netanyahu must be disappointed that Trump is no longer advocating for removal of Palestinians from Gaza, but Netanyahu usually gets his way with Trump in the end.”
Called on support
Nazal said PSNA especially noted that the Hamas acceptance statement called on countries supporting the deal — New Zealand included — to make sure Israel abided by the few specific conditions imposed on the Zionist state in the agreement.
“Israel has broken every peace deal it has ever signed on Palestine, right from occupying more than half of what was allocated by the United Nations as a Palestinian state in 1948,” Nazzal said.
“In the 1993 Oslo peace deal, which the US also brokered, there was meant to be a Palestinian state within five years. Israel made sure this never happened.
“This time, there is no mention of the Occupied West Bank. Nothing about return of refugees. There is no commitment in the Trump deal for a Palestinian state, for Winston Peters to eventually recognise.
“There’s just a vague pathway with no timelines and it’s all conditional on Israeli approval,” Nazzal said.
“So we have a message for Winston Peters, who is demanding PSNA and other protesters applaud the Trump deal as ‘case solved’.
“Ceasefire or not, our campaign to isolate the apartheid state of Israel will continue to grow until all Palestinians are liberated.”
Two years ago, Israel suffered what was perhaps the most jarring day in its modern history. The events of October 7, 2023, weren’t just a military failure or an intelligence lapse — they were a national humiliation. Police stations were stormed and overrun. Military posts were taken. Soldiers and officers, including from elite units, were killed or captured. The Gaza Division of the Israeli army, a symbol of Israel’s long-standing dominance over the Strip, fell into chaos.
Israel invoked the Hannibal Doctrine — a policy that allows military forces to prevent the capture of soldiers even at the cost of their lives, by opening fire on both Hamas and the kidnapped Israelis. That day, it wasn’t theory — it was execution.
In the fog of panic, Israeli fire turned on its own, and the thin line between protecting society and sacrificing civilians for strategic ends evaporated.
But October 7 was just the opening act. What followed was a war unlike anything Israel had fought in fifty years — brutal, relentless, and devastating in scale and ambition. Gaza was not merely targeted; it was systematically dismantled. What began as retaliation became something else entirely: an erasure.
The illusion of military supremacy
Two years into the war, one fact is undeniable: Israel, backed by some of the most powerful military alliances in the world, has failed to conquer a territory smaller than half of New York City. 365 square kilometers — that’s all Gaza is. Yet despite overwhelming force, technological advantage, and political cover, the Israeli army has been unable to fully occupy it.
This failure is especially glaring given the scale of destruction. Over 200,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza — the equivalent of 20 nuclear bombs without radiation. That’s not metaphor. That’s the measure of how far Israel was willing to go and is not willing to stop yet: flattening entire towns, turning hospitals, schools, mosques, residential towers, universities, even cemeteries into rubble.
Gaza has endured more concentrated bombing than any territory since the Second World War.
Indeed, what Gaza has endured over the past two years dwarfs even some of the most infamous wartime bombardments of the twentieth century. In February 1945, Allied forces dropped roughly 3,900 tons of explosives on Dresden in a three-day firestorm that killed an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 people and obliterated much of the city. Where Dresden became a symbol of wartime excess, Gaza is witnessing destruction on a scale so vast it makes Dresden look like a prelude.
And unlike Dresden, Gaza’s devastation has been broadcast live, in real time, to a world that cannot claim it did not know.
But Israel was never alone and had every advantage and complicity: real-time intelligence from the United States and Britain, precision munitions from Germany, satellite targeting, drone supremacy, complete air dominance. And still, two years on, it cannot claim control over this tiny strip of land.
The problem was never firepower. It was urban warfare — a terrain where bombs are blunt tools and conquest requires something far more difficult: boots on the ground, close-quarters control, and the ability to hold territory without hemorrhaging soldiers or sparking endless insurgency.
The Israeli army, trained for dominance but not for urban occupation, found itself caught in a repetitive, grinding cycle: enter, level, retreat, repeat.
Neighborhoods were captured and declared “secured,” only to be abandoned and recontested days later. Troops rotated in and out of ruined zones, unable to maintain sustained presence. For every area leveled, resistance either moved underground or regrouped elsewhere. The war turned into a grim spectacle of destruction without achievement.
This revealed a contradiction at the heart of Israel’s military doctrine: it can destroy almost anything, but it cannot hold what it destroys. Air supremacy means nothing when the battlefield is a bombed-out maze. Gaza’s density, devastation, and defiance turned every advantage into a liability.
So while the Strip lies in ruins, it is not conquered. And that truth — buried under declarations of “strategic success” — is the defeat Israel cannot admit.
The real objective: Not security—territory
Israel’s war was not, as officially claimed, about eliminating Hamas or rescuing hostages. That narrative collapsed quickly under the weight of Israel’s own actions. From the beginning, hostage negotiations were treated as peripheral. Every time progress was made on potential ceasefires, it was Netanyahu’s office that pulled the plug — because every hostage released made the war harder to justify. Every ceasefire threatened to slow the campaign just enough for the world to ask uncomfortable questions.
This was never about hostages. It was about Gaza. More specifically: it was about removing Gaza as an obstacle to territorial ambition.
Netanyahu, cornered by political instability, corruption trials, and a fragile coalition held together by the far-right, saw in October 7 a chance to do what had always been unspoken: clear Gaza. Not of Hamas, but of Palestinians. Permanently. Not by announcement, but by attrition — bombing, starvation, siege, trauma.
Gaza’s civilian population wasn’t collateral damage. It was the target.
Destroying Gaza wasn’t a means to defeat an enemy. It was a means to reshape a demographic reality. This wasn’t defense. It was a conquest dressed up as security.
When the mask falls
In war, the first casualty is truth. But in this war, truth didn’t die quietly — it was dragged into the open, exposed by the very actors trying to hide it. Israeli soldiers live streamed brutality. Government officials made genocidal statements on public platforms. Civilian infrastructure was not accidentally struck — it was deliberately annihilated.
At first, the world made excuses. Israel had been attacked and was “entitled to defend itself”. But over time, the scale, duration, and clarity of its actions stripped away any remaining ambiguity. When every hospital (38 in total) becomes a target, when entire neighborhoods are turned to rubble, when starvation is used as a weapon — it becomes impossible to speak of “defence” without insulting reason.
And so the global tide turned. Governments hesitated, but people didn’t. From Berlin to Boston, from Sydney to Cape Town, millions marched — not for Hamas, but for the principle that no state, however victimised, has the right to massacre an entire population in response.
Israel didn’t just lose global support. It lost the moral framing that had shielded, or it had hid behind, it for decades.
It had positioned itself as a democracy surrounded by enemies. But democracies don’t bomb refugee camps, don’t livestream the deaths of children, don’t cut off water to two million people and don’t hold hostages’ lives hostage to political calculus.
Israel’s loss over the last two years hasn’t been military — it’s been existential. The myth of invincibility is broken. The image of moral exceptionalism, cultivated so carefully for decades, has shattered. Netanyahu, once a master manipulator of global opinion, now finds himself isolated, distrusted, even among allies.
What October 7 exposed was the weakness of Israel in the one arena it believed itself untouchable: control. It wasn’t just a border breach. It was a rupture of the entire apparatus that had kept Gaza contained for years. Fences, drones, AI, intelligence, surveillance — all of it failed.
And when the mask of control slipped, the response wasn’t strategic — it was criminally vengeful. It was rage mixed with blood thirst. But rage isn’t a strategy, rage destroys. And over two years, rage has destroyed Gaza — and with it, Israel’s future.
Netanyahu’s calculus: Eternal war
The war served Netanyahu well—at least at first. It silenced his critics. It unified a fractured public. It postponed trials. It gave him relevance again. But the deeper logic was more disturbing: war is the only environment where his political survival is guaranteed.
Peace, by contrast, is a threat. Peace requires compromise. Peace requires vision. Netanyahu offers neither.
Each time a ceasefire neared, his government collapsed it. Each time hostages were close to freedom, the process was torpedoed. To free the hostages would be to end the war. To end the war would be to lose power. This is the twisted loop that has defined Israel’s leadership for two years. Hostages weren’t bargaining chips — they were leverage. They were the excuse for ongoing brutality.
And the world saw it. Every broken deal, every last-minute sabotage, made it harder to pretend this was about security. By the end of the second year, no serious government believed Netanyahu was acting in good faith. Even allies began to distance themselves, not out of principle — but out of shame. What’s remarkable isn’t that Israel committed war crimes — it’s that it did so while assuming the world would look away.
For decades, that assumption held. But this time was different.
Technology turned every phone into a witness. Every child pulled from rubble was broadcast in real time. Every lie was challenged within seconds. The world saw the crimes as they happened — and watched as Israel confirmed them with its own footage.
No state can withstand that level of exposure and retain legitimacy.
Even in the US, the last bastion of unconditional support, the consensus cracked. Young people rejected the old narratives. Jewish voices joined Palestinian ones. The streets filled with dissent, not just from the fringe but from the center. Israel’s status as a protected partner is no longer guaranteed.
In Europe, traditional guilt-driven loyalty gave way to disgust. Governments clung to old alliances, but the public broke ranks. Supporting Israel was no longer an expression of Western solidarity — it became a political liability.
Ceasefire, but not peace
Now, with pressure mounting, ceasefire talks are back — this time in Egypt, under the bizarre influence of Donald Trump, whose re-entry into international politics has added a surreal dimension to an already surreal conflict. But few believe the talks will produce anything lasting. Netanyahu has built his power on conflict. He has no incentive to end it.
Even if a deal is signed, it’s unlikely to hold. The machinery of occupation, the logic of dispossession, the appetite for dominance — it remains intact. This war may pause. But the ideology that fueled it still governs Israel.
And that’s the real crisis: not the bombs, not the destruction, not even the deaths — but the belief that this can go on forever.
Israel may declare victory over Hamas. It may claim strategic success in degrading enemy capabilities. But that’s not what the world sees.
What the world sees is a nation that responded to horror with horror. A nation that lost its soul in pursuit of a war it could never truly win. A nation that allowed vengeance to become policy, and policy to become annihilation.
Two years later, Gaza lies in ruins. But so does Israel’s credibility. So does the illusion of a “moral army.” So does the narrative of self-defence that once made its case persuasive to the world.
Hamas lit the match. But Israel poured the fuel, struck the steel, and claimed the fire was purification.
In the end, what remains isn’t security. It’s ash.
Elijah J Magnier is a veteran war zone correspondent and political analyst with over 35 years of experience covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He specialises in real-time reporting of politics, strategic and military planning, terrorism and counter-terrorism; his strong analytical skills complement his reporting. His in-depth experience, extensive contacts and thorough political knowledge of complex political situations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria provide his writings with insights balancing the routine misreporting and propaganda in the Western press. He also comments on Al Jazeera.
Framed as a “historic milestone”, the pact re-casts security cooperation between Port Moresby and Canberra while stirring deeper debates about sovereignty, dependency, and the shifting balance of power in the region.
At a joint press conference in Canberra, PNG Prime Minister James Marape called the treaty “a product of geography, not geopolitics”, emphasising the shared neighbourhood and history binding both nations.
“This Treaty was not conceived out of geopolitics or any other reason, but out of geography, history, and the enduring reality of our shared neighbourhood,” Marape said.
Described as “two houses with one fence,” the Pukpuk Treaty cements Australia as PNG’s “security partner of choice.” It encompasses training, intelligence, disaster relief, and maritime cooperation while pledging full respect for sovereignty.
“Papua New Guinea made a strategic and conscious choice – Australia is our security partner of choice. This choice was made not out of pressure or convenience, but from the heart and soul of our coexistence as neighbours,” Marape said.
For Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cast the accord as an extension of “family ties” – a reaffirmation that Australia “will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with PNG to ensure a peaceful and secure Pacific family.”
Intensifying competition
It comes amid intensifying competition for influence across the Pacific, where security and sport now intersect in Canberra’s broader regional strategy.
The Treaty promises to bolster the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) through joint training, infrastructure upgrades, and enhanced maritime surveillance. Marape conceded that the country’s forces have long struggled with under-resourcing.
“The reality is that our Defence Force needs enhanced capacity to defend our sovereign territorial integrity. This Treaty will help us build that capacity – through shared resources, intelligence, technology, and training,” he said.
Yet, retired Major-General Jerry Singirok, former PNGDF commander, has urged caution.
“Signing a Defence Pact with Australia for the purposes of strengthening our military capacity and capabilities is most welcomed, but an Act of Parliament must give legal effect to whatever military activities a foreign country intends,” Singirok said in a statement.
He warned that Sections 202 and 206 of PNG’s Constitution already define the Defence Force’s role and foreign cooperation limits, stressing that any new arrangement must pass parliamentary scrutiny to avoid infringing sovereignty.
The sovereignty debate Singirok’s warning reflects a broader unease in Port Moresby — that the Pukpuk Treaty could re-entrench post-colonial dependency. He described the PNGDF as “retarded and stagnated”, spending just 0.38 percent of GDP on defence, with limited capacity to patrol its vast land and maritime borders.
“In essence, PNG is in the process of offloading its sovereign responsibilities to protect its national interest and sovereign protection to Australia to fill the gaps and carry,” he wrote.
“This move, while from face value appeals, has serious consequences from dependency to strategic synergy and blatant disregard to sovereignty at the expense of Australia.”
Former leaders, including Sir Warren Dutton, have been even more blunt: “If our Defence Force is trained, funded, and deployed under Australian priorities, then whose sovereignty are we defending? Ours — or theirs?”
Cooperation between the two forces have increased dramatically over the last few years.
Canberra’s broader strategy: Defence to rugby league The Pukpuk Treaty coincides with Australia’s “Pacific Step-up,” a network of economic, security, and cultural initiatives aimed at deepening ties with its neighbours. Central to this is sport diplomacy — most notably the proposed NRL Pacific team, which Albanese and Marape both support.
Canberra views the NRL deal not simply as a sporting venture but as “soft power in action” — embedding Australian culture and visibility across the Pacific through a sport already seen as a regional passion.
Marape called it “another platform of shared identity” between PNG and Australia, aligning with the spirit of the Pukpuk Treaty: partnership through shared interests.
However, critics argue the twin announcements — a defence pact and an NRL team — reveal a coordinated Australian effort to strengthen influence at multiple levels: security, economy, and society.
The US factor and overall strategy The Pukpuk Treaty follows last year’s Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) signed between Papua New Guinea and the United States, which grants US forces access to key PNG military facilities, including Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island.
That deal drew domestic protests over transparency and the perception of external control.
The Marape government insisted the arrangement respected PNG’s sovereignty, but combined with the new Australian treaty, it positions the country at the centre of a US-led security network stretching from Hawai’i to Canberra.
Analysts say the two pacts complement each other — with the US providing strategic hardware and global deterrence, and Australia delivering regional training and operational partnership.
Together, they represent a deepening of what one defence analyst called “the Pacific’s most consequential alignment since independence”.
PNG’s deepening security ties with the United States also appear to have shaped its diplomatic posture in the Middle East.
As part of its broader alignment with Washington, PNG in September 2023 opened an embassy in Jerusalem — becoming one of only a handful of states to do so, and signalling strong support for Israel.
In recent UN votes on Gaza, PNG has repeatedly voted against ceasefire resolutions, siding with Israel and the US. Some analysts link this to evangelical Christian influence in PNG’s politics and to the strategic expectation of favour with major powers.
China’s measured response Beijing has responded cautiously. China’s Embassy in Port Moresby reiterated that it “respects the independent choices of Pacific nations” but warned that “regional security frameworks should not become exclusive blocs.”
China has been one of PNG’s longest and most consistent diplomatic partners since formal relations began in 1976.
China’s role in Papua New Guinea is not limited to diplomatic signalling — it remains a major provider of loans, grants and infrastructure projects across the country, even as the strategic winds shift. Chinese state-owned enterprises and development funds have backed highways, power plants, courts, telecoms and port facilities in PNG.
In recent years, PNG has signed onto China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and observers count at least 40 Chinese SOEs currently operating in Papua New Guinea, many tied to mining, construction, and trade projects.
While Marape has repeatedly said PNG “welcomes all partners,” the growing web of Western defence agreements has clearly shifted regional dynamics. China views the Pukpuk Treaty as another signal of Canberra and Washington’s determination to counter its influence in the Pacific — even as Port Moresby maintains that its foreign policy is one of “friends to all, enemies to none”.
A balancing act For Marape, the Treaty is not about choosing sides but strengthening capacity through trust.
“Our cooperation is built on mutual respect, not dominance; on trust, not imposition. Australia never imposed this on us – this was our proposal, and we thank them for walking with us as equal partners,” he said.
He stressed that parliamentary ratification under Section 117 of the Constitution will ensure accountability.
“This is a fireplace conversation between neighbours – Papua New Guinea and Australia. We share this part of the earth forever, and together we will safeguard it for the generations to come,” he added.
The road ahead Named after the Tok Pisin word for crocodile — pukpuk, a symbol of endurance and guardianship — the Treaty embodies both trust and caution. Its success will depend on transparency, parliamentary oversight, and a shared understanding of what “mutual defence” means in practice.
As PNG moves to ratify the agreement, it stands at a delicate crossroads — between empowerment and dependency, regional cooperation and strategic competition.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The father of Samuel Leason — one of the three from New Zealand held by Israel — told RNZ his son, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour had been released.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has confirmed the three New Zealanders detained by Israel have been released.
An MFAT spokesperson said on Wednesday morning that the trio were on board buses containing other deportees which have now crossed into Jordan.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) said on Tuesday night it did not respond to non-urgent queries after hours, and would respond on Wednesday morning.
Initially in disbelief
Adi Leason said he was initially in disbelief when his son Samuel called him late on Tuesday night. He said it was a quick call and it was fantastic to hear the teenager’s voice.
“It was little taste, just a little moment where the connection’s made and you don’t know … someone’s okay until they tell you themselves. And Samuel’s told us in no uncertain terms — he’s back.”
Leason said his son sounded surprisingly good.
“He sounded really buoyant and hopeful and he just kept saying, ‘I’ve got so many stories dad, I’ve got so many stories.’
“He said he’d been incarcerated in a cage with Nelson Mandela’s grandson, and they’d become buddies.”
Leason said he understood the flotilla participants had spent time in a big hall, “kinda being paraded and berated by the authorities”.
“Then the other times when they were crammed in … Samuel mentioned 11 crammed into a cell at one time.”
Fellow New Zealanders
He said Samuel confirmed that he was with fellow New Zealanders, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour, “that they were together, that they were free”.
Leason said his son was hoping to be back in the county by the end of the week.
Earlier, Leason said he thought the New Zealanders and Australians were being kept together.
“And they are being put up in a hotel at their — just to stress this — at their own expense … so, no cost to the taxpayer.”
He understood the New Zealanders’ passports had been returned to them, but their other personal belongings had not.
“We don’t know the exact details on that. Their passports are in their possession which is going to speed up the ability to book flights and get home as soon as possible.”
A welcome home celebration was being planned for Saturday, Leason said.
Relieved ordeal is over
Meanwhile, the partner of a New Zealand doctor detained by Israel is relieved the ordeal is over after confirmation of her release.
New Zealand-born Bianca Webb-Pullman was part of the aid flotilla to Gaza and was counted officially as Australian because she was using an Australian passport.
She and other participants are now in Jordan.
Stephen Rowe said it had been a sleepless week.
“It was terrible, there was no way we could really contact her, we were left completely in the dark.
“And of course we were aware of reports coming out of conditions in the prison and how bad they were, so yeah, it was incredibly worrying.”
He said he was “extremely relieved” last night to learn of her release and said Webb-Pullman had since managed to call her mother.
‘Obviously shaken’
“She’s obviously shaken . . . But as far as I know, she’s okay.”
Rowe said he planned to fly to Melbourne to meet Webb-Pullman at the end of the week.
“It’s been just a horrible experience but that part of it is over and I know that she and the rest of the people on the flotilla don’t really want this to be about them.
“They really want this to be much more about the people of Gaza and ending their suffering.
“I know that the reason Bianca was on the flotilla was that she’d just finally had enough.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Bougainville’s re-elected President Ishmael Toroama has announced a caretaker government following a formal swearing-in ceremony on Monday in the capital Buka.
The former Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) commander won more than 90,000 votes in a landslide victory after the election on September 5-6.
The interim Bougainville Executive Council (BEC) will consist of the President, the Vice President Ezekiel Masatt and the Member of Parliament for Atolls Amanda Masono.
In his address, Toroama said the occasion marked an important step in Bougainville’s democratic process, signifying a time of transition, continuity and renewed commitment, according to a statement on the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) Facebook page.
“During this caretaker period, our priority is to safeguard good governance and maintain the trust and confidence of our people,” Toroama said.
The interim BEC will oversee government operations until the full Cabinet of the Bougainville Executive Council is formed.
The president will choose four cabinet ministers, while the remaining 10 will be selected by regional committees.
Assigning portfolios
However, Toroama will assign portfolios to each of them.
This will take place after the swearing-in of the 5th Bougainville House of Representatives on Friday, October 10.
Toroama added that Bougainvilleans had expressed concern over the conduct of some losing candidates, saying their actions undermine Bougainville’s democratic values.
“It is disappointing that several have chosen to express their dissatisfaction in premature and disorderly ways. Such conduct mocks the democratic values enshrined in the Bougainville Constitution and insults the people of Bougainville, who have spoken with unity and purpose through the ballot box,” he said.
“The people have made their choice, they have elected leaders whom they trust to guide Bougainville through the next phase of our political journey, particularly toward our aspiration for independence.
“Leadership is not about personal ambition. It is about service, humility, and accountability to the people who have placed their faith in us.”
He also called on elected representatives to unite as Bougainville enters a new political chapter.
‘Set aside differences’
“Let us set aside personal differences and work together for the greater good of Bougainville. Our people deserve leadership that is mature, united, and focused on building a future that is peaceful, prosperous, and independent.
“The strength of our democracy lies not in how we win elections, but in how we respect their outcomes and continue to serve our people with humility and purpose,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Bougainville Electoral Commission (OBEC) returned the writs for 45 seats on Monday.
Electoral commissioner Desmond Tsianai handed them to the outgoing Speaker Simon Pentanu, marking the end of the electoral process.
The writs included the presidency, 38-single-member constituencies and six reserved regional seats for women and former combatants.
Tsianai said the democratic spirit of the people of Bougainville was a testament to their unity and resilience.
“To every voter who stood in line with patience, dignity, and determination, we say thank you. You have proven once again that the heart of Bougainville beats strong with a belief in peaceful democratic choice and representation,” said.
More women candidates
“We recorded a total of 408 candidates, including a growing and welcome number of women candidates. Some 21 women contested constituency seats, up from 14 in 2020.”
The presidential race featured seven candidates, reflecting a vibrant and competitive democratic environment, he said.
He said the final electoral role included 238,625 registered voters, the most inclusive and comprehensive roll in the history of the autonomous region.
Notably, he added, 14.3 percent of enrolled voters were aged 18 to 24, a significant increase from 8.9 percent in 2020.
“This shows that our youth are claiming their place in shaping Bougainville’s future. Our systems of verification, oversight, and accountability were tested and they held firm.”
Officials will now begin their post-election review, listening to lessons from this election, to improve the next.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealanders deserve to know how the country’s foreign policy is made, writes John Hobbs.
ANALYSIS:By John Hobbs
The New Zealand government remains unwilling to support Palestinian statehood recognition at the United Nations General Assembly.
This is a disgraceful position which gives support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and seriously undermines our standing. Of the 193 states of the UN, 157 have now provided statehood recognition. New Zealand is not one of them.
The purpose of this opinion piece is to highlight the troubling lack of transparency in how the government deliberates on its foreign policy choices.
Government decisions and calculations on foreign policy are being made behind closed doors with limited public scrutiny, unlike other areas of policy, where at least a modicum of transparency occurs.
The government has, over the past two years, exceeded itself in obscuring the process it goes through, without explaining its approach to the question of Palestine.
New Zealand still inconceivably lauds the impossible goal of a two-state solution, the hallmark of successive governments’ foreign policy positions on the question of Palestine, but does everything to not bring about its realisation.
To try to understand the basis for New Zealand’s approach to Gaza and the risks generated by the government’s lack of direct action against Israel, I placed an Official Information Request (OIA) with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Winston Peters. I requested copies of advice that had been received on New Zealand’s obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.
Plausible case against Israel
My initial OIA request was placed in January 2024, after the International Court of Justice had determined there was a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. At that point, about 27,000 people in Gaza had been killed, mainly women and children. My request was denied.
I put the same OIA request to the minister in June 2025. By this time, nearly 63,000 people had been killed by Israel. At the time of my second request there was abundant evidence reported by UN agencies of Israel’s tactics. Again, my request for information was denied.
I appealed the refusal by the minister of foreign affairs to the Office of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman reviewed the case and accepted that the minister of foreign affairs was within his right to refuse to provide the material.
The basis for the decision was that the advice given to the minister was subject to legal professional privilege, and that the right to protect legally privileged advice was not outweighed by the public interest in gaining access to that advice.
The refusal by the minister and the Ombudsman to make the advice available is deeply worrying. Although I am not questioning the importance of protecting legal professional privilege, I cannot imagine an example that could be more pressing in terms of “public interest” than the complicity of nation states in genocide.
Indeed, the threshold of legal professional privilege was never meant to be absolute. Parliament, in designing the OIA regime, had this in mind when it deemed that legal professional privilege could, under exceptional circumstances, be outweighed by the public interest.
The Office of the Ombudsman has ruled in the past that legal professional privilege is not an absolute; it accepted that legal advice received by the Ministry of Health on embryo research had to be released, for example, as it was in the public interest to do so, even though it was legally privileged.
Puzzling statement
The Ombudsman concludes his response to my request with the puzzling statement that the “general public interest in accountability and transparency in government decision-making on this issue is best reflected in the decisions made after considering the legal advice, rather than what is contained in the legal advice.”
The point I was trying to clarify is whether the government is acting in a manner that reflects the advice it has received. If it has received advice that New Zealand must take particular steps to fulfil its obligations under the Genocide Convention, and the government has chosen to ignore that advice, then surely New Zealanders have a right to know.
The content of the advice is extremely relevant: it would identify any contradictions between the advice the government received and its actions. Through public access to such information, governments can be held to account for the decisions they make.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, concluded on September 16 that Israeli authorities and security forces committed four out of the five underlying acts of genocide. Illegal settlers have been let loose in the West Bank under the protection of the Israeli army to harass and kill local Palestinians and occupy further areas of Palestinian land.
At the UN General Assembly, the New Zealand government took a stance that is squarely in support of the Israeli genocide, also supported by the United States. International law clearly forbids the act of genocide, in Gaza as much as anywhere else, including the attacks on Palestinian civilians living under occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In 2015-16, New Zealand co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution that condemned the illegality of Israel’s actions in the Occupied West Bank, with the intention of supporting a Palestinian state. New Zealand’s recent posture at the General Assembly undermines this principled precedent.
That New Zealand could not bring itself to offer the olive branch of statehood recognition is morally repugnant and severely damages our standing in the international community. The New Zealand public has the right to demand transparency in its government’s decision-making.
The advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the minister cannot be hidden behind the veil of legal professional privilege.
John Hobbs is a doctoral student at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.
: A number of Australian journalists have been targeted, harassed, and censored by lobby groups for reporting critical of Israel’s war on Gaza. 
LIVE updates: 
