Biweekly Brief. January 5, 2026

More wars and mass ethnic cleansing appear to be on the 2026 Israel-US agenda

“There are surveys that say that almost 90% of the population of the world wants this to stop,” the Indian writer Arundhati Roy said about Israel’s Gaza genocide on Democracy Now! “But there is no connection between democratically elected governments and the will of the people.  It’s ended.  So the whole charade of Western liberal democracy is as much of a corpse under the rubble as the tens of thousands of Palestinians.”

Thanks  in part to the ‘Palestine exception’ to freedom of expression which has served as a catalyst to a range of repressive policies, the vaunted ideals of liberal democracy are now seeming as hollow in the West as they have long appeared to formerly colonized nations of the Global South.   One need look no further than the way Palestine Action hunger strikers are being treated in the UK, and the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism in US schools and universities to grasp what Roy means about the ‘charade of Western liberal democracy.’  In Amahl Bishara’s words, “it is clear that Palestine has become a hub of global liberation politics today. Palestine links people and issues in ways that would have been surprising a few years ago.”

A public love fest at Mar-a-Lago

The ‘charade’ not just of liberal democracy, but of Trump’s ‘peace plan’ was on full display when Prime Minister Netanyahu on Dec. 29 had his fifth meeting in the US this year with President Trump.  In public at least there was little sign of what The Washington Post on Dec. 28 had called their “increasingly diverging views on practically every Middle East hot spot.”  

With Netanyahu by his side Trump asserted that he was “not concerned about anything that Israel is doing” even as the number of Israel’s ‘ceasefire’ violations approached 1,000, leaving  418 Palestinians dead and more than 1,100 wounded.  While Israel maintains it has only killed militants who were violating the ceasefire, at least 157 children are among the dead, including three and four-year olds.  Trump declared that Israel “has lived up to the plan, 100%,” overlooking the rebuke he had given Netanyahu for an airstrike on Dec. 13 that killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saad and three other people.  Three days later Israel carried out multiple airstrikes and artillery shelling in several parts of Gaza City and Deir al-Balah without, as far as we know,  triggering Trump’s disapproval.  

Trump endorsed what he called a ‘voluntary’ displacement of Palestinians from Gaza but refused to discuss the withdrawal of Israeli troops.  He repeatedly demanded that Hamas disarm, stating that “there’ll be hell to pay” if they don’t.   Days before the US conducted a massive assault on Venezuela (which “we’re going to run”) and on international law, he gave Israel the green light to again bomb Iran, adding that “we’ll knock the hell out of them” if Iran is trying to rebuild its nuclear program.  A few days later he declared that the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran continued to attack protestors.    

Netanyahu had his own present for Trump: he told him that the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest civilian honor that had never previously been given to a non-Israeli, would be bestowed on him in 2026.  

Off stage: preparing for war and ethnic cleansing

Three days before Netanyahu and Trump met, Israel – invoking the spirit of the Abraham Accords – announced its official recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as a sovereign state.  It is the first country to recognize the breakaway Muslim territory which had declared its independence from Somalia in 1991.    Some 21 countries and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation signed Somalia’s statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as an “unprecedented step” and a violation of international law.  

Somaliland is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden across from Yemen, home of the Houthis, which is one of the six countries Israel attacked in 2025.  The US has attacked Yemen nearly 400 times since 2002, and The Heritage Foundation (which authored Project 2025 that guides Trump’s policies) has long recommended that the US recognize Somaliland.   

As well as offering Israel (and the US) military opportunities, Somaliland on Dec. 20 reportedly promised to resettle up to one and a half million displaced Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.   The potential  mass transfer of Gaza’s residents to Somaliland or war-torn Somalia and Sudan had been pursued by Israel and the US for several months.  On Jan. 1, 2026 the Somaliland government denied allegations that it would accept displaced Palestinians or permit new Israeli military bases to be established on its territory.

Intensifying the pressure on the population

On Dec. 30, a day after Netanyahu and Trump met, Israel released a list of 37 international NGOs which as of March 1, 2026 would no longer be allowed to work in the Gaza Strip – see the list here.  It claims their deregistration is a necessary security measure to prevent “the exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for terrorist purposes” and asserted without offering proof that Doctors without Borders (MSF) had two staff members with links to militant groups.  According to The Times of Israel, organizations could be deregistered for a number of reasons,  including for not submitting personal information about their workers and for supporting “delegitimization” campaigns such as BDS.  Twenty-four organizations have been registered to work in Gaza, most of them American and Christian organizations.  That list is here. 

The banning of major NGOs  has been widely denounced, with foreign ministers of ten nations condemning it as “catastrophic” and more than 50 international NGOs saying it would gravely impede delivering humanitarian aid. Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, approved of the ban.  

According to the Palestinian group Badil, Israel’s action against the NGOs is part of  the ‘Decisive Plan’ developed by Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, which is a “blueprint for colonial expansion and Palestinian subjugation.”    The banning of NGO’s coincides with new legislation against the already restricted group UNRWA which abolished its diplomatic immunity, denied it water, electricity  and fuel and empowered the government to seize its property.  Remarkably, UNRWA is still at work in Gaza, as the executive director of UNRWA-USA explains here.

Netanyahu joins Trump in battle for ‘western civilization’ 

As Israel began to build a new settlement on lands seized from the majority-Christian town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, Netanyahu took a cue from Trump’s Christmas Day bombing of Nigeria in the name of protecting Christians.  With Christian Zionists in the US a major source of support for both leaders,  the Israeli prime minister announced on Dec. 31 that Israel would be engaging with the US in a global battle for “the future of Western civilization” against the spreading influence of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.   Brushing aside the fact that in the West Bank, the Christian population has shrunk to 1% under the Israeli occupation, he asserted that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that “protects the Christian community, enables it to grow, defends it, and makes sure it thrives.”  

With Iran and Hezbollah looming large in Israel’s war playbook at a time when the US public and even Republican voters are turning against unconditional arms shipments to Israel, Netanyahu must have been relieved with the Pentagon’s announcement following his meeting with Trump that it gave Boeing $8.6 billion to manufacture 25 F-15IA warplanes for Israel.   When the prime minister returned from his six-day visit to the US, a member of his delegation said that “everything went better than we expected.”

The West Bank: accelerating de facto annexation

The one area where Trump hinted at disagreement with Netanyahu concerned Israel’s West Bank policies which have destroyed the territory’s economy,  turned it into a powder keg and been denounced by Arab and Muslim nations.  A week before Netanyahu traveled to the US, Israel ‘legalized’ 19 more ‘outposts’ so they could be made ‘legal’ settlements.  According to Finance Minister Smotrich, over the past three years Israel has approved 69 outposts in its drive “to develop, build and settle the inherited land of our ancestors.” 

Fourteen countries immediately condemned the latest legalization.  But Israel has showed no sign of being deterred by international rhetoric opposing its plan to establish sovereignty over the West Bank.  To further fragment the territory and prevent the formation of a Palestinian state, it is planning to build 9,000 strategically-placed new housing units  in East Jerusalem in addition to the 28,000 already approved for the West Bank in 2025.  Israel  has prevented tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes in partly destroyed refugee camps and continuing to demolish refugee homes.   It is now using often deadly violence and relentless harassment to expel  Palestinians from their homes in the 22% of the West Bank  known as Area B,  that the Oslo process had put under the administrative control of the PA.

The end of the olive harvest has not diminished the daily brutality inflicted on Palestinians throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the ‘protective presence’ mounted by Israeli and international volunteers has slowed but not ended the Israeli effort to empty the Jordan Valley of Palestinians.   Soldiers continue to shoot and kill teenagers they say are throwing stones, which is official army policy.   Over 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and more than 9,000 wounded since Oct. 2023 as the US ensures that Israel has the equipment needed to repress the population.   On Dec. 23, Haaretz reported that the Defense Department was providing Israel with American-made Colt rifles worth $13 million.   

The Gaza Strip: the nightmare is unending 

With more than 239,000 Palestinians killed and wounded since Oct. 2023, the majority of them women and children, the numbers continue to rise, while only 74 intensive care beds remain in Gaza’s wrecked health care sector.   Israel has no hesitation in firing over the  ‘ceasefire’s yellow line’ which its army expands west at will into Gaza’s heavily populated areas, even as it systematically destroys all the structures within the more than half of Gaza it controls and builds roads linking Gaza to Israel.  

On Dec. 19,  the army attacked a school where displaced people had taken shelter in Gaza City, killing six of them including a baby.   As frigid winter storms continue to flood tents which are of poor quality, more children have died of cold.   Miscarriages have surged, with births reportedly declining by 40% over last year’s numbers.  Gaza’s residents are meanwhile being sickened by towering piles of 900,000 tons of solid waste, as Israel refuses to allow the entry of a sufficient number of trucks to remove waste and material to repair sewage facilities.  

While it bars humanitarian shipments containing ‘dual-use’ items such as tent poles, solar panels, crutches, wheelchairs, sterilization equipment and oxygen generators “which can be repurposed for terrorist activities”   as well as the entry of items that “don’t address urgent humanitarian needs” such as pens, pencils, frozen beef and many other food items, it gives a green light to commercial shipments of many of these products which most residents cannot afford to purchase.  The huge profit made by a network of businesses involved in the Gaza trade is described here. 

A bleak future

With Israel rejecting Hamas’ offer to ‘store’ its weapons or hand them over to  a Palestinian-run entity, with Netanyahu refusing to allow the PA to operate in Gaza and seeking to prolong the war that has already cost $110 billion,  with Trump’s Board of Peace and International Stabilization Force still unformed as countries refuse to shoulder the burden of disarming Hamas, and with Republican insiders and US companies maneuvering for lucrative contracts, among them the company that helps run the infamous immigrant detention center in south Florida known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face a grim future in which mass expulsion is Israel’s goal.

According to The Wall Street Journal for Dec. 19, a ‘Project Sunrise’  Kushner-Witkoff scheme to rebuild Gaza as a luxurious ‘smart city’ high tech zone at a projected  cost of $112 billion is making the rounds, with the US pledging $60 billion in grants and debt guarantees.  So it seems that Trump’s plan for a ‘Riviera of the Middle East ’ is still on the cards.  Under this latest version of monetizing catastrophe, there is no mention of Palestinians having any role to play and no consideration of whether they could afford to live in the glitzy administrative hub of New Rafah, with a projected population of 500,000.

Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine

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