Media Report 2025.10.26
Gaza’s Mandela or just a killer?
Daily Telegraph (Hobart Mercury) / The Times| 26 October 2025
The world agrees that Hamas can no longer rule Gaza. But the question is who can replace the terror group.
Marwan Barghouti, in an Israeli jail for terrorism and murder, is the man some Palestinians are pitching to President Donald Trump as a “Nelson Mandela” who could unite a future Palestinian state.
Barghouti, who consistently polls as the most popular Palestinian leader, has appeared at the top of various prisoner lists submitted by Hamas, including one this month, but Israel has refused to release him despite pressure from the US.
American negotiators, including Steve Witkoff, took the case for his release all the way to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, only for him to refuse.
He has been in jail since 2002 and was convicted on terrorism charges in 2004. He was acquitted of 21 charges of murder because of a lack of evidence. Fearing Barghouti may die in jail, the family has redoubled its efforts for a global push to ensure his release, modelled on the campaign that helped Nelson Mandela to walk free and become South Africa’s first post-apartheid leader.
Aarab Barghouti, his son, told The Times: “Mandela was seen by his enemies as a terrorist but he led South Africa to peace and freedom.”
In an interview with Time Magazine published on Thursday, President Trump bemoaned the lack of a “visible leader” in Gaza and said he had discussed with associates whether he should personally press Israel for Barghouti’s freedom. “So I’ll be making a decision,” Trump said.
Barghouti is seen as a threat by the current Israeli government because of his popularity and his support for a two-state solution. He is backed as a leader in waiting by Israeli politicians who support a two-state solution. Barghouti is also a threat to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, who has not faced an election for 20 years.
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Puzzled why Gazans being brought here
Courier-Mail | Letters | 26 October 2025
Like Peta Credlin, I too would like to know why the people from Gaza are coming to the land down under (“Gaza war is now over – sowhy are they still coming?”, SM, 19/10).
The constant bombing and destruction has ended, and here’s this Middle Eastern mob going to abandon their home of origin and take up residence in a distant land, which is worlds away from their own culture. Are the Gazans going to be bringing their own demountables to set up their place of abode?
Well, there is rising homelessness here, and yet the powers who be have decided that they can house, feed and finance complete strangers from a foreign land and turn a blind eye to what’s happening on their political doorstep.
People are finding the cost of rentals crippling, and yet the individuals who happen to be running the country can’t or won’t help every day Aussies.
How this mob of mish-mash politicians who make these decisions to import total strangers from the Middle East live with themselves just beggars belief. But that’s what we have begun to accept as normal as one doesn’t expect miracles from empty vessels.
Helen Holdey, Brighton
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WHO in medical evac bid for Gaza
Hobart Mercury | 26 October 2025
Geneva: The UN’s health agency has pleaded for thousands of people in desperate need of medical care to be allowed to leave Gaza in what it said would be a “game-changer”.
The World Health Organization has supported the medical evacuation of nearly 7800 patients out of the Gaza Strip since the war with Israel began two years ago – and estimates that there are 15,000 people, including 4000 children, currently needing treatment outside the Palestinian territory.
But a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect on October 10 has not sped up the process. The WHO has been able to evacuate only 41 critical patients since then.
Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, called for all crossings out of Gaza into Israel and Egypt to be opened up during the ceasefire – not only for the entry of aid, but for medical evacuations, too.
The WHO says more than 700 people have died waiting for medical evacuation since the war began.
The plea comes as top US diplomat Marco Rubio voiced hope of soon putting together an international force to police the ceasefire in Gaza as Palestinian factions agreed that a committee of independent technocrats would run the post-war territory.
The secretary of state visited Israel on the heels of Vice President JD Vance as part of an all-out effort by the United States to persuade both Hamas and Israel to respect the truce.
Rubio said it was critical for the deal to create “the conditions for the stabilisation force to come in as soon as it possibly can be put together”.
He expressed optimism for a durable end to the two-year Gaza war as he met Israeli, US and other Western forces monitoring the ceasefire from inside a vast converted warehouse in southern Israel.
The deal calls for an international force to oversee security after Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas, whose unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023 sparked a war that has left Gaza in ruins.
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A bomb in Gaza wounds twins who thought it was a toy
Canberra Times / AAP | Abdel Kareem Hana & Samy Magdy | 26 October 2025
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9097048/a-bomb-in-gaza-wounds-twins-who-thought-it-was-a-toy/
The Shorbasi family’s ceasefire homecoming to their severely damaged house in Gaza City has been marred by tragedy after six-year-old twins mistook unexploded ordnance for a toy and suffered life-threatening injuries in a blast.
The boy, Yahya, and his sister, Nabila, had discovered a round object while playing outside. One touch, and it went off.
“It was like a toy,” their grandfather, Tawfiq Shorbasi, said of the unexploded ordnance, after the children were rushed to Shifa hospital on Friday.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are seizing the chance to return to what’s left of their homes under the ceasefire that began on October 10.
But the dangers are far from over as people, including children, sift through the rubble for what remains of their belongings, and for bodies unreachable until now.
Shorbasi said the family had returned home after the ceasefire took hold.
“We’ve just returned last week,” the grandfather said at Shifa hospital, fighting back tears.
“Their lives have been ruined forever.”
The boy, Yahya, lay on a hospital bed with his right arm and leg wrapped in bandages.
Nabila, now being treated at Patient’s Friends hospital, had a bandaged forehead.
Both children’s faces were freckled with tiny shrapnel wounds.
A British emergency physician and paediatrician working at one of the hospitals told The Associated Press the twins had life-threatening injuries, including a lost hand, a hole in the bowel, broken bones and potential loss of a leg.
The children underwent emergency surgery and their conditions have relatively stabilised, the doctor said.
But concerns remain about their recovery because of Gaza’s vast lack of medicine and medical supplies, a doctor said.
“Now it’s just a waiting game, so I hope that they both survive, but at this point in time, I can’t say, and this is a common recurrence,” she said.
Health workers call unexploded ordnance a major threat to Palestinians.
Two other children, Yazan and Jude Nour, were wounded on Thursday while their family was inspecting their home in Gaza City, according to Shifa Hospital.
Gaza’s Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government, said five children were wounded by unexploded ordnance over the past week, including one in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“This is the death trap,” a doctor said.
“We’re talking about a ceasefire, but the killing hasn’t stopped.”
Already over 68,500 Palestinians have died in the war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.
Luke Irving, head of the UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS, in the Palestinian territories, has warned that “explosive risk is incredibly high” as both aid workers and displaced Palestinians return to areas vacated by the Israeli military in Gaza.
As of October 7, UNMAS had documented at least 52 Palestinians killed and 267 others wounded by unexploded ordnance in Gaza since the war began.
UNMAS, however, said the toll could be much higher.
Irving told a United Nations briefing last week that 560 unexploded ordnance items have been found during the current ceasefire, with many more under the rubble.
Two years of war have left up to 60 million tons of debris across Gaza, he added.
In the coming weeks, additional international de-mining experts are expected to join efforts to collect unexploded ordnance in Gaza, he said.
“As expected, we’re now finding more items because we’re getting out more; the teams have more access,” he said.
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Turkey likely to be excluded from Gaza stabilisation force after Israeli objection
Doubts over whether Ankara will be part of 5,000-strong force to be deployed to prevent postwar power vacuum
The Guardian | Patrick Wintour | 25 October 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/25/turkey-gaza-stabilisation-force-israeli-objection
Turkey will probably be excluded from the 5,000-strong stabilisation force that is to be set up inside Gaza after Israel made clear it did not want Turkish troops taking part.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said it was a requirement that Israel is comfortable with the nationality of the multinational force, set up to prevent a security vacuum when the massive task of reconstruction in Gaza starts. Turkey has said it is willing to offer troops, but Israel has let it be known that it disapproves of Turkish troops taking part in the force.
Tensions between Israel and Turkey have grown over Syria and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seen by the Israeli government as too close to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Hamas itself. But the exclusion of Turkey from the stabilisation force would be controversial since it is one of the guarantors of the Trump 20-point ceasefire agreement, and is seen as one of the most capable Muslim armed forces.
The force is still likely to be led by Egypt.
Other contributors to the stabilisation force, such as Indonesia and the Emiratis, would still prefer the force to be given a UN security council mandate, even if it is not itself a UN peacekeeping force.
Instead it will coordinate with a US-led military cell, known as the Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC), based in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat. The cell, which includes a small number of British, French, Jordanian and Emirati advisers was inaugurated on Tuesday by the US vice-president, JD Vance. The CMCC also appears to be taking on an aid coordination role in Gaza, although key aid crossings remain closed.
The force will be tasked with disarming Hamas and securing a transitional Palestinian government, the formation of which is still being contested. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ruled out Palestinian Authority involvement in postwar Gaza, although on Friday the main Palestinian factions agreed that an independent committee of technocrats would take over the running of the strip.
In a sign of the tensions between Turkey and Israel, Turkish disaster response specialists sent to help locate Palestinian and Israeli bodies inside Gaza remained near Egypt’s border with the strip on Thursday, awaiting Israeli authorisation to enter.
The 81-member team from Turkey’s AFAD disaster management authority are waiting to enter with life-detection devices and trained search dogs.
Erdoğan told reporters on Friday that the US should do more to put pressure on Israel, including through sanctions and arms sales bans, to abide by its commitments in the Trump plan.
Rubio also said there could be no role for the UN’s Palestinian relief works agency, Unrwa, in Gaza due to the agency being a “subsidiary of Hamas”.
His remarks will put him at odds with many European countries, the UN itself, and the international court of justice (ICJ), which said in an advisory opinion this week that the Unrwa was an irreplaceable vehicle to distribute aid inside Gaza.
The ICJ did not accept that Israel had provided incontrovertible evidence that Unrwa had been irretrievably infiltrated by Hamas.
Joint US-Israeli opposition to Unrwa presents a dilemma since Donald Trump, in his 20-point plan, has accepted a role for the UN in distributing aid in Gaza, but seems intent on excluding Unrwa, the main relevant aid agency. The UN faces a choice over whether or not to confront Trump over Unrwa.
Norway, the country that initiated the action at the UN general assembly last December that led to the ICJ opinion this week, had said it was drafting a resolution incorporating the key ICJ findings about the need for Israel as the occupying power not to restrict aid supplies into Gaza. Under the Trump ceasefire plan, accepted by Israel, 600 aid trucks were due to enter Gaza daily. But since the agreement, the daily average has been 89 trucks a day on average – only 14% of the agreed amount.
Unrwa criticised Israel, saying: “Since the start of the war in Gaza, the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has also seen a sharp escalation of violence.
“Families know only fear and uncertainty. The growing annexation of the West Bank continues unabated, in flagrant violation of international law. This must stop. The future of Gaza and the West Bank are one.”
The head of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, Tom Fletcher, speaking to the BBC, said of his recent visit to Gaza: “It felt to me like I was driving through the ruins of Hiroshima, or Stalingrad, or Dresden”.
Delegations from Hamas led by Khalil al-Hayya, and its rival, Fatah, led by Hussein Al-Sheikh, met in Egypt on Friday to discuss post-war arrangements in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas said it had received “clear guarantees” from mediators that “the war has effectively ended”.
A joint statement published on the Hamas website said the groups had agreed during a meeting in Cairo to hand “over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent ‘technocrats’, which will manage the affairs of life and basic services in cooperation with Arab brothers and international institutions”
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West Bank community left reeling after Palestinian woman clubbed by masked Israeli settler
ABC | Barbara Miller, Sami Sockol & Michael Franchi | 26 October 2025
Warning: This story contains a graphic account of assault.
The video of a young, Jewish man wearing a mask and wielding a large stick as he runs towards a woman is short and shocking.
The unprovoked attack, which took place in the village of Turmus’ayya in the occupied West Bank, was captured on video by US journalist Jasper Nathaniel from a car nearby.
He can be heard yelling: “Oh come on, don’t f***ing hit her … hey, hey.”
Then the settler clubs 53-year-old Palestinian woman, Afaf Abu Alia.
She falls to the ground and he beats her again with the stick.
He then chases after volunteers, who usually come out at harvest time to try and offer a layer of protection to the Palestinian olive farmers, clubbing one of them too.
The incident was part of a wider attack by settlers on olive farmers that day in Turmus’ayya.
Locals say a group of more than 12 young Israeli men threw stones at Palestinians working in the fields and set alight three cars.
The West Bank is regarded internationally as being illegally occupied by Israel, but settlers claim the land belongs to them.
And in the past two years, settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have skyrocketed.
The situation is particularly acute during the olive harvest, which began this month.
There have been accounts of trees being chopped down, equipment damaged and farmers physically attacked.
Of 71 settler attacks documented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the week ending October 13, more than half were related to the harvest season.
One man was killed, 99 people were injured and 27 villages were impacted, according to OCHA.
The impact of the settler attacks
The attack has Khawla Za’atar and her workers watching their backs as they harvest olives near Turmus’ayya.
“The workers that are with us are scared, we can’t work properly, they are looking around them to see if they [the settlers] are coming on their quad bikes,” she says.
In case the settlers return, Ms Za’atar is loading the olives onto her ute as soon as they are harvested.
“We put the bags straight in the car right after we pick the olives,” she says.
“So if there is any problem, we can go home quickly.”
Turmus’ayya has seen many attacks before, with one of the worst incidents occurring in June 2023 when hundreds of settlers surged into town. Their rampage was captured on CCTV footage.
The violence was one of a number of attacks following the killing by Hamas gunmen of four settlers outside a settlement.
Israeli forces arrived and during the confrontation a young man was shot dead.
But the clubbing of a defenceless woman as she was picking olives has shocked the community.
“We were very upset about her, because she was an old lady,” Khawla Za’atar said.
“This woman was not able to run away like the young men.”
A statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says soldiers and the police had been dispatched to the scene after receiving reports of physical violence by Israeli civilians.
“Upon arrival of the forces, the confrontation was dispersed. Further processing of the incident was transferred to the Israel Police,” it says.
Mr Nathaniel refutes the IDF’s account of the incident and says they “never showed up to the attack at all, let alone dispersed it”.
When the ABC contacted Israel’s police to ask if any arrests had followed the widely reported and documented incident, they said the incident was “part of an ongoing investigation” and “would not elaborate any further”.
The statement says the area was under IDF jurisdiction and that police “continues to operate in coordination with all security bodies, within its purview and in accordance with the law”.
“Acts of violence against any individual are regarded with the utmost severity,” the statement says.
Ms Abu Alia was taken to hospital with injuries to her head and body.
She was released on Thursday.
‘They are getting ready for an attack’
Wadi’ Alqam has experienced settler violence firsthand.
Two months ago his farmhouse near Turmus’ayya was subjected to an arson attack.
The living room of the property was torched and all the furniture destroyed.
“I used to have 18 very nice seats over there … and they were all melted,” he said.
The attackers left messages spray-painted on the outside of the property.
“Revenge”, “we will return”, and “price tag” are scrawled in Hebrew on the stone walls in red paint.
“Price tag” is a term used by extreme settlers to indicate they see such actions as retaliation for a perceived injustice.
The attacks are often a reaction to Israeli authorities taking steps against radical settlers or Palestinian acts of violence.
Mr Alqam said the perpetrators came from a settlement outpost on a hill about 1.5 kilometres from his home.
He said he told the police who came to take a statement on the fire that they could likely find them there.
“I told it very simple,” he says.
“You just go to that point, those are the people who burnt my house. Those are the people who cut thousands of olive trees.”
But, he said, the police did nothing.
On the day we visit, Mr Alqam says the IDF has cut off access to some of his land, declaring it a military zone.
He says he currently cannot reach around two-thirds of his olive trees.
The harvest normally takes around a month, but because so much land is out of bounds, this year it will take him only about 10 days to reap what he can access.
“The army and the settler both have the same purpose, not to let the farmer reach their land.”
After we leave Mr Alqam spots a group of settlers on the dirt track in the distance.
On a shaky video he sends the ABC, a group of men dressed in black can be seen converging near a car and quad bike.
“They are getting ready for an attack,” he tells his workers.
“Don’t just stand and stare! Get to it.”
His words are a warning that they should pack up and leave.
Settlement expansion on the horizon
About half a million Israeli settlers live in about 140 settlements and several hundred outposts in the West Bank, with a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem.
Although widely considered illegal under international law, successive Israeli governments have allowed their expansion, and the current right-wing administration is approving more and more of them.
In May this year, the ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, confirmed the approval of more than 20 new settlements across the West Bank.
This week, the Knesset moved further towards full annexation of the West Bank, with a preliminary vote to extend Israeli sovereignty.
Yisrael Medad, a spokesman for West Bank settlement movement, described the Knesset vote as “in the right direction”.
“I suspect we’ll have to wait a little bit longer for anything to go on, but it’s a statement, and I think it shows the world we’re very determined to stay,” he said.
Mr Medad says the ultimate goal is “full sovereignty” in the West Bank, which he considers Jewish land.
He has no time for declarations from countries, including Australia, in support of Palestinian statehood.
“Every country can be as foolish and wrong as it wants to be,” he says.
The timing of the Knesset vote, brought on by the opposition, came as an embarrassment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was hosting United States Vice-President JD Vance.
A statement from his office said the vote was “a deliberate political provocation”, and stressed that the principal members of the coalition did not support the move, “except for one disgruntled Likud member”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was also about to head to Israel, condemned the vote, saying annexation moves were “potentially threatening for the peace deal”.
“The president’s made clear that’s not something we’d be supportive of right now,” he says.
At his farmhouse in Turmus’ayya, which has strong connections to the US, Wadi Alqam is not holding his breath for American support.
Like many in the town, he holds an American passport, but he doesn’t think it means very much for his current situation.
“If you live as American citizen, if you live all over the world, they protect you,” he said.
“The only place they don’t protect you is Israel.”
He says he has no hope the peace plan brokered by US President Donald Trump will succeed.
“No, because they [the Israelis] don’t want peace,” he says.
“They want the land. They want to pick us from our homes, from our village, from our city.”
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