“Today, the United States faces a legitimacy crisis not only in the Middle East but also in Latin America and East Asia,” Ali Akbar Velayati, Khamenei’s adviser on international affairs, told Iran’s state media in an interview published on Tuesday.

Newsweek has contacted the U.S. State Department for comment.

Why It Matters
Iran has condemned increased U.S. military activities near Venezuela. U.S. President Donald Trump has escalated the U.S. military’s counter-narcotics posture in the southern Caribbean region, carrying out multiple strikes on vessels alleged to be trafficking drugs from Venezuelan waters. The strikes have fanned concerns in Caracas about regime-change intentions disguised as anti-drug operations.

Iran, a principal challenger to U.S. influence in the East—alongside powers such as China and Russia—has long positioned itself as part of an emerging multipolar order countering Washington’s dominance. Velayati echoed this view, describing what he called a global transition “from a unipolar to a multipolar and just order,” driven by growing coordination among Eastern powers seeking to counter U.S. unilateralism.

What To Know
In a detailed interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Velayati highlighted Russia and China as examples of countries countering U.S. unilateralism, citing Moscow’s resurgence under President Vladimir Putin and Beijing’s rapid economic growth and strategic independence.

“The strategic alliance of China and Russia within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS clearly signals the emergence of a new Eastern pole standing against the unilateral policies of the United States,” he said.

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BRICS, a group of 10 major emerging economies, formed in 2009 to promote economic cooperation, political coordination and development among its members. The group’s founding members were Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2010, while the remaining five members—Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia—joined in the past two years.

Velayati also positioned Iran as a central actor in the Middle East, part of a broader “resistance front” that, together with these emerging powers, is shaping a multipolar order to challenge Washington’s global dominance.

The U.S.’s calls for Hezbollah’s disarmament, aimed at reducing Tehran’s influence in Lebanon and curbing the group’s military capabilities, are countered by Iran’s continued political and military support for the organization. Trump, who brokered the Abraham Accords, seeks to push more Arab countries toward normalization agreements with Israel, the U.S.’s key ally. The American president views Iran as a major obstacle to those efforts.

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. remain high over the nuclear issue, with Washington conducting targeted strikes in June amid concerns about Tehran’s program.

What People Are Saying
Ali Akbar Velayati, the adviser for international affairs to Iran’s supreme leader, told the Islamic Republic News Agency in Persian on Tuesday: “The U.S. seeks to expand its influence from South America to the North Pole and simultaneously aims to control strategic areas such as the Panama Canal, Venezuela, Chile, and Bolivia.”

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on November 7: “Iran has been asking if the sanctions could be lifted. Iran has got very heavy U.S. sanctions and it makes it really hard for them to do what they’d like to be able to do. And I’m open to hearing that, and we’ll see what happens, but I would be open to it.”

Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking in Tehran last week, said: “Only if the United States completely cuts its backing for the Zionist regime, removes its military bases from the region, and ceases interfering in its affairs, their request for cooperation with Iran, not in the near future but much later, could be examined.”

What Happens Next
Iran is likely to strengthen economic and political alliances with Russia, China and regional partners to counter what it perceives as U.S. unilateralism.

Stage one of the peace plan occurred with the exchange of the 20 remaining live Israeli hostages being held by Hamas for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel, including about 250 life prisoners and about 1,700 who had been captured since the war started on October 7, 2023, with Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel. The attack resulted in approximately 1,200 deaths, mostly civilians, and 251 people taken hostage. The other part of stage one was the ceasefire, which has been fragile at best.

The next stage of the peace plan has proven problematic, as Hamas has so far refused to give up its weapons and control over Gaza.

Turkey is reportedly planning to send thousands of soldiers to Gaza as part of the ISF, though both the U.S. and Israel are resisting that effort. Based on the Trump administration's proposed resolution sent to the United Nations Security Council, the ISF would oversee the Gaza ceasefire, the disarming of Hamas, and the humanitarian relief effort.

But Israel has been clear that no Turkish troops would be allowed to enter Gaza. "There will be no Turkish boots on the ground," a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a press conference, according to Algemeiner.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly praised Hamas. Just this week, the Turkish government issued arrest warrants for 37 Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, accusing them of "genocide" in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blasted the accusations, calling them "ridiculous."

"Take those ridiculous arrest warrants and get the hell out of here," he said in a post on X. "They're more fitting for the massacres you've committed against the Kurds. Israel is strong and unafraid. You'll only be able to see Gaza through binoculars."

Sharaa cited Israel’s “occupation” of the Golan Heights as a reason Syria would not enter such talks.

“I believe that this situation in Syria is different from the situation of the countries that went on with the Abrahamic agreement,” Sharaa told Fox’s Gillian Turner. “Syria has borders with Israel, and Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967. We are not going to enter into a negotiation directly right now.”

Sharaa’s answer came after Gillian noted that “Trump would like Syria to join the Abraham Accords.” She then asked whether Sharaa agreed with the accords’ “foundational principle,” which is that Israel had “the right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state.”

While Sharaa stated that Syria would not enter talks to join the accords at this time, he floated the possibility that “maybe the United States administration, with President Trump, will help us reach this kind of negotiation.”

Sharaa’s nom de guerre while active in terror organizations, including al-Qaeda and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, was “al-Jolani,” honoring his parents, who were residents of the Golan Heights until 1967, when they fled due to the Six-Day War. Sharaa was born in Saudi Arabia.

Israel-Syria agreement to be achieved before year's end, Syrian official believes
His interview with Fox followed a historic meeting between the Syrian president and Trump at the White House. The event was the first such visit by a Syrian leader. Israel and Syria are expected to come to several security and military agreements by the end of 2025, a Syrian official told Agence France-Presse in September.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also confirmed that negotiations are underway on September 24.

The United States is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to help enable a security pact that Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters last week.

The US plans for the presence in the Syrian capital, which have not previously been reported, would be a sign of Syria’s strategic realignment with the US following the fall last year of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran.

The base sits at the gateway to parts of southern Syria that are expected to make up a demilitarized zone as part of a non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria mediated by the Trump administration.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani warned that, in his view, Israel is “pursuing expansionist projects, exploiting recent changes in Syria, and destabilizing the region,” during an interview with state-run Al Ekhbariyah TV in October.

“Israel wanted to impose a new reality and an expansionist project, exploiting the change that took place in Syria,” he said.

He also affirmed his view that Israel’s actions are reinforcing Syria’s instability.

His comments came amid the clashes in southern Syria between Bedouin and Druze populations, with Israel assisting the Druze with military strikes.

Israel violated the ceasefire agreement at least 282 times from October 10 to November 10, through the continuation of attacks by air, artillery and direct shootings, the Government Media Office in Gaza reports.

The office said Israel shot at civilians 88 times, raided residential areas beyond the “yellow line” 12 times, bombed Gaza 124 times, and demolished people’s properties on 52 occasions. It added that Israel also detained 23 Palestinians from Gaza over the past month.

Israel has also continued to block vital humanitarian aid and destroy homes and infrastructure across the Strip.

Al Jazeera tracks the ceasefire violations to date.

What are the terms of the ceasefire?
On September 29, the United States unveiled a 20-point proposal, without any Palestinian input, to end Israel’s war on Gaza, release the remaining captives held in the enclave, allow the full entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory and outline a three-phase withdrawal of Israeli forces.

ome of the main conditions of the first phase, which is ongoing, include:

An end to hostilities in Gaza by Israel and Hamas
Lifting the blockade of all aid into Gaza by Israel and stopping its interference in aid distribution
Release of all captives held in Gaza – alive or dead – by Hamas
Release of some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and disappeared people from Israeli jails
Withdrawal of Israeli forces to the “yellow line”

Following mediation by partners including Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye, representatives from some 30 countries gathered on October 13 for a ceremony to sign the Gaza ceasefire agreement, led by US President Donald Trump.

However, Israel and Hamas were notably absent, raising doubts about the summit’s ability to achieve tangible progress towards ending the war and resolving the core issues of Israeli occupation and the 18-year-long siege of Gaza.

Israel has pledged not to allow a Palestinian state, and the US has continued its large-scale arms transfers and diplomatic backing to Israel throughout its genocidal war on Gaza, while offering only vague statements about Gaza’s future.

Israel attacks Gaza nearly every day
According to an analysis by Al Jazeera, Israel has attacked Gaza on 25 out of the past 31 days of the ceasefire, meaning there were only six days during which no violent attacks, deaths or injuries were reported.

Despite continuing attacks, the US insists that the “ceasefire” is still holding.

Israel still killing Palestinians
Since the ceasefire took effect at noon on October 10, Israel has killed at least 242 Palestinians and injured 622, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

On October 19 and 29 – two of the deadliest days since the latest ceasefire – Israel killed a total of 154 people.

On October 19, accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire after two Israeli soldiers were killed in Rafah, Israeli forces killed 45 people in a massive wave of air raids across the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, pointed out that Israel controls the Rafah area and it had no contact with any Palestinian fighters there.

On October 29, Israel killed 109 people, including 52 children, after an exchange of gunfire in Rafah that killed one Israeli soldier.

Israel also said a body transferred from Gaza by Hamas via the Red Cross did not belong to one of the captives due to be released under the ceasefire.

“The Israelis hit back, and they should hit back,” Trump told reporters, calling Israel’s attacks “retribution” for the soldier’s death.

Here are the latest figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, tracking the casualties from October 7, 2023, through November 10, 2025:

Confirmed killed: at least 69,179 people, including 20,179 children
Injured: at least 170,693 people

Israel still choking aid
The ceasefire stipulated that “full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip”. However, the reality on the ground remains very different.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), only half the required food aid is currently reaching Gaza, while a coalition of Palestinian relief agencies says total aid deliveries amount to just one-quarter of what was agreed under the ceasefire.

From October 10 to November 9, only 3,451 trucks have reached their intended destinations inside Gaza, according to the UN2720 Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard, which monitors humanitarian aid in Gaza.

According to truck drivers, aid deliveries are facing significant delays, with Israeli inspections taking much longer than expected.

According to the Government Media Office, as of November 6, only 4,453 trucks had entered Gaza since the ceasefire began, out of an expected 15,600.

This averages about 171 trucks daily, far short of the 600 trucks per day that were supposed to enter.

Yet the White House says nearly 15,000 trucks carrying commercial goods and humanitarian aid have entered Gaza since October 10, a figure sharply disputed by Palestinians and aid groups.

In addition, Israel has blocked more than 350 essential and nutritious food items, including meat, dairy, and vegetables crucial for a balanced diet. Instead, non-nutritious foodstuffs are being allowed, such as snacks, chocolate, crisps, and soft drinks.

Did Hamas release the captives it’s supposed to release?
On October 13, as per the ceasefire deal, Hamas released all 20 remaining living Israeli captives in exchange for 250 Palestinians serving long prison sentences and 1,700 Palestinians disappeared by Israel since October 7, 2023.

As part of the deal, Hamas is also expected to return the bodies of 28 Israeli captives in exchange for 360 Palestinian bodies held by Israel.

As of November 10, Hamas had returned 24 Israeli captives’ bodies, with four remaining in Gaza. The group has said it requires heavy excavation equipment to recover the remaining bodies buried under the rubble from Israeli bombardment.

Israel has so far returned 300 Palestinian bodies, many of which were mutilated and showed signs of torture. Many remain unidentified.

What does international law say about ceasefires?
According to Lieber Institute, a ceasefire is designed to halt active combat, or “freeze a conflict in place”, but it can be ambiguous in international law.

The suspension of hostilities is best understood as a cessation of active hostile military operations.

Resuming hostilities would breach political agreements, but it might not be a violation of international law unless the ceasefire was part of a binding treaty or United Nations Security Council resolution.

It was the latest in a series of attacks by young settlers in the West Bank.

Israeli police said four Israelis were arrested in what it described as “extremist violence,” while the Israeli military said four Palestinians were wounded. Police and Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said they were investigating.

Videos on social media showed two charred trucks engulfed in flames, with a nearby building on fire. Settler violence has surged since the war in Gaza erupted two years ago. The attacks have intensified in recent weeks as Palestinians harvest their olive trees in an annual ritual.

Earlier on Tuesday, tens of thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of an Israeli soldier whose remains had been held in Gaza for 11 years, overflowing and blocking surrounding streets as somber crowds stood with Israeli flags.

Earlier on Tuesday, tens of thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of an Israeli soldier whose remains had been held in Gaza for 11 years, overflowing and blocking surrounding streets as somber crowds stood with Israeli flags.

The burial of Lt. Hadar Goldin was a moment of closure for his family, which had traveled the world in a public campaign seeking his return. The huge turnout also reflected the importance for the broader public in Israel, where Goldin became a household name.

Hamas returned his remains on Sunday as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal that began last month. The bodies of four hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, are still in Gaza.

Settler violence in the West Bank

The U.N. humanitarian office last week reported more Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in October than in any other month since it began keeping track in 2006. There were over 260 attacks, the office said.

Palestinians and human rights workers accuse the Israeli army and police of failing to halt attacks by settlers. Israel’s government is dominated by West Bank settlers, and the police force is overseen by Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hardline settler leader.

In Tuesday’s incident, the army said soldiers initially responded to settler attacks in the villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf. It said the settlers fled to a nearby industrial zone and attacked soldiers sent to the scene and damaged a military vehicle.

Palestinian official Muayyad Shaaban, who heads the government’s Commission against the Wall and Settlements, said the settlers set fire to four dairy trucks, farmland, tin shacks and tents belonging to a Bedouin community.

He said the attacks were part of a campaign to drive Palestinians from their land and accused Israel of giving the settlers protection and immunity. He called for sanctions against groups that “sponsor and support the colonial settlement terrorism project.”

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the attacks during his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris on Tuesday, saying that “settler violence and the acceleration of settlement projects are reaching new heights, threatening the stability of the West Bank.”

Palestinians in Gaza still struggling to access food
Displaced Palestinians in central Gaza said they continue to rely heavily on charity kitchens for their only daily meal, as soaring market prices and the lack of income leave them struggling.

Scores of people, most of them children, lined up with empty pots at a charity kitchen in Nuseirat refugee camp on Tuesday waiting to be served rice — the only food available that day.

“The rockets and planes stopped but increasing living costs has been the hardest weapon used against us,” said Mohamed al-Naqlah, a displaced Palestinian.

On Tuesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has risen to 69,182. Its count, generally considered by independent experts as reliable, does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but the ministry says more than half of those killed were women and children.

The latest war began with the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel when around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and 251 people were kidnapped.

Close adviser to Netanyahu resigns
Cabinet Minister Ron Dermer, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing family reasons.

In a letter, Dermer said he had promised his family to serve two years but extended his term by an additional year to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and “to end the war in Gaza on Israel’s terms and bring our hostages home.”

The U.S.-born Dermer is a former Israeli ambassador to Washington. As strategic affairs minister, he served as Netanyahu’s envoy throughout the war in dealing with the United States and ceasefire negotiations.

Funeral for soldier whose remains were held 11 years
Goldin was 23 when he was killed two hours after a ceasefire took effect in the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. For years before the 2023 attack, posters with the faces of Goldin and Oron Shaul, another soldier whose body was abducted in the 2014 war, stared down from intersections.

Israel’s military long ago determined that Goldin had been killed based on evidence found in the tunnel where his body was taken, including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes. On Tuesday, it announced it had dismantled the tunnel shaft where his body was found. The military retrieved Shaul’s body in January.

Eulogies from Goldin’s siblings, parents, and former fiancee at his funeral never mentioned Netanyahu, who was prime minister when Goldin was kidnapped and for most of the period since. They thanked the Israeli military, including reserve soldiers, who tirelessly searched for Goldin’s body over the years.

Netanyahu did not attend the funeral, though Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, gave a eulogy on behalf of the military.

For years, Israel had four hostages in Gaza: Goldin, Shaul, and two Israelis with mental health issues who had crossed into Gaza on their own and were held since 2014 and 2015. All four were returned in the past year.

The Iranian fishing vessel called the Issamohamadi had been abandoned off the coast of Somalia following their seizure last week of the Hellas Aphrodite, which had been carrying a load of gasoline from India to South Africa. The pirates used the Issamohamadi, a type of traditional ship known across the Persian Gulf as a dhow, as a “mother ship” for a series of assaults capped by their taking of the tanker.

A team from the ESPS Victoria, a Spanish frigate, boarded the dhow and said the Issamohamadi’s original crew on board were in “good condition, safe and free.” Iran has not acknowledged the seizure of the ship.

The pirate group “operating in the area has been definitely disrupted,” the EU naval force’s Operation Atalanta said in a statement. EU forces “have gathered evidence and intelligence of the incident that together with the evidence collected on board Merchant Tanker Hellas Aphrodite, will be submitted to support the legal prosecution of the perpetrators.”

Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011, when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region that year cost the world’s economy some $7 billion, with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.

The threat was diminished by increased international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Somalia, and other efforts.

However, Somali pirate attacks have resumed at a greater pace over the last year, in part due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. The Houthis have signaled they’ve stopped their attacks as a shaky ceasefire holds in Gaza.

In 2024, there were seven reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau. So far this year, multiple fishing boats have been seized by Somali pirates. The Hellas Aphrodite represents the first commercial ship seized by pirates off Somalia since May 2024.

Masri was shot by British troops while on a protest march as a boy, in 1943. The leg injury has continued to plague him over the decades, like those countless Palestinians who have been injured, killed or displaced since the creation of Israel 77 years ago.

As a boy he lived through the Nakba in 1948, in which 750,000 Palestinians were made homeless by Zionist militias. Many arrived as refugees in his native Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

“I saw them, it was really terrible, they were hungry, afraid, bare footed, they had walked hundreds of miles to come to Nablus for refuge,” he tells Middle East Eye.

Six decades later, his grandson, also named Munib, was shot by Israeli forces in 2011 while on a peaceful protest from the Lebanese side of the Israeli border, leaving him paralysed.

In September, Masri and his grandson delivered a petition to Number 10 Downing Street alongside British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim and international law expert Dr Victor Kattan.

They demanded an apology for the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and reparations for the consequences of that short letter that promised to deliver Palestine as a homeland to the Jewish people, above the heads of the indigenous Palestinians.

“By occupying Palestine in 1917, reneging on undertakings made to the Arab people, and self-granting its Mandate in 1922, Britain transformed the legal, political and demographic character of the territory without authority to do so,” the 400-page petition, written with the aid of academic and legal experts, including Ben Emmerson KC, said.

Now in his 90s, Masri is Palestine’s richest businessman, with a sprawling business empire across the Middle East and North Africa that he launched in the 1950s in the oil and gas sector.

He lives in his palacio-style villa in Nablus, surrounded by olive orchards.

Masri served as minister of public works in Jordan’s government in the wake of Black September, when King Hussein’s army fought Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1970, and two decades later as a minister in Arafat’s first Palestinian Authority administration, following the Oslo Accords in 1994.

In 2021 he filed a successful lawsuit in Nablus, occupied Palestine, against the British government for actions during the British Mandate period (1917-1948) and for the Balfour declaration of 1917, issued by the UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.

Out of this came the legal petition delivered to Downing Street in September.

Speaking to Middle East Eye over the phone from Nablus, Masri said he hoped to meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss the petition in the wake of British recognition of Palestine in September, two weeks after he delivered the Balfour petition.

In a telling irony, on the day Masri delivered the petition to Downing Street, Starmer was controversially hosting Israeli President Isaac Herzog for an official meeting.

The Israeli president said early on in the genocidal Gaza war that “there are no innocents in Gaza”, and has been pictured signing missiles that would be fired on the besieged territory.

At least 79,000 Palestinians have been killed or are missing since October 2023. More than 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon.

Push for UK apology and reparations
Masri told MEE that the next steps are in the hands of the British government, led by Starmer.

“We cannot do anything about it until we hear from them, the British government.

"We hope after a couple of months we will hear if they are going to settle it out of court, or they are going to take it to court, but we are determined to take our right.

“Balfour was a very, very ugly letter, a deceipt, it was unjust and it was not legal.”

He hopes Starmer's Labour government will act on the petition as it has recognised the State of Palestine.

“We want to thank [Starmer] for recognising the Palestinian state, because the moment you recognise the Palestinian state, the Balfour declaration is null and void.

“I hope that if we have an audience with the new prime minister, that they [the UK government] realise that it’s about time they say sorry and make it right.”

The genocide in Gaza has opened the world’s eyes to the reality of Israel’s violent occupation and efforts to erase Palestinians, Masri says.

“Because of the Gaza war, the whole world realised that they had been completely fooled by the Israeli propaganda of a peace-loving and democratic state.

“But the whole cause of this came from something called the Balfour Declaration and that’s why England should really do everything they can to say 'I’m sorry' for the big mistake they did to Palestinians and the world, and to pay reparations for so many people who have suffered for this, like they did in India, like they did in Kenya.”

Masri studied in Texas in the 1950s and went on to build a fortune in the oil and gas industry, and as vice chairman of Arab Bank.

Over the decades he has met many of the key players in the Middle East, from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to US Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

He also hosted Lord Jacob Rothschild, whose family were instrumental in gaining UK imperial support for the Zionist project to build a colony in Palestine more than a century ago.

Helping Trump buy a New York icon
Masri met current US President Donald Trump in the 1980s, when he was vice president of the Arab Bank and Trump was a New York City real estate tycoon.

The bank formed part of a global consortium that lent Trump the money to buy the Plaza Hotel for $390m.

Four decades on, there is a hope that Trump – a man who recognises the value of money above everything – will repay this in delivering a Middle East settlement that ends Israel’s wars and recognises Palestinian rights.

“I have written two letters to President Trump who I met when I was in the [Arab] bank in New York, where we had made a loan for him to buy the most famous hotel in New York.

"We were part of the consortium that delivered to him $400 million and I visited him in Trump Tower. He was very kind and very nice, so I reminded him of this.”

He says that Trump is doing “okay”.

“I hope that America will go back to support the two-state solution. Because it is the only way – they cannot kill us all, and we don’t want to kill them, we want to live together.”

In 1993, when Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat returned to Palestine from exile as part of the Oslo Accords, Masri accompanied him.

"We went to Gaza, we went everywhere. They called me the black box of Yasser Arafat, because I was very close to him.”

Arafat appointed Masri as a minister without portfolio in the first Palestinian Authority administration in 1994.

“I believe I was the only person who held a ministerial post in both Jordan and Palestine. I was proud of it.”

Masri ran his business empire from the UK in the late 70s and 80s, but has lived in occupied Palestine since 1993, founding a number of businesses, including Palestine Telecom (Paltel).

His palatial home, Beit al-Falastine, which is on the site of an excavated fifth-century Byzantine monastery, stands above the crowded Balata refugee camp in the valley below.

Masri insists that had he not built it, it would now be an illegal Israeli settlement.

The site was occupied by Israeli troops during the Second Intifada, who “left it like a big latrine,” he previously told The Guardian.

Broken promises
Masri has experience of the way US political leaders often promise something in person and then renege on it.

This was the case with Biden. It should perhaps dent his optimism, which remains undimmed.

“I met Mr Biden when he was vice president, and very briefly when he was president, and he agreed with me on the two state solution.

"But then he changed his mind; he started not saying anything, because of the Zionist pressure on him.”

Masri, perhaps in line with his allies in the Mahmoud Abbas administration, clutches at the hope that Trump will deliver on the vague words of point 19 in his plan, which says there is a possibility of a future Palestinian state.

“Even Mr Trump agrees on it and now I think he will eventually [deliver on it]. His number 19 point shows there is a possibility of a Palestinian state.”

Masri has also attempted over recent years to end the division between Abbas’s Fatah, in the occupied West Bank, and Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007 and still has control of the strip despite a two-year onslaught that has destroyed most of it.

Many critics see Abbas as the main obstacle to unity on the Palestinian side. MEE put this to Masri, who says: “Ending division is the most important issue. President Abbas has to accept this, and I wrote him a letter on this.”

His view of the now widely discredited two-state solution – made less likely each day as Israel expands illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank – is that it is a stepping stone to a federated one state of all citizens in Israel-Palestine, which he calls a “workable utopia”.

“We support a two state solution, which emerged from the United Nations, and hopefully the Israelis will accept it, but there is no room for the Zionist belief or doctrine in the future."

He hopes that “Jews and Arabs could live together like they lived many centuries ago. Palestine could be the first federated state, hopefully in a federation with all the Arab states.”

Meeting Netanyahu
In the 1990s, while working for the PA under Arafat, Masri met Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, who had signed the Oslo Accords with Arafat, but who was then assassinated in 1995.

“I met Rabin and I met Netanyahu, in accordance with what Arafat wanted me to do,” Masri says.

He recalls his meeting with Netanyahu in 1996, at the beginning of the International Criminal Court-indicted war criminal’s first premiership.

“The first time he was prime minister I went to see him with my daughter; it lasted three hours, and after the meeting he told his aides, ‘I like Munib. Make sure he and I meet once every month.’ I was very happy.

“I said there is no way other than living together, and he agreed. But then, he deceived me, he did not stand with his word. I stood with my word.”

There were no further meetings with Netanyahu.

For Masri, the Gaza genocide has been horrific, but has delivered a change in the view of millions of Americans and Europeans over Palestine that he could not have imagined.

“You see what is happening in Gaza… I cannot sleep at night when I see what is happening there.

“If we [Palestinians] spent 15 or 20 billion dollars on changing people’s minds in America we would never have succeeded, but God gave us this privilege – finally, Israel made it clear what they want. They want us out, they want to kill us.”

He brings the current genocide back to Balfour and Britain. He is grateful for the Palestine protests that have swept the UK and US since 2023.

“I want to thank the British public who have been demonstrating against what Israel is doing and what their government is doing.

“This document [Balfour] made seven million Palestinians homeless. And you see the result of this in what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

“An apology is not just words, it is the recognition of truth and the start of healing.”

Sharaa’s bid to cement his alignment with the US comes as his government faces an Israeli occupation in a swath of southern Syria, festering problems with Kurdish fighters in the north and a sputtering economy that has been unable to draw outside investment because of sanctions.

None of those topics is expected to be resolved outright when Sharaa visits, but the image of Sharaa – who Trump has praised as an “attractive”, “strong”, and a “tough guy” – sitting in the Oval Office is going to resonate far.

“Sometimes the meeting is the message. This is one of those times,” former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told Middle East Eye. “Think about other leaders that the US has called terrorists. Were they ever in the Oval Office? It's unprecedented.”

While it is rare, there are a few examples in recent history, including South Africa's Nelson Mandela, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's Yasser Arafat and leaders from the Irish Republican Army.

Sharaa’s ability to assuage the concerns of bigger foreign powers about his past has been his top success, experts say, even as Syrians face corruption, economic woes and the fallout of sectarian violence against Christians, Alawites and Druze.

“Sharaa’s policy is very clear, zero problems, and not just with Syria’s neighbours,” Patrick Haenni, an expert on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), told MEE, referring to a line made famous by Turkey’s former top diplomat, Ahmet Davutoglu, decades ago.

On Friday, ahead of Monday's meeting, the Trump administration swiftly removed sanctions on the Syrian president and removed the Specially Designated Global Terrorist designations on Sharaa and Syria's interior minister, Anas Khattab, according to the US Treasury website.

'Zero problems, not just with neighbours'
Sharaa’s military is moving closer to Nato-member Turkey, which is now training Syrian troops. Meanwhile, his cash-strapped government is relying on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, two key US partners, to pay government salaries.

Sharaa’s Islamist group, HTS, toppled Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, but that did not prevent Sharaa from visiting Assad’s main backer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in October.

Sharaa’s decision to formally sign onto the coalition against IS codifies his government’s security cooperation with the US and the Gulf.

It is still a head-spinning turn for Sharaa, who served roughly five years in a US prison after travelling to Iraq to repel the 2003 invasion. He went on to found al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch.

“Sharaa’s main success has been showing that Syria will not be the breeding ground for any movement that will challenge another state. That includes everyone: Palestinian militants, Shia militant groups, the PKK, and the Muslim Brotherhood, for what it’s worth,” added Haenni, who is the co-author of Transformed by the People, a book on HTS’s rise to power.

Of course, Sharaa still has his detractors.

Egypt is nervous about Trump normalising Sharaa, given President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s ousting of an Islamist president a decade ago. While the UAE has pledged millions of dollars in investments in Syria, it is taking a backseat to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But Sharaa’s biggest threat is Israel.

Syria-Israel deconfliction agreement
Syria’s neighbour took advantage of Assad’s downfall to occupy a United Nations buffer zone in southern Syria and launched powerful air strikes that reached the capital, Damascus, over the summer.

Israel is digging in on Syria’s Mount Hermon, the highest peak in the region. It has also sought to portray itself as a defender of Syria’s Druze minority by backing Druze leader Sheikh Hikmat Salaman al-Hajri with arms, experts say.

Over the summer, when fighting broke out between Druze and Bedouins, Israel prevented Sharaa from deploying his mainly Sunni security forces to the south. The intervention upset Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Trump administration.

After its attack on Iran, some in Israel mused about Syria joining the Abraham Accords, but Trump’s envoy to the country, his billionaire friend and ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, ruled that out as impractical, given Sharaa's "backing of Sunni fundamentalists".

Barrack is trying to broker a more modest security deal between Syria and Israel that would replace the 1974 disengagement agreement that Israel tore up when it invaded Syria's south.

Saudi news-site Al-Hadath reported last week that the US is working on a plan for US, Syrian and Israeli troops to jointly patrol Mount Hermon.

“A security agreement will happen. It’s just a matter of time,” Dareen Khalifa, an expert at the International Crisis Group, told MEE.

“The Israelis will need to give something, but there will be flexibility in terms of a withdrawal," she added.

Ford, the former ambassador, said any agreement would stop short of a broader peace deal because Israel is unlikely to surrender occupied territory to Sharaa’s government.

“I see no evidence the Israelis are preparing to withdraw from the territory they seized after December 2024, much less the Golan Heights. So what does Sharaa get in return for a deal with Israel? What’s in it for him?” he said.

How Sharaa is sidelining Syria's Kurds
Trump campaigned on reducing the US’s entanglements in the Middle East.

Syria, where about 1,000 US troops are stationed in the northeast, has been a focal point of efforts to end the US’s so-called forever wars.

This issue is so divisive that Trump’s nominee for the top State Department position on the Middle East saw his nomination torpedoed last week – in part over his opposition to troop withdrawals during Trump's first term.

Now, the US may deepen its role on the ground. Reuters reported on Thursday that the US is planning to take over an air base south of Damascus to monitor a security deconfliction agreement with Israel.

Syria’s foreign ministry denied the report, but experts say such a move would represent a victory for Damascus.

Since 2014, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been Washington’s main security client in Syria. The US used the SDF to fight IS.

Washington’s support for the SDF has been a long-running sore point with Turkey, which views the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The SDF’s ranks are filled out by the YPG, the PKK’s Syrian wing.

Barrack is lobbying for a deal whereby the SDF incorporates into the Syrian military, but the SDF has been loath to surrender the autonomy it earned while Assad was in power. Experts say the closer Sharaa moves to the US, the more American support for the SDF becomes redundant.

“Time plays in Sharaa’s favour. The Americans are moving gradually to Damascus,” Khalifa, at the International Crisis Group, said. “The military resources that are coming to Damascus will also be significant.”

Haenni said the next logical step will be the transfer of IS prisoners and their families to Damascus’s control. Those prisons in northeast Syria are currently guarded by the SDF, which is one of their key forms of leverage with the US.

US concerns about the professionalism of Sharaa’s troops will be gradually addressed through closer military cooperation with Turkey, a US official told MEE. Syrian cadets entered Turkish military academies last month.

Sharaa is arriving in Washington at a time when tensions in Syria between Turkey and Israel have somewhat eased. The US mediated for both its partners to enter deconfliction talks in the spring. Ford, the former US ambassador, said Sharaa’s government could still be dragged into a potential flare-up.

“The Israelis feel they have total military superiority in the region. While Erdogan does not want to stir up a fight with Israel, the Turks will look for ways to challenge them,” Ford told MEE.

Israel's campaign to keep Caesar Sanctions on Syria
Sharaa’s visit is being closely watched by Syrians who want to reintegrate into the region. One analyst who has met Sharaa and his advisors said that a common quip was that among HTS’s base, “the global coalition against ISIS is seen as a global coalition against the Sunnis".

“Joining does not come without costs,” Haenni said. “But significant parts of Sharaa’s own social base will see this as a way out of international isolation.”Trump announced in May that he was lifting all US sanctions on Syria. The country was under one form of sanction or another since the 1970s, but Washington slapped most of them on during Syria's civil war that pitted rebels against Assad.

Trump has removed sanctions by executive order, but experts say Gulf states and western businesses are reluctant to make long-term financial commitments in Syria if Caesar sanctions, the most crippling regime, are not repealed fully by Congress.

Advocates in Washington hope the imagery of Sharaa in the Oval Office hits two people in particular, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressman Brian Mast.

“They are doing essentially all they can not to repeal the Caesar sanctions,” Mouaz Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, told MEE.

Mast, who often wears an Israeli military uniform in Congress, told The Hill on Thursday that his opposition to repeal Caesar "should be obvious to anyone following the situation in Syria".

Two US officials familiar with the matter said Mast and Graham are responding to a lobbying push by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisor, Ron Dermer, to keep the sanctions on Syria.

“The Trump administration, at the highest levels, has been lobbying actively for Congress to repeal Caesar, but diehard pro-Israel lawmakers are against it,” Moustafa told MEE.

Although Congress is not in session, the House and Senate are working on an amendment to the 2026 Defence Act that some hope could be ready by the time of Sharaa’s visit.

Moustafa, whose group is spearheading the push to repeal Caesar, a law they originally helped author, said there needs to be a “clear-cut repeal” in order for Gulf states and western companies to have confidence in investing.

“If there is any hint of a snapback, no company is going to move into Syria. That is what Netanyahu wants and President Donald Trump is against,” Moustafa said.

We carried him to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the doctors fought for his life. There were moments when the heart monitor barely registered a heartbeat. We all thought we had lost him forever, but Ahmad, with the stubbornness he was known for, challenged death itself.

He survived. Two days later, he was transferred to the European Hospital, where doctors operated to stop the bleeding in his brain and removed roughly one-third of his skull to reduce the pressure. He spent two weeks in the intensive care unit on oxygen and mechanical ventilation. He lost his ability to speak and became paralysed on his left side. His eye nerve was also damaged from the head trauma, and he is at risk of losing his eyesight.

After he regained consciousness, he was kept in the hospital for several more weeks before being transferred to a hospital run by the Red Crescent, where he received physiotherapy for a month and a half. The plan was to stabilise him for several more months before doing a surgery to insert an artificial bone to cover his brain.

But on one of Ahmad’s final days at the hospital, the Israeli army bombed so close to the facility that shrapnel and rubble hit the building. Large debris fell just a few centimetres from Ahmad’s head in the room he was in. That terrified his family and the doctors. They decided it was too dangerous for him to remain without a skull bone in such conditions, so he was transferred back to the European Hospital for surgery.

A synthetic bone was implanted to reconstruct the missing part of Ahmad’s skull. He remained in the hospital for two weeks after the surgery before he was discharged. He was supposed to be on a nutrient-rich diet to recover, but soon famine hit Gaza.

His family couldn’t buy any milk, eggs or any other nutrient-rich foods to help Ahmad heal. Some days, my aunt Iman, Ahmad’s mother, could not even find a kilo of flour. Malnutrition ate away at his recovery. The artificial bone in his skull began collapsing. If one was to gently press the soft area of his head, their fingers would sink in almost 2cm (three-quarters of an inch).

Today, Ahmad lives in a nightmare: a severe head injury, brain bleeding, one eye damaged, half of his body paralysed. He urgently needs reconstructive skull surgery, eye surgery and continuous, intensive physiotherapy.

Despite everything, his mother has tried to keep him integrated so he won’t fall into despair. A few weeks ago, she enrolled him in a tent school so he wouldn’t fall behind his peers. Every day, she would take him there with a notebook and pen. But when they would get back to their tent and take out the notebook, the pages would always be blank.

Eventually, my aunt went to speak to his teachers about this. They told her that he cannot write for more than two minutes before the pain in his head becomes unbearable. He would cry, throw the pen away and lay his head on the table.

His mother tried to teach him at home, but he must sleep one hour before studying and half an hour after, and even then, he struggles to absorb information.

Ahmad is one of 15,600 sick or injured Palestinians who need urgent treatment outside Gaza. Since October 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) has evacuated more than 7,600 patients from the Gaza Strip, two-thirds of them children. But in recent months, those evacuations have slowed to a trickle.

After the latest ceasefire began on October 10, the first medical evacuation took place two weeks later and included just 41 patients and 145 companions.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt remains closed. Israel now allows medical evacuations only through the Karem Abu Salem crossing in small and unpredictable numbers. Israel controls who gets on the list for evacuation and who gets approval to leave. The process is painfully slow. At the current rate, it would take years to evacuate everyone. Many will not make it.

But Israel is not the only barrier. Even when patients get approval, that does not mean they will leave. They still need funding to pay hospital bills and a foreign government willing to grant them visas.

While medical evacuations are recommended by local hospitals, the process itself is managed by the World Health Organization, which is trying to press foreign governments to cover evacuations, but the list is too long, and few countries are willing to accept patients from Gaza. In many urgent cases, families cannot wait so they try to secure funding or contact foreign hospitals themselves.

People wait. Days, months pass. Patients’ conditions worsen. Some pass away waiting.

Ahmad was initially classified as “not a priority” because he had his first surgery. But famine caused his condition to deteriorate. After repeated attempts by local doctors to prove that Ahmad deserved evacuation, he finally got approval. His family felt joy they hadn’t felt in months.

But then came the shock.

They were told they were responsible for securing treatment themselves, and the funding required for Ahmad’s treatment in a hospital abroad was unaffordable for a displaced family living in a tent. His parents – a teacher and a professor – work, but they do not receive regular salaries. They still pay the bank monthly instalments for a mortgage on their home, which was bombed into ruins. Their meagre income barely covers life in a tent.

But they have not given up. Ahmad’s brother, Yousef, is regularly contacting hospitals abroad, trying to find one that would take on his treatment. His father, Hassan, is writing to contacts abroad, hoping to find anyone who can help.

They keep fighting, but Ahmad’s condition is getting worse. He has now started forgetting the names of family members.

So many children like Ahmad are languishing in Gaza, waiting to be evacuated. Israel, as an occupier, bears the main responsibility. But what is the world doing to save these children?

Wealthy governments that funded and supported the genocide have looked away. They either accept a few cases or none at all. Their refusal to act, to acknowledge Palestinian children’s suffering, to accept their humanity is yet another sign of their moral bankruptcy.

It revealed something deeper: a tectonic shift driven by dramatic demographic change, internal fractures within the Haredi community, and the unravelling of a political bargain that for decades linked the state’s ruling coalitions to Haredi parties.

For decades, the political architecture that sustained Haredi political power rested on a simple transactional logic: in return for predictable Knesset support, Haredi parties secured budgets, institutional autonomy, and protections for religious life.

Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure, that arrangement – fed by growing state resources and generous allocations to Haredi education and social systems – became entrenched.

Although in the past the ultra-Orthodox parties and community tended to support peace initiatives – most notably the Oslo Accords which passed in the Knesset thanks to their backing – the growing radicalisation within Israeli society in recent years has not bypassed the ultra-Orthodox sector.

Despite the historically complex relationship between the ultra-Orthodox community and Zionism, there was a clear expression of support from the ultra-Orthodox parties and public for Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza.

But two years of genocide in Gaza, massive defence spending, and growing demands from broad segments of the Israeli public to rebalance “the burden of occupation” have put that compact under unprecedented strain.

Calls from both the nationalist right and its liberal critics to reorder the relationship between the state and Haredi society – essentially to renegotiate the status quo – have exposed how brittle the old bargain really is.

The original “status quo” pact between Israel’s founders and Haredi leaders enshrined four core arrangements. These included Shabbat as the state day of rest; kosher standards in state institutions, including the army and hospitals; personal status governed by religious law; and autonomy for Haredi education under the “independent education” framework.

But conspicuously absent from that founding compromise was a clear settlement on military service.

Mass phenomenon
The exemption of Haredi yeshiva students from conscription emerged only after statehood, as a temporary concession to a shattered European Torah world – initially a few hundred students spared in 1948.

What began as narrow, exceptional relief gradually ballooned into a mass phenomenon: tens of thousands exempted, while public debate has raged in the background, with several attempts made to enshrine into law the ultra-Orthodox exemption from conscription.

At the same time, Haredi Israelis have gone from constituting roughly 10 percent of the population in 2009 to around 14 percent today – an increase measured in tens of thousands of people in just a decade and a half.

Rapid demographic growth concentrates young people in a community whose social and educational systems are often detached from core labour market skills such as English, maths and science. The result is a paradox: a community that receives substantial state support while remaining economically marginalised, and increasingly resentful of efforts to change that reality.

These stresses have produced fractures inside the Haredi world. Deep hierarchies, rivalries between Lithuanian and Sephardi leaderships, and diverging attitudes towards Zionism and the state all complicate a single, unified response.

Some factions remain fiercely anti-Zionist, rejecting the legitimacy of the state; others pragmatically collaborate with secular coalitions to defend communal autonomy. Thursday’s rally itself, and the deliberate absence of political speeches, reflected these internal tensions: a show of mass force that nevertheless concealed real disagreements among Haredi leaders and constituencies.

At the same time, new sociopolitical currents are reshaping the attitudes of younger Haredim. Exposure to smartphones and the internet, economic hardships, and increased contact with non-Haredi Israelis have radicalised some segments of the community and opened them to alternative political narratives.

Some young Haredim have even volunteered for military service or joined extremist paramilitary units – Netzah Yehuda – an alarming development that has drawn international scrutiny.

Stark choice
Simultaneously, non-Haredi religious-nationalist politicians – most visibly the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – have cultivated influence among some Haredi youth via social media, through messaging that blends religious symbolism with militant nationalism. These cross-currents have intensified tensions between Haredi rabbis and Religious Zionist clerical figures, for example over access to sensitive holy sites.

What unites most Haredim right now is opposition to forced conscription. That opposition is not monolithic, however, and the coalition against conscription spans wildly different actors, from pragmatic communal leaders who fear the loss of religious autonomy, to ideologues who oppose the state on theological grounds.

The state, for its part, faces a stark choice: preserve the old status quo – risking economic instability over the long term, and widening public resentment – or press for structural changes that will inevitably provoke political and social upheaval.

The broader lesson of recent weeks is that Israel’s delicate compromise between religion and state is cracking under the combined pressures of demographics, war and economic realities. The government cannot indefinitely subsidise an educational ecosystem that leaves large cohorts unequipped for modern employment, while simultaneously demanding more soldiers for an expanding occupation.

If the state seeks to maintain both a viable economy and its expansionist military agenda, it must find ways to integrate more Haredim into the workforce and national service, without causing mass protests and widespread disruption. If Haredi communities seek long-term viability, they must reopen their relationship with Zionism and state institutions. Neither path is easy, and both will be bitterly fought.

Although this entire episode can be viewed as an internal Israeli affair among different social groups, it cannot be separated from the broader crisis Israel is generating within the Jewish world itself. This crisis is the consequence of the growing militarisation and the neoliberal policies that Israel upholds to sustain a Sparta-like state, whose very existence revolves around maintaining a vast military apparatus.

The implications of this reality extend far beyond Israel’s borders, shaping how the Jewish world understands itself and its moral relationship to power, war and nationhood.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.