RSS
Gaza Is Not an Open-Air Prison
An aid convoy’s trucks loaded with supplies send by Long Live Egypt Fund are seen at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on May 23, 2021. The Egyptian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the “pro-Palestine” propagandists could no longer plausibly refer to it as occupied territory. So they came up with another trope that has become a cliché: Gaza is an “open-air prison.”
The jailer in this dubious metaphor is only Israel, (even though Gaza also borders Egypt) and the Jewish state has been accused of imposing a “16-year blockade, depriving the people there of food, water, and the other necessities of life, especially healthcare” — or so goes the tale.
According to Ilana Feldman, the term “open-air prison” was first used in 1997 in the Philadelphia Inquirer and quickly found currency among Irish and Canadian journalists in the early 2000s. It became a staple of anti-Israel rhetoric in the US in 2009 after Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) claimed (in a campaign video and on Iranian television) that “The Palestinians are virtually in a concentration camp.”
In 2010, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that “People in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison,” adding that “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”
From politics to pop-culture, the term grew like an infectious meme in 2015, when the graffiti artist (pardon the oxymoron), Banksy, went to Gaza to spray-paint on some walls. He photographed them for his website, and added witty captions, like: “Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave.”
Of course, people leave and enter Gaza all the time. Prior to October 7, thousands of people left Gaza every day, crossing into Israel to work at jobs that paid them five times more than they could earn in Gaza. That arrangement is over, thanks to Hamas.
There is also a border with Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. And, lest anyone forget, there is a maze of underground tunnels that one recently-freed Israeli hostage calls “Lower Gaza,” which presents numerous illegal exit opportunities.
As Ari Zivotofsky observed in the Jerusalem Post, a September 19, 2023, episode of the Palestinian television show Emigration claimed that, “in the past 15 years a quarter of a million young Palestinians left for abroad.” In 2022, over 15,000 of them who lived abroad (having apparently escaped the “prison”) willingly returned to it to celebrate the feast of Eid al-Adha.
This is not how prisons work.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has been running a series on “Gaza Before October 7” refuting the “concentration camp” and “open-air prison” claims with pictures and videos.
The first two episodes follow Palestinian “influencer” Yousef Alhelou as he travels around Gaza, showing off the top spots for tourists, including a gold market. Subsequent episodes include an Al-Jazeera feature of the economic boom in Gaza, Turkish television reports on the markets of Gaza, and various Arab media outlets covering the many sporting events in Gaza.
Hamas propagandists argue that Gazans are denied goods and services that they are entitled to because of Israel’s “land, water, and sea blockade,” but Israel only blocks weapons from entering Gaza. Even after October 7, Israel has continued to supply electricity, food, and medicine.
What the “pro-Palestine” luminaries will never admit is that Israel has been forced into controlling Gaza’s ports by the long history of weapons shipped there.
In 2001, two vessels, the Calypso and the Santorini, were seized with weapons destined for Palestinian terrorists, and in 2002, a Palestinian ship called the Karine A was seized with 50 tons of Iranian weapons destined for Gaza. Since then, Israel has acted to prevent further shipments of weapons from reaching Gaza by sea. In 2007, after Hamas took over Gaza completely, Israel imposed an inspections regime and began more aggressively searching ships for smuggled weapons. Food and medicine are not prevented from entering Gaza.
Poor access to healthcare is another complaint about life in the Gaza “open-air prison.” In April 2023, the Jerusalem-based anti-Israel activist group B’Tselem faulted Israel for preventing Palestinians from leaving Gaza in order to be treated in Israeli hospitals. But Israel treats plenty of Palestinians.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh sends his entire family to Israel for medical care. In 2013, his 1-year-old granddaughter was treated in an Israeli hospital; in 2014, his daughter was treated at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital and his mother-in-law was treated at Jerusalem’s Augusta Victoria Hospital; in 2021, his niece was treated at Ichilov Hospital.
Just this month, it was reported that Haniyeh’s grandniece was being treated at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva. But why should any Gazans be treated in Israeli hospitals? There are 36 hospitals in Gaza, many of which are run by foreign nations (Indonesia, Turkey, Jordan, Europe countries) serving a population of around two million.
Of course, hospitals in Gaza are dual-purpose buildings, offering both healthcare and camouflage for the entrances to Hamas’s elaborate subterranean infrastructure. An IDF spokesman said that “Hamas systematically built the Indonesian Hospital to disguise its underground terror infrastructure.” The Al-Shifa hospital, where IDF soldiers found a stash of rifles, ammunition, and ballistic vests, also sits atop a major tunnel junction. IDF soldiers recently found unopened boxes of medicine for Israeli hostages at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
If Gaza is a prison, Hamas is the jailer.
The accusation that Israel withholds food from the “open-air prisoners” of Gaza is a common one.
In 2010, Sarah Leppert of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization said that “sixty-one percent of the Gaza population is food insecure.” A UN World Food Program’s country brief on “Palestine” for the year 2022 announced that Gazans account for 90% of the 1.84 million Palestinians “suffering from food insecurity.”
But media reports about the vibrant lives of people “under occupation” have long included photographs of Gaza showing bountiful markets with merchants whose stands are stocked with fruit and vegetables. As Robert Spencer pointed out recently, “The ‘open air prison’ of Gaza was actually quite opulent” before October 7. Spencer links to a video posted to X by a Gazan who complains that Gaza was beautiful before October 7. In the 42-second video, Gaza’s opulent markets, vacationing tourists, and shops of all sorts look like what one would expect in a tropical resort town.
In fact, there are shops of all kinds in Gaza, like any other city in the world, except perhaps for one — it’s hard to imagine a store named for Adolf Hitler anywhere other than “Palestine,” but in Gaza there’s one called Hitler2, which first achieved infamy in 2015. The store, with its knife-grasping mannequins, was reported damaged in recent fighting.
After October 7, the rhetoric heated up. When Israel briefly announced that it would cease supplying water and electricity to the people who had just killed over 1,200 Israelis and taken another 250 as hostages, the world flew into another outrage.
Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon. Israel denied the charges, pointing out that Hamas hijacks food and fuel for itself. Even The New York Times agrees that Hamas has long stockpiled the food and medical supplies meant for the people of Gaza. It quoted a Lebanese source to assert on October 27 that, “Hamas has hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel for vehicles and rockets; caches of ammunition, explosives and materials to make more; and stockpiles of food, water and medicine … enough stocked away to keep fighting for three to four months without resupply.”
That’s the reality of the situation in Gaza. The only people that ever made it an “open-air prison” were Hamas.
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Senior Fellow A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. A version of this article was originally published by IPT.
The post Gaza Is Not an Open-Air Prison first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Eyes Bringing Azerbaijan, Central Asian Nations into Abraham Accords, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter.
As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump’s first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Such an expansion would reflect Trump’s openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration’s goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel while war rages in Gaza.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps towards Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.
Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said.
While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks.
Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said.
As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia – which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – were contacted.
The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. “We are working to get more countries to join,” said a US official.
The Azerbaijani government declined to comment.
The White House, the Israeli foreign ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel.
OBSTACLES REMAIN
The original Abraham Accords – inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand US and Israeli soft power.
Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region.
Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to a president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories.
Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic – but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced.
But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh – an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population – broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict.
Primarily Christian Armenia and the US have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan.
Still, US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there,” Trump told reporters earlier in July. “And it’s pretty close.”
RSS
Trump Reaffirms Support for Morocco’s Sovereignty Over Western Sahara
A Polisario fighter sits on a rock at a forward base, on the outskirts of Tifariti, Western Sahara, Sept. 9, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Zohra Bensemra / File.
US President Donald Trump has reaffirmed support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, saying a Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory was the sole solution to the disputed region, state news agency MAP said on Saturday.
The long-frozen conflict pits Morocco, which considers the territory as its own, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which seeks an independent state there.
Trump at the end of his first term in office recognized the Moroccan claims to Western Sahara, which has phosphate reserves and rich fishing grounds, as part of a deal under which Morocco agreed to normalize its relations with Israel.
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made clear in April that support for Morocco on the issue remained US policy, but these were Trump’s first quoted remarks on the dispute during his second term.
“I also reiterate that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supports Morocco’s serious, credible and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute,” MAP quoted Trump as saying in a message to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.
“Together we are advancing shared priorities for peace and security in the region, including by building on the Abraham Accords, combating terrorism and expanding commercial cooperation,” Trump said.
As part of the Abraham Accords signed during Trump’s first term, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
In June this year, Britain became the third permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to back an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty for the territory after the U.S. and France.
Algeria, which has recognized the self-declared Sahrawi Republic, has refused to take part in roundtables convened by the U.N. envoy to Western Sahara and insists on holding a referendum with independence as an option.
RSS
Israel Says Its Missions in UAE Remain Open Despite Reported Security Threats
President Isaac Herzog meets on Dec. 5, 2022, with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. Photo: GPO/Amos Ben Gershom
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that its missions to the United Arab Emirates are open on Friday and representatives continue to operate at the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai in cooperation with local authorities.
This includes, the statement underlined, ensuring the protection of Israeli diplomats.
On Thursday, reports appeared in Israeli media that Israel was evacuating most of its diplomatic staff in the UAE after the National Security Council heightened its travel warning for Israelis staying in the Gulf country for fear of an Iranian or Iran-sponsored attacks.
“We are emphasizing this travel warning given our understanding that terrorist organizations (the Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Global Jihad) are increasing their efforts to harm Israel,” the NSC said in a statement.
After signing the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, the UAE has been among the closest regional allies of the Jewish state.
Israel is concerned about its citizens and diplomats being targeted in retaliatory attacks following its 12-day war against Iran last month.
Earlier this year, the UAE sentenced three citizens of Uzbekistan to death for last year’s murder of Israeli-Moldovan rabbi Zvi Cohen.