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‘New Gaza’ Rises: Anti-Hamas Militias Backed by Israel Claim Local Rule, Vow to Fight Qatar, Turkey, Iran Forces
Smoke rises in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
As Gaza’s ceasefire holds uneasily, four Israel-backed militias fighting Hamas are moving to fill the power vacuum, pledging to cooperate with most international forces involved in rebuilding the enclave but vowing to resist any presence from Qatar, Turkey, or Iran, The Algemeiner has learned.
The militias, mainly in southern Gaza, are not part of US President Donald Trump’s proposed plan for a technocratic administration in the enclave.
Based in Khan Younis, Hossam al-Astal, commander of the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, said his group and three allied militias had coordinated in recent weeks to secure areas vacated by Hamas, the terrorist group that until the latest with Israel had solely ruled Gaza since 2007, and were ready to take on civil and security responsibilities once reconstruction begins.
“We are capable of building [a] government in our areas,” al-Astal said over a Zoom call on Wednesday, adding that his group already had the “human resources” to do so.
“We are ready to cooperate with international forces and with others on the ground,” he said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
But he went on to say that his clan would not accept any Muslim Brother-affiliated forces, citing Qatar, Turkey, and Iran. “We will view forces from those countries as hostile, and we will fight them just as we fight Hamas.”
Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamist network, has received military, financial, diplomatic, and political backing for years from Qatar, Turkey, and Iran.
In the Trump-brokered ceasefire deal to end the war and release the hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas-led terrorists, Israeli forces pulled back to a notional demarcation called the “yellow line,” marking roughly half the Gaza Strip as under Israeli control. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has begun placing yellow concrete blocks and signposts every 200 meters to mark the boundary and issued orders that anyone crossing it may be fired on.
On Tuesday, IDF reservist Master Sgt. (res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum was killed when Palestinian terrorists attacked troops near the southern city of Rafah. The IDF retaliated by striking dozens of terrorist targets, it said.
Some counter-terrorism experts have argued that the rise of local militias makes both the disarmament of Hamas and the safe entry of reconstruction teams far more difficult.
Matthew Levitt, director of a counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in Foreign Affairs magazine that Hamas “will fight tooth and nail to maintain its political and military position in Gaza.”
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner told reporters last week that “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” he said. “There are considerations being discussed now in the areas the IDF controls, as long as they can be secured to start building the new Gaza.”
The term “New Gaza” is frequently used by al-Astal, and refers to what he described as a joint framework for the territory’s governance between his Counter Terrorism Strike Force and the three allied clans led by Yasser Abu Shabab in Rafah, Rami Halas, and Ashraf al-Mansi, the latter two both in Gaza City. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are estimated to be living in those areas.
During the Zoom call, which was organized by the Center for Peace Communications, a New York-based group that documents dissent inside Gaza, a journalist who identified himself as Ahmed al-Zakout described conditions in Hamas-controlled areas west of the yellow line. Since the ceasefire, more than 100 executions have been carried out by Hamas against Gazans accused of being collaborators with Israel, as well as large numbers of maimings. Disappearances and abductions are also estimated to number in the hundreds.
Al-Zakout said residents in his area had initially believed the agreement announced by Trump would remove Hamas from power — and explained that hope had already collapsed. “People are very afraid,” he said. “They are shocked and disappointed to see Hamas remain here in our areas.”
According to al-Zakout, many civilians were afraid to try to reach territory on the other side of the yellow line, because they believed they could be targeted while moving. He said no authority — “not America or even Israel” — was publicly guaranteeing safe passage, and he blamed Hamas messaging for deterring people from leaving. He singled out Qatar’s Al Jazeera network as part of what he called “a propaganda effort designed to scare people away from the other side of the yellow line, to intimidate them and ensure that they stay where they are.”
“We see obvious collaboration and coordination between the message of Hamas [and] the message of Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera portrays every civilian trying to get to [the] yellow side and to safety as [an] agent and collaborator with Israel. They are spreading a lot of propaganda.”
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Israel Says It Kills Senior Hamas Commander Raed Saed in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, December 13, 2025.REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
The Israeli military said it killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saed, one of the architects of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, in a strike on a car in Gaza City on Saturday.
It was the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a Gaza ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
In a joint statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saed was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers earlier on Saturday.
The attack on the car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
HAMAS SAYS ATTACK VIOLATES CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to reestablish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen Al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’ Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
Hamas, in a statement, condemned the attack as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but did not say whether Saed was hurt and stopped short of threatening retaliation.
The October 10 ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.
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Hezbollah Chief: Disarmament Would Be ‘Death Sentence’ for Lebanon
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem gives a televised speech from an unknown location, July 30, 2025, in this screen grab from video. Photo: Al Manar TV/REUTERS TV/via REUTERS
i24 News – Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that it was not the responsibility of the Shiite terror group “to prevent aggression,” but rather the Lebanese state’s, and it is the responsibility of Hezbollah to engage “when the state and army fail to do so.”
In a recorded televised statement, Qassem sarcastically posed the question whether it was not Hezbollah that should be demanding the Lebanese Army’s disarmament if the latter fails to stop “Israel’s ongoing aggression.”
On the issue of disarming Hezbollah, Qassem said that disarming it in the manner currently proposed is a death sentence for Lebanon.
“Even if the sky falls, we will not be disarmed, not even if the entire world unites against Lebanon. We will not allow this and it will not happen,” Qassem said.
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High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community
(JTA) — The photo spread swiftly after a student posted it on social media: Eight California high schoolers were lying on their school’s football field, their bodies arrayed in the shape of a swastika.
Alongside the picture was a quote from Adolf Hitler, threatening the “annihilation of the Jewish race.”
The incident at Branham High School in San Jose began on Dec. 3 and has roiled the local Jewish community in the days since, as the wrenching saga has ignited suspensions, recriminations and alarm from around the world.
The photograph and the response to it were first reported by J. Jewish News of Northern California.
“We don’t want to see hatred,” Cormac Nolan, a Jewish Branham senior, told the local Jewish newspaper. “We don’t want to see the idolization of one of the most evil men to ever walk the face of the Earth. We don’t want someone who spews out hatred like this on our campus.”
The school’s student newspaper reported that the students involved had been suspended, and that dozens of other students walked out to protest the incident.
The San Jose Police Department told J. that it is investigating the incident, and the school’s principal, Beth Silbergeld, who is Jewish, said the school was working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, a local antisemitism advocacy group, “to ensure that we receive appropriate support and guidance as we work to repair the harm that’s been done to our community.”
Silbergeld told J. that she felt pressure to learn from the incident.
“I’ve been in education for a long time and have seen, sadly, lots of incidences of oppression and hate toward many groups,” she said. “I think that we always have a responsibility as schools to do what’s right and to take action and learn from the experiences of other other schools and other incidents as a way to hopefully eliminate actions like what we’ve experienced.”
The incident is not the first time Branham High School has faced controversy over antisemitism on its campus. In April, the California Department of Education ruled that the school had discriminated against its Jewish students by presenting “biased” content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature curriculum.
It is also not the first instance of a “human swastika” roiling a school community. In 2019, nine middle schoolers in Ojai, California, also arranged themselves in a “human swastika” and faced disciplinary measures from the school.
Exactly what possessed the Branham students to do what they did is not clear. But psychologists told the J. that the teen years are a peak moment for transgressive behaviors that may or may not reflect deep-seated biases.
“It’s a developmental time where you’re doing new things, you’re trying new things, you’re making mistakes, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to get laughs and likes,” Ellie Pelc, director of clinical services at the Bay Area’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services, told the newspaper. “And you often do so in some hurtful or harmful ways that you don’t always have the capacity to think through in advance.”
The photo was met by condemnation by California State Sens. Scott Wiener, who wrote that antisemitism was “pervasive & growing” in a post on Facebook, and Dave Cortese, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the incident in a statement.
“What happened at Branham High School was not a joke, not a prank, and not self-expression — it was an act of hatred,” wrote San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in a post on X. “The fact that this was planned and posted publicly makes it even more disturbing.”
By Tuesday, the uproar had sparked a response from district leaders. In a post on Facebook, Robert Bravo, the superintendent for the Campbell Union High School District, wrote that the district “will respond firmly, thoughtfully, and within the full scope allowed by Board Policy and California law.” (Displaying a Nazi swastika on the property of a school is illegal in California.)
He added that the school district considered the incident an instance of “hate violence” based on California state education code, which allows for suspension or expulsion in such cases.
“Our response cannot be limited to discipline alone,” continued Bravo. “We are committed to using this incident as an opportunity to deepen education around antisemitism, hate symbols and the historical atrocities associated with them.”
The antisemitic post comes two months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a statewide office assigned to combatting antisemitism in California public schools. The office, which is the first of its kind in the country, was met with praise from local Jewish advocacy groups while some critics warned it could chill academic freedoms.
Marc Levine, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in the Central Pacific region, called the incident “repulsive and unacceptable” in a statement on X. The incident was also condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, which wrote in a statement that it had been working with the school about “how to ensure an effective response.”
The Bay Area Jewish Coalition also issued a statement on Tuesday, writing that the antisemitic act had “shaken Jewish families across Northern California and beyond.”
“We hope that what happened at Branham serves as a wake-up call for California and for the rest of the country to take the antisemitism crisis seriously and reverse the trend through real, meaningful action and long-term change,” the statement continued.
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