Iran Warns Neighbors Against Joining US Economic Sanctions

Gaza is running out of places to bury the dead

By Eman Abu Zayed

Reporting from Gaza

Families are being forced to put their loved ones to rest in gardens, schools, tents, or camps for the displaced, as Gaza runs out of space to bury the dead.

Israel’s mass killing of over 73,000 Palestinians has caused a major shortage of graves in the besieged enclave, but so has the destruction by Israeli forces of 40 burial sites across Gaza.

Khan Younis Cemetery had about 60 graves at the beginning of the war, now it contains 6,000.

The relative calm that now prevails presents a new challenge: with most shelling stopped, Palestinians are venturing out to recover lost loved ones’ bodies that were buried under rubble, but that means they need places to bury them.

Read more on how Palestinians in Gaza are coping with an acute shortage of places to bury their dead here.

Israeli settlers steal Palestinian property near West Bank village of Abu Falah: local media

A group of Israeli settlers have stolen Palestinian property from a community near the village of Abu Falah, north-east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to the Quds News Network.

Footage shared by the outlet shows several people on a truck appearing to tow the property away from the area.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces stormed the city of Qalqilya, according to the outlet.

How ‘hollow’ European condemnations empower Israel

Israel does not care what Europeans say or about their condemnation, says former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas.

“They don’t care [about condemnations]. In fact, it’s the exact opposite,” Pinkas told Al Jazeera.

“These condemnations allow this particular government to claim one of its trademark arguments: ‘The world is against us, everyone is anti-Semitic, there is an anti-Israel atmosphere and environment. They all hate us,’” he explained.

Pinkas’s comments follow a joint statement issued on Thursday by a group of European nations and Canada in which they criticised Israel’s “E1” settlement project and warned of “legal and reputational consequences”.

Pinkas, who served as Israel’s consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004, said: “As long as it is confined to rhetoric and hollow condemnations, whether [by] parliaments or foreign ministries throughout the European Union, the Israeli government does not care.”

A recap of the latest developments

• Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei has warned Gulf countries against joining US sanctions against Tehran, saying they would be considered an enemy if they do so, adding that Tehran would target their interests in retaliation.
• Yemeni authorities say a naval mine planted by the Houthi group has been found and destroyed in a vital area of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
• Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has said Tehran is not going to “bow [its] head and give in to the enemy”, while urging internal unity.
• The Israeli military has carried out an attack in the town of Haddatha, in southern Lebanon’s Bint Jbeil district, Lebanon’s National News Agency reports.

Iran is updating its military doctrine to prepare for future escalation

Hamidreza Azizi, a researcher on Iran at the Clingendael Institute, says Iran’s military doctrine is changing, with a growing focus on deterring threats to the country earlier.

Azizi, who also writes the Substack Iran Analytica, says the “failure” of Iran’s previous deterrence model to prevent repeated US and Israeli attacks has prompted the country to rethink how it deters future attacks, with a focus on earlier deterrence emerging.

“Tehran appears to be trying to establish deterrence at an earlier stage, by signaling that even preparations for an attack could trigger an Iranian response,” Azizi wrote in a post on X.

Two elements in the new “offensive doctrine” are emerging, Azizi said: preemption, which is aimed at preventing a perceived threat from materialising; and disproportionate retaliation, which is aimed at raising the cost of any attack that does occur.

Iran’s warning against Gulf states joining the US’s economic war against the country is “essentially an ultimatum” to the Gulf states, he said, adding that Iran’s military-security establishment “is increasingly preparing for another round of escalation”.

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