Germany marked 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell with festivities on Saturday under the theme “Preserve Freedom!”, against the sombre backdrop of conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine and fears that democracy is under attack around the world.

The liberal ideals of 1989 “are not something we can take for granted”, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, just days after his governing coalition collapsed.

“A look at our history and at the world around us shows this,” added Scholz, whose three-party alliance imploded the day Donald Trump was re-elected US president, plunging Germany into political turmoil and towards new elections.

November 9, 1989, is celebrated as the day East Germany opened the borders to the West after months of peaceful mass protests, paving the way for German reunification and the collapse of Soviet Communism.

That “joyful day” underlines the sombre fact “that freedom and democracy have never been a given”, Berlin mayor Kai Wegner told a commemoration service at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Saturday.

One Berliner who remembers the momentous events, retiree Jutta Krueger, 75, said it was “a shame” Germany’s political crisis had erupted just before the anniversary weekend. “But we should still really celebrate the fall of the Wall,” she said, hailing it as the moment East Germans could travel and “freedom had arrived throughout Germany”.

Saturday’s event at the Berlin Wall Memorial, which was attended by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, honoured the at least 140 people killed trying to flee the Russian-backed German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the Cold War.

Enduring relevance

In the evening, a “freedom party” with a music and light show was to be held at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, on the former path of the concrete barrier that had cut the city in two since 1961.

On Sunday, the Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot was to perform outside the former headquarters of the Stasi, former East Germany’s feared secret police.

Pro-democracy activists from around the world have been invited for the commemorations — including Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad.

Talks, performances and an open-air art exhibition will mark what culture minister Claudia Roth called “one of the most joyous moments in world history”. Replica placards from the 1989 protests are on display along four kilometres of the Wall’s route.

Among the art installations will be thousands of images created by citizens on the theme of “freedom”, to drive home the enduring relevance of the historical event.

Berlin’s top cultural official, Joe Chialo, said the theme was crucial “at a time when we are confronted by rising populism, disinformation and social division”.

Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall Foundation, said the values of the 1989 protests were “the power bank for the defence of our democracy, which today is being gnawed at from the left and the right”.

‘Populism and division’

The fall of the Berlin Wall — a symbol of the Cold War and the division between an Eastern and a Western Bloc — contributed to the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany a year later.

The 155-kilometre “wall of shame” was erected around West Berlin in 1961 to end an exodus of citizens from the Western Bloc enclave in Communist East Germany.

Most East Germans are grateful the GDR regime ended but many still have unhappy memories of the perceived arrogance of West Germans, and resentment lingers about a remaining gap in incomes and pensions.

These sentiments have been cited to explain strong support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in eastern Germany, and for the Russia-friendly, anti-capitalist BSW.

Strong gains for both at three state elections in the east in September highlighted enduring political divisions between eastern and western Germany, more than three decades after reunification.

This weekend also marks a darker chapter in German history.

During the Nazis’ Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, at least 90 Jews were killed, tens of thousands were sent to concentration camps, countless properties were destroyed and 1,400 synagogues torched in Germany and Austria.

“It is very important for our society to remember the victims […] and learn the correct lessons from those events for our conduct today,” government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said on Friday.

Her comments came just days after several members of the AfD, which is anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, were arrested as suspected members of a racist paramilitary group that practised urban warfare drills.

Israel has officially notified the United Nations of its decision to cut ties with its agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as another UN agency warns of an impending famine in genocide-ravaged Gaza.

In a statement on Monday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it cancelled a cooperation agreement from 1967 which provided the legal basis of the country’s relations with UNRWA.

“UNRWA – the organisation whose employees participated in the October 7 massacre and many of whose employees are Hamas operatives – is part of the problem in the Gaza Strip and not part of the solution,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz was quoted as saying.

The Israeli parliament last week adopted two controversial bills banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory, closing its premises in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Israel alleges fighters of Palestinian group Hamas have infiltrated UNRWA. The UN agency denies the allegations and says it takes measures to ensure its neutrality.

UNRWA on Monday said Israel’s ban on its operations would lead to the “collapse” of humanitarian work in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

“If this law is implemented, it would be likely to cause the collapse of the international humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip – an operation of which UNRWA is the backbone,” Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

The UN agency provides education, healthcare and other basic services to Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants, who now number nearly six million. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million population.

Aid groups have warned that Israel’s ban on UNRWA could create further obstacles to addressing a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel has said other UN agencies and aid groups can fill the gap, but those organisations insist UNRWA is essential.

Israel’s notification to the UN came as the World Food Programme (WFP) on Monday warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza “could soon escalate into famine” as Israeli forces continue to severely restrict the entry of food and other supplies into the enclave.

On Saturday, a WFP official said the agency cannot serve as a replacement for UNRWA in Gaza. “We cannot replace the important functions of the UNRWA in Gaza, such as the administration of emergency shelters, schools and health centres,” Martin Frick, head of the WFP Berlin office, told German media group RND.

In January, Israel claimed that more than a dozen UNRWA members took part in a Hamas-led attack on Israel last year, in which Palestinian fighters killed more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 captives.

After the assault, the Israeli army waged a ferocious military campaign in Gaza, killing more than 43,000 people so far, displacing almost its entire 2.3 million population, and reducing large swaths of the Palestinian enclave into rubble.

The UN launched an investigation into Israel’s allegations which resulted in the termination of contracts of nine staff members against which “the evidence – if authenticated and corroborated – could indicate that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved” in the attack.

In July, Israel claimed that another 100 UNRWA employees were members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups. The agency asked Israel to provide more information to take action. UNRWA on Monday told Al Jazeera it had not received any response.

Meanwhile, UN officials say Israeli forces have killed more than 130 of their workers in a year in Gaza – the largest such toll in any conflict since the global body was founded.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell has said that the Israeli killing of more than 50 children in “deadly” 48 hours in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip is another “dark chapter” of the “terrible” Israeli war against the besieged territory.

In a statement published Saturday on the UN agency’s website, Russell said Israeli forces not only killed a large number of Palestinians, children included, but also, cut humanitarian aid and attacked UN staff.

“This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza. In the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children have reportedly been killed in Jabalia, where strikes leveled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people.

She also highlighted the dangers humanitarian workers face, especially those involved in sensitive campaigns such as polio vaccination.

“And this morning, the personal vehicle of a UNICEF staff member working on the polio vaccination campaign came under fire by what we believe to be a quadcopter while driving through Jabalia-Elnazla. The car was damaged. Fortunately, the staff member was not injured. But she has been left deeply shaken.

“Meanwhile, at least three children were reportedly injured by another attack in the proximity of a vaccination clinic in Sheikh Radwan, while a polio vaccination campaign was underway,” she added.

Russell condemned the attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic, and UNICEF staff members as part of the broader Israeli genocidal tactic of indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“The attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic, and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“Taken alongside the horrific level of child deaths in North Gaza from other attacks, these most recent events combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war,” she warned.

She emphasized that international humanitarian law mandates the protection of civilians, civilian structures, humanitarian workers, and their vehicles during conflicts.

Displacement or evacuation orders do not excuse any party from their obligations to differentiate between military and civilian targets, ensure proportionality, and take all feasible precautions in attacks, according to Russell.

“Yet these principles are being flaunted over and over again, leaving tens of thousands of children killed, injured, and deprived of essential services needed for survival.,” she lamented.

She urged an end to attacks on civilians, humanitarian workers, and the remaining civilian facilities and infrastructure in Gaza, highlighting the dire situation in North Gaza, where the entire Palestinian population, particularly children, faces imminent threats of death from disease, starvation, and continued bombardment.

“UNICEF is asking Israel for an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attack on its staff member, and that actions to be taken to hold accountable those found responsible,” she said.

The Israeli regime launched its genocidal war on the defenseless people of the Gaza Strip in October 2023 following a retaliatory operation by the Hamas resistance movement.

Last month, Israeli forces intensified their attacks launching a sweeping air and land assault on northern Gaza, killing and wounding more Palestinians, many of them innocent children.

The overall death toll caused by the relentless Israeli attacks has reached 43,314 so far, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

It said, that since October 7, 2023, more than 102,000 Palestinians have been injured in the Israeli onslaught.

Most of the helpless Palestinian victims have been women and children.

The BBC has been accused by more than 100 of its staff of giving Israel favourable coverage in its reporting of the war on Gaza and criticised its lack of “accurate evidence-based journalism”.

A letter sent to the broadcaster’s director general, Tim Davie, and CEO Deborah Turness on Friday said: “Basic journalistic tenets have been lacking when it comes to holding Israel to account for its actions.”

First reported by The Independent newspaper on Friday, the signatories included more than 100 anonymous BBC staff and more than 200 from the media industry, as well as historians, actors, academics and politicians.

“The consequences of inadequate coverage are significant. Every television report, article and radio interview that has failed to robustly challenge Israeli claims has systematically dehumanised Palestinians,” the letter said.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 43,259 Palestinians and wounded 101,827 since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day and more than 200 were taken captive.

The signatories called on the BBC to implement editorial commitments including “reiterating that Israel does not give external journalists access to Gaza; making it clear when there is insufficient evidence to back up Israeli claims; making clear where Israel is the perpetrator in article headlines; including regular historical context predating October 2023; and robustly challenging Israeli government and military representatives in all interviews”.

The letter said British media organisations such as the BBC, ITV and Sky “enjoy high levels of public trust” and have a “duty to fearlessly follow the evidence”.

It also noted that the BBC “is licence fee funded, and the erosion of its own editorial standards has put its impartiality and independence at serious risk”.

Last November, more than a month after Israel began its war in Gaza, eight United Kingdom-based journalists employed by the BBC wrote a letter to Al Jazeera and said the BBC is guilty of a “double standard in how civilians are seen”, given that it is “unflinching” in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

“This organisation doesn’t represent us,” one of the co-writers told Al Jazeera.

“For me, and definitely for other people of colour, we can see blatantly that certain civilian lives are considered more worthy than others – that there is some sort of hierarchy at play.”

Israel’s war has now expanded to Lebanon, where at least 2,897 people have been killed and 13,150 wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began.

The BBC has defended its coverage of the war in Gaza.

According to UK media reports on Friday, a BBC spokesperson said: “When we make mistakes or have made changes to the way we report, we are transparent.

“We are also very clear with our audiences on the limitations put on our reporting – including the lack of access into Gaza and restricted access to parts of Lebanon, and our continued efforts to get reporters into those areas,” the spokesperson added.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied around the world, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon as Israel’s genocide against Palestinians completes a year.

Protesters gathered in dozens of cities on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel, as Israeli forces continue their operations in Gaza and Lebanon, raising fears of a wider regional war.

In New Zealand, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who gathered on Monday outside Auckland’s TVNZ public television demanding a ceasefire, clashed with followers of a far-right fundamentalist Christian group, Destiny Church.

According to The New Zealand Herald, 35 police officers were at the scene to separate the rival groups. One protester was pepper-sprayed as police attempted to break the commotion that spilled over onto the road near TVNZ, according to the report.

Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said New Zealand will continue to call for a ceasefire, restraint and de-escalation, “not for retaliation and reprisal”.

“There is simply no military action that will reduce regional tensions and conflict,” Luxon said, calling for a “two-state solution” to end the conflict.

In Australia, crowds gathered outside the country’s largest mosque in Lakemba, a suburb of Sydney, before an afternoon rally.

Participants were seen waving Palestinian flags and standing on the footpath and the street which was blocked off for the event, according to The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

People in Pakistani cities also held rallies and demonstrations to express solidarity with Palestinians on the first anniversary of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Different political and religious groups organised a string of events in the commercial capital, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Faisalabad, Multan, Sargodha, Hyderabad, and other cities.

Thousands of citizens, including students, women and children, came out of their homes, offices and schools to participate in the demonstrations.

A memorial event was also held in the Indian capital, New Delhi, as dozens of participants sang songs and raised slogans against the war in Gaza.

Other vigils, ceremonies and protests are planned later on Monday after a weekend of similar events across the world.

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, more than 1,000 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the US Embassy on Sunday, demanding that Washington stop sending weapons to Israel.

In Morocco, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the capital, Rabat, waving Palestinian flags and calling to break off diplomatic ties with Israel, which the kingdom normalised in 2020.

Thousands also marched in support of Gaza and Lebanon in cities across Turkey, including Istanbul and Ankara.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza and Lebanon, warning of the risk of an “even larger war”.

Thousands also marched through New York’s Times Square on Saturday, some carrying pictures of people killed in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. In Washington, DC, a man set himself on fire as more than 1,000 people demonstrated outside the White House, demanding an end to US military aid to Israel.

Marches were also reported over the weekend in several European cities.

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed and many others wounded after Israeli forces attacked a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, the strip’s Health Ministry said.

“The number of martyrs brought to hospitals as a result of the occupation’s targeting of displaced people in the Ibn Rushd school and al-Aqsa Martyrs Mosque reached 26, with several more wounded,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

“The Israeli occupation committed three massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 45 martyrs and 256 injuries arriving at hospitals during the past 24 hours,” it added.

The ministry said the overall death toll since the war on Gaza began a year ago had reached 41,870, with 97,166 Palestinians injured.

In a statement, the Israeli military claimed, without providing evidence, that the mosque and school were being used by the Palestinian group Hamas as “command and control” centres.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military issued more evacuation orders on Sunday morning for large swaths of northern Gaza, ordering residents to flee to the already overcrowded “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi.

The orders came shortly after Israel on Saturday issued a similar warning to thousands of displaced Palestinians sheltering in central Gaza, saying its military was preparing to use “great force” against Hamas in the area.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place in the enclave is safe, including the humanitarian zones where Israeli missiles have hit several times.

“The war is back,” 52-year-old Raed from Jabalia told the Reuters news agency, before he and his family left for Gaza City.

“Dozens of explosions from air strikes and tank shelling shook the ground and buildings, it felt like the early days of the war,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced at least once since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 8. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced several times.

The Israeli army also announced it had surrounded the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

“The troops of the 401st Brigade and the 460th Brigade have successfully encircled the area and are currently continuing to operate in the area,” the military said in a statement.

Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Basal said multiple attacks rocked Jabalia through the night, killing at least 11 people, adding that more people were trapped under the rubble.

Israeli forces have bombarded Jabalia regularly since the start of the war on Gaza, displacing nearly all its residents.

In several cases, they accused senior newsroom figures of failing to hold Israeli officials to account and of interfering in reporting to downplay Israeli atrocities. In one instance at CNN, false Israeli propaganda was put on air despite advance warnings from staff members.

The journalists spoke to Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post, a weekly programme dissecting the world’s media, for its documentary Failing Gaza: Behind the Lens of Western Media.

Adam, a journalist at CNN, said before October 7, he “hand on heart” trusted the network’s journalistic practices.

“But after October 7, the ease with which I saw news lines that supported the Israeli narrative come out really shook me,” he said in the film. “There were times where CNN was happy to push hard. But on balance, it’s very clear where we lie, regrettably. And it’s not entirely with the truth.”

‘An embarrassing moment’ at CNN

In November, CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson embedded with the Israeli army to visit Gaza’s bombed-out al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital.

Once inside, military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed to have found proof Hamas was using the hospital to hide Israeli captives.

Hagari showed Robertson a document on the wall written in Arabic, which he said was a roster of Hamas members watching over the captives.

“This is a guarding list. Every terrorist has his own shift,” Hagari told Robertson.

Adam recalled the broadcast as “an embarrassing moment” for CNN.

“It wasn’t a Hamas roster at all,” he said. “It was a calendar, and written in Arabic were the days of the week. But the report that came out from Nic Robertson just swallowed up Israel’s claim.”

To make matters worse, the Israeli claim had already been debunked by Arabic speakers on social media before the CNN footage aired, and, according to multiple CNN journalists and an internal WhatsApp chat seen by Al Jazeera, a Palestinian producer alerted her colleagues, including Robertson, but was ignored. After the report aired on television, they said, another producer tried to get it corrected before it was posted online.

“One colleague saw the report and flagged to Nic, [saying,] ‘Hold on, people are saying that this is not accurate,’” Adam said. “And apparently, Nic said, ‘Are you meaning to say that Hagari is lying to us?’

“There was a chance for this to get stopped. But Nic was adamant, and it went out. He’s a very experienced correspondent. If you are trusting the Israeli government over your own colleagues, then you need to have your wrist slapped at the very least because your reporting has given cover to the Israeli operation.”

No proof ever emerged of captives being held at al-Rantisi hospital.

Adam also said there was a period of time when CNN journalists “couldn’t call air strikes in Gaza air strikes unless we had confirmation from the Israelis”.

“We would not be doing this in any other place. We would not tolerate the need to ask, say, the Russians whether they bombed a hospital in Kyiv.”

Recently, when health officials in Gaza announced that Israeli attacks had killed more than 40,000 people, CNN Managing Editor Mike McCarthy ordered his team to “contextualise and hold Hamas accountable”, Adam said.

“That was reflected in the framing from the shows,” he added.

Informing viewers of the grim milestone in August, CNN presenter Becky Anderson said in a news show, “The Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the October 7 Hamas massacre in Israel that triggered the war,” and cautioned that CNN could not verify the toll. Leading experts have said the figure is likely an undercount.

‘No balance’ at the BBC

Sara, a former BBC journalist, accused the British broadcaster of a double standard in interviewing guests.

She told Al Jazeera that she no longer saw her future at the BBC in part because of a “sort of unwillingness among the executive” to address concerns around editorial bias.

In the days after October 7, the BBC set up an internal group chat in which producers could screen potential interviewees based on their online footprint.

“It was overwhelmingly guests on the Palestinian side of things who were being looked into,” she said. “Palestinians [were] being flagged up for using the word Zionist, which isn’t something to flag necessarily.”

She said that “now and again” Israeli guests were vetted.

“But there was no balance in what was going on. Israeli spokespeople who we did have on were given a lot of free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback,” she said.

For example, Israeli politician Idan Roll on October 17 told BBC presenter Maryam Moshiri that “babies were set on fire” and “babies were shot in the head” during the Hamas incursion into southern Israel, claims that Israel has not proved and Hamas rejects.

Moshiri did not challenge or probe his claim.

Over the past year, experts and veteran journalists have increasingly accused top Western media outlets of maintaining a pro-Israel bias while dehumanising Palestinians and minimising their suffering.

A small number of journalists at The New York Times and the BBC have resigned publicly, citing their consciences. Others have tried to change things from the inside with campaigns and internal meetings.

“This is a moment in history that we don’t often see where we actually see genocide being perpetrated as it’s happening,” Craig Mokhiber, a United Nations human rights official who resigned last year over the organisation’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza, told Al Jazeera.

“In a situation where Western governments like the United States, the UK and others have been complicit, you’ve got Western media that have actually become a part of the mechanism of genocide. That’s what’s different. That’s what’s frightening.”

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas called on Thursday on the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel in order to halt bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, singling out the United States.

Abbas said that Washington continued to provide diplomatic cover and weapons to Israel for its conflict in Gaza despite the mounting death toll there, now at 41,534 according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip.

“Stop this crime. Stop it now. Stop killing children and women. Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel. This madness cannot continue.

The entire world is responsible for what is happening to our people in Gaza and the West Bank,“ Abbas said in an address to the UN General Assembly.

The vast majority of the besieged Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the conflict with many seeking shelter in school buildings. “The US alone stood and said: ‘No, the fighting is going to continue.’ It did this by using the veto,” he said, referring to the veto repeatedly wielded to thwart censure in the UN Security Council of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

“It furnished Israel with the deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women. This further encouraged Israel to continuous aggression,” he added, saying that Israel “does not deserve” to be in the UN.

Washington is Israel’s closest ally and backer, supplying the nation with billions of dollars of aid and military material.

Attacks Israel’s UN membership

The speech by Abbas comes months after the General Assembly voted that the State of Palestine merited full membership. As world leaders opened their speeches on Tuesday, Abbas was able to take his seat alongside the Palestinian delegation, seated in the General Assembly in alphabetical position.

In his address, Abbas said Israel’s defiance of the United Nations, which it often calls biased, showed the country should not be part of the world body. “Israel, which refuses to implement United Nations resolutions, does not deserve to be a member in this international organisation,” Abbas said.

Gaza school strike

Civil defence rescuers in Gaza said an Israeli strike on Thursday on a school-turned-shelter killed at least 15 people. Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said there were “15 martyrs, including children and women, and several wounded, some of them seriously, following an Israeli bombardment of Al Faluja school in Jabalia camp in north Gaza”. Bassal earlier said the death toll was seven.

Thursday’s attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for nearly a year.

A strike on the United Nations-run Al Jawni School in central Gaza on Sep 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.

At least 41,534 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the conflict began, according to data provided by the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

Residents said Israeli forces operating in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and in Zeitoun, a suburb of Gaza City, had blown up several homes in both areas as the military continued its operations there.

Peace hopes

Many months of diplomatic efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire have yielded little progress, with Israel refusing any deal to halt the fighting without the total defeat of Hamas. Over the past week, Israel has also launched some of the biggest airstrikes on Lebanon in nearly two decades, targeting Hezbollah, which has been firing into Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians.

On Wednesday, the United States, France and several other allies called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Israel-Lebanon border while also expressing support for a Gaza ceasefire following intense discussions at the United Nations. In Gaza, many Palestinians voiced hope that a deal to end the war in Lebanon would also bring an end to the fighting in the Palestinian enclave.

“Since Oct 8, Hassan Nasrallah conditioned ending the strikes by Hezbollah on ending the Israeli crimes and war on Gaza. This is a big gate of hope that peace may prevail in Lebanon and Gaza,” said Tamer Al Burai, a Palestinian businessman from Gaza City, who is currently displaced in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

“We stand in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and we don’t wish that anyone be harmed as Gaza was,” Burai said via a chat app.

Some expressed concern that a deal in Lebanon alone could free Israel’s hands further in Gaza, but Abed Abu Mustafa, a resident of Gaza City, said he expected Nasrallah to continue supporting the Palestinian enclave.

The health ministry in Gaza on Thursday accused the Israeli army of treating exhumed bodies in an “inhumane” manner, saying it deposited a container containing scores of dead Palestinians without proper documentation.

The Gaza health ministry said the Israeli army sent back a container on Wednesday containing 88 bodies “without any data or information that could help identify” them.