Politics
Israel asserts control over Gaza despite ongoing truce

Israel reaffirmed on Sunday that it will retain full control of security inside Gaza, despite agreeing to a US-mediated ceasefire that envisions the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told cabinet ministers that Israel alone would decide when and where to strike its enemies and which nations would be permitted to send troops to oversee the truce.
“Israel is a sovereign nation. We will defend ourselves by our own means and continue to shape our destiny,” Netanyahu declared. “We seek no one’s approval for our actions. Our security remains in our hands.”
AFP footage showed an Egyptian convoy entering Gaza carrying rescue personnel and heavy machinery to assist in locating the remains of Israeli hostages reportedly buried under the rubble in the war-ravaged territory.
Trucks bearing the Egyptian flag and loaded with bulldozers and diggers were seen heading toward Al-Zawayda, where an Egyptian aid coordination committee is based.
Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian confirmed that Netanyahu personally authorized the Egyptian team’s entry.
“This is purely a technical team none of the members are military personnel,” Bedrosian clarified. “They have been permitted to cross the IDF’s Yellow Line into Gaza to conduct searches for the missing hostages.”
According to the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire, Israeli forces are to withdraw following two years of intense conflict with Hamas, while an international security contingent expected to consist largely of Arab and Muslim countries will assume responsibility for maintaining order in Gaza.
However, Israel has rejected any role for Turkey in the mission. Facing mounting pressure from hardliners within his coalition for agreeing to the truce, Netanyahu struck a defiant tone during the cabinet session in Jerusalem, emphasizing that Israel alone will dictate Gaza’s future security arrangements.
“We made clear with respect to international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us,” he said, one day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wound up the latest in a parade of high-level visits by Washington officials.
Later, Bedrosian put it more starkly: “The prime minister has said it’s going to be done the easy way or the hard way, and Israel will have overall security control of the Gaza Strip.”
“Gaza will be demilitarised and Hamas will have no part in governing the Palestinian people.”
Child’s dream is gone
Aid agencies complain that humanitarian convoys still do not have enough access to Gaza to alleviate the famine conditions in parts of the territory, and families there are still going hungry.
AFP journalists followed the family of 62-year-old grandmother Hiam Muqdad for a day in their Gaza City neighbourhood, where they live in a tent next to their ruined home and her barefoot grandchildren gather domestic waste and twigs to burn to heat water.
“When they said there was a truce, oh my God, a tear of joy and a tear of sadness fell from my eye,” Muqdad told AFP. “The child’s dream is gone. In the past they used to go to the park but today children play on the rubble.”
Israel has withdrawn its forces within Gaza to the so-called “Yellow Line” but remains in control of more than half the territory, approves every UN aid convoy going through its borders and has carried out at least two strikes since the ceasefire.
To underline Israel’s independence of action, Netanyahu said it had pummelled Gaza with 150 tonnes of munitions on October 19 after two of its soldiers were killed, and had conducted a strike on Saturday targeting an Islamic Jihad militant.
The United States and allies have set up a truce monitoring centre in southern Israel — the Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) — and dispatched a string of top officials from President Donald Trump’s administration to promote the ceasefire.
The latest Israeli strike came just as Rubio was leaving Jerusalem, but Washington’s top diplomat said he remained optimistic the ceasefire would broadly hold if Hamas agrees to disarm and hand over the rule of Gaza.
Rubio told reporters that Washington did not expect the Yellow Line to become Gaza’s new border and that Israel would eventually pull back.
“I think, ultimately, the point of the stabilisation force is to move that line until it covers hopefully all of Gaza, meaning all of Gaza will be demilitarised,” Rubio told reporters on his plane as he flew to Qatar.
The main Palestinian factions, including Hamas, have agreed to form a committee of technocrats to administer Gaza alongside the ceasefire and reconstruction effort.
But Hamas has resisted calls for its immediate disarmament and has launched a crackdown on rival Palestinian gangs and armed groups in Gaza.
Hostage recovery
In a statement on Sunday, Hamas’s lead negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya said the militant group’s weapons are “linked to the presence of the occupation and aggression”.
He added: “If the occupation ends, these weapons will be transferred to the state.”
Hamas has insisted it is serious about returning the remaining 13 hostage bodies.
They include 10 Israelis kidnapped during the group’s attack on October 7, 2023 that triggered the conflict, one Israeli missing since 2014, a Thai and a Tanzanian worker.
Hamas has already returned the remaining 20 living hostages and 15 bodies of hostages.
But Hamas warns it will struggle to find the bodies of the others in the ruins of Gaza, where more than 68,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, according to figures from the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory deemed reliable by the UN.
Bedrosian dismissed this, telling reporters: “Hamas knows where our hostages are,” and adding the group needed to make more of an effort to retrieve the bodies.
Politics
Russian general hails Iran’s ‘shining example’ of defense against US-Israeli aggression

The first deputy head of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the Russian Defense Ministry says Iran demonstrated a “shining example” of defense during the recent illegal US-Israeli war of aggression.
“Iranian Armed Forces showed to the world a shining example of their firm resolve to defend their country’s interests,” Major-General Yevgeny Ilyin said during a ceremony in Moscow on Thursday, marking Iran’s National Army Day.
Iranian forces, he added, stand ready to deliver a proper and proportionate response to emerging challenges and threats.
The Russian military official said the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, with its steadfastness and courage, has protected the country’s defense and security and turned into a reliable guarantor for the nation’s independence and stability.
The unprovoked US-Israeli aggression on Iran began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders.
Iranian armed forces unleashed 100 waves of successful retaliatory strikes against sensitive and strategic American and Israeli targets throughout the region.
On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered two-week ceasefire went into effect but the first round of Tehran-Washington negotiations failed to reach an agreement.
Referring to the strategic partnership pact signed between Iran and Russia, Ilyin said that both states have maintained their cooperation in many fields.
Iran-Russia defense relations are multifaceted, encompassing areas from the deep sea to space, he added.
The military official also reiterated Russia’s resolve to implement previous agreements with Iran and continue working on plans for bilateral military cooperation.
During the ceremony, Iran’s military attaché to Russia Sadeq Rezaei Moqaddam said Iranian Armed Forces have always been committed to moral principles and differentiated between military and civilian targets.
On the contrary, he said, the US and the Israeli regime perpetrated horrible war crimes by killing 170 students and teachers at an elementary school in the city of Minab, and targeting the Iranian Dena destroyer which was returning home from a naval drill in India.
The attacks on civilian infrastructure and educational centers represent the enemies’ strategic failure to deal a blow to the will of the Iranian nation, Rezaei Moqaddam asserted.
The perfect coordination of the Army units and other forces caused the aggressors to step back and thwarted their calculations, he said.
He further stressed that enhanced technical and military cooperation between the Iranian and Russian armed forces not only guarantees the national security of both nations, but is also the main pillar to safeguarding stability in Eurasia and countering unilateralism and organized international crimes.
Politics
Netanyahu says he was successfully treated for prostate cancer

- Netanyahu does not disclose when treatment occurred.
- Delayed release of medical report by two months: Israeli PM.
- Move aimed at preventing Iran from spreading “propaganda”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that he had received successful treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, without specifying when the treatment took place.
In a statement on social media, as his annual medical report was released, Netanyahu, 76, said an early stage malignant tumor had been discovered during a routine checkup. He said “targeted treatment” had removed “the problem” and left no trace of it.
According to the medical report, which otherwise said the prime minister was in good health, Netanyahu was treated with radiation therapy for early-stage prostate cancer.
Neither the medical report nor Netanyahu said when the treatment occurred.
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister said that he had delayed the release of the medical report by two months to prevent Iran from spreading “false propaganda against Israel”.
In March, during the fighting with Iran, rumors that circulated on social media and aired on Iranian state media claimed that Netanyahu had died.
The Israeli leader recorded a video of himself visiting a Jerusalem cafe in March to refute the claims.
Netanyahu underwent surgery on his prostate in 2024 after he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection resulting from a benign prostate enlargement. In 2023, he was fitted with a pacemaker. Elections are due to be held in Israel by October.
Politics
Strategic Assertion or Legal Breach? Deconstructing India’s Indus Waters Doctrine

India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty under the pretext of security concerns constitutes a flagrant violation of international law , devoid of any legal basis within the Treaty framework. By invoking unsubstantiated claims surrounding the Pahalgam incident , India advances a dangerous doctrine that legitimizes treaty erosion and the coercive weaponisation of shared resources.
The Indus Waters Treaty is a binding bilateral instrument that contains no provision permitting unilateral suspension , reinterpretation, or conditional compliance, thereby rendering India’s decision to hold it in abeyance legally untenable and inconsistent with the principle of pacta sunt servanda. The attempt to justify this breach through allegations linked to the Pahalgam incident remains entirely unsubstantiated in international fora, exposing the claim as a politically motivated pretext rather than a lawful justification. By conflating disputed security narratives with treaty obligations, India not only undermines the integrity of a long-standing water-sharing regime but also sets a pernicious precedent that threatens the stability of transboundary agreements and the broader rules-based international order.
India’s unilateral move to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance is not a policy shift, it is a shameless act of legal defiance , openly violating the most basic rule of international law; pacta sunt servanda.
The weaponization of a water-sharing treaty exposes the dangerous ideological imprint of the RSS mindset , where majoritarian extremism overrides legal commitments India’s attempt to justify its conduct through the Pahalgam incident collapses under scrutiny even after a year; no evidence, no accountability, no credibility, only a politically convenient narrative weaponized to rationalize treaty violations.
Dragging terrorism allegations into a binding water treaty is not strategy, it is blatant and reckless escalation , dismantling decades of carefully insulated cooperation and replacing it with instability and mistrust.
By sidestepping proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, India has revealed a pattern of selective legality , embracing international law when convenient and abandoning it when constrained. Moreover, India yet remains silent to the UN Special Rapporteurs queries even after 130 days.
The weaponisation of water by an upper riparian state is nothing short of hydro-political terrorism , targeting the economic and agricultural lifeline of millions and crossing the line from governance into coercion.
This conduct represents a shameful erosion of treaty sanctity , sending a chilling message to the world that binding agreements can be hollowed out by power politics and ideological rigidity.
Pakistan’s position remains unequivocal; treaties are not conditional favors but binding obligations, and no state has the authority to unilaterally rewrite or suspend them under the guise of security narratives.
The growing international concern surrounding India’s actions underscores a simple reality: Unilateralism is isolating, destabilizing, and fundamentally incompatible with a rules-based order.
At its core, this doctrine of “blood and water cannot flow together” is not a principle of justice, it is a dangerous precedent, legitimizing collective punishment and transforming a historic instrument of peace into a tool of strategic pressure.
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