Kuwaiti authorities have arrested 67 people accused of producing and distributing locally made alcoholic drinks that killed 23 people in recent days, including a Bangladeshi national said to head the criminal network, the Interior Ministry has said.

In a statement on X late on Saturday, the ministry said it seized six factories and another four that were not yet operational in residential and industrial areas.

A Nepali member of the criminal group told authorities how the methanol was prepared and sold.

Kuwait, a Muslim nation, bans the import or domestic production of alcoholic beverages, but some are manufactured illegally in secret locations that lack oversight or safety standards, exposing consumers to the risk of poisoning.

The arrests come after the Ministry of Health said on Thursday that cases of methanol poisoning linked to the tainted drinks had reached 160, with 23 deaths, mostly among Asian nationals.

At least 51 people required urgent kidney dialysis while 31 needed mechanical ventilation, the ministry said.

The Embassy of India in Kuwait, which has the largest expatriate community in the country, said around 40 Indian nationals in Kuwait were hospitalised in the last few days, without specifying the cause.

“There have been some fatalities, some are in a critical condition while others are recovering,” it said in a statement on X.

Methanol, a toxic colourless alcohol used in industrial and household products, is hard to detect. Symptoms of poisoning are typically delayed and include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, hyperventilation and breathing problems.

It is reported that thousands of people suffer from methanol poisoning every year, especially in Asia. If not treated, fatality rates are often reported to be 20 percent to 40 percent, according to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Part of the Series Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

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The Israeli security cabinet approved a plan presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 8 to fully occupy the Gaza Strip and forcibly displace the residents of Gaza City from the north of the territory to the south.

The news of the plan spread rapidly among those of us in Gaza, leaving us in a state of shock and despair. We had been following the updates in hopes of hearing about a possible ceasefire — not a full occupation and a new wave of displacement. Since the Israeli plan was announced, the Israeli army has intensified its artillery bombardment and airstrikes on the southern part of Gaza City.

The decision comes at a time when starvation has severely gripped the Gaza Strip. According to UN officials, since late May, nearly 1,400 people struggling to obtain basic food supplies have been killed through Israel’s failed food distribution. In addition, more than 500,000 people in Gaza are facing starvation, and all 320,000 children under the age of 5 are at risk of severe malnutrition.

The Israeli plan was met with condemnation from both Western and Arab countries, who warned that it would further diminish the chances of achieving a permanent ceasefire and bring nothing but more destruction and suffering. Nevertheless, Netanyahu insisted that he would press ahead with his plan, refusing to yield to rhetorical pressure from other nations.

Some reports, citing statements from Israeli officials, indicated that the plan will be implemented in phases. The first phase involves the occupation of Gaza City by displacing its roughly 1 million residents to areas Israel designates as “safe zones,” while providing what Netanyahu’s office describes as humanitarian aid to civilians outside the combat zones. Israel has bombed safe zones it has designated itself repeatedly over the course of its assault on Gaza; meanwhile, the current aid scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been described by the UN as a “death trap.”

The mass forcible displacement will reportedly be followed by intensified airstrikes aimed at clearing the way for troops to encircle the city and conduct incursions into residential neighborhoods. Netanyahu has said that the military will also focus on occupying the refugee camps in the central Strip.

In Gaza City, most people view this plan as a continuation of Israel’s systematic strategy to replicate the devastation seen in Gaza’s northern governorate, Rafah, and Khan Younis — targeting the few remaining areas in the Strip that still have residential buildings and landmarks. This could pave the way for Israeli right-wing extremists to bring back settlements in Gaza and confine the Palestinian population to a specific area in the south, in preparation for their forced displacement outside the Strip.

During the 22-month war, most of Gaza City’s neighborhoods — now marked as the first target in Israel’s latest plan — have endured bloody massacres, relentless bombardment, suffocating starvation, and temporary military incursions. However, they have so far been spared the total destruction that devastated Rafah and other parts of the Strip, as the most intense fighting and incursions have, until now, been concentrated in the city’s eastern areas, including Al-Tufah, Al-Shujaiya, and Al-Zaytun.

Now, Gaza City — especially its central and western areas, which were already overcrowded with residents — has become even more congested, as thousands of evacuees have poured in from the eastern part of the city and from the northern governorate, including Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahia. This influx followed the Israeli military operation called Gideon’s Chariots by Israel, and known as “Markeb Jadoun” on the ground in Gaza, which launched in May. By that operation’s end, Israel had seized large parts of the northern Strip and confined its population to specific areas within Gaza City.

Most people in Gaza City, including both evacuees and original residents who lost their homes, are now living in flimsy tents that lack basic necessities, crammed into makeshift camps set up in any available spaces — playgrounds, parks, and even along Gaza City’s beach. Others have taken shelter in schools and public institutions that have been converted into housing for displaced families, where conditions are equally harsh; in some cases, a single classroom accommodates three or four families.

The overcrowded conditions in Gaza City mean that any large-scale military invasion would trigger a humanitarian catastrophe, forcing more than 900,000 people to flee under the looming threat of massacres and a bloody invasion. They would be pushed toward the south, where evacuation orders have already covered most areas and Israeli forces have seized two of the area’s largest cities — Rafah and Khan Younis.

Ahmed Totah, 56, said that during the ceasefire in January 2025, he and his family managed to return to their home in the Jabalia refugee camp after 16 months of displacement in the south. However, Totah was only able to live in his home for two months before the Israeli military resumed the war and expanded their operations in the north, reaching his neighborhood.

Refusing to move back south, Totah decided to flee to the western part of Gaza City, to an area called Al-Rimal, where he set up his tent in a public park called Al-Jundi.

“Isn’t the hell we are already living through enough?” Totah said. “Now Israel wants to displace us once again to the south. We have no food or clean water, and we live in flimsy tents that offer no protection from the scorching sun or the cold of winter. On top of that, the daily bombardments terrorize us. We are exhausted and have no energy left to face the suffering of yet another displacement. We have literally reached a point where we prefer death over living this life.”

Rawan Husain Ali, 22, said she has been displaced in the heart of Gaza City since the early days of the war, after her neighborhood, Al-Shujaiya, was declared a dangerous war zone by the Israeli army. “The news of the Israeli occupation plan for Gaza City has brought back all the dark memories of destruction, killing, and displacement I endured in Al-Shujaiya,” she said. “My entire family is now consumed by worry, depression, and relentless thoughts about where we will live, where we will go, and how long our displacement will last. We have already lost our father and our home — we cannot bear to lose anything more or be displaced to the unknown. We can no longer endure such horrors.”

As hundred thousands of families in Gaza City, like those of Husain Ali and Totah, brace for yet another chapter of suffering that could end in their displacement from the Strip, Palestinians in Gaza ask an urgent question : Will the world move beyond mere words to take meaningful action that protects civilians, halt Israel’s catastrophic plan, and save what remains of the devastated Strip before it is too late?

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Open this photo in gallery: Palestinians, displaced by the Israeli offensive, shelter in a tent camp on a beach in Gaza City. The Associated Press on Tuesday reported that Israel was holding discussions with South Sudan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza.Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

South Sudan is not in talks with Israel to resettle Palestinians from war-torn Gaza, South Sudan’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press, citing six people with knowledge of the matter, reported that Israel was holding discussions with Juba to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in the East African nation.

“These claims are baseless and do not reflect the official position or policy of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan,” South Sudan’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

Israel’s military has pounded Gaza City in recent days prior to its planned takeover of the shattered enclave, which is home to more than two million Palestinians.

In a Gazan refugee camp, Netanyahu’s plans to expand war prompt fear, anger and many questions

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday reiterated a view – also enthusiastically floated by U.S. President Donald Trump – that Palestinians should simply leave Gaza.

Many world leaders are horrified at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another “Nakba” (catastrophe), when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

In March, Somalia and its breakaway region of Somaliland also denied receiving any proposal from the United States or Israel to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, with Mogadishu saying it categorically rejected any such move.

South Sudan’s Foreign Minister Monday Semaya Kumba visited Israel last month and met with Netanyahu, according to the foreign ministry in Juba.

Last month South Sudan’s government confirmed that eight migrants deported to the African nation by the Trump administration were currently in the care of the authorities in Juba after they lost a legal battle to halt their transfer.

Since achieving independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan has spent nearly half its life at war and is currently in the grip of a political crisis, after President Salva Kiir’s government ordered the arrest of Vice President Riek Machar in March.

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The Israeli TV hosts were live on air for the Big Brother season finale last weekend, urging viewers to call in with their votes when several activists burst onto the stage shouting “Israel is starving Gaza!”

As security guards tackled the protesters, the presenters did their best to smooth over the disturbance, but it was too late: reality had intruded on reality TV.

“While the hostages are abandoned to their deaths and children are starving just an hour’s drive away from the Big Brother studios, the media is not telling the nation what is going on in Gaza and broadcasts to the citizens that everything is going on as usual,” read a statement from the Standing Together activist movement that was behind the protest.

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‘Maybe it’s time to understand that this isn’t just a PR failure, but a moral failure’

For nearly two years of war, Israeli media broadcasts have focused almost entirely on Israeli victims of the conflict, from the hostages and their families to fallen soldiers.

In recent weeks, however, a small but increasingly assertive minority of Israelis have been pushing Palestinian suffering into the picture as opposition to the war grows. Their aim: to break through a wall of indifference critics say has been enabled by the Israeli media’s failure to cover Gaza’s plight.

“If you think of the Israeli public as being isolated behind a dome that prevents them from knowing what’s going on, there have been cracks in the dome,” said Oren Persico, a staff writer for The Seventh Eye, an independent Israeli website devoted to journalism and freedom of the press.

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At protests calling for an end to the war, which have long focused mainly on the plight of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, photographs of Palestinian victims are more visible than before. Prominent artists and academics have signed petitions condemning the violence being perpetrated in their name. Some mainstream media have addressed starvation in the territory.

The shift comes as questions mount over a military strategy that hasn’t achieved Israel’s stated aims of returning the hostages and eliminating Hamas. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans this month to expand the war in Gaza despite mounting domestic and international pressure to stop it.

Poll after poll has shown a large majority of Israelis support a deal to end the war – if only for the sake of the hostages, rather than the suffering of 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza. Israel has devastated the territory and killed more than 60,000 people, a third of them children. Many Israelis now believe Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political ends.

Channel 12’s evening news anchor Yonit Levi has questioned how the situation in Gaza is being covered

Faced with a government that is unresponsive to the street, anti-war activists are changing tactics.

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A day after the Big Brother protest, 15 anti-war activists glued themselves to the floor of Ben Gurion International airport, spilling flour on the floor to symbolise starvation in Gaza. The stunts are grabbing the attention of mainstream Israeli media and forcing them to engage with the Palestinians’ plight, said Alon-Lee Green, co-director of Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab grassroots movement. “People need to understand that the average Israeli person doesn’t read the New York Times or watch CNN and the BBC,” says Green. “We already know that social media works with algorithms and works in bubbles.”

For a majority of Israelis – still immersed in the trauma of the attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023 – sympathy for Palestinians is in short supply. A poll conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute found that nearly 80% of Jewish respondents weren’t personally troubled by suffering in Gaza. That view has hardened in the past fortnight, after Hamas released footage of two emaciated Israeli hostages – one of them digging his own grave in a dingy tunnel in Gaza.

There was a fierce backlash after more than 1,000 artists – among them leading Israeli musicians, writers and other cultural figures – signed a petition this month demanding an immediate end to the war and decrying the “killing of children and non-combatants, expulsion of the population and the senseless destruction of Gaza’s cities”.

The mayor of a city in southern Israel banned any of the signatories from performing there, denouncing them as “contemptible people”. A musician was dropped from a series of summer events until he retracted his signature. Several others pulled their names under pressure.

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Actress and model Moran Atias said her blood boiled when she was approached to sign the petition, which didn’t blame Hamas. “Is it just our responsibility? This is really the antisemitic narrative,” she said on TV. Idan Amedi, an Israeli singer and actor on the popular show Fauda who was wounded while serving in Gaza, also accused fellow artists of spreading lies.

As hunger spread in Gaza last month, presenters on Israel’s second most-watched channel, which is popular with supporters of Netanyahu, devoted themselves to debunking reports in the international media. The hosts of one segment on Channel 14 joked with studio guests about a Palestinian mother featured in a CNN report suggesting she might have eaten her four-year-old daughter, who died of starvation.

But anti-war activists have continued to make their case. Outside the TV studios of Israel’s most-watched station Channel 12, a small group accosted journalists on their way to work, urging them to show the public the reality of what is unfolding in Gaza. “Enough with the self-censorship,” read one banner. “CEOs, editors and journalists: fulfil your journalistic duty and cover the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

The campaign provoked a heated discussion inside the Channel 12 newsroom, according to a leaked internal chat. Commenting on the protest outside, one journalist said it was “hard to connect” with the protesters’ message after listening to the accounts of Israelis who had endured Hamas captivity. Others pushed back, citing their journalistic duty to cover the truth: “Even if we don’t feel empathy, that is not the criteria,” wrote one member of the group.

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Chief political commentator Amit Segal, who is widely considered one of Israel’s most influential journalists, weighed in to defend the IDF’s actions as legitimate, comparing the destruction of Gaza to the bombing of Dresden, Berlin and Tehran, before the chief executive of the channel shut the conversation down.

“Israelis have a long history of looking away from what the IDF is doing to Palestinians,” said Persico, pointing to decades of occupation of the West Bank. “If the media had done its job from day one – and if it would start doing its job from tomorrow – more people would not have the luxury of looking away.”

But maybe that’s beginning to change. Days after the protests outside Channel 12, its evening news anchor Yonit Levi ended a report on how hunger in Gaza was being covered around the world on a surprising note: “Maybe it’s time to understand that this isn’t just a PR failure, but a moral failure,” she said.

Ex-Israeli intelligence chief said 50 Palestinians must die for every 7 October victim

Ex-Israeli intelligence chief said 50 Palestinians must die for every 7 October victim

‘It does not matter if they are children,’ said Aharon Haliva in recorded comments calling the death toll ‘necessary’