Weekly Briefing: Coordinated ethnic cleansing and the growing pushback

This week, our reporting shows the coordination between the United States and Israeli governments to ethnically cleanse Gaza. From Washington to Gaza to the West Bank, and inside New York City, the project takes different forms: prevent accountability, manufacture unlivable conditions, and drive Palestinians out of political life. But people are pushing back.

In Washington, the State Department sanctioned three leading Palestinian human rights groups—al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Al Mezan—for supporting the International Criminal Court’s probe of Israeli war crimes, punishing those who use international law to stop this genocide.

Inside Gaza, public health is collapsing. A “new strain” of respiratory illness is ripping through overcrowded shelters as famine and malnutrition make routine infections deadly. At the same time, a leaked Trump plan dresses ethnic cleansing up as “temporary relocation,” dangling $5,000, rent, and food subsidies to push Palestinians out. On the ground, midwives deliver babies by cell phone flashlights as mothers arrive malnourished and hospitals run on fumes. Israel is also “managing” the famine through engineered scarcity and chaos by taxing merchant trucks while aid convoys are attacked.

But pressure is growing. New Yorkers are organizing to evict genocide-linked firms from the city-owned Brooklyn Navy Yard. CUNY students won a court order forcing disclosure of investments tied to Gaza, giving divestment campaigns concrete targets (Claudia Gohn, coverage). And inside nonprofits, staff are speaking up and even quitting in protest over punishment for their Gaza solidarity. Amena al-Ashkar argues it’s time to focus boycott energy where power sits today: Arab capital sustaining normalization.

Must Read: Trump administration sanctions Palestinian human rights groups

Michael Arria: The State Department has imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights organizations for supporting the International Criminal Court’s Israel probe.

Genocide in Gaza

🧫 Tareq Hajjaj: Local authorities in Gaza have identified a “new strain” of respiratory virus in Gaza amid worsening conditions of famine and severe malnutrition, which threaten to cause even routine infections to turn deadly.

🇺🇸 Michael Arria: A leaked document details the Trump administration’s plan to forcibly relocate the population of Gaza. Included in a “relocation package” would be $5,000, four years of rent subsidies, and a year of food subsidies.

🫄 Wesam Abo Marq: Midwives in Gaza are on the front lines fighting against extermination, trying to save this generation and the next, as the Israeli-imposed famine causes a birthing crisis in the Strip.

🍞 Tareq Hajjaj: Israel is “managing” the famine in Gaza by targeting aid shipments while allowing some goods to reach local markets only if merchants pay the military an exorbitant fee. The system accomplishes two goals: engineering starvation and creating chaos.

Catch-up

🇮🇱 Qassam Muaddi: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich released a map proposing to annex over 80% of the West Bank. He’s not far off from the rest of the Israeli political establishment — even the “pragmatic” opposition.

🗽 Joseph Mogul: Most New Yorkers are not aware that companies contributing to the Gaza genocide operate in their backyard, but at least two are housed in the city-operated Brooklyn Navy Yard. Now, activists and local residents are banding together to get them evicted.

🇺🇸 Mitchell Plitnick: The cancellation of visas for Palestinian officials is part of a wider effort by Israel and the U.S. to prevent international recognition of a Palestinian state, and to further Trump’s grandiose plans for Gaza and Israel’s plans for the West Bank.

⛪ Michael Arria: Former employees at the Americans United for Separation of Church and State say they were pushed out of the organization for expressing solidarity with Palestinians. The battle at AU highlights a growing tension within nonprofits over Gaza.

💰 Claudia Gohn: In a landmark victory for student activists, the Supreme Court of New York ruled that CUNY must disclose the school’s financial portfolio, specifically contracts with businesses connected to the genocide in Gaza.

🛑 Amena al-Ashkar: The tools of boycott and public protest are inherited from the colonial period. We need to adapt these methods to focus on where power is concentrated today in our region: Arab capital.