Middle East Press On: 3rd Annan Plan, UN blueprint for Cyprus, Turkish economy, Hamas leaving government, Ghassan Kanafani, Gaza Journalist Documenting War, New Age Islam's Selection, 08 July 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
08 July 2026
1. 3rd Annan Plan: Why New UN Blueprint for Cyprus Will Fail Again
2. Ankara and Türkiye at Centre of NATO’s Transformation
3. Turkish Economy in Disinflation Process
4. Hamas Is Leaving Government, Not The Resistance
5. Like Israel’s Colonial Expansion, The UN’s Narratives Also Place Palestinians at Risk
6. Ghassan Kanafani: Marxist, Martyr… Musician?
7. After Losing His Family, A Gaza Journalist Keeps Documenting the War
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3rd Annan Plan: Why new UN blueprint for Cyprus will fail again
By Cenk Kaan Adasoy
JUL 08, 2026
Every decade or so, the United Nations rediscovers Cyprus. A new envoy arrives, a new acronym is coined, and a new round of "constructive ambiguity" is presented to two communities that have disagreed for half a century about what reunification even means. The latest iteration, reportedly drafted by the secretary-general's personal envoy, Maria Angela Holguin, and circulating among diplomats ahead of an "enlarged" five-plus-one meeting expected this summer, is being sold as something new: a "looser" federation, flexible enough that Greek Cypriots can call it a federation and Turkish Cypriots a confederation, so nobody has to admit what they actually signed. That, in itself, is the first warning sign. A settlement whose authors cannot agree on what to name it is a postponement with better branding.
According to multiple reports out of Lefkoşa (Nicosia), Ankara and Athens this June, the Holguin blueprint envisions two constituent states joined by a central government stripped down to five or six ministries – foreign affairs, defence, internal affairs, finance and European affairs – run by a rotating presidential council with top posts allocated by community rather than by vote. Security guarantees under the 1960 treaty system would be replaced by a NATO-based arrangement, with Turkish, Greek, British, French and American forces on the island.
At the heart of the deal sits a transaction dressed up as generosity: Turkish Cypriots would surrender the strategic Turkish-owned districts of Maraş (Varosha), Güzelyurt (Morphou) and parts of the Mesarya plain – also, if past plans are any guide, almost certainly parts of Karpaz as well – in exchange for lifting restrictions that should never have existed: direct trade, flights and contacts, the so-called "three Ds. “
Guarantee that already exists
The NATO formula deserves a harder look, because for most of the flags on that list, it changes nothing on the ground. France and the U.S. already operate in the Greek Cypriot administration through bilateral arrangements; South Nicosia pursued on its own initiative, part of a steady militarization of the south that has had nothing to do with any U.N. process. Wrapping that reality into a NATO label is an internationally sanctioned name for what the south was already doing. Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom are the only powers with an actual claim to a role: All three are 1960 treaty guarantors and NATO members in their own right, and Türkiye and Greece in particular are bound to the island through their population and violence of half a century ago in a way no other state is. Adding more flags dresses up unilateral militarization as multilateral peacekeeping, and it comes at an odd moment to side-line Türkiye: NATO leaders gathered at the Ankara summit were widely expected to formalize Türkiye's growing weight in Eastern Mediterranean security.
The three Ds, meanwhile, are presented as a trade between equals when they are nothing of the sort. They are not a gift Brussels is offering in 2026, but a promise the European Council made in April 2004, days after Greek Cypriots rejected the Annan Plan and Turkish Cypriots approved it. In the years that followed, the EU's own enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, has repeatedly called ending the isolation of the north a "moral obligation." Two decades later, that obligation remains unmet, and the new plan repackages it as a concession earned through territorial loss, rather than an overdue correction for discrimination against EU citizens with the wrong identity card. Asking Turkish Cypriots to hand over land for rights they were already promised is leverage dressed as compromise.
It is worth remembering what else the Annan Plan contained: provisions, contingent on approval on both sides, that would have set the new state on a path toward sovereignty and recognition. Because the Greek Cypriot referendum failed, none of it was implemented. Turkish Cypriots delivered their side of the bargain and got nothing for it, while the Greek Cypriot administration entered the EU regardless. That history is why current Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) President Tufan Erhürman has made political equality, a firm timeline, the preservation of past convergences and binding guarantees against renewed isolation his explicit preconditions for any new round of talks.
Pattern, not coincidence
Anyone who has followed this file for more than one news cycle will recognize the shape of what is happening. In 2004, the Annan Plan collapsed on the Greek Cypriot side, which had already secured EU membership regardless of the referendum outcome, removing any incentive to compromise once the prize was banked.
In July 2017, Crans-Montana collapsed in the early hours of the morning over the same questions now being recycled: guarantees, troop presence, territory and political equality. The official account points to an impasse over Türkiye's guarantor status and troop withdrawal. But former Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat has since alleged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally urged then-President Nicos Anastasiades to walk away from the table – an allegation Anastasiades has denied responsibility for without directly engaging with it. Whatever the precise trigger, the pattern is unmistakable: As Cyprus has grown entangled in Eastern Mediterranean energy and security politics since the 2010s, outside actors with no stake in reunification have had every incentive to keep the island divided and predictable.
Now comes attempt three, under a secretary-general with months left in office and an acute interest in a legacy before his term expires on Dec. 31, 2026, and the race to succeed him concludes. Holguin herself already tried and failed once before, during a first stint as envoy from January to July 2024 that produced no framework. Her credentials are real. She is a former Colombian foreign minister who helped negotiate the Havana peace accords ending a decades-long civil conflict. But Colombia's war was a domestic insurgency resolved through demobilization and transitional justice. Cyprus is a dispute over sovereign status, two legal orders and a foreign-backed security guarantee, and it has consistently punished diplomats who import frameworks built for different conflicts.
A confessional blueprint
Strip away the diplomatic language, and the Holguin plan proposes a confessional power-sharing system: ministries and the presidency allocated by community of birth rather than vote or competence. That is the architecture that has kept Lebanon in recurring institutional paralysis for half a century, where a presidency reserved for one community and a premiership for another have produced years-long vacancies whenever the two sides disagree, rather than a functioning government.
Guaranteed communal seats do not eliminate the incentive to deadlock. Contrarily, they institutionalize it, since every disagreement becomes a test of communal standing rather than a normal dispute resolved by majority or compromise. Bosnia-Herzegovina offers the closer warning: Dayton's rotating tripartite presidency, allocated by ethnicity in nearly the same structure now proposed for Cyprus, has spent 30 years entrenching the nationalist vetoes it was meant to dissolve, and in 2025 its Serb member was removed from office for defying the state amid open threats of secession. Cyprus would be wiser to study why that model keeps failing in Beirut and Sarajevo than to import a softer version of it.
There is also a basic cartographic question that the public reporting hasn't answered. Güzelyurt (Morphou) sits in the northwest of the TRNC; the Karpaz peninsula juts out toward the far northeast, a long, sparsely populated finger of land making up more than a quarter of the country's area. No version of the plan specifies which "parts" of the Mesarya plain would change hands, which matters enormously: depending on where the new line is drawn, the territory left to Turkish Cypriots could remain a coherent coastal corridor from Kyrenia through Famagusta to Karpaz, or end up narrower and harder to govern, with outlying areas more exposed. Before 1974, Turkish Cypriots lived scattered across dozens of isolated enclaves, dependent on outside intervention to avoid being cut off entirely. A serious settlement proposal would rule that risk out explicitly, with maps, rather than leave the question open as every previous round of talks did.
Neutrality the plan ignores
Any honest accounting of regional risk has to reckon with how entangled the Greek Cypriot administration has become with Israel specifically. Property purchases by Israeli buyers, once a source of friction in the TRNC, shifted decisively south after the north tightened its foreign-ownership rules in late 2023. Reports this spring documented an Israeli entrepreneur's purchase of roughly 70% of the homes in the depopulated village of Trozena, part of a wider wave that General Secretary of the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) Stefanos Stefanou says has brought close to 4,000 Israeli-linked purchases since 2021, concentrated near ports, resorts and sites close to Cypriot military installations. Haaretz and official statements have shown that Mossad uses Cyprus for safe house operations. And when Israel and Iran went to open war in June 2025, the island's practical role became impossible to miss: thousands of Israelis fled by yacht to Larnaca and Limassol, with southern Cyprus' Chabad network alone processing more than 12,000 people in 10 days.
To be clear: None of this means Israel belongs anywhere near the negotiating table. It does not, and should not. It means the Greek Cypriot administration has, on its own initiative, let itself become a logistical and intelligence rear base for a country at active war with its neighbors. A new constitutional order that says nothing about reining in that role is not protecting Cyprus' neutrality. On the contrary, it is formalizing the end of it, risking dragging a reunified island into conflicts that are not its own, while once again placing Turkish Cypriots in danger for decisions and policies over which they had neither responsibility nor control.
The status quo is not acceptable, but the cure on offer is the wrong one. A two-state outcome – sovereign equality between two states, each with full control over its own foreign relations, security and resources, linked through EU association rather than forced into a single shared government – would not satisfy the U.N. resolutions built around the federal model since 1977, and it would face real resistance in South Nicosia and Athens. But it would not require Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots to pretend an agreement says two different things, and it would not require the Lebanese-Bosnian-style communal carve-up described above.
Erhürman has a genuine mandate and a genuine opening. But Holguin's blueprint will not give him a framework specific enough to survive its own implementation. The next round of talks will be remembered either as the moment Cyprus finally said what it meant, or as Crans-Montana's sequel: closer to a deal than ever, and no deal at all.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/3rd-annan-plan-why-new-un-blueprint-for-cyprus-will-fail-again
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Ankara and Türkiye at centre of NATO’s transformation
BY MUHITTIN ATAMAN
JUL 07, 2026
The NATO summit held in Ankara is likely to be remembered as a turning point in the alliance's history. The summit comes at a time when NATO is facing an existential identity crisis. For the first time, the security concerns and priorities of its allies diverge significantly. On the one hand, tensions between the United States and European countries have intensified. On the other, European countries have sought to exclude Türkiye from European security platforms, despite the self-defeating nature of such a policy. In addition, significant differences and disagreements persist among European states themselves.
Taking these political fault lines into consideration, I will briefly examine the importance of the Ankara summit for the city of Ankara and the Turkish state.
Centrality of Ankara
Since it was declared the capital of Türkiye in 1923, Ankara has remained in the shadow of Istanbul, a globally renowned Turkish city and the former capital of empires. Although Ankara developed rapidly and became the country’s third-most populous city within a few decades, it continued to face significant shortcomings until recently. Despite being Türkiye’s capital, it had yet to achieve comparable international visibility. As one of the world’s most attractive cities, Istanbul continued to serve as the symbolic centre of Turkish history, economy and culture.
Following substantial public and private investments, Ankara has emerged as an important industrial, commercial, educational and cultural hub. In recent years, the number of international flights from the capital has increased significantly. The capacity of Esenboğa Airport has been expanded, and the government has initiated a project to connect the airport to the city centre via a metro line. These and similar developments are expected to make significant contributions to Ankara’s future growth and global profile.
In addition, Etimesgut Air Base was renovated ahead of the 2026 NATO Summit, hosted in Ankara. The operation of the military base was transferred to the State Airports Authority. The aprons were expanded, the runway was extended, and a VIP lounge was constructed. Following the renovation, the facility was renamed Ankara Airport. It was officially inaugurated on June 15, just weeks before the summit, and will continue to serve as a protocol airport after the NATO summit.
Today, Ankara is hosting one of the most important international meetings in its history. For the first time, the city is hosting such a significant and widely attended summit. Around 40 heads of state and government, accompanied by large delegations from some of the world’s most powerful countries, will spend several days in the city. More than 3,000 journalists from around the world are covering the summit. More than 50,000 security personnel have been deployed to ensure that the meeting is conducted safely.
I believe Ankara is ready to elevate its status. In addition to its historical heritage from the Roman and Ottoman periods, and more importantly, from the early years of the republic, Ankara has many universities, historic neighbourhoods, museums, concert halls, and stadiums to offer the world. Now, this summit, which presents an important opportunity to enhance Ankara’s diplomatic and political standing, will make a significant contribution to the city’s global brand value. In this sense, Ankara is becoming a true capital of the state by emerging as a centre of diplomacy, trade, culture and international transportation. With the beginning of the Turkish Century, Ankara has begun to rise as a symbol and centre of the new century.
Centrality of Türkiye
It is not a coincidence that no NATO summit was held in Türkiye, which became a member of the alliance in 1952, until the AK Party governments, under which the country hosted two such summits.
It is noteworthy that only two NATO summits have been held in Türkiye: one in Istanbul in 2004 and the other in Ankara in 2026. Both summits took place during significant periods marked by uncertainty and crisis, when the alliance was debating its future direction. While the Istanbul summit formalized NATO 2.0 and consolidated the alliance in the post-Cold War era, the Ankara summit appears poised to shape NATO 3.0 and adapt the alliance to future threats.
At a time when many Western states are criticizing Türkiye for its evolving preferences and policies in international affairs, the NATO Summit held in Ankara demonstrates the success of Türkiye’s long-standing foreign policy approach. Ankara has been seeking to enhance its strategic autonomy vis-a-vis its European allies for some time. This approach reflects Türkiye’s efforts to elevate its international status and expand its influence.
This summit has demonstrated that Türkiye is not merely a beneficiary of NATO but also, more importantly, a country capable of making and sustaining significant contributions to the alliance. Many Western politicians and academics have begun to recognize Türkiye’s central role in shaping the European security architecture. With its substantial military capabilities and robust defence industry, Türkiye has the capacity to play a decisive role in deterring threats against itself and its allies. It has already demonstrated its capabilities in various regional crises, including Syria, Karabakh and Libya.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/ankara-and-turkiye-at-center-of-natos-transformation
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Turkish economy in disinflation process
BY HARUN TÜRKER KARA
JUL 07, 2026
The Turkish economy has been undergoing one of the most important economic rebalancing processes in its history over the past two years. Disinflation policies aimed at combating high inflation, maintaining financial stability, and fiscal discipline-oriented policies have created a certain degree of slowdown in economic activity in the short term. However, they have also contributed to establishing a healthier foundation for growth in the medium and long term.
Recent macroeconomic indicators suggest that despite a controlled slowdown, the Turkish economy has maintained its growth. In this context, it can be argued that the fiscal space created through strengthened fiscal discipline has enabled Türkiye to navigate the economic repercussions of the war between the United States and Iran more effectively.
According to the latest Inflation Report of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) and assessments of Governor Fatih Karahan with international investors, the disinflation process remains on track, and policy measures are gradually producing results. The moderation in consumer demand, normalization of credit growth, and a more balanced stance in domestic consumption have helped put inflation on a downward path. Improvements in inflation expectations and the recovery in foreign exchange reserves are among the notable achievements of the current economic program.
Nevertheless, potential energy price shocks, geopolitical tensions, rising protectionism in global trade, and uncertainties in international markets continue to pose risks to the inflation outlook. For this reason, maintaining a tight monetary policy stance and effective expectation management remains critical.
One of the key priorities of economic policymakers in recent years has been reserve accumulation and fiscal discipline. The recovery in the Central Bank's reserves has become an important indicator of improving external financing conditions, current account balance, and the restoration of investor confidence.
At the same time, maintaining budget discipline, allocating public expenditures more efficiently, and ensuring coordination between fiscal and monetary policies have become essential pillars of the economic program.
As frequently emphasized by Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, lasting price stability can only be achieved through the coordinated implementation of monetary and fiscal policies.
State of industry
The true strength of the Turkish economy lies not only in financial indicators but also in its potential for productive capacity. Over the past two decades, the country has built a substantial industrial base, accumulated export experience, and developed a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem. In this regard, Türkiye's Top 500 Industrial Enterprises (ISO 500) survey published by the Istanbul Chamber of Industry in recent weeks serves as an important benchmark for assessing Türkiye's industrial strength.
The latest ISO 500 results reveal a real increase in production-based sales, indicating that industrial growth has not been driven solely by price effects but has also been supported by an expansion in actual volumes. This development points to the resilience of Türkiye’s manufacturing sector and reinforces expectations that industry will remain a key driver of economic growth in the coming period.
Sectors such as defence, automotive, machinery, iron and steel, chemicals and energy equipment stand out as drivers of industrial dynamism. Despite a high-interest-rate environment, many large industrial enterprises have tended to continue pursuing capacity expansion, technological investments and export-oriented growth strategies. Hence, the relationship between industrial production and economic growth has become more critical than ever for Türkiye.
Industrial production data show that the defence industry, in particular, has gained significant momentum. While domestic demand has moderated, growth is increasingly being driven by production, exports, and investment.
Industrial policies will play a central role in shaping this transformation. A significant portion of Türkiye's recent achievements has emerged in high-value-added production sectors. The defence industry stands out as one of the most notable examples of this transformation. For the first time, both Aselsan and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) were ranked among the top ten companies in the ISO 500. This development highlights not only the expanding scale of Türkiye's defence industry but also the progress achieved in the country's technology-intensive production capabilities.
Rising localization rates, growing expertise in electronics and software systems, and strong high-value-added export performance are strengthening Türkiye's position within global value chains. Similarly, investments in electric vehicles, digital technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and green transformation projects may enhance the quality and sophistication of the country's industrial structure. This transformation is also consistent with the objectives outlined in the 12th Development Plan (2024-2028), which emphasizes technology-oriented production and sustainable development.
Cautious optimism
Expectations for the coming period generally point toward cautious optimism. A continued decline in inflation, greater predictability in financial conditions, and a gradual easing of the global interest rate cycle could strengthen investment appetite. In particular, industrial investments, technology-oriented production projects, and export-driven capacity expansions may gain new momentum.
Growth forecasts published by international institutions also underline the resilience of the Turkish economy. At a time when many advanced economies are experiencing relatively weak growth, Türkiye's ability to sustain positive growth highlights the strength of its production infrastructure and entrepreneurial capacity.
Maintaining prudent expectations remains important during the rebalancing process. Ongoing geopolitical tensions, volatility in energy prices, and potential fluctuations in international financial markets remain significant sources of risk for the Turkish economy.
Domestically, the success of the disinflation program depends on the continued commitment of policymakers, the preservation of fiscal discipline, and the maintenance of policy consistency. In other words, the ultimate success of Türkiye's rebalancing process depends not only on a reduction in external uncertainties but also on the sustained political and institutional commitment to the current economic program.
In conclusion, the Turkish economy today is not only an economy attempting to reduce inflation. It is also an economy seeking to preserve its productive capacity, expand exports, sustain technological investments, and transition toward a more sustainable growth model. The disinflation process and the strengthening of industrial production should not be viewed as alternatives but rather as complementary objectives. However, transforming this potential into a long-term success story will require sustained commitment to disinflation policies, fiscal discipline, structural reforms, and effective management of global risks.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/turkish-economy-in-disinflation-process
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Hamas is leaving government, not the resistance
July 7, 2026
by Sayid Marcos Tenorio
Hamas’s decision to dissolve the Government Emergency Committee in the Gaza Strip and transfer civilian administration to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza marks a significant strategic shift. To interpret it as capitulation or defeat is to misunderstand the current stage of the Palestinian national liberation struggle.
The movement has reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the ceasefire agreement and fulfilling its responsibilities until Gaza’s civilian administration is fully transferred.
The first is to preserve Hamas as a political, social and military force deeply rooted in Palestinian society.
For almost two decades, the movement has carried the dual burden of governing and resisting, administering a population subjected to blockade, repeated wars and the systematic destruction of the material conditions necessary for life.
After the most devastating war in contemporary Palestinian history, the occupation failed to achieve one of its principal declared objectives: eliminating Hamas.
Leaving Gaza’s day-to-day administration allows the movement to reduce its institutional exposure, reorganise its structures and concentrate on its historical reason for existence: the Palestinian national liberation struggle.
The second objective is to contribute to rebuilding Palestinian national unity.
The political and geographical fragmentation between Gaza and the West Bank, together with internal Palestinian divisions, has long constituted one of the occupation’s greatest strategic advantages.
Gaza does not belong to Hamas. It belongs to the Palestinian people.
The new administration, however, cannot become an instrument of foreign tutelage or a mechanism for excluding political forces with genuine roots in Palestinian society.
The central challenge remains rebuilding a representative Palestinian leadership capable of speaking for Palestinians in the occupied territories, refugee camps and the diaspora.
The third objective is to preserve the continuity of resistance.
Governing and resisting are different political functions. A national liberation movement may participate in elections, administer territories, negotiate ceasefires and accept transitional governments. It may also withdraw from administrative structures when remaining within them threatens higher strategic objectives.
For years, “Israel” claimed that Hamas’s presence in government justified the blockade, military aggression and collective punishment imposed on Gaza.
Now that the movement has completed the procedures necessary to transfer civilian administration, the occupation is seeking to obstruct the implementation of the agreement, prevent the National Committee from assuming its responsibilities and create an administrative vacuum capable of prolonging Palestinian suffering.
The contradiction is revealing. The objective was never simply to remove Hamas from government, but to deprive the Palestinian people of their capacity to resist.
By demanding that mediators and guarantor states pressure “Israel” to comply with the agreement and allow the National Committee to begin its work, Hamas is also confronting these actors with their responsibilities.
The establishment of the new administration could restore essential public services, strengthen Palestinian resilience and begin confronting the humanitarian catastrophe produced by the war.
Hamas’s decision therefore puts the occupation’s own narrative to the test.
If the war was necessary because Hamas governed Gaza, then the movement’s departure from government should pave the way for the withdrawal of occupying forces, the opening of border crossings, reconstruction and an end to military aggression.
If new conditions continue to be imposed, the political reality will become impossible to conceal: the problem was never simply who governed Gaza, but the existence of a people who refuse submission, displacement and disappearance.
Hamas may leave ministries, dissolve committees and transfer civilian administration. But leaving government does not mean abandoning resistance.
Governing Gaza was a historical circumstance. The liberation of Palestine remains the strategic objective.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260707-hamas-is-leaving-government-not-the-resistance/
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Like Israel’s colonial expansion, the UN’s narratives also place Palestinians at risk
July 7, 2026
by Ramona Wadi
Little exposure has been given to the Yellow Line and the Orange Line in Gaza. Given the genocide, Israel’s military occupation in Gaza should have generated equal scrutiny at the very least. However, Israel’s current presence in Gaza has followed the same pattern of oblivion as in the occupied West Bank. Colonialism in Palestine has become the norm, as is military occupation.
A recent brief report by the UN follows the same normalisation trajectory.
Last week, the UN warned that ongoing Israeli expansion is “shrinking the areas available to civilians”. However, the statement does not encompass the entire story. Decades before the genocide, Palestinians faced the same repercussions of forced displacement. The current Israeli military occupation of Gaza to facilitate the colonisation of Gaza is a continuation of earlier colonial expansion.
Therefore, the UN could have been clearer in its writing by detailing that Israel as a colonial entity is implementing further expansion measures that will drive Palestinians out of Gaza. The majority of UN reports are intent on separating Israel from colonial expansion, thus creating separate narratives for each violation Israel commits. Since the UN focuses on repercussions more than it does on the perpetrator, the UN’s strategy used in reporting creates more impunity for Israel.
The immediate focus upon reading the report is humanitarian operations. Expansion, the UN stated, is “limiting access for aid workers and reducing the space available for civilians already displaced by the conflict.” However, if the UN looked at its other reports, it would find multitudes of examples in which similar statements were made. The question, therefore, is why does the UN persist in documenting each Israeli aggression with little to no context? More importantly, why does the UN not reference Israeli colonialism, clearly, as the culprit?
References to international law violations are continuously made without the defining colonial context. Hence forced displacement is just a humanitarian concern, just as aid restrictions are also filed under humanitarian concerns. Palestinians killed within the murky areas designated by Israel as buffer zones are also discussed through a humanitarian lens.
Israel, however, is eliminating Palestinians strategically though different means.
Killing Palestinians is an instant elimination that contributes to the kill toll.
The various means Israel has employed throughout the decades have been narrated to the rest of the world in an alienated manner. The UN, in particular, has been at the helm of spreading this form of narrative. The more the humanitarian aspect is magnified, the less Palestinian rights are linked to politics. As a result, Israel colonial politics are openly shielded by the UN’s humanitarian paradigm. The UN reaps benefits for the coloniser while the colonised struggles, despite provisions for liberation under international law.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260707-like-israels-colonial-expansion-the-uns-narratives-also-place-palestinians-at-risk/
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Ghassan Kanafani: Marxist, Martyr… Musician?
July 8, 2026
By Louis Brehony
Descriptions of assassinated Palestinian writer and leader Ghassan Kanafani are not merely superlative. A novelist, political theorist, Marxist-Leninist, newspaper editor, visual artist, playwright, public speaker and more, Ghassan had so many strings to his bow that his late comrade Fadle al-Nakib called him an example in “total resistance.” Fellow cultural activist and PFLP leader in Lebanon, Marwan Abd el-’Al told me that anytime those in his organization introduce Ghassan’s works, his name is necessarily prefaced with “the martyr, the leader” and other titles, both honorific and viscerally embedded in a multilayered legacy.
Coining the term “resistance literature” through his introduction of Mahmoud Darwish, Tawfiq Zayyad, and other then-young Palestinian poets to the displaced masses, Ghassan was himself a genre-defying pioneer in the field. But, in the era of Arab singers Fairuz, Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafiz, and with the rebirth of Palestinian revolutionary song by the late 1960s, was there also a musical Ghassan? Could “musician” be added to his titles?
Fear not, dear reader. In a world of misattributed poetry, false quotations and AI slop images, this is not my attempt to add another myth to a cause grounded in violent materialism and real-life resistance. At the same time, with music central to Palestinian liberation, musical themes in Ghassan’s works are a present and unique window into understanding the assassinated writer’s worldview.
A strong case in point came in 1957 when a then 21-year-old Ghassan was living between Syria and Kuwait. Unable to finish his university studies in Damascus “for political reasons,” he had already been recruited to the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) founded by George Habash, Hani al-Hindi and other activists. Working as a teacher in Kuwait, Ghassan also worked on the editorial board of the ANM newspaper al-Ra‘i (The Viewpoint) and published short stories there and in the organization’s al-Tali’a (Vanguard) magazine. During these years of exile, camp poverty and reorganization, music for Palestine was largely voiced by non-Palestinians.
A rising star, Lebanese singer Fairuz released Rajioun (We are Returning) in 1957. Composed by the Rahbani brothers and steered by Palestinian producer Sabri Sharif, the album was filled with imagery of village life, olives and Palestine, less than a decade on from the horrors of the Nakba:
Love and Jerusalem on the mind
Despite the impossible
and a night where beauty did not depart
Yet justice has vanished
and the shadows have turned black
Built operatically around Western orchestration and Fairuz’ voice, the 12-minute title track broke through bleakness to declare in its finale:
Amidst sand and shadows, in ravines and on hills
We are returning! We are returning! We are returning!
Ghassan Kanafani was among the Palestinians to take heart from these words. Also a budding artist, he produced an artwork, “The Return,” in the wake of Rajioun’s release. Like the Fairuz album artwork, Ghassan used a black canvas and white paint, in a simple line-drawing. On mountains dotted with village buildings, below birds migrating in the same direction, a huddle of refugees walk together: elderly people carrying walking sticks, children, women carrying babies. Above them is the figure of a youth, carrying a pointed weapon; behind him, the flag of Palestine, glowing like a torch. Below the imagery, Ghassan wrote the words:
We are returning! We are returning! We are returning!
The reference was direct and an indication of the popularity Fairuz and others singing for Palestine found among young ANM activists of the time.
Ghassan would work Fairuz into his literature too. In August of the same year, he wrote the short story “Path to a Traitor” (Darbu ila-Kha’in) in Damascus. Travelers on the desert road from Baghdad to the Jordanian transit city of al-Mafraq find a stopping point at a shelter built by Bedouins:
“We were waiting for tea.
The desert was open in front of us, vast and silent, bathed in the gentle glow of the moon. Cool breezes passed lightly through the tent, lending the place a certain holiness. I felt no desire to talk nor listen to others, just to gaze outwards. But, despite this, I felt a touch of delight when I caught the words of someone over on the wooden platform opposite:
‘All that this atmosphere is missing is the voice of Fairuz.’”
Music could also be used in symbolic ways that recreated the “atmosphere” of Palestine before its colonization. During his time as a militant of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and two months before he became founding editor of its al-Hadaf newspaper, Ghassan wrote the Nakba story, “He was then a Child” (Kan Yumathak Tiflan). The story’s opening describes the backdrop of a winding journey of passengers on the back of a transport car from Haifa to Acre, of treetops, stone walls and the Mediterranean breeze. The narrative centres on a young boy:
“Ahmad took the shabbabeh (reed flute) from his basket, leaned back in the corner of the vehicle and began to play an ‘ataaba – the heartbroken melody for an eternal lover, at home in any of the villages scattered like an earthly constellation across the length and breadth of Galilee.”
As the passengers traveled to the sounds of this skillful young boy, “the melody emanated from everything around them,” and their conversation was dispersed with talk about the olive harvest and a Zionist massacre of orphans in Haifa. At one point, the driver joins Ahmed, singing romantic lyrics along to his melody.
The ‘ataaba is a folk form found historically in Palestine, Lebanon and the near region, relying on improvised poetry around a set rhyming scheme and a known melody. In the same oral tradition, Ghassan would later include examples of sahja, another genre of folk poetry, in his 1966 book Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine, 1948-66. It is clear that he and the musical revolutionaries of his generation saw these traditional song forms as referential to Palestinians’ rootedness on the land.
In “He was then a Child,” the journey of the passengers is cut short when a band of Zionist terrorists orders them off the bus. After being searched, their leader orders a young machine-gun-toting recruit to kill them, their bodies falling into a trench. The boy is the only survivor – the killers want him alive to tell others, to spread the fear of more massacres among the Palestinians and hence expel them from their land. Told to run or face gunfire, the boy, who had been beaten by the paramilitary leader, soon stops in the middle of the road to ponder what just happened. He walks away calmly, rhythmically. Palestine would live to carry its melody onwards.
Ghassan was clearly drawn to music. Seeking deeper understandings of world politics, his early forays into Marxism were accompanied by both the literature and music of the Soviet Union – the composer Sergei Prokofiev is named in his notebooks of the 1950s. Family members remember that Ghassan collected vinyl records at their home in Hazmieh, Beirut, and that he had a particular affinity for Nina Simone and other black US singers. Finding out that Ertha Kitt and other touring musicians had performed on Israeli stages, he wrote them letters denouncing normalisation and demanding a boycott.
Later, as Ghassan edited al-Hadaf, pages of the newspaper would increasingly connect the black struggle in the US to the global fight against racism and imperialism, reporting on the 1971 Attica prison uprising and demanding freedom for imprisoned activists like Angela Davis.
His comrade and widow Anni Kanafani remembers that “Ghassan and I loved singing and dancing,” and during their 1964 trip to visit her family in Denmark, their gathering featured “speeches, songs and dances. Ghassan even taught the guests the Palestinian/Lebanese folkdance, the Dabke…” The next year, while traveling in China as a journalist with al-Muharrir newspaper, he attended the 1 October Revolution celebrations and wrote:
“From early morning we heard the loud crescendo of singing and music before we were driven to the main square. There we were looked on, amazed by the indescribable spectacle of half a million people marching in columns amidst the vibrant colours so characteristic of China.”
Ghassan and his comrades took worldly influences as they forged a new path ahead, with internationalism in politics and culture already part of their practice as they formed the PFLP. As leftists in the liberation movement engaged in years of intense debate, writing and guerrilla training, Ghassan produced two epochal studies on resistance literature. Both contained long collections of poems by figures who were then rather obscure, including Mahmoud Darwish, Tawfiq Zayyad and Rashid Hussein. Some of these poems became songs, with lyrics used by Sabreen and al-Fajer bands, and musicians like George Kirmiz and Mustafa al-Kurd in the 1980s found in the poetry compendiums Ghassan compiled in the mid-1960s.
Indeed, the resistance poetry of this era still finds musicians keen to put the words to song, as in a 2021 version of “A Lover from Palestine” by Gaza’s Sol band and songwriter Nahed Elrayes. The Darwish poem appeared twice in Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine, with emphasis on the stanza that said, “Our songs are swords when we brandish them.”
This work of poetic rebellion serves to push back against Zionist attempts to smash Palestinians’ connections to a vibrant heritage of political culture. Verses of “Hizz al-Rimh” (Shake the Spear) quoted in Ghassan’s 1972 work The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine were sung by Rawan Okasha’s Dawaween band in Gaza between the Second Intifada and al-Aqsa Flood.
The brutal assassination of Ghassan Kanafani and his niece Lamis Najem on 8 July 1972 did not have the intended effect of severing the revolutionary influence of the PFLP writer and leader from the cause of Palestine. One indication of this comes through his own immortalization through song. When we compiled the book Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings, we began with the words of Ghazi Mikdashi, who led a children’s choir in Lebanon in the 1970s, singing “Ghassan taught us the love of the cause.”
Dedications to his legacy have also been sung by Lebanese icon Wadi’ al-Safi, Palestinian vocalist Amal Kaawash, and by the mothers of political prisoners released from the jails of the occupation. Whether or not we call Ghassan a musician, the role of revolutionary music in his life and afterlife is undeniable. May he continue to dance dabke along the path of total resistance.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/ghassan-kanafani-marxist-martyr-musician/
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After Losing His Family, a Gaza Journalist Keeps Documenting the War
July 7, 2026
By Shaimaa Eid
Photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Hasira walks through the streets of northern Gaza, camera in hand. Through his lens, he documents the brutal reality of Israel’s ongoing genocide while carrying an indescribable emptiness after losing his wife, his two children, and dozens of members of his extended family since the war began on October 7, 2023.
His mind always returns to one particular date: November 4, 2023.
The clock read 9:15 p.m.
For Mahmoud, that was the moment time stood still, and the people he loved were gone.
“I remember hearing massive explosions west of Gaza’s seaport,” he recalls. “That’s where my home was, where my wife, my two children, and the rest of my family were. But I never imagined that our home itself would be the target.”
Mahmoud had been away from home with his father. As soon as reports identified the location of the strike, they rushed there, convinced that a nearby mosque had been hit. It never crossed their minds that their own home had been deliberately targeted.
Tragically, that was exactly what had happened.
That night, Mahmoud lost his wife, his seven-year-old son, Ziad, and his four-year-old daughter, Ghada, along with 33 members of his extended family. Most of those killed were women, children, and elderly relatives.
He vividly remembers the morning of that day and the final moments he spent with his children. He had taken them to a neighborhood grocery store, which was later bombed as well. He bought them some of their favorite snacks, hoping to distract them, ease their fear, and offer them a brief escape from the terror of the bombardment, killing, and displacement surrounding them.
“My children were killed before they could even finish the bag of snacks I bought them,” he says quietly.
Mahmoud is overwhelmed by grief every time he thinks of his wife and children, whose bodies remain buried beneath the rubble of their destroyed home to this day.
“The Israeli strike was so devastating that civil defense crews were unable to reach the site because of the intensity of the explosions,” he says. “Israeli forces were also targeting rescue teams attempting to save those trapped beneath the rubble.”
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, attacks targeting Palestinian journalists have intensified in what many rights organizations have described as a systematic campaign. At the time of writing, 263 Palestinian journalists have been killed.
For Mahmoud, that is all the more reason to continue.
“The essence of the war we are living through in the Gaza Strip is to tell the truth and bring the voices of people being exterminated in cold blood to the entire world,” he says.
Despite the pain that never leaves him, Mahmoud chose to keep working.
He walks through Gaza’s streets—now reduced to vast fields of rubble—documenting what remains of the city’s neighbourhoods and landmarks. Through his camera, he seeks to show the world the grief etched onto the faces of children robbed of their innocence, and the funeral processions of entire families brought from hospitals after being wiped from the civil registry.
When Mahmoud returns each day to the place where he is now displaced, he often finds himself scrolling through photographs of his two children.
“I miss the feeling of my children welcoming me home,” he says. “They used to greet me with hugs and ask me to fulfil their little wishes.”
In every photograph he takes, he sees the faces of the family members he lost. The rubble surrounding him has become a symbol of unbearable pain—the very rubble beneath which so many of his memories remain buried.
Standing before the ruins of his destroyed home, Mahmoud says, “Not even my children’s toys were spared. They are still trapped beneath the rubble, just like some of my family members.”
Like many journalists in Gaza, Mahmoud believes his work has become more important than ever. He sees every photograph he captures and every report he files as one of the few remaining tools available to document what he describes as a war of extermination.
“The occupation may try to silence our voices,” he says, “but it will never extinguish the truth. The truth will continue to live through our lenses, our photographs, and our daily reports.”
Despite everything he has lost, Mahmoud continues his work with determination, confronting what he calls the crimes of the occupation with the only weapon he has: documenting the truth.
“The occupation wants us to break, but we will not give it that victory,” he says. “This camera is my weapon, and through it I will continue to show the world what is happening here—the reality of the horrific crimes being committed against defenceless civilians in Gaza.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/after-losing-his-family-a-gaza-journalist-keeps-documenting-the-war/
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