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3 days ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
Rights groups say Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s comments about curbing migration to the UK risk sparking a fresh wave of riots targeting mosques and asylum hotels this summer. In a speech, which politicians and rights groups say recalled rightwing politician's Enoch Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech, Starmer defended Labour's plans to curb net migration to the UK.
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1 week ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
Human rights groups have called on the Saudi authorities to immediately release a 51-year-old mother of five who has been held in solitary confinement since February. Ten NGOs, including Alqst, Dawn and Human Rights Watch, issued a statement on Thursday raising the alarm about the detention of Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, highlighting that her health has rapidly deteriorated in custody.
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1 week ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
Legal experts and rights groups have raised the alarm after documents emerged suggesting the UK had shared contact details of counterterrorism police with the Israeli embassy during ongoing investigations into Palestine Action (PA) activists.
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1 week ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
At least 70 Palestinians have been killed and 275 others injured in Israeli attack across Gaza in the last 48 hours, the enclave's Ministry of Health has reported. Additionally, emergency teams recovered another seven bodies from the rubble over the last two days. the latest figures have pushed the overall toll of Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 2023 to 52,495 people, with another 118,366 wounded.
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2 weeks ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
A court of appeal has ruled that legislation that granted British police sweeping powers to crack down on protests was created unlawfully. The court dismissed an appeal by the government against a high court ruling in May last year which found that former home secretary Suella Braverman did not have the power to pass the measures.
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2 weeks ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
Human rights defender David Yambio recalls his time in Libya as one of “perpetual fear”. Yambio fled Sudan in 2016 after he was forcibly recruited as a child soldier, and wound up in a series of detention centres and prisons in Libya. “I was tortured, I was enslaved. I saw an enormous level of violence that I cannot describe,” he told Middle East Eye.
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2 weeks ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Sondos Asem |Katherine Hearst |Joel Beinin
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Tuesday concluded its second day of hearings on Israel’s humanitarian obligations in the occupied Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The hearings coincide with Israel's total blockage of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has been ongoing for over 50 days, and the intensification of military attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians since the collapse of the ceasefire on 18 March.
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3 weeks ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
British-Egyptian prisoner and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has fallen ill after marking 50 days of a hunger strike, his family have reported. Abd el-Fattah, who launched a hunger strike on 1 March at Egypt's Wadi al-Natroun prison, is receiving treatment after he suffered multiple bouts of vomiting on Saturday. He had been subsisting on herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts since he heard that his mother Laila Soueif had been hospitalised in London.
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3 weeks ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
At least a dozen detainees have died in Egyptian prisons this year amid deteriorating conditions, rights groups have reported. According to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), 13 people have died in prison due to medical negligence, ill treatment and suicide in the first few months of 2025, while the Committee for Justice (CFJ) puts the number at 11.
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1 month ago | 
middleeasteye.net | Katherine Hearst
Israeli officials, flanked by security forces, raided six schools run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (Unrwa) in occupied East Jerusalem last week and handed 30-day closure orders to staff. The order was issued by the Israeli Ministry of Education, which claimed the schools were operating without licences. This means around 800 children will receive no education, only weeks before the end of the school year.
