View of humanitarian supplies for Gaza, with the logos of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, and the World Health Organization, stored at Egyptian Red Crescent warehouses in the Egyptian border town of El Arish, Egypt, April 8, 2025 [Benoit Tessier/Pool via Reuters]
Recap of recent developments
Dozens of international aid groups are at risk of deregistration, potentially forcing closures or restrictions on operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, if they do not comply with new criteria set by Israeli authorities.
The United Kingdom, Canada, France and others say in a joint statement that the humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened again and is of serious concern.
US President Donald Trump says Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm in Gaza and insisted that Israel had “lived up” to the truce plan, as he presented a united front with Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli prime minister’s visit to Florida.
Trump also says he hopes to reach phase two of the Gaza plan “very quickly”.
Israel defends its formal recognition of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, but several countries at the United Nations question whether the move aims to relocate Palestinians from Gaza or to establish military bases.
Israel’s ban on aid groups to have ‘horrific’, ‘immediate’ consequences on Gaza, doctor says
Dr James Smith, an emergency physician who has volunteered in Gaza, has pushed back against Israel’s claim that the newly suspended aid groups manage a small number of programmes as “misinformation”.
“A situation that is already horrific will be made even more horrific. The changes will be immediate, and they will be ruthless,” he said.
The move is “an extension of Israel’s longstanding strategy of titrating humanitarian access and humanitarian services as a core pillar of the occupation and of the genocide”, Smith said. “Israel wants to exert totalising control over all aspects of Palestinian life, not only in Gaza but throughout occupied Palestine.”
Which organisations are being suspended?
Israel says 37 organisations have failed to meet its new rules for aid groups working in the Gaza Strip, and are suspended starting January 1.
The most prominent organisations – which provide essential medical care, food and children’s services – include:
Batoul Abu Shawish, 20, lost her entire family in an Israeli strike that targeted their home in Nuseirat during the ceasefire in November 2025 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
The only survivor
Sanaa’s husband was one of the more than 71,250 Palestinians killed by Israel during the war.
Twenty-year-old Batoul Abu Shawish can count her father, mother, two brothers and two sisters – her whole immediate family – among that number.
Batoul comes into the new year wishing for only one thing: to be with her family.
Her heartbreaking loss came just a month before the end of the year, on November 22.
Despite the ceasefire, an Israeli bomb struck the home her family had fled to in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
“I was sitting with my two sisters. My brothers were in their room, my father had just returned from outside, and my mother was preparing food in the kitchen,” she recalled, eyes vacant, describing the day.
“In an instant, everything turned to darkness and thick dust. I didn’t realise what was happening around me, not even that it was bombing, due to the shock,” Batoul added, as she stood next to the ruins of her destroyed home.
She was trapped under the debris of the destroyed home for about an hour, unable to move, calling for help from anyone nearby.
“I couldn’t believe what was happening. I wished I were dead, unaware, trying to escape the thought of what had happened to my family,” Batoul said.
“I called for them one by one, and there was no sound. My mother, father, siblings, no one.”
After being rescued, she was found to have severe injuries to her hand and was immediately transferred to hospital.
“I was placed on a stretcher above extracted bodies, covered in sheets. I panicked and asked my uncle who was with me: ‘Who are these people?’ He said they were from the house next to ours,” she recalled.
As soon as Batoul arrived at the hospital, she was rushed into emergency surgery on her hand before she could learn about what had happened to her family.
“I kept asking everyone, ‘Where is my mom? Where is my dad?’ They told me they were fine, just injured in other departments.”
“I didn’t believe them,” Batoul added, “but I was also afraid to call them liars.”
The following day, her uncles broke the news to Batoul that she had lost her mother and siblings. Her father, they told her, was still in critical condition in the intensive care unit.
“They gathered around me, and they were all crying. I understood on my own,” she said.
“I broke down, crying in disbelief, then said goodbye to them one by one before the funeral.”
Batoul’s father later succumbed to his injuries three days after the incident, leaving her alone to face her grief.
“I used to go to the ICU every day and whisper in my father’s ear, asking him to wake up again, for me and for himself, but he was completely unconscious,” Batoul said as she scrolled through photos of her father on her mobile phone.
“When he died, it felt as if the world had gone completely dark before my eyes.”
Batoul al-Shawish holds a photo on her phone showing her with her family, including her father, mother, and siblings Muhammad, Youssef, Tayma, and Habiba [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
‘Where is the ceasefire?’
Israel said that it conducted the strikes in Nuseirat in response to an alleged gunman crossing into Israel-held territory in Gaza, although it is unclear why civilian homes in Nuseirat were therefore targeted.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office and the Ministry of Health, around 2,613 Palestinian families were completely wiped out during the war on the Gaza Strip up until the announcement of the ceasefire in October 2025.
Those families had all of their members killed, and their names erased from the civil registry.
The same figures indicate that approximately 5,943 families were left with only a single surviving member after the rest were killed, an agonising reflection of the scale of social and human loss caused by the war.
These figures may change as documentation continues and bodies are recovered from beneath the rubble.
For Batoul, her family was anything but ordinary; they were known for their deep bond and love for one another.
“My father was deeply attached to my mother and never hid his love for her in front of anyone, and that reflected on all of us.”
“My mother was my closest friend, and my siblings loved each other beyond words. Our home was full of pleasant surprises and warmth,” she added.
“Even during the war, we used to sit together, hold family gatherings, and help one another endure so much of what we were going through.”
The understandable grief that has overtaken Batoul leaves no room for wishes for a new year or talk of a near future, at least for now.
One question, however, weighs heavily on her: why was her peaceful family targeted, especially during a ceasefire?
“Where is the ceasefire they talk about? It’s just a lie,” she said.
“My family and I survived bombardment, two years of war. An apartment next to our home in eastern Nuseirat was hit, and we fled together to here. We lived through hunger, food shortages, and fear together. Then we thought we had survived, that the war was over.”
“But sadly, they’re gone, and they left me alone.”
Batoul holds onto one wish from the depths of her heart: to join her family as soon as possible.
At the same time, she carries an inner resignation that perhaps it is her fate to live this way, like so many others in Gaza who have lost their families.
“If life is written for me, I will try to fulfil my mother’s dream that I be outstanding in my field and generous to others,” said Batoul, a second-year university student studying multimedia, who is currently living with her uncle and his family.
“Life without family,” she said, “is living with an amputated heart, in darkness for the rest of your life, and there are so many like that now in Gaza.”
PTA by another name, and a familiar democratic failure
By Ceylon Today -January 1, 2026
Sri Lanka has been here before — often, and at great cost. Each time the language of national security has been used to justify exceptional laws; democratic safeguards have weakened, public trust has frayed, and ordinary citizens have borne the consequences. The proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism (PSTA) Bill threatens to entrench that legacy rather than end it, despite repeated assurances that the long-reviled Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) would finally be abolished.
The letter submitted recently by 33 academics, journalists, social activists, and civil society members to Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara gives voice to a concern that has been steadily gathering momentum. Their description of the Bill as ‘PTA+’ is not rhetorical excess, but a considered assessment grounded in Sri Lanka’s own experience of emergency lawmaking. It reflects a growing fear that the Government is seeking to preserve, and even expand, the architecture of repression under a more palatable title.
Sri Lankan president signs PTA order of Muslim man as rights groups condemn arrest Apr 7, 2025
For more than four decades, the PTA has remained among the most discredited laws in Sri Lanka’s statute books. Enacted in 1979 as a temporary measure and made permanent in 1982, it enabled prolonged detention without charge, eroded judicial oversight, and fostered conditions that allowed torture, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary arrests. These violations were not incidental, but flowed from a legal framework that privileged executive power over constitutional safeguards, as repeatedly documented by local rights groups, UN bodies, and foreign governments.
Successive administrations acknowledged these failures, at least in principle, with repeated pledges to reform or abolish the law, particularly after the war. The present Government went further, explicitly committing to repeal the PTA — a promise reaffirmed by Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara in Parliament in January and again before civil society in May. It is against this unambiguous record that the proposed PSTA Bill must be assessed.
The substance of the proposed Bill justifies the concern it has generated. By reportedly expanding the definition of terrorism to encompass acts and expressions that may overlap with protest, dissent, and critical speech, it risks criminalising core democratic activity. When coupled with enhanced surveillance powers and access to private communications and financial information, the danger is clear. In a country where national security laws have repeatedly been used against journalists, activists, trade unionists, and minorities, these risks are real, not speculative. The manner in which the Bill has been advanced is equally troubling. Legislation of such breadth demands public consultation, rigorous parliamentary scrutiny, and a transparent justification. Instead, the Government appears to be acting with undue haste, denying citizens a meaningful debate on whether a specialised anti-terror law is even necessary. As the signatories note, existing criminal law already addresses violence, conspiracy, and organised crime without undermining fundamental rights. The call for a white paper is therefore responsible, not obstructive. If a new framework is truly required, the Government must explain its necessity, identify gaps in current law, and demonstrate compliance with constitutional and international human rights standards — while also accounting for the repeated delay in repealing the PTA.
That these warnings come from academics, senior journalists, human rights advocates, and former PTA detainees lend them particular weight. Their concerns are grounded in lived experience as much as legal principle.
At a time when Sri Lanka speaks of democratic renewal, the choice it makes on national security law will be a defining test. Replacing the PTA with a broader version under another name would represent continuity, not reform, reinforcing the perception that repression is merely being repackaged.
If the Government is serious about breaking with the past, it must begin by keeping its word. That means withdrawing the PSTA Bill, repealing the PTA, and engaging in an open, inclusive discussion about security that does not subordinate liberty to executive power. Anything less will confirm that Sri Lanka has learnt little from its own history — and is once again prepared to repeat it.
![Batoul Abu Shawish, 20, lost her entire family in an Israeli strike that targeted their home in Nuseirat during the ceasefire in November 2025 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/ Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/873A1950-1767206334.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
![Batoul holds a photo on her phone showing her with her family, including her father, mother, and siblings Muhammad, Youssef, Tayma, and Habiba [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/873A2057-1767206534.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
