Welcome to +972’s Sunday Recap! 

The Israeli military has weaponized a fleet of Chinese-manufactured commercial drones to attack Palestinians in parts of Gaza that it seeks to depopulate, Yuval Abraham revealed in a joint investigation with Local Call. According to interviews with seven soldiers and officers who served in the Strip, these drones are operated manually by troops on the ground, and are frequently used to bomb Palestinian civilians — including children — in an effort to force them to leave their homes or prevent them from returning to evacuated areas.

From Gaza City, Ahmed Ahmed wrote that while ceasefire talks have given residents cautious hope, the reality on the ground could not be more brutal. From a massacre at a clinic to an airstrike on tents, relentless Israeli bombing across the Strip this week has proven evacuation orders meaningless — and Palestinians have no safe place left to shelter.

With West Bank annexation in the air, settlers are revelling in their impunity: as Oren Ziv and Shatha Yaish reported, Israeli settlers have rampaged through Palestinian towns and villages near Ramallah in recent weeks — including Al-Muarrajat, Kufr Malik, and Turmus Ayya — and even rioted outside an Israeli military base, knowing that government officials have their backs.

And Amir Rotem reviewed Egyptian-Canadian writer Omar El Akkad’s new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” (originally published in Local Call). The collection of essays is an indictment of Western liberalism and its moral collapse in Gaza, exploring why the West only venerates resistance in hindsight, and how we might reconstruct humanity from the ashes of genocide. 

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