Democracy for the Arab World Now - DAWN

06/12/2026

“The Lebanese state takes from its citizens through taxes and tariffs while essential services those revenues should fund are either missing, privatized at citizen expense or reserved for those who can afford alternatives,” writes Jad El Dilati.

Read more about challenges facing Lebanon's reform government, while also dealing with Israeli attacks and economic crisis: https://dawnmena.org/the-state-takes-but-does-not-deliver-lebanons-legitimacy-crisis-deepens/

06/12/2026

Israel should stop blocking the medical evacuation of Palestinian cancer patients from Gaza to hospitals in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, a coalition of 62 members of Congress said in a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio today. Since October 2023, Israel has blocked Gaza residents in need of life-saving medical treatment from going to Palestinian hospitals in the other part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The letter, led by Representative James McGovern and Senators Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen, was signed by 51 members of the House and 11 senators. DAWN worked with Congressional offices to develop and circulate the letter.

"Hospitals in the West Bank are ready to receive children with cancer and other patients from Gaza; the Palestinian Authority and churches will even pay for their treatment. The only obstacle is that the occupying power refuses to let them pass, because they are Palestinian. The world has to apply pressure on Israel to end this now," said Deyar Jamil, a legal advisor at DAWN.

More than 18,500 Palestinians require urgent medical care unavailable in Gaza, approximately 11,000 of whom have cancer.

The letter urges the Trump administration to engage in a coordinated diplomatic effort to secure medical evacuations for every child with cancer in Gaza, together with their caregivers, and to obtain Israeli assurances that they will be allowed to return to Gaza. It also calls on Israel to facilitate the permanent reestablishment of the medical corridor between Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to stop impeding the rebuilding of hospitals and medical infrastructure in Gaza.

Israel's denial of medical care to Palestinians in Gaza is part of a systematic pattern of gross human rights violations at the center of Gaza v. Rubio, a federal lawsuit DAWN supports, challenging the State Department for refusing to enforce the Leahy Law with regards to Israel.

(Washington, D.C., June 11, 2026) — Israel should stop blocking the medical evacuation of Palestinian cancer patients from Gaza to hospitals in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, a coalition of 62 members of Congress said in a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio today. Sin...

06/12/2026

The U.S. decision to label the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood a terror organization is viewed by experts in Jordan as an assault on Jordanian civil society, writes Aaron Magid.

“As Washington’s reputation has plummeted across Jordanian public opinion, it remains curious that the Trump administration would consider this the ideal time to target the relatively popular Muslim Brotherhood. With Jordan’s government already banning the group, the United States has decided that aligning itself with authorities in Amman is a priority, especially if such a move advances another regional goal of Washington: targeting Islamist pro-Palestine organizations,” Magid says.

Read more analysis and interviews with experts in Jordan:

In January, the United States labeled Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood a terror organization, the influential Islamist group’s first such designation since its establishment in 1945.

06/11/2026

New video footage obtained by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem בצלם "appears to contradict the Israeli military’s account of the shooting that killed seven-month-old Sam Abu Haikal in his mother’s arms, showing the family’s car slowing near a military post before soldiers opened fire," The Guardian reports.

“The footage clearly shows that the Israeli soldier fired at the car as it was slowing to a stop,” B’Tselem said in a statement. “The car was far from the soldiers and posed no danger to them whatsoever.”

“I stopped as I was instructed to, Then they simply shot at the car,” said Fahd Abu Haikal, the child's father and a resident of the city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “There was no clear checkpoint, just soldiers standing in the street. I stopped when I was asked to, and then the shooting started.

“The car was completely stationary when he shot at us, it wasn’t moving at all. A seven-month-old infant killed in cold blood. He didn’t deserve this.”

See The Guardian's full report: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/10/palestinian-baby-shot-dead-israeli-troops-occupied-west-bank-new-footage

06/10/2026

Israeli authorities are directly involved in settler attacks that have killed, injured and displaced Palestinians ​in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli security forces provide protection to settlers, a UN commission says. Israeli authorities enabled attacks through financial and military support, in a climate of impunity fostered by judicial and law enforcement bodies.

See Reuters' story about the new UN report: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-inquiry-finds-israeli-forces-shield-settlers-during-attacks-palestinians-2026-06-09/

06/10/2026

Egyptians are feeling the regional war in the Middle East at the gas station and while sitting at the dinner table, writes Shaheen Hend. "Inflation is measured in percentages but experienced in compromises, dictating what families can no longer afford to buy."

Compared with most locals, my fan story sounds like a first-world problem. But for Egypt’s 108 million residents, the U.S.-Israel war on Iran feels like a distant storm whose thunder echoes through local Egyptian markets and household budgets. While Cairo is not a battlefield of the war and has no...

06/10/2026

"As long as it treats Israeli violence and forcible displacement as the work of rogue actors and not a state project, the international community is denying itself diplomatic and policy tools that could actually form an effective response to Israel’s strategic efforts — actively carried out by settlers, soldiers and government ministers alike — to erase Palestine and Palestinians," writes DAWN's Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man.

Read more: https://dawnmena.org/europe-is-sanctioning-israeli-settlers-next-it-must-confront-israel-itself/

06/10/2026

"It's very transparent what Israel is trying to do here," said DAWN's Omar Shakir, commenting on continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon. "They're trying to sabotage the possibility of U.S.-Iran agreement here. ... We keep seeing leaked reports and public statement by President Trump about his disapproval of Israeli actions. But unless the U.S. uses its actual leverage here, and by that I mean suspending arms transfers and intelligence cooperation, the Trump administration is effectively giving the Israeli government this veto over a potential agreement."

Watch more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHdyG379ack

06/09/2026

"Many observers have been pointing to the fact that this new [U.S.-Iran] deal is very similar in its nature to the original deal that was signed between the U.S and Iran, that President Trump tore apart and mocked for a long time," DAWN's advocacy director Raed Jarrar told TRT World. "So it seems now, after the deaths of thousands of people, and the destruction of the entire region, President Trump is back to square one, negotiating a deal that was always on the table."

06/09/2026

On May 25, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan to join the Abraham Accords as part of a ceasefire deal with Iran.

“Like much of Trump’s foreign policy,” writes DAWN Fellow Mira Al Hussein in +972 Magazine, “this announcement seemed illogical and far-fetched. Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey have maintained diplomatic relations with Israel for decades, long predating the accords, and there is no indication that the other three will heed Trump’s call.”

“Yet deep within his bombastic Truth Social post lay a kernel of truth. Urging these countries to join the accords is not merely about normalization with Israel, but rather an attempt to create a political consortium — an ideological coalition upon which military and security decisions would hinge.”

“That distinction matters enormously,” argues Al Hussein, “because it clarifies what the Abraham Accords have always been: not just a normalization framework, but a forward-defense arrangement built around Israeli strategic interests.”

“Most of the states Trump is calling to join the accords … have reasons to resist. Kuwait, however, is undergoing huge transformations that are steadily eroding its institutional capacity to do so,” Al Hussein says. “Both Israel and the UAE need a success story with which to resurrect a framework discredited by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and further damaged by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Kuwait, stripped of its institutional buffers, reorienting quietly toward Abu Dhabi, and repeatedly targeted by Iran, is the most available candidate.”

Despite the potential for Kuwait to be pulled into the Abraham Accords with Israel, Al Hussein concludes that, “Trump’s proposal to annex Abraham Accords membership to an Iran deal misreads the regional consensus entirely. A loose but consequential alignment is already forming between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt, with Qatar and Oman drawn increasingly into its orbit. It is driven not merely by shared unease about Israeli expansionism, but by the suspicion that the UAE has become its most willing Arab accomplice.”

Read Mira Al Hussein’s full analysis in +972 Magazine: https://www.972mag.com/abraham-accords-kuwait-trump-iran/