(UN News)* — A spike in Israeli military raids and settler violence across the occupied West Bank is driving new displacement, shutting schools and disrupting essential services for tens of thousands of Palestinians, the UN relief coordination office, OCHA, said in its latest humanitarian update Friday [].
Between 25 November and 1 December, four Palestinians, including one child, were killed by Israeli forces, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank so far this year to 227. Nearly half of all fatalities in 2025 were recorded in the Jenin and Nablus governorates.
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Large-scale operations in Jenin and Tubas governorates alone affected more than 95,000 Palestinians last week.
(UN News)* — Nearly two months after the latest ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on 10 October, a fragile calm has brought much-needed relief to families who have endured unimaginable suffering and repeated displacement.
For months on end, thousands of families remain without a roof over their heads, laying beneath the open sky — the stars above offering both solace and a haunting reminder of everything they have lost.
Sabah, her husband Ahmad, and their seven children spent weeks sleeping in the open after losing their home.
“We fled from Shuja’iya to Rimal, then to the south – Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – and then back to Shuja’iya,” Ahmad explains.
“Every time we move, we lose more of what little we have.”
(UN News)* — Israeli airstrikes took place within the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon’s (UNIFIL) area of operations, the mission said in a statement issued on Friday [].
The strikes come as the Lebanese Armed Forces continue operations to control unauthorised weapons and infrastructure in south Lebanon a year after a cessation of hostilities was announced in the country.
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“We urge the Israel Defense Forces to avail of the liaison and coordination mechanisms available to them,” UNIFIL said. “We caution Lebanese actors against any reaction that could aggravate the situation further.”
Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.
A mushroom cloud after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing over 73,000 people. Keystone / Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the global climate, causing widespread famine.
(Stockholm) Revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest arms-producing companies rose by 5.9 per cent in 2024, reaching a record $679 billion, according to new data released on 1 December 2025 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), available at www.sipri.org.
The Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall partnered Global Mobile Artillery Rocket System (GMARS) live fired for the first time at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, August 2025. Photo: US Army
Global arms revenues rose sharply in 2024, as demand was boosted by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, global and regional geopolitical tensions, and ever-higher military expenditure.
For the first time since 2018, all of the five largest arms companies increased their arms revenues.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 5 2025 (IPS)* –– President Donald Trump’s recent announcement to resume nuclear testing rekindles nightmares of a bygone era where military personnel and civilians were exposed to devastating radioactive fallouts.
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A nuclear test is carried out on an island in French Polynesia in 1971. Credit: CTBTO
In the five decades between 1945 and the opening for the signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world. The United States conducted 1,032 tests between 1945 and 1992.
(UN News)* — The Arab region is heating at nearly twice the global average, UN weather experts warned on , after 2024 saw unprecedented heat, destructive storms and worsening water scarcity impact some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
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Unsplash/Ali Guddam | People across the Arab region including in the city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, face increasing pressure from climate extremes.
The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) first State of the Climate in the Arab Region reportpaints a stark picture of a region under constant pressure from rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather.
(UN News)* — Every week in Gaza, at least 15 women give birth outside any health facility, often without a trained midwife, pain relief or basic medical supplies.
Some are forced to deliver alone. Others rely on neighbours with no medical training. For many, childbirth has become a matter of survival.
Before the fragile ceasefire got underway in October, the UN reproductive health agency, UNFPA, estimated that 55,000 pregnant women were trapped in “a spiral of displacement, bombardment and acute hunger”, with no reliable access to care.
Annalena Baerbock In her address as President of the UN General Assembly
Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe September 2025
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2025 (IPS)* – For seventy-eight years, the question of Palestine has been on the agenda of this General Assembly, almost as long as the institution itself.
Resolution 181 (II) was adopted by the General Assembly on November 29 1947 – laying the foundation for the Two State Solution and calling for the establishment of both an Arab State and a Jewish State in Palestine.
But while the Jewish State, the State of Israel, is a recognized Member State of the United Nations, the Arab State, the State of Palestine, is not.
Seventy-eight years later, Palestine has still not been admitted to the UN as a full Member.
(UN News)* — The UN has called for an investigation into the recent “horrific” killing by Israeli forces of two young brothers in Gaza who were reportedly targeted by a drone while collecting firewood.
This comes as humanitarians continue to receive reports that air strikes, shelling, gunfire and other continuing Israeli military operations in the enclave are causing more civilian casualties, displacement and destruction.
In recent days, hundreds of families were reportedly displaced in two neighbourhoods in eastern Gaza City following strikes and movement of military equipment, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarrictold journalists in New York on Wednesday.
A mushroom cloud after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing over 73,000 people. Keystone / Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 