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Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.

The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.

On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.

Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.

They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.

Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.

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Mahmoud Khilla waited for nearly two and half years for the remains of his family to be retrieved from under the rubble of their home before he decided to take matters into his own hands. The Israeli military bombed the five story building in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, on December 21, 2023, demolishing it with two missiles and killing all 39 people inside. Mahmoud had gone out just 10 minutes earlier to get some food for dinner. He returned to find a massacre.

“There was no warning strike, no call, no prior warning,” Khilla told Drop Site News. “There were 24 children in the house under the age of 17. They killed them all.” Eighteen of the bodies were pulled out in the immediate aftermath, but 21 remained buried, including his wife, children, father, brother, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and other relatives.

“For nearly 30 months, we repeatedly called on Civil Defense, the municipality, and local institutions to come and clear the rubble so we could retrieve the bodies. There was no response,” Khilla, 40, told Drop Site. “We appealed to everyone but there is no equipment, no tools. They couldn’t clear the rubble.”

Khilla spoke sitting in a chair on top of the wreckage of where his family home once stood—a small mountain of broken concrete with tentacles of twisted rebar protruding outward at awkward angles.

“I had a son who was just 40 days old. My brother Ahmed had a daughter who was 8 months old. His eldest daughter was 7 years old. My brother Mohammed’s son was in second grade, and the older one was in tenth grade,” he said. “There is no peace of mind. You always think—in winter you think, in summer you think—what has happened to them? You keep thinking about it 24 hours a day, it becomes an obsession. One eventually reaches his limit.”

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Authorities are searching for answers after two suspects opened fire on a San Diego mosque, killing three men and then themselves on May 18.

The shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego in the Clairemont neighborhood unfolded at about 11:43 a.m. PT, police said.

San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the third victim, previously identified as Amin Abdullah, was the center's security guard whose actions prevented it from being much worse.

"He immediately observed the threat to everyone at the mosque, began to engage them in gunfire; both suspects returned fire," Wahl told reporters on May 19. "His actions without a doubt delayed, distracted and ultimately deterred these two individuals from gaining access to t

Earlier, the Islamic Center said in a statement that the three men were "pillars of our community."

Wahl said he would not release the names of the shooting suspects as the day should be focused on the shooting victims.

During a news conference one day earlier, Wahl said the shooting would be investigated as a hate crime "until it's not," and said "there was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved," but not a specific threat to the mosque.

he greater areas of the mosque where as many as 140 kids were within 15 feet of these suspects."

Earlier, the Islamic Center said in a statement that the three men were "pillars of our community."

Wahl said he would not release the names of the shooting suspects as the day should be focused on the shooting victims.

During a news conference one day earlier, Wahl said the shooting would be investigated as a hate crime "until it's not," and said "there was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved," but not a specific threat to the mosque.

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Mohammed Shalalda leaned on a cane to walk after a bloody night of Israeli settler violence that shattered his family's sense of safety in their own home.

At dawn on Sunday, a group of settlers, numbering in the dozens, attacked the Shalalda family home in the al-Daraja area near the town of Sair, east of Hebron, wounding Mohammed, his elderly mother, his sister, and his brother.

Mohammed was sleeping on the roof of his old house when he awoke to the sound of voices around 3am. More than 15 settlers then attacked him, brutally kicking him and beating him with wooden sticks before he had barely opened his eyes. 

The settlers dragged him to the ground despite his wounds bleeding profusely.

“I started screaming to wake the residents and rescue me, but the settlers put a blanket over me and continued beating me violently. I was bleeding, and I didn’t know where the bleeding was coming from; my whole body was their prey,” he told Middle East Eye.

The settler raid is part of a broader pattern of escalating Israeli attacks aimed at forcing Palestinian families to leave their homes so that settlers can seize their land, in a policy pursued throughout the occupied West Bank.

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France is moving to deport prominent Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath over his opposition to Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Shaath, a political campaigner and human rights defender, was released from arbitrary detention in Egypt in January 2022 following pressure from French President Emmanuel Macron.

A key figure in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, he now faces expulsion from France on the grounds that he poses a “serious threat to public order”.

He is due to appear before a deportation committee on 21 May, after which the local prefecture "may immediately issue a deportation order that can be enforced at any time", according to his lawyer, Damia Taharraoui.

A notice by the Nanterre prefecture and seen by AFP cited Saath's activism and comments in support of Palestinians as factors in his deportation.

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