Al Jazeera World

The political sands are shifting in the Middle East. New alliances are being formed that until recently would have been unimaginable. But as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and, potentially, Sudan forge closer relationships with Israel, where does this leave the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza? How is Hamas - the elected government of Gaza - and its paramilitary wing, the Qassam Brigades, adjusting to the new regional political climate? In this film, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Tamer Almisshal meets Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniya and discovers dramatic and surprising military preparations that may seriously concern Israel and its allies. Today, the Gaza Strip is blockaded by the two countries bordering Gaza, Israel and Egypt, but it somehow continues to obtain rocket technology, some of it homemade, some smuggled in. Tamer Almisshal has obtained video of rockets being manufactured in Gaza. Iran is cited as a likely supplier but the source of some of this weaponry is unexpected. While clearing damage from the 2014 Gaza War, the Qassam Brigades came across unexploded Israeli missiles and say they have repurposed them into a source of arms. Hamas explains how another arms supply was sourced by a specialist unit of Palestinian divers, who were tasked with searching the seabed for weaponry and who claim to have recovered projectiles from the hold of century-old sunken ships.

This is the story of a much-loved Palestinian singer-songwriter whose life encompasses creativity, artistic success, political activism and personal tragedy. Rim Banna was born into a creative family in Nazareth in 1966. Her mother was the Palestinian poet Zouhaira Sabbagh and she was raised listening to famous artists like Fairuz. At 16, she was deeply affected by the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, something that would later heavily influence her music. She studied at a conservatory in Moscow and her own compositions often put Palestinian poems, including her mother’s, to music. Banna began her career recording Palestinian children’s songs, but her powerful and emotional music ultimately reached an international audience. In 2003, she sang on the Lullabies from the Axis of Evil album, through which female singers from the Middle East, Norway, North Korea, Cuba and Afghanistan sent an anti-war message to a world embroiled in the Iraq War. Banna’s music is poetic and emotional; her political message uncompromising. She often performed in colourful embroidered gowns and her songs focused on Palestinian suffering, especially in the West Bank. She was a genuine artistic talent, but her life was tragically cut short. In 2009, Banna was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a nine-year battle with a terminal illness, she died on March 24, 2018. Thousands attended her funeral in Nazareth where she was born 51 years before.

The Swedish city of Malmo, positioned at the eastern end of the Oresund Bridge with Denmark, and the Austrian town of Nickelsdorf, located near the borders of Hungary and Slovakia, have been on the route for refugees fleeing conflict and hardship for years. In this film, we follow the stories of people who have left their native countries, each for different reasons, to build a new life in Western Europe. Imad Tamimi teaches Swedish as a foreign language at an institute in Malmo. He left Nablus for Sweden nearly 10 years ago, and although his application for asylum was initially denied, he was determined to settle there. His big break came in 2018 when he covered for an absent language teacher and was hired full-time, enabling him to get Swedish residency. By contrast, Moataz Kanaan, a Palestinian raised in Libya, is now homeless in Malmo. He fled Libya's revolution in a small raft from Benghazi, was rescued and sent to Sardinia, and then headed north to Scandinavia, only to have his asylum application rejected. Meanwhile in Nickelsdorf, a town with fewer than 2,000 people, Ismael Saleh works as a barman for a local Austrian. Saleh was a geology student in Syria who escaped to Turkey in 2014 before travelling to Western Europe.

No two journeys of migration are the same. In this film, we follow four people who left their native countries, each for different reasons, to build new lives in Spain. Mae Azango is a journalist who fled Liberia in 2006 but eventually returned home six years later. A teenager in the Liberian Civil War of the 1990s, she was eight months pregnant when her father was beaten to death. Since returning, she has written in vehement opposition to female genital mutilation. While editors initially ignored her work, her persistence has now attracted several international awards. In 2016, journalist Milthon Robles fled his native Honduras where dozens of reporters have been killed covering the widespread gang violence. “They kidnapped me and tried to kill me several times,” he says, “specifically for my work as an investigative journalist.” He and his wife sought refuge in Spain, where he has received support from a global network that helps writers-in-exile. David Laurent is an actor from Cameroon who has lived in Spain for the past six years. He arrived after a perilous dinghy journey from Morocco that he still finds hard to talk about. Today in Barcelona, David works with Theatre Without Papers, performing original plays with an African influence. Hamid Karim is an established Algerian actor who has lived in Spain for 30 years. He loves his work and shares his passion for drama with a new generation – but is frustrated by being constantly typecast as a terrorist. Beyond their individual journeys, all four have a common desire to give something back to their communities, by mentoring young people and trying to inspire others along the way.

There are many heroes and heroines of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, but among the celebrated names of Mandela, Sisulu, Tutu and Biko is one less familiar - Abdullah Haron. This Muslim leader from Cape Town led a quiet but significant defiance against racist government policies in the 1960s. He was especially politicised by the infamous massacre of 69 Black African protesters at Sharpeville in 1960. His anti-apartheid activities took him around the world and he established close ties with renowned anti-apartheid figure Canon John Collins, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. His work in defiance of apartheid also put him in great danger. He was detained without charge and tortured when he returned to Cape Town. He died while in police custody in 1969 under still-unexplained circumstances; claims by police that he "fell down stairs" - a stock explanation at the time for deaths of political prisoners in police detention - are today countered with overwhelming evidence of his death at the hands of security police. In this film, Haron's family and others relay the story of the man who became known as "the imam who fought apartheid".

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled conflict, poverty and human rights abuses at home, arriving on the shores of the Mediterranean and Western Europe. Despite the difficulties they face, many have built successful new lives. Now in Italy, Olumide Bobola fled Nigeria over fears for his safety in 2016. He crossed the Sahara, surviving for three days on nothing but glucose drops, and after a perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing, arrived in Sicily. Today he is a singer in Rome, performing a repertoire of Italian songs. He was "adopted" by established traditional Italian musician, Stefano Saletti, and the two now share musical influences and the same creative musical journey. "I call Italy my house," says Bobola, "but Nigeria is my home." Nosakhare Ekhator, also from Nigeria, fell into the hands of people traffickers in Libya where he was held in a room with 120 others. One in five of those detainees perished. Now also in Rome, the young clothing designer has learned Italian and staged his first fashion show in the shadow of the famous Colosseum. In the Netherlands, singer Samira Dainan was born in Amsterdam to a Moroccan father and a Dutch mother. After her father's sudden death, she chose to take his remains back to Morocco for a large family funeral. She now believes that sharing grief in her home country gave her the support she needed to carry on living in the Netherlands. Journalist Linda Bilal grew up in Aleppo, Syria where she reported extensively on the Syrian conflict. She arrived in the Netherlands in 2015 and now writes for news outlets and is a regular Amnesty International magazine columnist. The challenge for each of them has been how to integrate into a new home, while at the same time staying in touch with their roots, culture and religion.

What do you do if your bank account suddenly gets closed and you and your business can no longer function - and you have no idea why? You discover it is because you are on a database that you did not even know existed, saying that you have links with "terrorism" and therefore few banks will deal with you. This happened to two organisations in London which were listed on a database used by the banking system to combat money laundering and other financial crimes. They both resorted to legal action, their cases were settled out of court and they were paid damages - but they still suffered disruption and reputational damage. This film examines these databases - how they gather information, how it is used and what human impact they can have.

What do you do if your bank account suddenly gets closed and you and your business can no longer function - and you have no idea why? You discover it is because you are on a database that you did not even know existed, saying that you have links with "terrorism" and therefore few banks will deal with you. This happened to two organisations in London which were listed on a database used by the banking system to combat money laundering and other financial crimes. They both resorted to legal action, their cases were settled out of court and they were paid damages - but they still suffered disruption and reputational damage. This film examines these databases - how they gather information, how it is used and what human impact they can have.

Stretching from Mozambique in south-east Africa to Syria in the Middle East, the Great Rift Valley is home to the world's lowest city, Jericho, which was established over 10,000 years ago. Farmers and shepherds have tended flocks and lived off the land in the Jordan Valley for thousands of years. But Israel's continued occupation of the region since 1967 is threatening people's traditional way of life, restricting Palestinian development on the land - and Bedouin homes in the area have repeatedly been razed. Some 56,000 Palestinians live in the part of the valley that lies in the West Bank, many of who are Bedouin living in temporary communities, always moving with the herds. Their determination to remain on the land is becoming ever more difficult in the face of constant attempts by the Israeli military and settlers to drive them off their land. With water resources and agricultural potential, the valley would be the breadbasket and water source of any future Palestinian state. The Jordan Valley has some of the most fertile land in all of the occupied territories. Arable farming is a lifeline for many rural Palestinian communities, yet Israel controls most water resources in the area. While making life difficult for local communities, Israel has also encouraged the spread of settlements - regarded illegal under international law - across the occupied West Bank for over five decades. The number of Jewish settlers in the Jordan Valley has nearly doubled from 2011 to 2018. Israeli settlers already use the vast majority of the area's water resources and an increased influx would further threaten the living conditions of Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley, limiting their opportunities for economic growth and pushing the people living there into greater poverty. "The Israeli policy is to drive us away, not to aid our survival here," says Abu Saqr, one of the Jordan Valley residents struggling to stay on in the face of Israeli policies of home demolitions and arrest. His home has been destroyed three times. Between 2011 and 2018, 458 housing units were demolished by the Israeli Army in the Jordan Valley districts of Tubas and Jericho. During that same period, three of Abu Saqr's eight sons and Abu Saqr himself spent time in Israeli prisons. Since then, Israel's policy on settlements has also hardened and in 2018, it announced plans to expand 14 of the 20 existing illegal settlements and build three new ones, effectively doubling the Israeli settler population. Local campaigners like Sirene Khudairi, have consistently protested against Israel's human rights violations in the Jordan Valley; and her activities led to her detention for nine months. "I get so upset when I see this well nearly empty and the settlement draining our water to turn their areas into a Garden of Eden," says Sirene, during one of her visits to Abu Saqr. Since this film was originally made in 2011, Sirene has got married and moved to Bethlehem to start a family. Those like Abu Saqr and Sirene are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's Israel on one hand, and the Palestinian Authority - whom they constantly have to pressure to support their cause – on the other. The PA does its best to protect Palestinian farming communities in the valley and considers itself the last line of defence for any future, self-sufficient Palestinian state. But unfortunately, the Valley forms a third of the occupied West Bank, with 88 percent of its land classified as Area C (under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords), which falls under full Israeli military control. This film documents the struggle of Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley as they try to cling on to an age-old way of life.

On December 24, 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Leaders of the Soviet Union said they had been invited by Afghanistan's communist leader Babrak Karmal. But the invasion set Afghanistan on a path of decades of conflict - from the Soviet-Afghan War to Moscow's complete withdrawal in the late 1980s, and the eventual collapse of the communist government. Civil war followed, eventually leading to the Taliban's rise to power. Once backed by the United States's CIA, the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan until 2001, when the US-led coalition invaded after the 9/11 attacks, and the group's leadership fled Kabul. After that, general elections were held in 2004, then 2005, 2009, then 2010, 2014 and 2018. Afghan politicians squabbled for power and struggled to control large swathes of their own territory. But the Taliban did not recognise the authority of any of the elected governments. Nearly 20 years later, US forces signed an agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan - on condition that the Taliban will not harbour hardline groups or attack the US and its allies. The agreement came after nearly seven years of efforts to facilitate political reconciliation between the Taliban, the Afghan government, the US, and other countries after Qatar agreed to open an office for the Taliban where Afghan leaders and western governments could negotiate face-to-face. But as attacks continue, efforts to arrange intra-Afghan talks have been delayed yet again. So, what will it take to achieve lasting peace in Afghanistan? We find out as Khairullah Khairkhwa, a member of the Taliban's political office in Qatar, talks to Al Jazeera. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The coronavirus is changing the world as we know it. When infections soared earlier this year, governments worldwide implemented strict social distancing measures that slowed the global economy dramatically. So far, more than half-a-million people have died, with 10 million infected worldwide. But the pandemic's huge cost has forced many countries to lift restrictions and reopen their economies. The United Kingdom, one of the world's largest economies, has one of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates globally. British scientists, like many others, are working around the clock to find a vaccine, and one of the country's most renowned institutions, Oxford University, is fighting the pandemic on multiple fronts. Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology Martin Landray is one of the scientists leading The Recovery Trial, the world's largest randomised clinical trial of potential COVID-19 treatments. He is not looking for a cure on its own. He is more focused on finding treatments with drugs used for other viruses such as HIV and SARS. But will there ever be a cure for COVID-19? Or will we all just have to learn to live with it? And how? Find out more as Professor Martin Landray talks to Al Jazeera. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

After Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s and descended into a bitter regional conflict, Alija Izetbegovic fought for the survival of his country and people. The first president of the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Izetbegovic was no stranger to controversy and had served five years of a 14-year prison sentence in the 1980s. This two-part documentary series uses interviews with members of his family and major regional figures as well as archive footage and reconstruction to tell the chequered history of this part of the Balkans through Izetbegovic's eyes.

On February 26, Brazil became the first country in South America to confirm a COVID-19 infection. And as the number of cases increased over the subsequent weeks and months, its president, Jair Bolsonaro, refused to take any drastic measures. He fought with state leaders who imposed lockdowns and mandated social distancing rules - calling their actions "economically ruinous". Bolsonaro still refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the global pandemic. He has called the virus nothing more than a "little flu". His priority has been to keep the economy going at any cost. But now, Brazil has recorded more than 1.2 million infections - and has the world's second-highest death toll. And as Bolsonaro pushes for people to go back to work, two of his health ministers have walked away. Nelson Teich had taken office on April 17, but left the job just four weeks later. Teich had replaced Luiz Henrique Mandetta, whom Bolsanaro had dismissed. The president called it "a consensual divorce", but Mandetta's sacking caused anger across Brazil - with many banging pots and pans from their windows. So, how will President Bolsanaro's handling of this pandemic affect the more than 200 million Brazilians? And are his decisions influenced by his friendship with US President Donald Trump? We put those questions to one of the men who played a central role during this crisis - Brazil's former health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

After Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s and descended into a bitter regional conflict, Alija Izetbegovic fought for the survival of his country and people. The first president of the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Izetbegovic was no stranger to controversy and had served five years of a 14-year prison sentence in the 1980s. This two-part documentary series uses interviews with members of his family and major regional figures as well as archive footage and reconstruction to tell the chequered history of this part of the Balkans through Izetbegovic's eyes.

After Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s and descended into a bitter regional conflict, Alija Izetbegovic fought for the survival of his country and people. The first president of the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Izetbegovic was no stranger to controversy and had served five years of a 14-year prison sentence in the 1980s. This two-part documentary series uses interviews with members of his family and major regional figures as well as archive footage and reconstruction to tell the chequered history of this part of the Balkans through Izetbegovic's eyes.