From Gaza to Muridke: How 2025 Turned Palestine into the Muslim World’s Final Red Line
A year of genocide, mass resistance, and state crackdowns from Cairo to Islamabad, as Muslim streets rose for Palestine while their own governments turned the guns on them.
PART 1: Overview, Executive Summary,
The year 2025 marked a decisive rupture between the Muslim world’s rulers and its streets. Across capitals from Cairo and Amman to Istanbul, Karachi and Jakarta, millions mobilised for Gaza and Palestine, even as their own governments raced to harden protest laws, expand security powers and criminalise the very solidarity they claimed to endorse.
Internationally, the year saw the International Criminal Court issue unprecedented arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister on charges including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, while Israel deepened its occupation of the West Bank and continued the devastation of Gaza. At the same time, the United States channelled more than 21 billion dollars in military aid and arms to Israel, and Russia’s war in Ukraine eroded its capacity to shape events in the Middle East, further narrowing external avenues for Palestinian relief.
Within the Arab and wider Muslim world, regimes invoked “stability” and “security” to justify a wave of authoritarian consolidation targeting Palestine solidarity, from Egypt’s and Jordan’s legal crackdowns to Gulf bans on public support for Palestine. Pakistan offered one of the starkest illustrations: security forces met a pro Gaza march with lethal force in Muridke, killing protesters who claimed to be marching for Palestine, even as Islamabad presented itself abroad as a defender of Palestinian rights.
This assessment is openly normative. It begins from the premise that Palestinians live under a system of occupation, apartheid and large scale violence, and that popular movements across the Muslim world in 2025 represented a historic, if heavily repressed, alignment with their struggle.
SECTION I: THE ICC’S HISTORIC STEP WITHOUT HANDCUFFS
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court did something many thought would never happen. It issued arrest warrants for a sitting Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. The judges said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” they were responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including using starvation as a weapon and targeting civilians.
This was an extraordinary moment. For decades, Palestinians had watched their suffering discussed in UN halls and human rights reports, but never translated into personal legal risk for top Israeli officials. Now at least on paper, two of the most powerful figures behind the Gaza assault were wanted men in over 120 countries.
The court did not simply accuse them of excess or negligence. It focused on policy. It argued that Israeli leaders deliberately created famine conditions by blocking food, water and medicine from entering Gaza. The siege, in this reading, was not a side effect. It was a method.
Israel tried to argue that the court had no jurisdiction over its officials or over Palestinian territories. The judges rejected that. They treated the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as one occupied unit, whose people have the right to see crimes against them investigated.
The reaction was telling. Netanyahu called the decision antisemitic. Gallant claimed it “legitimized” the murder of Israeli civilians. The United States attacked the court, even though it is not a member. Some European governments said they would respect the warrants, but none moved to arrest Israeli officials.
Netanyahu travelled to Western capitals in 2025 without fear of detention. No one put him on a plane to The Hague. In practice, the warrants became a moral and symbolic victory rather than an operational one. Still, they planted an important flag. For the first time, the global legal system formally said: what is happening to Palestinians is not just tragedy. It may be criminal.
For many ordinary Muslims, this spoke to a deeper frustration. International law seems to bite only when it is convenient for powerful states. When the victims are Palestinians, there is a gap between law and enforcement that is hard to ignore.
SECTION II: ISRAEL’S JUDICIAL COUP AND THE USE OF WAR
While Gaza burned and starved, Israel quietly reshaped its own political system in ways that make it easier to maintain permanent occupation.
In early 2023, the Netanyahu government launched a “judicial reform” that was in reality a power grab. It targeted the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government decisions as “unreasonable.” Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested for months. Reservists threatened not to serve. The country lived through its deepest internal crisis in years.
In July 2023, the Knesset passed a law weakening the court’s use of the “reasonableness” standard. In January 2024, the Supreme Court, by a narrow majority, struck down this law. It was the first time the court had ever invalidated a Basic Law, which in Israel’s system functions like a constitutional norm.
Then came October 7 and the war. Many expected the judicial struggle to pause while the country united. In fact, the crisis gave the government new opportunities.
In 2025, the coalition advanced another law, this time changing how judges are selected. The Judicial Selection Committee, which had previously included representatives of the legal profession alongside politicians, was restructured in favor of political appointees. The threshold to appoint Supreme Court judges was lowered. In practice, this meant the ruling coalition could shape the composition of the highest court over time.
The opposition boycotted the vote. The law passed almost unopposed. The Supreme Court announced that it would hear challenges, but not until mid 2026. That delay gives the government a long window to appoint judges who share its worldview.
The war helped in two key ways. First, it distracted the public. It is much harder to mobilize huge protests when people are focused on hostages, funerals and a sense of national siege. Second, it blunted the most effective earlier tactic: threats by reservists to refuse service. After October 7, any hint of refusal could be portrayed as betrayal of soldiers in the field.
At the same time, the erosion of judicial independence had direct consequences for Palestinians. Courts became even more reluctant to intervene against home demolitions, land seizures and settler violence. When the body that is supposed to limit government power is itself captured, occupation does not need to declare martial law. It becomes the default setting.
The lesson for many in the region was simple. War does not just kill people. It also kills checks and balances. It provides cover to change the rules at home.
SECTION III: THE WEST BANK’S SLOW ERASURE
While Gaza drew headlines, the West Bank went through what can only be called a slow catastrophe.
By the end of 2025, Palestinian sources and humanitarian agencies were reporting the highest death toll in the West Bank since detailed modern records began. More than a thousand Palestinians had been killed since October 2023, and thousands more wounded, in raids, shootings and settler attacks.
Settler violence skyrocketed. There were on average five recorded settler attacks per day in 2025. Villages were harassed, olive groves burned, water tanks destroyed. Armed settlers, often moving with the direct protection or passive presence of soldiers, attacked herding communities and told them to leave “or else.” Many did, because they had no realistic way to defend their families.
Hundreds of families, amounting to several thousand people, were displaced in this way over a two year period. This is ethnic cleansing in an unhurried, bureaucratic style. The state does not always have to send soldiers to drag people out. It can simply create conditions in which staying becomes impossible.
In parallel, the Israeli government advanced the E1 settlement plan near Jerusalem, a project that has been criticized for years. If fully implemented, it would cut the West Bank into two disconnected northern and southern sections and threaten the existence of Bedouin communities in the area. The map of a future Palestinian state, already full of holes, would become a barely connected patchwork.
By late 2025, demographic data reflected these policies. Populations in some refugee camps faced mortality rates many times higher than non refugee areas. Young men in particular were at constant risk, whether from night raids, checkpoints or settler roadblocks.
For people living this reality, the international language of “peace process” and “confidence building measures” feels obscene. They see their land vanish hill by hill, their neighbors forced out, their own children grow up under permanent military control. 2025 did not invent this reality, but it intensified it.
SECTION IV: A MUSLIM WORLD WAKES UP FOR GAZA
One of the defining features of 2025 was the sheer scale and emotional depth of solidarity with Gaza and Palestine across the Muslim world and far beyond it. This was not a brief outpouring that flared and faded with the news cycle. It was a sustained wave that kept returning, reshaping public space and political imagination in country after country.
In city after city, large crowds came out. People filled the streets of Cairo and Casablanca, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, Karachi and Islamabad, Istanbul and Ankara, Rabat and Tunis, Amman and Doha. There were marches in smaller provincial towns that rarely appear on international maps, where local mosques and student unions became organizing hubs. From North Africa to Southeast Asia, the geography of protest followed the same emotional map: a sense that what was happening in Gaza was not only a Palestinian issue, but a wound to the entire Ummah, and a test of everyone’s moral standing.
Many of these protests were not officially sanctioned. Some countries allowed limited marches under tight control, treating them as safety valves for public anger. Others banned demonstrations outright, forcing people to gather in defiance of the law. In places like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, the risk of arrest, job loss and surveillance was real and immediate. Parents warned their children not to go. Employers quietly passed the word that photographs in certain marches might end careers. Yet people came anyway. In some cases, they masked their faces and left their phones at home. In others, they marched openly, knowing that cameras from state security and from foreign media were rolling.
For many young Muslims, Gaza became the organizing principle of a wider political awakening. Before 2025, their political engagement might have been scattered: anger at corruption here, frustration about unemployment there, concern about climate or gender or local injustices. Gaza brought these threads together. It offered a simple, brutal story: a population under siege, bombed, starved and displaced, while powerful states provided weapons and diplomatic cover. It made visible the connections between their own rulers, who spoke of Palestine but traded with its oppressor, and a global system that treated some lives as more disposable than others.
On campuses, student groups that had previously worked in silos started to collaborate. Islamic societies, leftist organizations, anti racism groups and climate activists found themselves chanting the same slogans for Gaza. In many countries, especially in Europe and North America but also in places like South Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia, the Palestinian flag became a symbol of a broader refusal of injustice, not just a national emblem. Young people who might never have looked up a UN resolution or a legal judgment before were suddenly reading about war crimes, apartheid conventions and genocide law.
The Global March to Gaza symbolized this new spirit. In June 2025, activists, parliamentarians, trade unionists and ordinary citizens from more than thirty countries converged on Egypt, hoping to travel together to the Rafah crossing. Their goal was not only to deliver food and medicine. It was to physically challenge the blockade and to dramatize the complicity of all governments that helped maintain Gaza’s isolation, including Egypt’s.
People arrived from diverse backgrounds: European solidarity networks, Turkish and Algerian delegations, Latin American activists, South Asian organizers, African parliamentarians, Arab and Palestinian diaspora groups. Some saw themselves simply as human rights defenders who could not accept watching another year of bombing and starvation from a distance. Others came with explicitly political agendas, calling for sanctions on Israel and an end to normalization agreements. All of them understood that marching to Rafah would poke at the pressure points of both Israel and Egypt.
At first, the Egyptian government tried a familiar tactic: a mixture of silence and administrative obstruction. Activists were questioned at airports, held briefly, then released. Others were denied entry without explanation. Then, as the numbers grew, Cairo shifted to open repression. Hundreds of foreign participants were detained at Cairo International Airport, in hotels and at checkpoints on the road to Sinai. Dozens were summarily deported on the first flights out. Nearly five hundred activists from Africa, Europe, North America and Asia were eventually expelled from the country. Egyptian citizens who helped organize or even just joined online support channels for the march found themselves summoned by security services, interrogated, or arrested.
A protest camp that had formed near the road to Rafah was dismantled in stages. Pro government thugs, some wielding sticks and chains, attacked groups of marchers while security forces looked on or intervened selectively. Eventually, the state made clear that the march would not be allowed to reach Gaza. The message was unmistakable. Egypt, not its people, would decide how to “stand with Gaza.” Anything beyond state controlled solidarity was intolerable, because it threatened to turn foreign policy into a domestic rallying point outside the regime’s grip.
The repression of the Global March did not erase its impact. For those who tried to join, the experience sharpened something important. Many had thought of Egypt as a frontline state, as Gaza’s gateway, as a natural champion of Palestinians. Being detained, deported or watching Egyptians arrested for the simple act of wanting to walk to Rafah forced a recalibration. It became impossible to separate Gaza from the internal structures of repression in Egypt and similar states.
At the same time, calls from Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, for global days of solidarity were answered across continents. On symbolic dates such as the anniversary of the October 7 attacks or key moments during ceasefire talks, people gathered outside Israeli and U.S. embassies, at city squares, and in front of government buildings. They held vigils with the names of the dead, organized boycotts of companies linked to Israeli settlements, and pressed local councils to adopt motions on ending cooperation with Israeli institutions.
In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority country, more than a thousand people marched to the U.S. embassy in Jakarta on the two year mark of the Gaza war’s beginning, chanting “Free, free Palestine” and denouncing the blockade. The government, which has no formal ties with Israel but values its relationship with Washington, deployed a large police presence. Similar scenes played out in Turkey, where buildings in Istanbul were lit up in the colors of the Palestinian flag and rallies drew crowds that mixed religious conservatives, secular leftists and Kurdish activists in ways that would have been unusual in other contexts.
In many countries, these mobilizations were the largest pro Palestine actions in living memory. Older activists who had marched against the Iraq war or in solidarity with the Second Intifada commented on the difference in tone. Back then, crowds often spoke in broad, sometimes vague, anti imperial slogans. In 2025, the language was more precise. Young speakers referred to “settler colonialism,” “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid regimes,” “genocide,” and “international criminal responsibility.” They cited case numbers from the International Court of Justice. They discussed the details of ICC warrants. They understood that words like “disproportionate force” or “conflict” were inadequate. They used language that named structures and crimes, not just emotions.
This shift matters enormously. It means Palestine is no longer just a distant tragedy in the news or a topic for Friday sermons that ends with a prayer and a collection. It has become a lens that millions use to understand power, empire and their own governments. A young woman in Rabat can look at Gaza and see not only Israeli bombs, but also the role of her own state in maintaining ties with Israel. A student in Kuala Lumpur can look at the siege and see parallels with how refugees are treated in her own region. A worker in Casablanca can connect Gaza to the weapons industry contracts his country signs with Western powers.
Social media played a complicated but central role in this awakening. Platforms that had once been used mainly for entertainment or personal updates became spaces where raw footage from Gaza circulated, often faster and in more graphic detail than traditional media would allow. At the same time, users faced censorship, shadow bans and content removals when they posted about Palestine. Instead of ending activism, this pushed many young organizers to experiment with new forms of communication: in person teach-ins, printed zines, encrypted channels, coordinated days of action that were planned offline but amplified online.
All of this unfolded against a backdrop of heightened risk. In places like Jordan, laws on cybercrime and “fake news” were used to prosecute people for social media posts supporting Gaza. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a tweet or an Instagram story could lead to questioning or worse. In Egypt, even signing up for a Telegram group related to the Global March could trigger an arrest. Yet even under these conditions, content continued to flow, often routed through diasporas or anonymous accounts.
Ultimately, the Muslim world’s awakening for Gaza in 2025 was not a single event but a chain reaction. Each march inspired another. Each arrest reminded people of the price of speaking. Each victory, however small, such as a local council passing a boycott motion or a university divesting from an Israeli company, showed that pressure could move institutions. Each defeat, such as the crushing of the Global March or the Muridke massacre, showed who was willing to use violence to stop Palestine from becoming a vehicle for deeper political change.
In that sense, Gaza became more than a place. It became a question that millions of Muslims, and many others besides, had to answer for themselves. What does it mean to live an ethical life in a world where such atrocities are broadcast in real time? What are you willing to risk, and what are you not? Where do you stand when your own government demands silence while claiming to speak for you?
The answers in 2025 were far from uniform. But they were louder, more informed and more connected than at any time in recent memory.
PART 2: EGYPT, JORDAN, GULF AND PAKISTAN (INCLUDING MURIDKE)
SECTION V: EGYPT’S SECURITY STATE AGAINST ITS OWN PALESTINIANS
Egypt plays a double role. On one hand, it is Gaza’s gateway to the world. On the other, it is a glaring example of how a regime can speak the language of solidarity while crushing any independent expression of it.
Legally, Egypt has built a dense web of laws that turn protest into a privilege. The 2013 protest law requires prior permission for demonstrations and gives the interior ministry broad discretion to ban them. Violating these rules can lead to years in prison. Later counterterrorism laws added vague offences about “harming national unity” or “disturbing public order,” which can be used against almost any form of dissent.
In practice, even small gestures become risky. Egyptians who raised the Palestinian flag in public or criticized the Rafah closure online were detained. Human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of political prisoners remain behind bars, and 2025 added a new layer to that prison population: those whose “crime” was supporting Gaza outside of state-approved channels.
The treatment of the Global March to Gaza participants was a vivid example. Authorities lured them in with initial visas and permits, then turned the screws. Foreign activists were detained, interrogated and deported. Egyptians who supported the camp faced threats of terrorism charges.
President Abdel Fattah el Sisi’s “Second Republic” rests on the military’s control of politics and the economy. In that system, Palestine is useful as a card in external negotiations and a theme in state media. It is dangerous when it becomes a cause that unites ordinary Egyptians independently of the state. So the regime keeps the Rafah crossing and the people of Gaza under its own monopoly of compassion.
The tragedy is not only for Palestinians who rely on that border. It is also for Egyptians who feel a deep connection to Gaza, but are told that their love for Palestine makes them a security threat.
SECTION VI: JORDAN’S FRAGILE BALANCE
Jordan is home to a large population of Palestinian origin. The country hosts millions of refugees and has long presented itself as a supporter of Palestinian rights while also keeping a peace treaty and close security cooperation with Israel.
In 2025, that balancing act became even more strained.
Jordan’s cybercrime law, updated in 2023 and aggressively enforced afterwards, gave authorities a new tool to silence critics. The law punishes online content that is deemed to “spread rumors,” “undermine national unity” or “insult the state.” These phrases are vague enough to cover almost anything.
In practice, the state used this law against journalists who reported on alleged corruption in Gaza aid, activists who called for canceling gas deals with Israel, and organizers of protests near the Israeli embassy. Posting a video of a demonstration, sharing a slogan seen as too radical or questioning the government’s line could lead to interrogation, prosecution and prison time.
Despite the risks, large crowds gathered several times in 2024 and 2025, especially in Amman. Protesters called for expelling the Israeli ambassador, tearing up the peace treaty and cutting economic ties. Security forces responded with a mix of containment and repression. Some marches were allowed but heavily policed. Others were blocked. Key activists were arrested and held as examples.
In one case, a well known Jordanian activist received a five year sentence for peaceful criticism of the king and the government’s policies. The sentence was upheld on appeal. The message was blunt. You may be Palestinian. You may care deeply about Gaza. But if your activism touches the monarchy’s core interests, you will pay a heavy price.
Jordan’s rulers are acutely aware that Palestine is both a unifying cause and a potential spark. The regime’s survival depends on keeping that spark under tight control.
SECTION VII: THE GULF AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PALESTINE
In the Gulf, 2025 made clear how far some monarchies are willing to go to keep Palestine in the realm of slogans, not street power.
Saudi Arabia has long projected itself as a leader of the Muslim world. Yet reports in 2025 described a quiet, but strict, ban on public displays of support for Palestine. People recounted being ordered to remove Palestine flags from cars and shops. Teachers were told not to discuss Gaza in class. Wearing certain symbols in malls or public spaces drew questioning and sometimes threats of detention.
Human rights organizations already described Saudi Arabia as a place where almost any form of independent expression can be criminalized. In that environment, supporting Palestine publicly becomes another “crime.” It challenges not only normalization efforts with Israel, but also the Crown Prince’s project of redefining Saudi identity away from pan Islamic politics and toward a highly controlled, entertainment focused nationalism.
In the United Arab Emirates, the situation is even sharper. Public protest of any kind is effectively banned. The law treats gatherings, critical speech and organizing as security matters. People who ask whether pro Palestine marches are allowed are often answered with silence or warnings.
Qatar and Kuwait allowed more visible pro Palestine protests, especially Kuwait, where parliament has sometimes been openly critical of Israel. But even there, security services monitored organizers closely, and state media kept a firm grip on framing.
The pattern is consistent. In these states, Gaza is allowed to be a charity cause, a line in an official speech, a flag on a government building. It is not allowed to become a rallying point for popular pressure from below.
SECTION VIII: PAKISTAN, GAZA AND THE MURIDKE MASSACRE
Pakistan holds a special emotional place in the Muslim world’s relationship with Palestine. Many Pakistanis grow up hearing that the country will never recognize Israel until Palestinians are free. The military and political class cite this as proof of their Islamic and moral credentials.
In 2025, that narrative shattered for many. The events around Muridke exposed a brutal reality. The state that speaks loudly for Gaza abroad was willing to shed the blood of its own citizens who marched for Gaza at home.
The “Labbaik Aqsa” March
In October 2025, the religious party Tehreek e Labbaik Pakistan, or TLP, announced a “Labbaik Aqsa Million March.” Its leaders called on supporters to march from Lahore to Islamabad to protest the war on Gaza and what they saw as Pakistan’s weak stance.
They demanded the government cut ties with Israel’s allies, expel ambassadors of countries backing Israel and take a more confrontational line in international forums. They also denounced reports of a new Gaza plan associated with Donald Trump, which they saw as an attempt to formalize Israel’s control through an international arrangement.
The timing was sensitive. Pakistan’s government was trying to present itself internationally as a mediator and responsible partner. There were rumors that it was exploring some form of indirect understanding with Israel under pressure from Gulf allies and Washington. A mass march with blunt anti Israel and anti U.S. slogans directly threatened that image.
The Trap at Muridke
At first, the march followed a familiar pattern. Protesters gathered on the Grand Trunk Road. Police fired tear gas but allowed the procession to continue. Lahore’s police reportedly showed reluctance to use live fire.
According to investigative reporting and sources within Pakistan’s security establishment, the real plan was to bottle up the march at a pre chosen location. That location was Muridke, a town about 30 kilometers from Lahore. Barricades and containers were set up on the road. When the caravan reached Muridke, it stalled. Protesters could not go forward to Islamabad. Many also could not easily return.
Thousands camped out on the road and in adjacent fields. They slept in their vehicles, on prayer mats, and in makeshift tents. They believed they were in a temporary standoff that might resolve through negotiations.
What happened next turned Muridke into a word of horror.
The Night of Blood
In the early hours of the morning, around the time of Fajr prayer, security forces moved in. Rangers and police units opened fire from multiple directions. Protesters later described how people who were praying were shot. There were reports that some police officers refused to fire on unarmed civilians and were themselves shot in the legs by paramilitary forces to force compliance.
People began to run into nearby streets and alleyways. Videos that circulated briefly online before being scrubbed showed men falling, others trying to carry the wounded away, and uniformed forces shooting at fleeing crowds.
The exact death toll remains contested. The government claimed only a handful of deaths, including one police officer. TLP leaders spoke of hundreds killed or missing. One local witness, interviewed briefly on a pro establishment television channel before the clip disappeared, spoke about “hundreds of bodies.” An intelligence source later alleged that bodies were removed under cover of tear gas and darkness in trucks, and buried or handed to families quietly under strict instructions.
Families were reportedly told that funerals must be small and silent, with no slogans, flags or speeches. Some homes of deceased protesters were raided to deter public mourning.
What is clear, beyond the numbers, is the intent. This was not crowd control that spiraled out of hand. It was a demonstration. The message was aimed at the whole country: no matter how sacred your cause, even if it is Gaza, even if it is Al Aqsa, you cannot challenge the state’s red lines. If you try, you will be treated as an enemy, not a fellow citizen.
The Broader Crackdown
Muridke was not a one off. In the days around the massacre, there were deadly clashes in other cities as well. Police and protesters were killed in Lahore’s outskirts, in Gujranwala, and near Islamabad. Videos showed lines of officers firing at crowds, and protesters throwing stones and sometimes responding with sticks and makeshift shields.
Soon after, the government announced a ban on TLP, describing it as a terrorist organization. This was not the first time. The party has been banned and unbanned before when it suited the state. But this time, the context was different. The issue at the center was Gaza.
Journalists who investigated the events faced pressure. Some were arrested or went into hiding. Independent outlets that tried to count the dead found it almost impossible. Internet services were cut during key moments, and access for reporters to Muridke was restricted.
At the same time, Pakistani leaders continued to speak in international forums about their concern for Palestinians. They pushed resolutions at the United Nations, made strong statements about war crimes in Gaza and called themselves defenders of the Ummah.
For many ordinary Pakistanis, this contrast became unbearable. On one hand, the state claims to stand with Gaza. On the other, it kills Pakistanis who try to stand with Gaza in the streets. Muridke became a symbol of that hypocrisy.
It also exposed a wider pattern. The same state had used brutal force against supporters of Imran Khan earlier, and against movements in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Muridke showed that when it comes to maintaining control, the Pakistani establishment does not hesitate to turn its guns on anyone, including those marching under the banner of Palestine.
PART 3: WESTERN REPRESSION, U.S. POLICY, RUSSIA, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND CONCLUSION
SECTION IX: HOW WESTERN DEMOCRACIES LEARNED AUTHORITARIAN LESSONS FROM PALESTINE
Repression of Palestine solidarity in 2025 was not confined to autocratic regimes. It extended deep into countries that like to present themselves as guardians of free speech and liberal democracy. In practice, many Western governments and institutions treated Gaza protests as a testing ground for new techniques of control, surveillance and delegitimization, techniques that can later be turned on other movements.
In the United States, the most visible front of this repression was on university campuses. Students who organized sit ins, walkouts and encampments in support of Gaza often found themselves facing disciplinary hearings, suspensions or expulsions. Faculty who signed open letters, spoke at rallies or even posted critical commentary on social media about Israel’s assault on Gaza were investigated, denied promotions or quietly pushed out of positions. Some saw job offers withdrawn after public pressure campaigns by donors or lobby groups. Others were placed on administrative leave in the name of “safety” or “neutrality.”
Universities that had once celebrated protest as part of their civic mission responded to Palestine solidarity with a very different playbook. Student groups were derecognized on the grounds that their statements violated vague policies about “harassment” or “incivility.” Events featuring Palestinian speakers, or even Jewish and Israeli critics of Israeli policy, were cancelled at short notice after pressure from external organizations. Security fees were raised for pro Palestine events to levels that organizers could not afford, while other controversial events went ahead without similar hurdles. In the most dramatic instances, administrations called in police in riot gear to clear encampments peacefully protesting the use of tuition and endowment funds to support companies arming Israel.
Money and influence played a powerful role in this. Major donors threatened to withdraw funding if universities did not clamp down on what they described as antisemitism, but which in practice often meant any sharp criticism of Israel or Zionism as a political ideology. Boards of trustees and presidents, anxious not to lose multimillion dollar gifts or to be attacked in the media, framed their actions as protecting Jewish students, even when many Jewish students themselves were part of the protests. Palestine solidarity became a litmus test for institutional independence. In many cases, the institutions failed.
Beyond campuses, workplaces and cultural spaces also became arenas of sanction. Employees in media, tech, NGOs and public sector jobs who spoke openly about Gaza sometimes faced internal disciplinary processes, were reassigned or found themselves dropped from projects. Artists lost gallery shows, writers lost book deals, and speakers had invitations withdrawn. The threat did not always need to be explicit. In many professional circles, people learned to self censor, avoiding certain words or positions to protect their livelihoods.
Underlying this was a legal and political climate shaped by the United States’ broad “material support for terrorism” framework. Laws that were originally justified as tools to fight armed groups abroad have wording so wide that they can be interpreted to cover many forms of non violent political engagement. When Palestinian groups are designated as terrorist organizations, and when any form of support for them is painted with the same brush, new risks appear. People begin to worry that fundraising for humanitarian work in Gaza, sharing a statement by a resistance group, or even arguing that Palestinians have a right to armed struggle under occupation could be twisted into accusations of criminal support.
Civil rights lawyers and advocacy groups spent much of 2025 warning about this trend. They pointed out that vague laws and overbroad definitions have always been tools that states can redeploy against whichever movement they see as threatening. Today, they explained, it might be Palestine solidarity that is carved out as an exception to normal free speech standards. Tomorrow, the same logic can be used against climate activists blocking pipelines, against labor organizers calling for strikes, or against racial justice movements challenging police budgets. Once you accept that particular political positions can be punished as “terrorism” rather than argued with, the door is open.
Across the Atlantic, Europe saw its own version of this process. Several governments banned or severely restricted pro Palestine demonstrations around sensitive dates, such as the anniversary of the October 7 attacks or major Israeli military escalations. Interior ministries justified bans by citing vague risks of “public disorder” or “extremist infiltration.” In some cities, even vigils for children killed in Gaza were subject to heavy police presence, ID checks and dispersal orders.
At the rhetorical level, political leaders tried to draw lines between “legitimate concern for civilians” and “extremism.” In practice, these lines often coincided with whether protestors questioned Israel’s right to maintain its current structures of control over Palestinians. Chants that directly named Zionism as a colonial project, or that called for the dismantling of apartheid, were singled out. Slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which many Palestinians and their supporters see as a call for equality in all of historic Palestine, were rebranded by officials and media as inherently genocidal or as veiled calls to expel Jews. On that basis, police argued that such chants constituted hate speech or support for terrorism.
This blurring of protest and extremism had two overlapping effects. It criminalized Palestine solidarity directly, giving police and prosecutors tools to act against demonstrators and organizers. People were arrested not only for violence or property damage, but for words on placards or in speeches. Investigations were opened into activists whose main “crime” was being outspoken and persistent. At the same time, it shifted the boundaries of what is thinkable. If criticizing a specific state’s policies, or calling for the end of a political system like Zionism, can be treated as akin to supporting terrorism, then the space for dissent on any controversial issue shrinks.
The climate of fear extended to media and culture. In some European public broadcasters, internal guidelines urged journalists to avoid certain terms such as “occupation” or “apartheid” in describing Israel, even when those terms are used by major human rights organizations. Guests who tried to use them on air were interrupted or challenged in ways that signalled to audiences that these words were beyond the pale. Film festivals that programmed Palestinian movies, or European works sharply critical of Israel, faced political backlash and funding threats. A few high profile events chose to cancel films or talks rather than risk confrontations with local authorities or sponsors.
For activists and observers in the Global South, none of this came as a surprise. Many have long argued that Western commitments to free speech, academic freedom and human rights are conditional. They apply robustly when dissent is directed at official enemies, such as Russia or Iran, but they weaken when criticism targets close allies like Israel or when it exposes colonial histories and ongoing forms of racial hierarchy. The events of 2025 seemed to validate this view.
People watching from Cairo, Karachi, Johannesburg or São Paulo saw students in the United States arrested on campuses that once celebrated the civil rights movement. They saw French and German police beating or kettling demonstrators whose central demand was an end to bombing of civilians. They saw British politicians raising the idea of criminalizing specific slogans at protests. Then they compared this to lectures they had received for years about how their own societies needed to learn “Western values” of open debate and tolerance.
The result was a deepening scepticism. Western talk about a rules based order, about universal values and about peaceful protest as a cornerstone of democracy sounded emptier. It became harder for Western diplomats to sell human rights language to foreign governments when videos circulated of their own security forces dragging away young people wrapped in Palestinian flags.
There is another, more subtle effect as well. When people in the Global South see Western governments treat Palestine solidarity as a threat, they also see an opportunity for alignment. They observe that their own regimes and Western ones share an interest in managing and containing this issue. Authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa can point to bans and police actions in Europe and the United States as a justification for their own crackdowns. They can say, in effect, “Look, even the countries that lecture us do the same when it comes to Gaza.” That kind of mutual reinforcement normalizes repression across borders.
For movements that care about Palestine and broader justice, this landscape is challenging. It means that defending space for Gaza solidarity is not just about one cause. It is about defending the principle that people can criticize states and systems without being treated as criminals. It is about insisting that anti Zionism is not the same as antisemitism, that naming apartheid is not hate speech, and that solidarity with an occupied people is not terrorism.
In that sense, 2025 was a warning and a lesson. The warning is that legal and institutional tools developed against Palestine can and will be used against others. The lesson is that struggles for Palestine, civil liberties and democratic space are now entangled. Protecting one requires fighting for all.
SECTION X: U.S. POLICY AND THE ARMING OF DESTRUCTION
Throughout 2025, U.S. policy on Israel remained consistent in one central dimension: military support.
Billions of dollars in weapons and security assistance continued to flow. Bombs, artillery shells, jets, armored vehicles and intelligence systems all played a part in the devastation of Gaza and the continued control of the West Bank. Calls for conditioning or suspending aid gained traction among some U.S. lawmakers and a significant portion of the public, but the core of the political establishment refused to change course.
Claims that Washington was working for a “postwar vision” for Gaza rang hollow. Plans that were floated spoke about demilitarization, international administration and reconstruction. They rarely spoke in meaningful terms about Palestinian sovereignty or the dismantling of apartheid like structures.
The Trump camp’s idea of a “Gaza takeover” by an international consortium, backed by Arab money and overseen by Western and perhaps even Pakistani or Arab troops, was an extreme version of this mentality. It saw Gaza primarily as a security problem to be managed and a business opportunity to be exploited, rather than as a society that had been bombed into ruins and deserved self determination.
For many Muslims, this confirmed that the United States is not an honest broker. It is a party to the conflict on the side of the occupier. It may occasionally press for pause or restraint, but it does not question the fundamental hierarchy of power between Israelis and Palestinians.
SECTION XI: RUSSIA, UKRAINE AND A WEAKER HAND IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Russia’s role in the region looked very different by the end of 2025 compared to just a few years earlier.
The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, followed by a messy transition, weakened Moscow’s main foothold in the Arab world. While Russian forces still held military bases, their political influence had waned. Other actors, including Turkey, Iran and various Gulf states, began to shape Syria’s future more heavily.
At the same time, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine consumed resources and attention. The Kremlin had fewer chips to play in the Middle East. It could not offer Palestinians real protection or pressure Israel in meaningful ways, beyond rhetoric and occasional diplomatic moves.
For Palestinians and many in the Muslim world, this made clear that no great power was going to “save” them. The American empire was aligned with Israel. The Russian alternative was struggling and compromised. China kept its distance, preferring economic engagement and cautious statements.
This contributed to a broader realization. The fight for Palestinian rights would not be won by appealing to empires. It would have to rely on people power, international law, economic pressure and a long struggle from below.
SECTION XII: HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE REGION THROUGH THE PALESTINE LENS
Looking across the Middle East and Pakistan in 2025, one can map human rights conditions country by country. But a more revealing approach is to ask a simple question. How does each state treat its own citizens when they stand for Palestine?
In Egypt, peaceful Gaza solidarity can lead to terrorism charges. In Jordan, it can get you prosecuted under cybercrime laws. In Saudi Arabia, it can cost you your job or your freedom. In the UAE, it is effectively impossible in public. In Pakistan, it can get you killed in places like Muridke.
These reactions reveal more about each regime than any polished speech in international conferences. They show which states see their people as partners and which see them as threats. They also show how deeply Palestine is intertwined with questions of democracy, accountability and basic freedoms.
For many citizens, Palestine became the safest way to test the limits of speech, because it is officially endorsed. But they quickly discovered that even here, the line between allowed and forbidden is drawn by the regime, not by moral principle.
SECTION XIII: A SHIFT IN CONSCIOUSNESS
Beyond governments and armies, 2025 mattered because of what it did to ordinary minds.
Among young Muslims in particular, support for Palestine moved from charity to structural thinking. People did not only want to “help Gaza.” They wanted to end the systems that produce wars on Gaza in the first place.
They learned the language of international law, apartheid conventions, settler colonial theory and genocide prevention. They connected Palestine to other struggles, from Black Lives Matter to Indigenous rights, from anti caste movements to climate justice. They saw that different communities across the world recognize something of their own history in the image of bombed homes in Gaza or bulldozers in the West Bank.
At the same time, many lost whatever faith they still had in existing institutions. They watched international courts issue rulings without teeth, Western governments preach values while arming slaughter, and their own rulers invoke Islam while jailing people who lived its principles of justice.
This loss of illusion is painful. But it can also be liberating. It clears the way for new kinds of organizing, rooted less in appeal to authority and more in solidarity from below.
SECTION XIV: TRAGEDY AND TURNING POINT
From a pro Palestine, pro Muslim peoples perspective, 2025 stands as both a tragedy and a turning point.
The tragedy is obvious. Tens of thousands of Palestinians killed. Entire neighborhoods wiped out. Children traumatized beyond words. The West Bank further carved up and suffocated. Authoritarianism turbocharged across the region. Muridke’s streets stained with the blood of Pakistanis who marched for Gaza. Families in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Karachi learning that a flag, a chant or a Facebook post can bring a knock on the door at night.
The turning point is subtler but just as real.
Legal records now contain the names of Israeli leaders as suspected war criminals. The word “genocide” is no longer taboo in mainstream debates about Gaza. Palestine solidarity has become truly global, spanning continents and identities. Millions of Muslims now see their own freedom as tied to Palestinian freedom, and their own regimes as obstacles, not guardians.
Authoritarian governments have overreached, showing their willingness to crush even the most widely shared moral cause. In doing so, they have undermined their own legitimacy in the eyes of a new generation.
Conclusion
The events of 2025 do not offer a clean ending or a comforting roadmap. There is no dramatic turning point, no decisive victory, no signed agreement that suddenly makes sense of the carnage in Gaza or the repression in places like Muridke, Cairo or Amman. What this year does give, however, is a much clearer view of the landscape. It strips away some of the illusions that still surrounded Palestine, the Muslim world and the international system. It shows who stands where, and at what cost.
For journalists, activists and readers who care, several hard truths now stand out.
First, Palestine is no longer a marginal issue that can be tucked into the foreign pages or the final minutes of a news bulletin. It sits at the centre of debates about democracy, empire, law and identity. When students in New York or London set up encampments for Gaza, they are not only talking about a strip of land on the Mediterranean. They are talking about what kind of political order they live in, who is allowed to challenge power and whose lives are seen as expendable. When courts in The Hague weigh genocide charges against Israeli leaders, they are not only determining one case. They are testing whether the language of international law has any real force when it touches a close ally of the West.
Second, the Muslim street has shown, again and again, that it is willing to pay a high price to stand with Gaza and the West Bank, even when its own governments stand in the way. That was always true at an emotional level. In 2025 it became true at a physical and legal level. People knew they could be arrested for carrying a Palestine flag in Riyadh or for posting a Gaza video in Amman. They knew that marching in Cairo could put them in a cell, and that chanting in Karachi could put them in the crosshairs. They came out anyway. In some cases, they paid with their jobs and their futures. In others, they paid with their blood.
Pakistan offers the clearest and most brutal example. For decades, Pakistan’s leaders wrapped themselves in the Palestinian flag. In speeches at the UN and at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, they described themselves as guardians of Al Aqsa and champions of Gaza. In October 2025, when ordinary Pakistanis tried to act on that rhetoric by joining the Labbaik Aqsa march, the state answered them with live ammunition. The massacre at Muridke was not a clash that went wrong. It was a deliberate act of intimidation by a state that wanted to send a message to its own people: Gaza belongs on our podiums, not on your banners. Your solidarity is acceptable only when we control it. Once it becomes independent and confrontational, it becomes a target.
That leads to a third point. The main obstacles to Palestinian freedom are not only in Tel Aviv and Washington. They are also in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Islamabad and other capitals that line up for photographs with Palestinian flags while cooperating closely with Israel and the United States behind closed doors. These regimes may condemn Israeli airstrikes in public, but they also jail citizens who demand real consequences, such as sanctions, arms embargoes or treaty cancellations. They may send aid trucks toward Gaza, but they will not allow their own people to march to Rafah. They may speak about the sanctity of Al Aqsa, but they police every sermon that mentions it in a way that links it to domestic power.
One of the clearest lessons of 2025 is that Palestine has become a mirror for every government in the Muslim world. The question is no longer simply “What is your position on Israel?” It is “What do you do to your own people when they stand with Palestine?” The answers differ in detail, but the pattern is consistent. Where there is authoritarianism, Palestine solidarity is seen as a threat. Where there is fragile legitimacy, Palestine is treated as an imported fire that must be contained.
There is also a deeper shift, one that matters for anyone trying to write or organize around these questions. For a long time, Palestine could be framed as a humanitarian tragedy. Palestinians were victims who needed charity and sympathy. In 2025, that framing feels insufficient. More and more people, especially younger ones, are describing Palestine as a test of structures: occupation, apartheid, militarism, racial hierarchy and the way global capitalism interacts with all of these. When people chant for Gaza now, they often speak in the same breath about police violence in Paris, racism in the United States, caste oppression in India, or border regimes in Europe. They see connections, not analogies.
This is where stories and networks become central. States hold guns, prisons and legal codes. They control borders and budgets. But they do not fully control narratives. In 2025, the battle over Gaza and Palestine played out not only in diplomatic cables, but also on phones and timelines. Videos from bombed apartment blocks in Khan Younis, audio messages recorded from beneath rubble in Jabalia, live streams from checkpoints in the West Bank: all of these reached audiences far beyond what traditional media could have done alone. They changed how people talk about Palestine and who they listen to.
The same is true for the other fronts of this story. The testimonies from Muridke, even if many were suppressed, travelled through family networks, encrypted chats and diaspora communities. The chants from Rabat, Jakarta, London and Johannesburg became shared reference points. Legal briefs filed in The Hague and in domestic courts were read, summarized and debated far from the courtrooms where they were submitted. An advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice might seem distant, but when it uses words like “occupation” more clearly, it feeds directly into how activists frame their demands and how journalists pose questions.
For those who write, film or organize, this means that the work is not merely descriptive. It is also connective. It joins the dots between a child in Gaza who records a TikTok under bombardment, a student in Boston who refuses to let a university silence her, a farmer near Nablus who loses his olive groves to settlers, a young man in Muridke whose body is carried away in the dark, and a lawyer in The Hague who spends her nights drafting arguments about starvation as a weapon of war. Each of these is a separate story. Together, they form a map of a global struggle in which Palestine is both a specific place and a symbol.
Seen this way, 2025 is not just a year of despair. It is also a year of tightening connections. Global solidarity networks for Palestine are no longer vague gestures. They have shape: campus encampments, boycott campaigns, legal clinics, translation collectives, independent media platforms, small community groups that adopt a family in Gaza or a political prisoner in Egypt. They are often fragile, underfunded and vulnerable to repression. But they exist. They reached a visibility and scale in 2025 that even seasoned activists say they have never seen before.
At the same time, there is a danger that must be named honestly. Exhaustion is real. The constant stream of images from Gaza, the repeated defeats in political arenas, the brutality of crackdowns in places like Muridke or Cairo can drain people’s capacity to feel and to act. Many Palestinians speak about a sense of being watched as they die, of being turned into content in other people’s feeds. Many activists in the diaspora speak about burnout, about feeling that despite all their efforts, bombs still fall and prisoners still disappear.
This is where a long view is essential. Liberation struggles rarely move in straight lines. They are uneven, full of setbacks and false dawns. The anti apartheid struggle in South Africa, the fight against colonialism in Algeria, the civil rights movement in the United States: all of these seemed, at various points, hopeless. All of them faced powerful local elites backed by global empires. All of them relied on a combination of local organizing, international solidarity, legal challenges and narrative shifts. None of them would have been possible if people in those moments had insisted on quick victories or given up when the first efforts failed.
Palestine is now clearly in that family of struggles. The fact that international courts are finally naming Israeli crimes more bluntly does not mean justice will follow immediately. The fact that public opinion in many countries has shifted against the war on Gaza does not mean governments will suddenly change policy. The fact that millions marched does not mean that the next protest will be as large. But these are openings, not endings.
For the Muslim world, there is a particular internal reckoning that 2025 has forced. It is no longer enough for a government to vote “yes” on a UN resolution about Palestine or to host a conference. Citizens are watching what that government does at home. Does it allow a march for Gaza, or does it beat it back? Does it tolerate criticism of Israel, or does it treat that criticism as a pretext to crush broader dissent? Does it treat Palestine as a living cause, or as a set of talking points?
As a journalist, you are in a position to track that reckoning. You can ask uncomfortable questions in your writing. For example: when an Arab or Muslim leader denounces Israeli war crimes, what is the state of their own prisons? When they talk about standing with Gaza, what happened the last time young people in their capital tried to stand with Gaza without permission? When they praise the ICC warrants, what do they say about the same court when it looks at their own conduct?
You are also in a position to shape form, not only content. Long, deeply reported narratives about specific events, such as the Muridke massacre, can cut through abstraction. By following one family, one street, one protest, you can allow readers to feel the stakes of this global story in a concrete way. The same is true for a student group in Morocco or a lawyer in Amman fighting a cybercrime charge over a Facebook post. These are the human entry points into what might otherwise feel like a distant geopolitical chess game.
Turning sections of your larger piece into stand alone features, as you mentioned, is a powerful strategy. A narrative on Muridke can explore how a state that claims to champion Palestine abroad can commit murder at home in Palestine’s name. A profile of a young Egyptian activist arrested at the Global March to Gaza can show how Gaza is both a border and a mirror. A deep dive into the legal battles at the ICC and ICJ can make clear how international law both empowers and frustrates those seeking justice.
In the end, the conclusion that 2025 offers is not a slogan, but a responsibility. Palestine is now embedded in the global story of what kind of world is emerging from this century’s crises. The Muslim world’s people have shown, in streets and squares and at terrible cost, that they see Palestinian freedom as bound up with their own. Their governments, for the most part, have shown that they fear that connection.
Between those two realities lies the space for journalism, activism and reflection. The task is not to pretend that liberation is around the corner, but to record, connect and sharpen the lines of struggle so that when openings do appear, people are ready to move. The stories from Gaza, Muridke, Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Karachi, Casablanca and Jakarta are not separate chapters. They are different verses of the same unfinished text.
If 2025 is remembered only as a year of death and repression, the regimes and armies will have had the final word. If it is remembered instead as the year when Palestine’s cause finally anchored itself, deeply and irreversibly, in the conscience of the Muslim world and far beyond, then it becomes something else: a dark but decisive passage in a much longer march.