NEWS

Israel international Shon Weissman was expected to complete move from Spain’s Granada to Germany’s Fortuna Dusseldorf.

Bundesliga 2 side Fortuna Dusseldorf has pulled out of signing Israel striker Shon Weissman in response to fan anger about his social media posts on the Gaza war, German tabloid Bild has reported.

Fan furore erupted online on Monday when news emerged that Weissman was on the cusp of joining Dusseldorf from Spanish side Granada FC.

On Tuesday, the club tweeted: “We looked into Shon Weissman intensively, but ultimately decided not to sign him”.

The club did not reveal the reasons for the decision, but Bild reported the club reacted to fan anger about social media statements from Weissman, who was already in Dusseldorf and had completed a medical exam.

The centre forward, who has 33 Israel caps, made several social media posts after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that set off the Gaza war.

Bild reported that Weissman called for Israel to “wipe Gaza off the map” and to “drop 200 tons of bombs on it”.

The 29-year-old had also liked posts saying “there are no innocents [in Gaza], they don’t need to be warned”.

Weissman, who deleted the posts soon after making them, has since said he made a mistake and was acting in the heat of the moment.

Dusseldorf fans launched an online petition on Monday saying Weissman’s “disrespectful and discriminatory” comments are in stark contrast to the principles Fortuna “stand for and try to promote”.

Weissman has already been the subject of fan protests in Granada, a side he joined in January 2023.

Bild reported that Dusseldorf and Weissman had planned to issue an apology statement for the posts, which was to be made public after the signing was made official.

After 22 months of combat in Gaza sparked by the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,219 people and saw hundreds kidnapped, the Israeli army has devastated large parts of the Palestinian territory.

More than 60,933 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, and humanitarian agencies have warned that the territory’s 2.4 million people are slipping into a catastrophic famine.

Germany, as it has sought to atone for the Holocaust, has long been a steadfast supporter of Israel, but concern has risen sharply over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The war has previously made an impact in professional football in Germany.

In 2023, Bundesliga side Mainz decided to sack player Anwar El Ghazi for statements made on social media about the conflict.

El Ghazi, a Dutch international with Moroccan roots, won a wrongful dismissal case in a German court against the club, who have since appealed.

Former Bayern Munich defender Noussair Mazraoui, now with Manchester United, apologised publicly after making several social media posts on the conflict, including one which called for “victory” for “our oppressed brothers in Palestine”.

German football fans are heavily involved in major decisions, from signing players to setting fixtures, due to the so-called 50+1 regulation, which requires club members to retain overall control of professional football sides.

Urgency surrounds the future of the two-state solution as Israel ramps up its control of historic Palestinian territory. And even though several countries have moved to recognise a Palestinian state, many observers say it’s too late. Soraya Lennie breaks it down.

‘Most officers want that information out there’

The humanitarian situation is taking a heavy toll on women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) amid the armed violence unsettling the country.

Bruno Lemarquis, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in the DR Congo, has raised concerns over unmet needs regarding protection and care for survivors of violence, especially women. Lemarquis expressed his concern during an online campaign for aid funding tagged “Every Dollar Counts.”

“It is a crisis of protection, the women and children being the first victims,” the humanitarian coordinator said.

Violence linked to conflicts results in massive displacements, exposing women to added risks, notably sexual aggression, precarious sanitary situations and exclusion from essential services. On the ground, despite considerable efforts by humanitarian teams, resources remain insufficient. By mid-July this year, only 13 per cent of the funds necessary for the year had been raised. This crisis of financing has direct effects. In certain zones, the women who are victims of sexual violence no longer receive medical treatment or psycho-social support, which is indispensable to their well-being.

During a recent mission in North Kivu and South Kivu, Lemarquis visited a health centre supported by Humanitarian Funds. While childbirth is free of charge, the available resources are significantly below what is needed. There is a lack of personnel, equipment, and medicine, which compromises the quality of maternal care.

Women are also affected by the insufficiency of water, hygiene and sanitation, which aggravates their vulnerability in the face of epidemics such as cholera. Only 10 per cent of the needs in these sectors are daily covered. 

“Thanks to humanitarian teams on the ground, these modest contributions are being transformed into concrete actions: hygiene kits to prevent diseases, protection for the survivors of violence,” Lemarquis said, adding that the “Each Dollar Counts” campaign aims to mobilise the necessary resources to protect women in the most fragile contexts and guarantee minimum access to vital services.

Texas Republicans, at President Donald Trump’s urging, are preparing to redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that could flip up to five seats to the GOP in 2026. Trump hopes to boost Republicans’ chances of maintaining a narrow House majority amid the headwinds of the midterm election.

The manoeuvre in Texas would be legal and not unprecedented for the state, which also undertook a Republican-driven redistricting in 2003. But Democrats have called the move a partisan power grab and an affront to the traditional practice of drawing new congressional districts every 10 years, after a new Census.

But the debate over Texas’s electoral map has also prompted broader questions over the fairness of the way in which voting districts are outlined. And the one state bigger than Texas – California – has caught the attention of Vice President JD Vance.

“The gerrymander in California is outrageous,” Vance posted July 30 on X. “Of their 52 congressional districts, 9 of them are Republican. That means 17 percent of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40 percent of the vote in that state. How can this possibly be allowed?”

So, does California have an unfair map, as Vance said?

By the numbers, California is not a dramatic outlier when it comes to the difference between its congressional and presidential vote. However, because this difference is multiplied by a large number of districts – since California is the United States’ most populous state – it produces a bounty of House seats beyond what the state’s presidential vote alone would predict.

Vance’s description of California’s map as a “gerrymander” is also doubtful – it was drawn by a bipartisan commission, not Democratic legislators. Gerrymandering is done by politicians and political parties.

Vance’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

What the numbers show

Our first step was to measure the difference between each state’s House-seat breakdown by party and its presidential-vote breakdown by party, which is what Vance cited. (Our analysis builds off of a 2023 Sabato’s Crystal Ball story written by this author. Sabato’s Crystal Ball is a publication of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.) We removed from consideration any state with one, two or three House members in its delegation, because these small states have wide differentials that skew the comparison.

For red states won by Trump, we took the percentage of Republican seats in the House delegation and subtracted the percentage of the vote Trump won in that state. Conversely, for blue states won by Kamala Harris, we took the percentage of Democratic seats in the House delegation and subtracted the percentage of the vote Harris won in the state.

Our analysis found that California did elect more Democrats to the House than its presidential vote share would have predicted, but the state was not an outlier. With 83% of its House seats held by Democrats and 58% of its 2024 presidential votes going to Democrats, California ranked 13th nationally among 35 states that have at least four seats in their delegation.

California has the nation’s 13th widest difference between House and presidential results

The top 13 differentials were split roughly evenly between blue and red states.

In six states that have at least four House seats – red Iowa, Utah, Arkansas and Oklahoma, and blue Connecticut and Massachusetts – a single party controls every House seat, even though the winning presidential candidate won between 56% and 66% of the vote in those states.

Another six states had a differential equal to or wider than California’s: Red South Carolina and Tennessee, and blue Oregon, Illinois and Maryland, plus purple Wisconsin.

California does stand out by another measure, because of its size.

If you multiply the House-to-presidential differential by the number of House seats in the delegation, you get a figure for “excess House seats”, the term used in the 2023 Sabato’s Crystal Ball article – essentially, a majority party’s bonus in House seats beyond what presidential performance would predict.

Because California has a large population represented by many House districts, even its modest differential produces a lot of extra Democratic House seats – 12, to be exact. That’s the largest of any state; the closest competitors are blue Illinois and New York, and red Florida, each of which has more than four excess seats for the majority party.

Texas’s current congressional map has 3.7 excess seats for the Republicans. That would increase to an 8.7-seat GOP bonus if the GOP can flip the five seats they’re hoping for in 2026.

Is California a “gerrymander”?

Vance described California’s map as a gerrymander, but political experts doubted that this term applies. A gerrymander typically refers to a map drawn by partisan lawmakers, and California’s is drawn by a commission approved by voters specifically to remove the partisanship from congressional map drawing.

“California’s congressional map is no gerrymander,” said Nathaniel Rakich, a contributing analyst to Inside Elections, a political analytics publication. “It was drawn by an independent commission consisting of five Republicans, five Democrats, and four independents that is generally upheld as one of the fairest map-drawing entities in any state.”

Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said commissions tend to produce a more competitive House battleground than a fully partisan system. Of the 19 House seats his outlet currently rates as toss-ups going into 2026, only two come from states where one party had a free hand to gerrymander the current district lines.

“I think it’s fair to say that commission and court-drawn maps can inject some competitiveness into the process,” Kondik said.

Because the seats were drawn by a commission, California has a lot of competitive seats. This helps California Republicans despite the state’s Democratic tilt.

According to the 2024 pre-election ratings by Sabato’s Crystal Ball, California had three Democratic-held seats in the “lean Democratic” category, and two more that were rated “likely Democratic”.

So, going into the election, five of California’s 40 Democratic-held seats are at least somewhat vulnerable to a Republican takeover. Texas Democrats aren’t so lucky, under its existing map: They are able to realistically target only one “likely Republican” seat out of 25 held by the GOP.

Sometimes, geography is the enemy of a “fair” map

Despite map makers’ efforts, it is sometimes impossible to produce a map that jibes perfectly with a state’s overall partisan balance. The cold facts of geography can prevent this.

One oft-cited example is Massachusetts, which hasn’t elected a Republican to the US House since 1994. There are few Republican hotbeds in Massachusetts, and experts say they can’t be easily connected into coherent congressional districts.

“Especially in deep-red or deep-blue states, parties tend to get a higher share of seats than they do of votes,” Rakich said. “Imagine a state where Republicans get two-thirds of the vote in every district; obviously, they would get 100 percent of their seats.”

Rakich said Democrats are geographically distributed more favourably in California. But in other states, Republicans benefit from better geographic distribution.

“I haven’t heard Vance complain about the fact that Democrats only get 25 percent of Wisconsin’s congressional seats despite regularly getting 50 percent of the vote there,” Rakich added.

Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother’s grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan’s Indus delta.

Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities.

“The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides,” said Khatti from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, about 15km (9 miles) from where the river empties into the sea.

As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring, until that too became impossible, with only four of the 150 households remaining.

“In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area,” he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses.

Kharo Chan once comprised about 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater. The town’s population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data.

Khatti is preparing to move his family to nearby Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, which is swelling with economic migrants, including people from the Indus delta.

The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta’s coastal districts.

However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister.

The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s, as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the effects of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water.

That has led to devastating seawater intrusion. The salinity of the water has risen by about 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting the shrimp and crab populations.

“The delta is both sinking and shrinking,” said Muhammad Ali Anjum, a local WWF conservationist.

Beginning in Tibet, the Indus River flows through disputed Kashmir before traversing the entire length of Pakistan. The river and its tributaries irrigate about 80 percent of the country’s farmland, supporting millions of livelihoods. The delta, formed by rich sediment deposited by the river as it meets the sea, was once ideal for farming, fishing, mangroves and wildlife.

But more than 16 percent of fertile land has become unproductive due to encroaching seawater, a government water agency study found in 2019.

In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water’s edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground. Boats carry in drinkable water from kilometres away, and villagers cart it home via donkeys.

“Who leaves their homeland willingly?” said Haji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level.

He rebuilt farther inland, anticipating more families would join him. “A person only leaves their motherland when they have no other choice.”

British colonial rulers were the first to alter the course of the Indus River with canals and dams, followed more recently by dozens of hydropower projects. Earlier this year, several military-led canal projects on the Indus River were halted when farmers in the low-lying riverine areas of Sindh province protested.

To combat the degradation of the Indus River Basin, the government and the United Nations launched the “Living Indus Initiative” in 2021. One intervention focuses on restoring the delta by addressing soil salinity and protecting local agriculture and ecosystems.

The Sindh government is currently running its own mangrove restoration project, aiming to revive forests that serve as a natural barrier against saltwater intrusion. Even as mangroves are restored in some parts of the coastline, land grabbing and residential development projects drive clearing in other areas.

Neighbouring India, meanwhile, poses a looming threat to the river and its delta, after revoking a 1960 water treaty with Pakistan, which divides control over the Indus basin rivers. It has threatened never to reinstate the treaty and to build dams upstream, squeezing the flow of water to Pakistan, which has called it “an act of war”.

Alongside their homes, the communities have lost a way of life tightly bound up in the delta, said climate activist Fatima Majeed, who works with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum.

Women, in particular, who for generations have stitched nets and packed the day’s catches, struggle to find work when they migrate to cities, said Majeed, whose grandfather relocated the family from Kharo Chan to the outskirts of Karachi.

“We haven’t just lost our land; we’ve lost our culture.”

India cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar is amongst those to heap praise on the current team after Test series in England.

A euphoric India heaped praises on Shubman Gill and his men after they pulled off an edge-of-the-seat thriller at the Oval on Monday to split an all-time classic Test series with England.

Odds were stacked against India in their first Test series under Gill, who inherited a team depleted by the retirement of batting stalwarts Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli – two men who preceded him in that role.

As if the gaping holes in their batting order were not bad enough, veteran seamer Mohammed Shami was deemed unfit for the tour, while pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah was available only for three of the five Tests as part of his workload management.

Gill and his men went on to record memorable victories at Edgbaston and the Oval to secure a 2-2 series draw and assure their legions of fans that the future of Indian cricket was in safe hands.

The indefatigable Mohammed Siraj led their lion-hearted bowling effort in the series finale to script a six-run victory amid high drama.

Batting great Sachin Tendulkar led tributes to the team and said the quality of cricket on offer was “absolute goosebumps”.

“Series 2–2, Performance 10/10! SUPERMEN from INDIA! What a win,” the former India captain wrote on X.

England needed 35 runs on Monday to secure a 3-1 series win with four wickets in hand, but Siraj struck three times to secure a famous victory for his team.

“In a nail-biting, riveting hour of cricket at England’s oldest test match ground, in characteristically cloudy Olde Blighty weather, India pulled off a historic heist,” the Hindustan Times newspaper wrote.

An Indian Express headline read “Miracles Do Happen” and the newspaper explained how Gill had stepped up as captain of a “gun team”.

The Hindu waxed eloquent on the “Mission accomplished”.

“After 25 days of riveting action, the best was saved for the last as Shubman Gil’s men rode Mohammed Siraj’s sensational spell to pull off a remarkable victory,” it said.

“It was a litmus test for an Indian team in transition but the young side showed heart and character as it fought back from tough situations to share the honours.”

TV presenter Jay Blades has been charged with two counts of rape.

Mr Blades, best known for hosting BBC show The Repair Shop, will appear in court next Wednesday over the allegations, police said.

A West Mercia Police spokesperson said: “Jason Blades, 55, of Claverley in Shropshire, has been charged with two counts of rape.

“He is due to appear at Telford magistrates’ court on 13 August 2025.”

Separately, a pre-trial review is taking place for Mr Blades at Worcester Crown & County Court on Tuesday regarding a charge of engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour against the presenter’s estranged wife Lisa Zbozen. Mr Blades pleaded not guilty to the charge at a plea hearing in October.

Mr Blades became one of the best-known faces on British TV after The Repair Shop launched in 2017, with members of the public bringing their treasured possessions and heirlooms to be fixed.

It began in a daytime slot and then moved to primetime after it became a hit.

The show won a National Television Award in 2023, and also won a Bafta the same year for its royal special, in which the future King took a clock and a vase to the workshop.

He has also hosted Money for Nothing, Jay Blades’ Home Fix and Jay and Dom’s Home Fix, and in 2022 he fronted a documentary about learning to read at the age of 51.

He was honoured with an MBE in 2021.

Mr Blades stepped back from presenting The Repair Shop last year.

Australian minister lauds deal for next-generation, Mogami-class frigates and their long-range missile capabilities.

Australia and Japan have reached the largest defence-industry agreement ever between both countries for the production of advanced warships for the Australian Navy, the country’s Minister for Defence Richard Marles said.

Australia will upgrade its naval force with 11 Mogami-class frigates, built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Marles said on Tuesday, with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC, reporting that the contract was worth $10 billion Australian dollars (some $6.5bn).

“This is clearly the biggest defence-industry agreement that has ever been struck between Japan and Australia,” Marles said.

Mogami-class warships are advanced stealth frigates capable of launching long-range missiles, and have an operational range of up to 10,000 nautical miles (18,520km), compared with Australia’s current Anzac-class frigates, which have a range of about 6,000 nautical miles (11,112km), Marles said.

The new ships, which will be in service by 2030, also operate with a smaller crew than the Anzac class.

“It is a next-generation vessel. It is stealthy,” Marles said.

“It’s going to be really important in terms of giving our navy the capability to project, and impactful projection is at the heart of the strategic challenge,” Marles said, adding that the deal was also “a very significant moment in the bilateral relationship between Australia and Japan”.

Australia’s Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said: “It will take our general purpose frigates from being able to fire 32 air defence missiles to 128 missiles, giving our sailors the cutting‑edge weapons and combat systems they need.”

While Canberra did not specify a price tag for the vessels, only that it was part of a broader 55 billion Australian dollars ($35.5bn) “investment over the decade for the Navy’s surface combatant fleet”, the Reuters news agency reported that the “three frigate contract” will see three ships built in Japan, and a remaining eight expected to be built by Australia.

The contract for the frigates is Japan’s biggest and most significant defence deal since it lifted a decades-long ban on military exports in 2014, and only the second after it agreed to supply air defence radars to the Philippines.

Japanese Minister of Defence Gen Nakatani said it was a “major step forward in Japan’s defence cooperation efforts”.

“The benefits include enhanced joint operations and interoperability with both Australia and the United States,” he told a briefing in Tokyo.

“This collaboration is of significant security importance to Japan,” Nakatani said.

Negotiations will begin this year on a contract for the deal, which is expected to be signed in 2026, Australian and Japanese officials said.

Australia is in the midst of a major military restructuring announced in 2023, with a focus on long-range strike capabilities to better respond to China’s naval might.

It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next 10 years.

In the men’s event, taking place in Toronto, Alexander Zverev battled back from a set down to beat defending champion Alexei Popyrin 6-7 (6-8) 6-4 6-3.

The 28-year-old German is into his 75th semi-final on the ATP Tour, becoming the only active men’s player to have reached that milestone alongside Novak Djokovic.

He will face Russian Karen Khachanov, who moved past Alex Michelsen of the United States 6-4 7-6 (7-3).

The Cincinnati Open confirmed Djokovic had withdrawn for “non-medical” reasons from the tournament, which begins on Thursday.

The 24-time Grand Slam champion, who is not competing in Toronto because of a groin injury, has not played since losing to Jannik Sinner in the semi-finals of Wimbledon.

The 38-year-old is unlikely to play before the US Open, which starts on 24 August.

When I was a freshman at Columbia University in 1999, the professor of my Literature Humanities course shared some personal information with my class, which was that she slept exactly three hours per night. I forget what prompted the disclosure, though I do recall it was made not to elicit pity but rather as a matter-of-fact explanation of the way things were: sleeping more than three hours a night simply did not allow her sufficient time to simultaneously maintain her professorship and tend to her baby.

This, of course, was before the era of smartphones took the phenomenon of rampant sleep deprivation to another level. But modern life has long been characterised by a lack of proper sleep – an activity that happens to be fundamental to life itself.

I personally cannot count the times I have awakened at one or two o’clock in the morning to work, unable to banish from my brain the capitalist guilt at engaging in necessary restorative rest rather than being, you know, “productive” 24 hours a day.

And yet mine is a privileged variety of semi-self-imposed sleep deprivation; I am not, for example, being denied adequate rest because I have to work three jobs to put food on the table for my family.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health agency of the United States, approximately one-third of US adults and children under the age of 14 get insufficient sleep, putting them at increased risk for anxiety, depression, heart disease, and a host of other potentially life-threatening maladies. As per CDC calculations, a full 75 percent of US high schoolers do not sleep enough.

While the recommended amount of sleep for adults is at least seven hours per day, a 2024 Gallup poll reported that 20 percent of US adults were getting five hours or less – a trend attributable in part to rising stress levels among the population.

To be sure, it’s easy to feel stressed out when your government appears more interested in sending billions upon billions of dollars to Israel to assist in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip than in, say, facilitating existence for Americans by offering healthcare, education, and housing options that don’t require folks to work themselves to death to afford.

Then again, pervasive stress and anxiety work just fine for those sectors of the for-profit medical establishment that make bank off of treating such afflictions.

Meanwhile, speaking of the Gaza Strip, residents of the occupied territory are well acquainted with acute sleep deprivation, which is currently a component of the Israeli military’s genocidal arsenal for wearing Palestinians down both physically and psychologically. Not that a good night’s sleep in Gaza was ever really within the realm of possibility – even prior to the launch of the all-out genocide in 2023 – given Israel’s decades-long terrorisation of the Strip via periodic bombardments, massacres, sonic booms, the ubiquitous deployment of buzzing drones, and other manoeuvres designed to inflict individual and collective trauma.

A study on trauma and sleep disruption in Gaza – conducted in November 2024 and published this year in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Psychology – notes that, in the present context of Israel’s round-the-clock assault, “the act of falling asleep is imbued with existential dread”. The study quotes one Gaza mother who had already lost three of her seven children to Israeli bombings: “Every time I close my eyes, I see my children in front of me, so I’m afraid to sleep.”

Of course, Israel’s penchant for killing entire families in their sleep no doubt exacerbates the fear associated with it. The study observes that children in Gaza have been “stripped of the simple peace that sleep should offer, forced to endure nightmares born from real-life horrors”, while overcrowded shelters have rendered the pursuit of shut-eye ever more elusive.

Furthermore, mass forced displacement in the Gaza Strip “has deprived families of their homes, severing the link between sleep and security”.

A recent article in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics argues that sleep is a human right that is integral to human health – and that its deprivation is torture. It seems we can thus go ahead and add mass torture to the list of US-backed Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Naturally, the US has engaged in plenty of do-it-yourself torture over the years, as well, including against detainees in Guantanamo Bay – where sleep deprivation was standard practice along with waterboarding, “rectal rehydration”, and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

In her 2022 study of sleep deprivation as a form of torture, published by the Maryland Law Review, Deena N Sharuk cites the case of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan teenager imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay in 2003 and subjected to what was “referred to as the Frequent Flyer Program”, whereby detainees were repeatedly moved between cells in order to disrupt their sleep.

According to Sharuk, Jawad was moved “every three hours for fourteen consecutive days, totaling 112 moves”. The young man subsequently attempted suicide.

Now, the ever-expanding array of immigration detention facilities in the US offers new opportunities to withhold sleep, as victims of the country’s war on refuge seekers are crammed into cages illuminated at all hours by fluorescent lights.

And while a well-rested world would surely be a more serene one, such a prospect remains the stuff of dreams.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Sinthia Mehrin Sokal remembers the blow to her head on July 15 last year when she, along with thousands of fellow students, marched during a protest against a controversial quota system in government jobs in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

The attack by an activist belonging to the student wing of the then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party left Sokal – a final-year student of criminology at the University of Dhaka – with 10 stitches and temporary memory loss.

A day later, Abu Sayed, another 23-year-old student, was protesting at Begum Rokeya University in the Rangpur district, about 300km (186 miles) north of Dhaka, when he was shot by the police. A video of him, with his arms outstretched and collapsing on the ground moments later, went viral, igniting an unprecedented movement against Hasina, who governed the country with an iron fist for more than 15 years before she was toppled last August.

Students from schools, colleges, universities and madrassas took to the streets, defying a brutal crackdown. Soon, the young protesters were joined by their parents, teachers and other citizens. Opposition parties, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, lent crucial support, forming an unlikely united front against Hasina’s government.

“Even students in remote areas came out in support. It felt like real change was coming,” Sokal told Al Jazeera.

On August 5, 2024, as tens of thousands of protesters stormed Hasina’s palatial residence and offices in Dhaka, the 77-year-old leader boarded a military helicopter and fled to neighbouring India, her main ally, where she continues to defy a Bangladesh court’s orders to face trial for crimes against humanity and other charges.

By the time Hasina fled, more than 1,400 people had been killed, most when government forces fired on protesters, and thousands of others were wounded, according to the United Nations.

Three days after Hasina fled, the protesters installed an interim government, on August 8, 2024, led by the country’s only Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus. In May this year, the interim government banned the Awami League from any political activity until trials over last year’s killings of the protesters concluded. The party’s student wing, the Chhatra League, was banned under anti-terrorism laws in October 2024.

Yet, as Bangladesh marks the first anniversary of the end of Hasina’s government on Tuesday, Sokal said the sense of unity and hope that defined the 2024 uprising has given way to disillusionment and despair.

“They’re selling the revolution,” she said, referring to the various political groups now jostling for power ahead of general elections expected next year.

“The change we fought for remains out of reach,” said added. “The [interim] government no longer owns the uprising.”

‘What was my son’s sacrifice for?’

Yunus, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner presiding over Bangladesh’s democratic overhaul, faces mounting political pressure, even as his interim government seeks consensus on drafting a new constitution. Rival factions that marched shoulder to shoulder during anti-Hasina protests are now locked in political battles over the way forward for Bangladesh.

On Tuesday, Yunus is expected to unveil a so-called July Proclamation, a document to mark the anniversary of Hasina’s ouster, which will outline the key reforms that his administration argues Bangladesh needs – and a roadmap to achieve that.

But not many are hopeful.

“Our children took to the streets for a just, democratic and sovereign Bangladesh. But that’s not what we’re getting,” said Sanjida Khan Deepti, whose 17-year-old son Anas was shot dead by the police during a peaceful march near Dhaka’s Chankharpul area on August 5, 2024. Witnesses said Anas was unarmed and running for cover when a police bullet struck him in the back. He died on the spot, still clutching a national flag.

“The reforms and justice for the July killings that we had hoped – it’s not duly happening,” the 36-year-old mother told Al Jazeera. “We took to the streets for a better, peaceful and just country. If that doesn’t happen, then what was my son’s sacrifice for?”

Others, however, continue to hold firm in their trust in the interim government.

“No regrets,” said Khokon Chandra Barman, who lost almost his entire face after he was shot by the police in the Narayanganj district.

“I am proud that my sacrifice helped bring down a regime built on discrimination,” he told Al Jazeera.

Barman feels the country is in better hands now under the Yunus-led interim government. “The old evils won’t disappear overnight. But we are hopeful.”

Atikul Gazi agreed. “Yunus sir is capable and trying his best,” Gazi told Al Jazeera on Sunday. “If the political parties fully cooperated with him, things would be even better.”

The 21-year-old TikToker from Dhaka’s Uttara area survived being shot at point-blank range on August 5, 2024, but lost his left arm.

A selfie video of him smiling, despite missing an arm, posted on September 16 last year, went viral, making him a symbol of resilience.

“I’m not afraid… I’m back in the field. One hand may be gone, but my life is ready to be offered anew.”

‘Instability could increase’

Others are less optimistic. “That was a moment of unprecedented unity,” said Mohammad Golam Rabbani, a professor of history at Jahangirnagar University on the outskirts of Dhaka.

Rabbani had recited a poem during a campus protest on July 29, 2024. Speaking at an event last month to commemorate the uprising, he said: “Safeguarding that unity should have been the new government’s first task. But they let it slip.”

The coalition of students, professionals and activists, called Students Against Discrimination, that brought down Hasina’s government, began to fragment even before Yunus took charge.

Hoping to cash in on massive anti-Awami League sentiment, the main opposition BNP has been demanding immediate elections since the uprising. But parties like the National Citizens Party, formed by student leaders of the 2024 protests, and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami want deeper structural reforms before any vote is held.

To reconcile such demands, the Yunus administration formed a National Consensus Commission on February 12 this year. Its mandate is to merge multiple reform agendas outlined by expert panels into a single political blueprint. Any party or coalition that wins the next general election must formally pledge to implement this charter.

But so far, the meetings of the commission have been marked by rifts and dissent, mainly over having a bicameral parliament, adopting proportional representation in both its houses, and reforming the appointment process for key constitutional bodies by curbing the prime minister’s influence to ensure greater neutrality and non-partisanship.

“If the political forces fail to agree on reforms, instability could increase,” warned analyst Rezaul Karim Rony.

But Mubashar Hasan, adjunct fellow at Western Sydney University’s Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative, thinks a political deadlock is “unlikely”, and that most stakeholders seem to be moving towards elections next year.

Hasan, however, remains sceptical of the reforms themselves, calling them a “cosmetic reset”.

“There’ll be some democratic progress, but not a genuine shift,” he told Al Jazeera. He pointed out that the Awami League, which once represented millions, remains banned – a fact that some analysts have pointed out could weaken the credibility of Bangladesh’s electoral democracy. 

Deepti, who lost her teenage son during the protests, said political parties are scrambling for power, and not acting against the people who enabled Hasina’s brutal repression during last year’s protests.

“Most of the officials and law enforcement members involved in the violence are still at large, while political parties are more focused on grabbing power,” she told Al Jazeera.

Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, the spokesman for Inquilab Manch (Revolution Front), a non-partisan cultural organisation inspired by the uprising, warned that elections without justice and reforms would “push the country back into the jaws of fascism”.

His group, with more than 1,000 members in 25 districts, organises poetry readings, exhibitions and street performances to commemorate the 2024 uprising and demand accountability, amid widespread concerns over deteriorating law and order across the country.

‘A city of demonstrations’

While the police remain discredited and are yet to recover from the taint of complicity in perpetuating Hasina’s strong-armed governance, military soldiers are seen patrolling Bangladesh’s streets, armed with special power to arrest, detain and, in extreme cases, even fire on those breaking the law.

In a recent report, rights group Odhikar said at least 72 people were killed and 1,677 others injured in incidents of political violence between April and June this year. The group also documented eight alleged extrajudicial killings during this period involving the police and notorious paramilitary forces like the Rapid Action Battalion.

Other crimes have also surged.

Police recorded 1,587 cases of murder between January and May this year, a 25 percent rise from the same period last year. Robbery nearly doubled to 318, while crimes against women and children topped 9,100. Kidnapping and robbery have also seen a spike.

“Mob justice and targeted killings have surged, many with political links,” Md Ijajul Islam, the executive director of the nonprofit Human Rights Support Society, told Al Jazeera. “Unless political parties rein in their activists, a demoralised police won’t be able to contain it.”

The demoralisation within the police stems mostly from the 2024 uprising itself, when more than 500 police stations were attacked across Bangladesh and law enforcement officials were missing from the streets for more than a week.

“The force had to restart from a morally-broken state,” Ijajul said.

Several police officers Al Jazeera spoke to at the grassroots level pointed to another problem: the collapse of what they called an informal political order in rural areas.

“During the Awami League era, police often worked in tandem with the ruling party leaders, who mediated local disputes,” said a senior police officer at the Roumari police station in the Kurigram district near the border with India.

“That structure is gone. Now multiple factions – from BNP, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and others – are trying to control markets, transport hubs and government tenders,” he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

In Dhaka, things are no better.

“Every day, managing street protests has become one of our major duties,” Talebur Rahman, a deputy commissioner with the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told Al Jazeera.

“It feels like Dhaka has become ‘a city of demonstrations’ – people break into government offices, just to make their demands heard,” said Rahman.

Still, Rahman claimed the city’s law and order situation was better than immediately after the 2024 uprising. In a televised interview on July 15, Yunus’s spokesperson, Shafiqul Alam, also claimed that “if you consider overall statistics, things are stabilising”, he told Somoy Television network, referring to law and order in Dhaka.

Alam said that many people who were denied justice for years, including during the uprising, are now coming forward to register cases.

Some agree.

“Things are slowly improving,” said 38-year-old rickshaw-puller Mohammad Shainur in Dhaka’s upscale Bashundhara neighbourhood.

The economy, for one, has shown some positive signs. Bangladesh is the world’s 35th largest economy and the second in South Asia – mainly driven by its thriving garment and agriculture industries.

Foreign reserves climbed from more than $24bn in May 2024, to nearly $32bn by June this year, helped by a crackdown on illicit capital flight, record remittances and new funding from the International Monetary Fund. Inflation, which peaked at 11.7 percent in July 2024, dropped to 8.5 percent by June this year.

But there is also widespread joblessness, with the International Labour Organization saying that nearly 30 percent of Bangladesh’s youth are neither employed nor pursuing education. Moreover, a 20 percent tariff announced by the United States, the largest buyer of Bangladesh’s garments, also threatens the livelihood of 4 million workers employed in the key sector.

Back in Dhaka, Gazi is determined to preserve the memory of 2024’s protests.

“Let the people remember those martyred in the uprising, and those of us who were injured,” he told Al Jazeera. “We want to remain as living symbols of that freedom.”

“I lost one hand, and I have no regrets. I will give my life if needed – this country must be governed well, no matter who holds power.”

Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong has told the country’s media that “there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise”, amid Israel’s devastating war on Gaza and increasing violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Wong, who did not indicate that Australia plans to change its stance and recognise Palestinian statehood, made her comments in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ( ABC) on Tuesday morning, where she responded to questions about a mass protest in Sydney attended by hundreds of thousands of people rallying against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Organisers said that between 200,000 and 300,000 people joined the protest across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday. Police had initially estimated that about 90,000 people took part.

Wong said the Australian government shared the protesters “desire for peace and a ceasefire”, and that the huge turnout reflected “the broad Australian community’s horror” and the “distress of Australians, on what we are seeing unfolding in Gaza, the catastrophic humanitarian situation, the deaths of women and children, the withholding of aid”.

However, asked if Australia was considering taking any more concrete actions, such as imposing sanctions on Israel, Wong said: “We don’t speculate on sanctions for the obvious reason that they have more effect if they are not flagged.”

She noted that Australia had already imposed sanctions on two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in June this year, as well as “extremist” Israeli settlers.

On Australia’s position regarding Palestinian statehood, Wong said: “In relation to recognition, I’ve said for over a year now, it’s a matter of when, not if.”

Wong’s interview came as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is reportedly seeking to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of Sunday’s protest.

Responding to questions about what he plans to discuss with Netanyahu, Albanese said he would again express his support for a two-state solution.

Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said that the “only business” that Albanese should be discussing with Netanyahu is cancelling the “two-way arms trade between Australia and and Israel, new sanctions measures, and Netanyahu’s one-way trip to the [International Criminal Court] to face war crimes and crimes against humanity charges“.

Albanese “must not give legitimacy to an accused war criminal”, Arraf wrote in a post on X.

While both Albanese and Wong have continued to emphasise the importance of a two-state solution, Australia has yet to follow other countries, including France and Canada, that have recently announced their plans to recognise Palestinian statehood, and join the vast majority of countries which already do so.

Albanese also had a phone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, the first publicly recorded call between the pair since November 2023, according to the ABC.

Responding to questions about the Sydney protest rally, Albanese said: “It’s not surprising that so many Australians have been affected in order to want to show their concern at people being deprived of food and water and essential services.”

But the state government in New South Wales, which is led by Albanese’s Labor Party, had sought to prevent the march from crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the week leading up to the protest.

The protest only went ahead after State Supreme Court Justice Belinda Rigg ruled that “the march at this location is motivated by the belief that the horror and urgency of the situation in Gaza demands an urgent and extraordinary response from the people of the world”.

“The evidence indicates there is significant support for the march,” Rigg added.

A number of state and federal Labor ministers also took part in the march, in an indication of a growing divide within Albanese’s party.

Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein told Al Jazeera that Sunday’s march showed that Australians are “frustrated that our government is doing little more than talk at this point”.

“People are so outraged, not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also the Australian government’s complicity,” said Loewenstein, who spoke at the march on Sunday.

Australia “is part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, which Israel is using over Gaza every day, and the parts that are amongst those parts in the plane are probably coming from Australia”, he said.

Sudanese women who fled the city of el-Fasher say paramilitary Rapid Support Forces fighters killed, looted, and raped people during their escape. Now in Tawila, about 60km to the west, they face rain, hunger, and a growing cholera outbreak.

Here are the key events on day 1,258 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, August 5:

Fighting

• Three people were killed in a Russian attack on the Stepnohirsk community in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, the local military administration said on Telegram. Russia launched 405 attacks on 10 settlements in the region in the past day, the administration said on Monday.
• Russian drone attacks killed three people in the Chuhuiv district of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the regional prosecutor’s office said. The victims included a man killed when Russian drones caused a fire in his home in the village of Losivka, and a man and a woman who were riding a motorcycle when they were killed. The prosecutor’s office said it was investigating the motorcycle attack as a possible war crime.
• Russian attacks across Ukraine’s Kherson region killed one person and damaged homes, cars and a gas pipeline, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. A man who was injured by artillery shelling on the town of Beryslav on July 27 also passed away due to his injuries, Prokudin added.
• Russian attacks killed one person in Dobropillya city in the Pokrovsky region and another person in Kostiantynivka city, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
• Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) claimed that Ukrainian drones hit five Russian fighter jets at Saky airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, destroying one of them.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that mercenaries from China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and African countries are fighting with Russian forces in the Vovchansk area of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s general staff acknowledged that it was responsible for a drone attack that caused a fire at a fuel depot of Sochi airport in southern Russia on Sunday.

Military aid

• The Netherlands will contribute 500 million euros ($578m) to buy US military equipment for Ukraine, including Patriot air defence system parts and missiles. The purchase will make the Netherlands the first country to participate in a new scheme where NATO countries fund US weapons to send to Kyiv.

Sanctions

• India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement that the United States and European Union’s “targeting” of the nation for importing oil from Russia after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was “unjustified and unreasonable”.
• Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House, said earlier on Fox News: “What he [US President Donald Trump] said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia.”
• Trump said he would “substantially” increase tariffs on India for what he said was the buying and reselling of “massive amounts” of Russian oil “for big profits”.

Ceasefire talks

• Trump said his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, would again visit Russia to continue talks on its war in Ukraine.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian Former President Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow’s abandonment of a moratorium on medium- and short-range nuclear missiles was “the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy”, in a post on X.
• The trial has begun in the March 22, 2024, shooting attack in a Moscow concert hall that killed 149 people. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, without providing evidence, that Ukraine was involved in the attack, an allegation Kyiv vehemently denies.

Corruption

• Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau said in a statement that it had charged six people, including a lawmaker and a government official, involved in “systematically misappropriat[ing] funds allocated by local authorities for defence needs”, including funds meant for the purchase of drones and jamming equipment for the military.

The 42-year-old was detained by the British Transport Police after disembarking from a flight from Portugal.

Police in the United Kingdom have arrested the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson on suspicion of assault, following an attack last month at London’s St Pancras station.

The far-right campaigner, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was arrested at about 6.30pm (17:30 GMT) on Monday evening at Luton airport, which is located north of the English capital.

Robinson had just landed there on a flight from the Portuguese city of Faro.

His detention comes a week on from the alleged assault at one of London’s main railway terminals.

“The man had been wanted for questioning after leaving the country to Tenerife in the early hours of 29 July following the incident at St Pancras,” the British Transport Police (BTP) said on Monday evening.

He will now be questioned in custody “on suspicion of… grievous bodily harm”, the BTP added.

Although the statement did not directly name Robinson, he was shown in a video of the incident that was widely circulated online.

In the footage, the former founder of the far-right English Defence League is seen walking near a motionless man, claiming to have acted in self-defence.

The other man was taken to hospital with serious injuries, which the police said were “not thought to be life threatening”.

Robinson has numerous convictions for public order and contempt offences.

In May, he was released from a prison in Buckinghamshire four months early, after the high court cut his 18-month sentence.

He was imprisoned in October 2024 for contempt of court after admitting that he had flouted an injunction that prevented him from repeating false claims about a Syrian schoolboy.

The injunction came into force after the far-right activist lost a libel case against Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian refugee whom Robinson was judged to have defamed.

Robinson has been described by the advocacy group Hope Not Hate as “the UK’s most notorious far-right extremist”.

Earlier this year, tech billionaire and former adviser to United States President Donald Trump, Elon Musk called for Robinson to be freed from a UK prison where he was held at the time, and where he is likely to be returning after his latest arrest.

As Israel’s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza’s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return.

Khaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing vehicle on the coastal road in Deir-el-Balah, hoping against all odds that one of them might bring him home.

The boy had left the displaced family’s tent in the central town to find food for his parents and sister, who had lost her husband during the war, and headed to the Zikim crossing point, where aid trucks enter northern Gaza.

“He hasn’t returned until now. He went because he was hungry. We have nothing to eat,” the distraught father told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears with his wife under the blue tarpaulin where they are sheltering.

Khaled reported his son’s disappearance to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and every official body he could reach, to radio silence. To this day, he has received no answers on Ahmed’s whereabouts.

Khaled’s story is all too common under Israel’s ongoing punishing blockade of Gaza, where the largely displaced population faces a stark choice between starvation and braving the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and United States security contractors in a bid to get food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. These distribution points have been dubbed “death traps” and “human slaughterhouses” by the United Nations and rights groups.

It is a life-or-death gamble that has taken the lives of nearly 1,400 people, shot dead mainly by the Israeli army, at the aid sites since they started operations in late May and along food convoy routes, according to figures released by the UN last week. That is, without counting the untold numbers of missing aid seekers, like Ahmed.

Human rights monitors have been collecting harrowing firsthand accounts of people who have gone missing in Gaza, only to be found later, killed by Israeli forces.

“In many cases, those who went missing are apparently killed near the aid distribution points, but due to the Israeli targeting, their bodies remained unreachable,” Maha Hussaini, the head of media at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera.

“Many Palestinians left home with empty hands, hoping to return with a bag of flour. But many never came back,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah. “In Gaza, the line between survival and disappearance is now heartbreakingly thin.”

As the number of missing aid seekers mounts, famine stalks the enclave, with more than 80 adults reportedly dying of starvation over the past five weeks alone, and 93 children succumbing to man-made malnutrition since the war began.

Authorities in Gaza say an average of 84 trucks have entered the besieged enclave each day since Israel eased restrictions on July 27. But aid organisations say at least 600 aid trucks are needed per day to meet the territory’s basic needs.

‘Death circle’

On Monday, amid growing international condemnation over the mass starvation, seen by many as being deliberately engineered by Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to double down on his war goals.

Netanyahu announced that he would convene a meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday to ensure that “Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”. Israel’s Channel 12 cited an official as saying that Netanyahu was tending towards expanding the offensive.

The announcement came on another bloody day in the Strip, with at least 74 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since dawn on Monday, including 36 aid seekers, according to medical sources.

Among the attacks, at least three people were killed by an Israeli strike on a house in Deir el-Balah, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

A source at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City reported that seven people were killed in Israeli shelling on multiple areas in the Shujayea neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.

Emergency services said that two were killed in an Israeli bombing of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

It also emerged on Monday that a nurse at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah was killed when he was hit by an airdropped box of aid.

This week, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the dangerous airdrops as a “distraction” and smokescreen.

On Monday, UNICEF warned that 28 children – essentially an entire “classroom” – are dying each day from Israeli bombardment and lack of aid.

“Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW,” said the UN agency on X.

Death by bombardments.
Death by malnutrition and starvation.
Death by lack of aid and vital services.
In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.

Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a… pic.twitter.com/7QIQQ6IAoG

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 4, 2025

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to “assume its responsibilities” by enforcing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, conducting an official visit to the territory and implementing calls at a recent UN conference in New York for a two-state solution.

In a statement posted on social media on Monday, the ministry warned that more than two million Palestinians in Gaza are “living in a tight death circle of killing, starvation, thirst, and deprivation of medicine, treatment, and all basic human rights”.

Mike Johnson, the top legislator in the United States Congress, has visited an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, drawing condemnation from Palestinians.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the trip by the speaker of the US House of Representatives on Monday a “blatant violation of international law”.

Johnson, who is next in line for the US presidency after the president and vice president, is the highest-ranking US official to visit a West Bank Israeli settlement.

His trip comes amid escalating settler violence against Palestinian communities that killed two US citizens in July.

The Israeli military has also been intensifying its deadly raids, home demolitions and displacement campaigns in the West Bank as it carries out its brutal assault and blockade on Gaza.

Johnson’s visit contradicts Arab and US efforts to “end the cycle of violence” as well as Washington’s public stance against settlers’ “aggressions”, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

“The ministry affirms that all settlement activity is invalid and illegal and undermines the opportunity to implement the two-state solution and achieve peace,” it added.

According to Israeli media reports, Johnson visited the settlement of Ariel, north of Ramallah, on Monday.

“Judea and Samaria are the front lines of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it,” Johnson was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post newspaper, using a biblical name for the West Bank.

“Even if the world thinks otherwise, we stand with you.”

The House speaker’s comments appear to be in reference to recent moves by some Western countries – including close allies of the US and Israel – to recognise a Palestinian state.

‘Illegal under international law’

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice, the top United Nations tribunal, reaffirmed that position last year, saying that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible”.

Asked about Johnson’s visit, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters on Monday: “Our standpoint on the settlements, as you know, is that they are illegal under international law.”

Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, and annexed the entire holy city in 1980.

Successive Israeli governments have been building Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank on land that would be the home of a Palestinian state if a two-state solution were to materialise.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers now live in the occupied West Bank.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, bans the occupying power from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.

While the Oslo Accords granted the Palestinian Authority some municipal powers over parts of the West Bank, the entire area remains under full Israeli security control.

Israel also controls the airspace and ports of entry in the territory.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank have full citizenship rights, while Palestinians live under Israel’s military rule, where they can be detained indefinitely without charges.

Leading rights groups have accused Israel of imposing a system of apartheid on Palestinians.

‘It’s a matter of faith for us’

For decades, the US has publicly rejected West Bank settlements and called for a two-state solution despite providing Israel with billions of dollars in military aid.

However, US President Donald Trump has taken US policy further in favour of Israel, refusing to criticise settlement expansion or commit to backing a Palestinian state.

Many Republicans, meanwhile, have long expressed support for Israel from a theological perspective, arguing that it is a Christian religious duty to back the US ally.

“Our prayer is that America will always stand with Israel. We pray for the preservation and the peace of Jerusalem. That’s what scripture tells us to do. It’s a matter of faith for us,” Johnson said on Sunday during a visit to the Western Wall.

In a social media post, Marc Zell, chair of the US Republicans Overseas Israel, cited Johnson as saying on Monday that the mountains of the West Bank are “the rightful property of the Jewish People”.

Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been arrested in connection with an assault at St Pancras railway station.

British Transport Police did not name Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, but confirmed a 42-year-old man, from Bedfordshire, was arrested over an assault in London on 28 July.

The force said the arrest took place at Luton Airport shortly after 18:30 BST on Monday, following a notification that the man had boarded an incoming flight from Faro.

The man was arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and will be taken to custody for questioning, police said.

The statement added he had been wanted for questioning after leaving for Tenerife in the early hours of 29 July following the incident.

British Transport Police previously said that they found a man with “serious but non-life-threatening injuries” following the incident at the railway station in Kings Cross.

The force confirmed on Thursday that he had been discharged from hospital.

Video footage on social media emerged shortly after the alleged assault showing Robinson walking back and forth near a motionless man lying on the floor, near the stairs down to the northbound Thameslink line.

The clip did not show how the man ended up on the floor.

Robinson then starts coming back up the stairs, appearing to try to talk to the passing commuter who called for help.

Robinson can be heard saying: “He’s come at me bruv.”

Robinson was contacted by a female BBC reporter for comment after the incident, but Robinson responded with a message that said “slag”.

Since the incident, Robinson has continued to post on his personal X account but has not made any comment on the arrest.

He shared a few supportive posts shortly after British Transport Police released their initial statement on the incident.