Yemen’s Houthis have released a video showing their attack on the Magic Seas, a commercial ship they said had sunk in the Red Sea. The group says it’s targeting vessels linked to Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
Published On 9 Jul 20259 Jul 2025
President Donald Trump has threatened to impose more tariffs on nations aligning themselves with BRICS.
The BRICS bloc of developing nations aims to challenge the US-led economic order. In theory, it has the clout to push through reforms to global governance. But critics say the expanded group faces rifts among its members.
BRICS leaders have criticised US policies, including trade tariffs, during the gathering in Brazil’s Rio de Janiero, but they shied away from naming Washington directly.
President Donald Trump responded by threatening a 10% levy on any country that aligns itself with BRICS policies.
And the UN special rapporteur says global companies should be held accountable for profiting from the genocide in Gaza.
Rome Statute signatories Italy, France and Greece accused of ‘violating’ international legal order by letting alleged war criminal fly over territory.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, has hit out at countries that allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fly over their airspace en route to the United States, suggesting that they may have flouted their obligations under international law.
Albanese said on Wednesday that the governments of Italy, France and Greece needed to explain why they provided “safe passage” to Netanyahu, who they were theoretically “obligated to arrest” as an internationally wanted suspect when he flew over their territory on his way to meet United States President Donald Trump on Sunday for talks.
All three countries are signatories of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, which last year issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated during Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Italian, French and Greek citizens deserve to know that every political action violating the int’l legal order, weakens and endangers all of them. And all of us,” Albanese wrote on X.
Albanese was responding to a post by human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, who had said the previous day that the countries had “breached their legal obligations under the treaty [Rome Statute], have declared their disdain for the victims of genocide, and have demonstrated their contempt for the rule of law”.
Netanyahu’s visit to the US, during which he and Trump discussed the forced displacement of Palestinians amid his country’s ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, was not his first sortie since the ICC issued the warrant for his arrest.
In February, Netanyahu travelled to the US, which is not party to the Rome Statute, becoming the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his January inauguration.
Then, in April, Netanyahu visited Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban in Budapest, the latter having extended his invitation just one day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant, withdrawing the country’s ICC membership ahead of the Israeli leader’s arrival.
From Hungary, Netanyahu then flew to the US for a meeting with Trump, his plane flying 400km (248 miles) further than the normal route to avoid the airspace of several countries that could enforce an arrest warrant, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
Member states of the ICC are expected to take subjects of arrest warrants into custody if those individuals are on their territory.
In practice, the rules are not always followed. For instance, South Africa, a member of the court, did not arrest Sudan’s then-leader Omar al-Bashir during a 2017 visit, despite an ICC warrant against him.
European Union countries have been split on the ICC warrant issued for Netanyahu.
Some said last year they would meet their ICC commitments, while Italy has said there were legal doubts. France has said it believes Netanyahu has immunity from ICC actions.
Bloodied children were taken from the wreckage of a Gaza City tent camp reportedly hit by Israeli shelling.
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‘Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink,’ UN humanitarian office says.
The United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, has warned that the fuel crisis in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade has reached a “critical point” and will cause further deaths and suffering in the besieged Palestinian territory.
OCHA said the fuel powering vital functions in Gaza, including water desalination stations and hospitals’ intensive care units, is running out quickly, with “virtually no additional accessible stocks left”.
“Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink,” the office said in a statement.
“The deaths this is likely causing could soon increase sharply unless the Israeli authorities allow new fuel in – urgently, regularly and in sufficient quantities.”
Israel has imposed a suffocating siege on Gaza since early March.
Over the past weeks, it has allowed some food into Gaza to be distributed through a United States-backed group at sites where hundreds of aid seekers have been shot dead by Israeli fire.
But fuel has not entered the territory in months.
Senior World Food Programme official Carl Skau also decried the lack of fuel in Gaza.
“The needs are greater than ever, and our capacity to respond has never been more constrained. Famine is spreading, and people are dying trying to find food,” Skau said in a social media post.
“Our teams in Gaza are doing their best to deliver aid and are often caught in the crossfire. We are suffering from shortages of fuel, spare parts and essential communications equipment.”
The director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said that the situation at the medical centre is alarming due to the lack of fuel supplies.
“We don’t have enough fuel left until morning. If fuel is not available, generators cannot run, and hospitals find it difficult to provide care,” Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.
“Blood banks, nurseries and oxygen stations are not operating because of a lack of fuel. Patients will be doomed to certain death if fuel is not provided to hospitals.”
The health sector in Gaza has already been pushed to the brink under Israeli bombardment and repeated displacement orders.
Aid workers and health experts have been reporting a rise in preventable diseases in the territory amid the dire humanitarian situation.
On Tuesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the enclave is seeing an uptick in cases of meningitis, a potentially deadly disease, especially among children.
“The catastrophic conditions in shelters, the severe shortage of drinking water, the spread of sewage, and the accumulation of waste are driving the health situation to further deterioration,” the ministry said.
Meningitis, which causes inflammation around the brain and spinal cord, can be caused by a bacterial infection.
In addition to the humanitarian crisis, Israel is pressing on with its intense bombardment of the territory. Medical sources told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks killed at least 95 Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday.
Israeli attacks killed dozens of displaced people in and around tents in the al-Mawasi area near Khan Younis and in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.
UN experts and rights groups have described Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza as a genocide.
United States President Donald Trump has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House for a second time in 24 hours to discuss a possible ceasefire deal in Gaza.
The unscheduled talks on Tuesday evening lasted just over an hour, with no media access.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump said he would be speaking with Netanyahu “almost exclusively” about Gaza.
“We gotta get that solved. Gaza is… it’s a tragedy, and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to,” he said.
The two men had also met for several hours during a dinner at the White House on Monday during Netanyahu’s third visit to the US since the president began his second term on January 20.
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said the latest meeting was “tightly sealed with very little information coming out”.
“The fact that it was so hermetically sealed, the fact that there has been no clear readout of exactly what was discussed, the fact that the meeting lasted just over an hour before the prime minister returned to his residence – all of it may indicate that there’s some kind of stumbling block, something that is clouding the optimistic position that the two leaders have adopted over the past 24 hours,” Hanna said.
Shortly before the unscheduled meeting, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said the issues keeping Israel and Hamas from agreeing had dropped to one from four, and he hoped to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement this week.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we’ll have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire. Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff told reporters at a meeting of Trump’s Cabinet.
But Netanyahu, meeting with the speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, said Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian enclave was not done and that negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.
“We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’s military and government capabilities,” the Israeli leader said.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Jordan, said Israeli media are reporting that Netanyahu is facing “extreme pressure” to reach a deal on Gaza.
“But still, there’s been no breakthrough,” she said from the Jordanian capital, Amman.
“Israeli media is also talking about a delay in the travel plans of Witkoff to Doha, although earlier in the night, he had sounded very optimistic about possibly reaching a deal. Because according to him, only one issue remained problematic – which is, ‘Where will the Israeli army redeploy to?’” Odeh said.
“Now, this is important, because Israel wants to maintain control over the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. According to the Israeli minister of defence, Israel plans to build a tent city in Rafah, where it will concentrate the population, control who enters, not allow anyone to leave, and then push the population out of Gaza to implement, according to the Israelis, the Trump plan of depopulating Gaza and taking over the enclave,” she added.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 57,575 Palestinians and wounded 136,879 others. Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced by the war, and nearly half a million people are facing famine within months, according to United Nations estimates.
An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Some 50 captives remain in Gaza, with 20 believed to be alive.
Trump has strongly supported Netanyahu, even wading into domestic Israeli politics by criticising prosecutors over a corruption trial against the Israeli leader on bribery, fraud and breach-of-trust charges, which Netanyahu denies.
In his remarks to reporters at the US Congress, Netanyahu praised Trump, saying that there has never been closer coordination between the US and Israel in his country’s history.
Tehran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi visits Saudi Arabia for the first time after Iran’s 12-day war with Israel.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has met Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Jeddah in the first visit by a top Iranian official to the Gulf kingdom after Israel’s war with Tehran.
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Araghchi’s talks with Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials on Tuesday were “fruitful”.
The visit after the 12-day intense conflict between Israel and Iran, which saw the United States bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities before mediating a ceasefire, suggests that the war did not derail the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia’s official news agency, SPA, said Araghchi and Prince Mohammed “reviewed bilateral relations and discussed the latest regional developments and the efforts being made in that regard”.
“The Crown Prince expressed the Kingdom’s aspiration that the ceasefire agreement would contribute to creating conditions that promote security and stability in the region, emphasizing the Kingdom’s stance in supporting dialogue through diplomatic means as a path to resolving disputes,” SPA said.
It added that Araghchi expressed his gratitude to the kingdom for “condemning the Israeli aggression”.
The top Iranian diplomat also met with Saudi Minister of Defence Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz and Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.
Israel launched a massive bombardment against Iran on June 13, without direct provocation, killing top military commanders and nuclear scientists as well as hundreds of civilians.
Iran retaliated with missile barrages that left widespread destruction in Israel.
After the US targeted Iran’s nuclear sites, Tehran responded with a missile launch against a US airbase in Qatar. Shortly after that attack, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
While Arab countries condemned the attack as a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty, Iran appears to be pushing to repair relations with Gulf states.
Ties between Tehran and Riyadh were strained for years over disagreements around regional conflicts and mutual accusations of spreading instability.
But the two countries agreed to restore formal relations as part of a deal brokered by China in 2023, and top Saudi and Iranian officials have been in regular contact.
Before the outbreak of the recent war, Saudi Arabia had welcomed Iran’s nuclear talks with the US, saying it supported efforts to resolve regional and international disputes.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he believed Tehran could resolve its differences with the US through dialogue, but trust would be an issue after the attacks on his country.
In an article published by the Financial Times earlier on Tuesday, Araghchi accused Israel of preferring conflict over diplomacy.
“Iran remains interested in diplomacy, but we have good reason to have doubts about further dialogue,” he wrote. “If there is a desire to resolve this amicably, the US should show genuine readiness for an equitable accord.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would meet with President Trump again on Tuesday to discuss a Gaza ceasefire. He also praised Washington’s “unprecedented” military ties with Israel following a meeting with Capitol Hill lawmakers.
Published On 8 Jul 20258 Jul 2025
Israel claims it targeted a ‘key figure’ from the Palestinian group Hamas near the coastal Lebanese city of Tripoli.
An Israeli strike on a vehicle near the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli has killed at least three people and injured 13 others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry says, in the latest breach of a ceasefire between the two countries.
The attack in the Ayrounieh area on Tuesday came as Israel intensifies its strikes in Lebanon amid Hezbollah’s weakened position, the Lebanese army’s inability to fight back and the international community’s failure to pressure Israel to abide by the truce.
The strike near Lebanon’s northernmost major city – more than 180km (110 miles) from the Israeli border – highlights Israel’s willingness to launch assaults across the country, not just in the south.
The Israeli military claimed that it struck a “key” figure from the Palestinian group Hamas without identifying the target.
A Hamas source in Lebanon told Al Araby TV that no senior official from the group was killed in the strike. Lebanon’s Annahar newspaper reported that initial reports indicated that the assassination attempt might have failed.
Hamas and other Palestinian groups maintain a presence in various areas of Lebanon, mostly in refugee camps that have housed Palestinians for decades. Tripoli is home to the large Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp.
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Israel has carried out attacks against the Lebanese group Hezbollah and members of Palestinian factions in Lebanon.
Hamas’s deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs in early 2024.
While the ceasefire last year ended the conflict, Israel has continued to carry out strikes on what it says are Hezbollah arms depots and fighters, mostly in southern Lebanon. Israeli attacks have also targeted homes, municipal workers and civilian infrastructure.
On Monday, at least one person was killed in a suspected Israeli air attack on a van in the town of Deir Kifa in southern Lebanon.
The recent attacks were launched as United States envoy Thomas Barrack was in Lebanon for a two-day visit to discuss disarming Hezbollah.
On Monday after meeting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Barrack told reporters he was “unbelievably satisfied” with Lebanon’s reply to a US proposal on taking away Hezbollah’s weapons.
Barrack, a longtime adviser to US President Donald Trump who also serves as US ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy for Syria, said he believed “the Israelis do not want war with Lebanon”.
“Both countries are trying to give the same thing – the notion of a stand-down agreement, of the cessation of hostilities and a road to peace,” he said.
On Sunday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem ruled out giving up the group’s weapons before Israel withdraws from the areas it still occupies in southern Lebanon in violation of the ceasefire.
Houthis strikes on Israel prove without a shadow of a doubt that America’s air strikes on Yemen are a failure, Nasr Al-Din Amer, deputy head of the Houthi group’s media office, said yesterday.
In statements to Al Jazeera, Amer added: “As much as the destruction of our infrastructure pains us, it does not affect our military operations, and we will respond.”
He stressed that “the blockade on Umm Al-Rashrash [Eilat] Port will not be lifted, nor will it resume operations. It will remain closed, and navigation will not return to normal at the Israeli enemy’s airports. They will remain closed until the aggression against Gaza stops.”
“We tell them that the operations will not end, and we are in a long battle, not an exchange of strikes. Our strikes are coming, even if you don’t attack Sana’a airport or Hudaydah Port. We will attack you because you are killing the Palestinian people,” he continued.
READ: US-Houthi ceasefire deal does not include Israel, says Houthi spokesperson
Amer asserted that the group’s operations intend to support the Palestinian people, vowing to intensify them with other advanced methods “if Israel continues to threaten ground operations in Gaza.”
He ended by saying: “We are responding within the framework of a battle with the Israeli enemy entity. As long as the aggression against Gaza continues, along with the siege and the violation of a number of Arab countries continues, we remain in a state of engagement with the enemy. We will respond with full force, we will say no, and we are confident that we will achieve victory in the battle.”
Yesterday, the Israeli occupation army announced it bombed Sanaa airport and central power stations used by the Houthis in the capital, as a response to the attack on Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday.
READ: Airlines halt all flights to Israel after Houthi missile lands near airport
Top British diplomat David Lammy says the US-backed aid distribution mechanism in Gaza is ‘not doing a good job’.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has decried the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that the United Kingdom could take further action against Israel if a ceasefire deal to end the war in the Palestinian territory does not materialise.
Speaking to the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Lammy also criticised the new aid distribution mechanism in Gaza via a group backed by the United States and Israel, dubbed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
“We’ve been very clear that we don’t support the aid foundation that has been set up,” Lammy said. “We it’s not doing a good job. Too many people are close to starvation. Too many people have lost their lives. We have led globally on our condemnation the system that has been set up.”
Hundreds of Palestinians have been gunned down by Israeli fire while seeking GHF assistance over the past weeks.
Asked by a legislator whether the British government will take measures against Israel if the “intolerable” situation in Gaza continues, Lammy said: “Yes, we will.”
Last month, the UK joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in sanctioning Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.
Weeks earlier, the UK had also suspended talks for a free trade agreement with Israel over the blockade on Gaza, which has sparked a starvation crisis in the territory. And last year, London halted some arms exports to Israel.
While welcoming the moves, some Palestinian rights supporters have criticised them as symbolic and failing to impose serious consequences on Israel for its apparent abuses of international humanitarian law.
On Tuesday, Lammy condemned settler violence and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that they are “flouting international law”.
Pressed on whether the UK’s pressure on Israel has led the Israeli government to alter its behaviour, Lammy acknowledged that the change is “not sufficient”. Still, he defended London’s record, including recent moves against Israel and support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
“I am very, very comfortable that you would be hard pressed to find another G7 partner or another ally across Europe that’s doing more than this government has done,” he said.
Ultimately, Lammy played down the UK’s sway in the Middle East, saying that it is “but one actor”.
The UK is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is also a major trade partner of Israel. And according to numerous media reports, the British Royal Air Force has conducted hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza to help locate Israeli captives in the territory.
The UK has also cracked down on Palestinian rights activists at home, recently banning the advocacy group Palestine Action and arresting dozens of its supporters.
The Labour government in the UK has not recognised Palestine as a state – a move that several European countries have made over the past year.
Lammy said London wants its recognition of Palestine to be part of a concrete push towards the two-state solution, not just a symbolic gesture.
He added that the UK wants to recognise Palestine at a moment that helps shift “the dial against expansion, against violence, against the horrors that we’re seeing in Gaza, and towards the just cause that is the desire for Palestinian statehood”.
But Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Emily Thornberry warned Lammy that with settlement expansion and annexation threats, if the UK continues to delay the decision to recognise Palestine, “there won’t be anything left to recognise”.
“We should recognise a Palestinian state and then work towards ensuring that one happens practically,” Thornberry said. “But if we continue to hold back, it’ll slide through our fingers.”
US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoy both claimed the talks could happen next week, following the Iranian president’s comments on being open to dialogue.
Iran says it has not requested talks with the United States over its nuclear programme, as claimed by US President Donald Trump.
“No request for a meeting has been made on our side to the American side,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday in comments carried by the country’s Tasnim news agency.
The clarification came a day after Trump, during a dinner in the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Iran was actively seeking negotiations on a new nuclear deal following the 12-day war with Israel last month, which the US also joined.
“We have scheduled Iran talks. They want to talk,” Trump told reporters. “They want to work something out. They are very different now than they were two weeks ago.”
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff – also present during the dinner – had even said the meeting could take place in the next week or so.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday that Tehran remains interested in diplomacy but “we have good reason to have doubts about further dialogue”.
On June 13, Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign on Iran that targeted military and nuclear sites as well as residential areas, killing senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. Iranian authorities say the Israeli strikes killed at least 1,060 people. Israel says retaliatory drone and missile fire by Iran killed at least 28 people.
The US joined the war, bombing Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, just days before a planned meeting between Tehran and Washington, DC on reviving the nuclear talks. Trump then went on to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.
The negotiations, aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, would replace the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – a deal signed with the US, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union – which Trump ditched during his first term in office.
Floating the prospect of more talks on Monday, Trump also dangled the prospect of lifting punitive US sanctions on Iran, imposed after the US withdrawal from JCPOA, with further restrictions piled on this year.
This month, the US issued a new wave of sanctions against Iranian oil exports, the first penalties against Tehran’s energy sector since the US-backed ceasefire ended the war between Israel and Iran.
“I would love to be able to, at the right time, take those sanctions off,” said Trump.
Towards the end of last month, Trump said he was working on “the possible removal of sanctions”, but dropped his efforts after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed “victory” in the Iran-Israel war.
Tehran’s denial regarding talks with the US came after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told US journalist Tucker Carlson that Iran had “no problem” resuming talks so long as trust could be rebuilt between the two sides.
The interview, aired on Monday, provoked a backlash in Iran, with the critics accusing Pezeshkian of being “too soft” in the wake of last month’s attacks on the country.
“Have you forgotten that these same Americans, together with the Zionists, used the negotiations to buy time and prepare for the attack?” said an editorial in the hardline Kayhan newspaper.
The conservative Javan daily also took aim at Pezeshkian, saying his remarks appeared “a little too soft”.
In contrast, the reformist Ham Mihan newspaper praised Pezeshkian’s “positive approach”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met United States President Donald Trump at the White House, with the two leaders repeating their controversial proposal to forcibly transfer thousands of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.
Trump and Netanyahu met for dinner in the Blue Room of the White House on Monday as indirect talks in Qatar between Israel and Hamas on US-backed proposals for a 60-day ceasefire to end the 21-month Gaza war appeared to gather some momentum.
Netanyahu told reporters present at the meeting that the US and Israel were working with other countries to give Palestinians a “better future”, suggesting that the residents of Gaza could move to neighbouring nations.
“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. It shouldn’t be a prison. It should be an open place and give people a free choice,” Netanyahu said.
“We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realise what they always say, that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future. I think we’re getting close to finding several countries.”
Trump, who earlier this year caused outrage when he floated his idea of relocating Palestinians and taking over the Strip to turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, said there had been “great cooperation” on the matter from “surrounding countries”.
“So something good will happen,” he added.
“This is something the Israelis have been saying for some time, calling it the ‘voluntary migration’ of Palestinians from their homelands. But of course, this has been condemned as ethnic cleansing,” Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said, reporting from Amman, Jordan.
Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera that just because there are ongoing reports and statements about relocating Palestinians in Gaza to other countries, it does not mean that there is a “practical plan”.
“The fact that the Israeli defence minister blurts some ideas out, or even the prime minister, or even the president of the United States, doesn’t mean there is a plan,” he said.
“In early February, Trump spoke about a Palestinian Riviera, and within 36 hours, he changed that from a Riviera for the Palestinians to the Palestinians will be expelled,” he added.
Pinkas explained that amid reports that the Boston Consulting Group, which has been asked to come up with a plan to relocate Palestinians, it “doesn’t mean it’s implementable, it doesn’t mean it’s practical”.
“[It] is a recipe for catastrophe because it ensures that no [post-war] agreement in Gaza is durable,” Pinkas said.
Trump and Netanyahu met as Israeli and Hamas negotiators held a second day of indirect talks in Qatar, seated in different rooms in the same building. Proposals for a 60-day pause in fighting envisage a phased release of Hamas-held captives and Palestinian prisoners, Israeli troop withdrawals from parts of Gaza, and discussions on completely ending the war.
But a sticking point is whether the ceasefire will end the war altogether. Hamas has said it is willing to free all the captives in exchange for all Palestinian prisoners and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas surrenders, disarms and goes into exile – something the Palestinian group refuses to do.
In advance of Netanyahu’s visit to the US, Trump predicted that a ceasefire deal could be reached this week. But Netanyahu appeared cagey, ruling out a full Palestinian state, saying Israel will “always” keep security control over the Gaza Strip.
Monday’s talks in Qatar ended with no announcements. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who played an important role in crafting the proposals, is expected to join negotiators in Qatar this week.
Trump and Netanyahu’s discussions came just over two weeks after the former ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites in support of Israeli air strikes, before announcing a ceasefire in the 12-day Israel-Iran war.
During their meeting, Netanyahu gave Trump a letter that he said had been used to nominate the US president for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump, appearing pleased by the gesture, thanked him.
“So much of this is about optics,” said Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle, reporting from Washington, DC. “Of course, the [Israeli] prime minister will be very keen to make sure that this is seen back home as a major success … He is very keen to make sure that he is portrayed as being back in the good favours of Donald Trump.”
Trump has made little secret of the fact that he covets a Nobel, trumpeting recent truces that his administration facilitated between India and Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda.
During the meeting, Trump indicated that Iranian officials have reached out to the US to schedule talks about Iran’s nuclear programme. Negotiations had started in April but were scuppered after Israel launched attacks last month.
“We have scheduled Iran talks, and they … want to talk. They took a big drubbing,” said the US president.
Sitting at the table with Trump, Witkoff said the meeting would be soon, perhaps in a week.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, released on Monday, that he believed Tehran could resolve its differences with Washington through dialogue.
Netanyahu, who also met Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, is due to meet Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday morning (about 13:30 GMT).
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun received American diplomat Thomas Barrack in Beirut on Monday and gave him the Lebanese state’s reply to a proposal from the United States about disarming Hezbollah.
Barrack, ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy for Syria, said Lebanon’s response was “something spectacular” and that he was “unbelievably satisfied” by the reply, which has not been made public as of yet.
The visit comes amid continued Israeli attacks on alleged Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, which have killed civilians, since a ceasefire went into effect on November 27, 2024.
Here’s what you need to know about the visit and what it means for Lebanon and Israel:
Not for the summer weather.
Barrack went to receive the Lebanese state’s official response to a US proposal, delivered to Lebanon on June 19, to disarm the Hezbollah group.
Under the terms of a ceasefire deal with Israel from last November, Hezbollah was to withdraw its fighters from south of the Litani River – which runs across south Lebanon and up into the Bekaa Valley – and turn over military infrastructure and bases there.
However, according to diplomatic and political sources with knowledge of the agreement, the language was purposefully undefined, leaving it open to interpretation by both sides.
The US and Israel have chosen to interpret the ceasefire as contingent on Hezbollah’s complete disarmament in the entirety of the country.
Barrack insinuated in his statement after the meeting that support for Lebanon would be contingent on the Lebanese government acting in line with what he said was a “region moving at Mach speed”, although he did not specify what it was moving towards.
Over the past two years, Israel has waged war on Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, with full US support.
Developments have often been touted as victories against Iran and its allies in the region.
The response has not yet been made public.
But reports indicate the government demanded that Israel withdraw from all Lebanese territories, including five points it occupied during the recent ceasefire and areas it stayed in after the 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
It also reportedly called on the US to pressure Israel to:
Barrack said he received a seven-page reply from Aoun’s team and had not yet had time to study it, but that he was satisfied.
His comments also seemed to suggest Lebanon needs to meet certain expectations if it wants US support, talking about Lebanon turning over a new leaf, similar to neighbouring Syria, which has indicated it is willing to have a peace agreement with Israel.
“If you don’t want change, it’s no problem,” Barrack said, before adding: “The rest of the region is moving at high speed.”
Barrack did not specify if US support would be in the form of reconstruction financing – the World Bank says Lebanon needs $11bn for recovery following the latest Israeli aggression – or in terms of reining in Israel, which continues daily attacks on southern Lebanon and occasionally on Beirut and its periphery.
There are external and internal demands.
The external demands come mostly from the US and Israel. Before Hezbollah was battered in this latest war and lost much of its military leadership, Israel saw the group as a military threat.
Many Gulf states have also opposed Hezbollah and its benefactor Iran’s influence over Lebanon and the Levant.
Internally, Lebanon’s president and prime minister, as well as a variety of political parties and figures, want Hezbollah to disarm and for the Lebanese army and state to control the use of force and decisions of war and peace.
In much of Lebanon’s post-civil war period (1990 onwards), Hezbollah has been Lebanon’s political and military hegemon. Its support comes mostly from the Shia community, and most elected Shia officials are members of Hezbollah or their allies, the Amal Movement.
The group’s critics say the party has isolated Lebanon from good relations with regional and international countries and has grown from a party outside the corrupt Lebanese political system to that system’s protector.
The US seems to have become the only power that can rein in Israel’s attacks, which are undermining the new government’s efforts at reform and at helping a segment of the population that feels they are not being properly supported by the state.
Historically, Hezbollah filled the void left by the state, while at times undermining the state’s attempts to fill that void.
Further pressure is on the country because it is badly in need of foreign investment and aid for reconstruction, which the US has signalled may be tied to disarming Hezbollah.
Here, Hezbollah seems to agree with the Lebanese government and has expressed some willingness to cooperate, as it knows many of its supporters need their homes or villages liberated or rebuilt.
There are a few.
One is the continued Israeli attacks and presence in south Lebanon, in the five points that the Israeli military occupied during the ceasefire period and the continued occupation of the Shebaa Farms and Kfarchouba Hills.
Few in Hezbollah or among their supporters believe the group should disarm as long as Lebanese territory is under occupation or attack.
“We cannot be asked to soften our stance or lay down arms while [Israeli] aggression continues,” Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem told supporters in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday for Ashura, an important Shia commemoration.
Hezbollah says it is unwilling to disarm as long as Israeli presence remains in the south of the country and as long as the fear of invasion exists. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982, occupying the south until Hezbollah drove them out in 2000.
They reinvaded last year.
Hezbollah has also raised concerns about the Lebanon-Syria border, where clashes erupted earlier this year.
While both countries said they want border delineation, a resumption of tensions is not out of the question.
What about Israel?
That is the big question.
Whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will heed any pressures from the US to stop attacking Lebanon and to implement fully the terms of the agreements between the two countries remains to be seen.
It is unclear if Barrack’s visit to Beirut and the Lebanese state’s response had any effect on a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu in Washington, DC, on Monday.
What is clear from Lebanon is that it is hoping the US will get the Israelis to stop attacking the country, enforce the ceasefire, and support the Lebanese state as it attempts to complete the fragile task of bringing Hezbollah’s weapons under state control without isolating the Shia community from the nation-building project.
WASHINGTON — If he wins the presidential election, Joe Biden will find a Middle East quite different from the one at the end of the Obama administration.
Nuclear threats may once again be on the horizon in Iran. Militant groups are on the ascendance in Lebanon and Yemen. And Israelis and Palestinians stand further away from settling their conflict than they have in a long time.
Biden says his first task will be repairing much of what he and his supporters consider to be the damage done by President Trump, who demolished long-standing norms and decades of U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Joe Biden will benefit just by not being President Trump,” Biden’s top foreign policy advisor Tony Blinken said in a recent interview. “That is the opening opportunity.”
More difficult will be deciding whether to reverse some of Trump’s controversial actions and, if so, which ones.
The Palestinian Authority leadership boycotted administration-led peace talks after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city.
Palestinians claim the eastern part of the city — which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East War — as their capital. For decades the U.S. avoided recognizing either side’s claim in Jerusalem pending a final peace agreement.
Biden’s advisors say he will not return the U.S. Embassy to Tel Aviv, but it is likely he would reopen a U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem that would cater to Palestinians and allow a Palestinian de facto embassy in Washington.
Regaining Palestinian trust will be a major challenge. The Biden team has released careful, measured policies for the decades-old conflict, a clear rebuke to Trump, but disappointing to many progressives.
Unlike Trump, Biden supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
“There will be a very important statement about the intention to pursue a two-state solution,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy organization in Washington and informal advisor to the campaign. “Those signals will be sent early.”
And Biden said he plans to revive U.S. financial aid to support Palestinians that was cut off by Trump as punishment for what he termed their lack of cooperation.
His hands will be partly tied by Congress. The 2018 Taylor Force Act prohibits U.S. aid from going to some Palestinian entities as long as the Palestinian Authority gives stipends to families of Palestinians killed in attacks on Israelis. It will be easier to resume funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which supports hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and to hospitals in Palestinian-dominated parts of East Jerusalem, all cut off by Trump.
Biden is likely to frown on any Israeli annexation of West Bank land it seized during the 1967 war and that Palestinians have claimed for their state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s annexation plan was tacitly approved by Trump, but has since been put on hold, partly out of concern about hurting Trump in November and partly because of a pending agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with United Arab Emirates.
How strongly Biden might act to block annexation remains to be seen. He has been careful not to say that U.S. aid to Israel would be conditioned on Israeli behavior.
Much of what Biden could do might be mired in U.S. domestic politics. Any action risks antagonizing either the pro-Israel lobby or the progressive wing of his party.
“I think the best we can hope for from a Biden government is undoing a lot of the damage and doing no more harm, while giving the Palestinians space to get their own house in order,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, and director of the Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian affairs program.
Elgindy and others predicted there would be no bold initiatives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the beginning of a Biden administration. There will be more-pressing crises, his advisors say, and the environment is not ripe for new negotiations.
Netanyahu got nearly everything he wanted with no concessions from Trump, so he has little incentive now to negotiate.
Palestinians, long skeptical about whether the U.S. could be a neutral broker in peace talks, gave up any hope of that after Trump. Members of the governing Palestinian Authority are biding their time, Elgindy and others said, hoping that a Biden victory at least returns the troubled U.S-Palestinian relationship back to a better footing.
“Have we given up on the U.S.? Yes,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian attorney and former legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. At most, she predicted, “we will see that Biden will reach out to Abbas, but won’t do much other than that.”
She said that in addition to failing to condemn the U.S. Embassy relocation, Democratic Party leadership declined to include a reference in its platform to the “ongoing occupation” of Palestinian territories by Israel.
Another of Trump’s surprising breaks from years of U.S. policy came when he recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a large, fertile plateau that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war. It is unclear whether such a move can be easily reversed, and there appears to be little precedent for it. On the other hand, recognition did not lead to any concrete U.S. action and put the United States in conflict with the rest of the international community, which views Israel’s control over Golan as a violation of international law.
On Iran, Biden is expected to chart a dramatically different course, and one that Netanyahu won’t like.
Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which forced the Islamic Republic to dismantle most of its infrastructure that could be used to produce nuclear weapons, in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions on Tehran and release of its assets frozen in banks all over the world.
Trump — prodded by Netanyahu — contended the deal was flawed because it failed to limit other Iranian activities such as its support for the region’s militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen. In recent months, the Trump administration has piled on new sanctions and other punishment to increase pressure on Iran in hopes of destroying the deal once and for all.
Biden wants to revive it by first bringing Iran back into compliance, and then reenlisting the United States.
“Assuming the deal is still on life support when he takes office, [Biden] would move toward mutual reentry,” said Colin Kahl, who served as national security advisor to the then-vice president and now consults with the campaign.
Biden said this year that once the deal is revived, he would work with European allies to “strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities.”
Israel’s government, which views Iran as an existential threat, has been working to undermine the nuclear agreement since before it was signed.
Another unknown will be the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu.
Trump and Netanyahu had one of the warmest relationships between any U.S. and Israeli leaders. That’s a hard act for Biden to follow, particularly since he’s associated with the Obama administration, which repeatedly and bitterly clashed with Netanyahu.
But Biden has known Netanyahu for decades, including during the years the Israeli leader spent in the United States. According to aides, the pair enjoy an amiable if sometimes prickly friendship.
The highest rate of home demolitions since 1967 is currently underway by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim explains the impact of the destruction on Palestinian communities.
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A 16-month-old Palestinian baby is among a growing number of children in Gaza suffering from meningitis, as overcrowding, poor sanitation, and collapsing healthcare caused by Israel’s war on the enclave drive a surge in cases.
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A Palestinian woman could only watch on as Israeli forces destroyed her home near Ramallah.
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Children’s toys were found in the rubble after an Israeli strike on a Gaza clinic killed several people.
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Israel attacked Iran just days before Tehran and Washington were to meet for a new round of nuclear talks.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said he believes Tehran can resolve its differences with the United States through dialogue, but trust would be an issue after US and Israeli attacks on his country.
“I am of the belief that we could very much easily resolve our differences and conflicts with the United States through dialogue and talks,” Pezeshkian told US right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson in an interview conducted on Saturday and released on Monday.
His remarks came less than a month after Israel launched its unprecedented June 13 bombing campaign against Iran, killing top military commanders and nuclear scientists.
The Israeli attacks took place two days before Tehran and Washington were set to meet for a new round of nuclear talks, stalling negotiations that were aimed at reaching a deal over Iran’s atomic programme.
A week later, in separate attacks on June 21, the US also bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Iranian state media said on Monday that the death toll from the 12-day war had risen to at least 1,060.
Pezeshkian blamed Israel, Iran’s archenemy, for the collapse of talks with the US.
“How are we going to trust the United States again?” he asked.
“How can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks, the Israeli regime will not be given the permission again to attack us?”
Iran’s president also accused Israel of attempting to assassinate him during the June attacks.
“They did try, yes. They acted accordingly, but they failed,” Pezeshkian told Carlson in response to a question on whether he believed Israel had tried to kill him.
“It was not the United States that was behind the attempt on my life. It was Israel. I was in a meeting … they tried to bombard the area in which we were holding that meeting,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks from Persian into English.
On June 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also did not rule out plans to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying it would “end the conflict” after reports emerged at the time that US President Donald Trump had vetoed the move.
While a ceasefire between Iran and Israel has been in place since June 24, during the interview with Carlson, Pezeshkian accused Netanyahu of pursuing his “own agenda” of “forever wars” in the Middle East and urged Trump not to be drawn into war with Iran by the Israeli leader.
Netanyahu is visiting Washington on Monday for talks at the White House.
“The United States’ president, Mr. Trump, he is capable enough to guide the region towards peace and a brighter future and put Israel in its place. Or get into a pit, an endless pit, or a swamp,” Pezeshkian said.
“So it is up to the United States president to choose which path.”
Trump said he expected to discuss Iran and its nuclear ambitions with Netanyahu, praising the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites as a tremendous success.
On Friday, he told reporters that he believed Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back permanently, although Iran could restart efforts elsewhere.