Middle East

Opposition leader Ghannouchi, ex-prime minister and former presidential aide sentenced amid President Saied’s crackdown on dissent.

A Tunisian court has handed jail terms to 21 high-profile politicians and former top officials, including opposition leader and ex-Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunis Afrique Press (TAP) news agency reports.

The rulings on Tuesday are the latest move in President Kais Saied’s widening crackdown on critics and political opponents.

Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahdha party who has been in jail since 2023, was sentenced to up to 14 years in jail. Several others, including former Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Rafik Abdessalem Bouchlaka, were sentenced in absentia to 35 years.

Nadia Akacha, Saied’s former chief of staff, who was considered a close and influential aide to the president, was also handed a 35-year prison sentence in absentia, according to the TAP.

The charges against the defendants cover a wide range of alleged offences, including forming and joining a “terrorist” organisation and conspiring against internal state security.

On Tuesday, Bouchlaka, the former foreign minister, dismissed the sentences as unserious, saying that the Tunisian government has become a “mockery in front of the world with its immaturity, recklessness and craziness”.

“Sooner or later, this lying, deceptive coup regime will leave like the dictators, tyrants and fraudsters that left before it,” Bouchlaka wrote in a social media post.

Many opposition leaders, some journalists and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he suspended the elected parliament and began ruling by decree in 2021 – moves the opposition has described as a coup.

Critics have accused Saied of using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents. Many warn that democratic gains in the birthplace of the Arab Spring in the years since the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali are being steadily rolled back.

Saied rejects the accusations and says his actions are legal and aimed at ending years of chaos and rampant corruption.

Ennahdha denies allegations against the group. The party had emerged as one of Tunisia’s largest after the 2011 uprising, and Ghannouchi led a power-sharing agreement with late President Beji Caid Essebsi to transition the country to democracy.

Last year, the Tunisian government closed down Ennahda’s headquarters in Tunis. Ghannouchi, 84, is already serving other jail sentences for charges that his supporters say are political.

In February, he was given a 22-year sentence for “plotting against state security”.

Ennahdha called the ruling “a blatant assault on the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and a blatant politicisation of its procedures and rulings”.

Trump aide says Washington ‘hopeful’ a 60-day truce between Israel and Hamas can be reached by the end of the week.

An aide to United President Donald Trump has suggested a Gaza ceasefire is close, saying Washington hopes to see an agreement finalised by the end of the week.

“We’re in proximity talks now, and we had four issues, and now we’re down to one after two days of proximity talks,” special US envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

“So we are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire.”

Witkoff said the deal would see the release of 10 Israeli captives and the bodies of nine. He added that the Trump administration thinks the deal “will lead to a lasting peace in Gaza”.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in Washington, DC, that while Israel “still has to finish the job in Gaza”, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.

Trump and Netanyahu dined together on Monday at the White House during the Israeli leader’s third US visit since the president began his second term on January 20.

The two leaders are to meet again later on Tuesday.

“He’s coming over later. We’re going to be talking about, I would say, almost exclusively Gaza. We’ve got to get that solved,” the US president told reporters at a cabinet meeting in the White House on Tuesday.

“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.”

Qatar confirmed on Tuesday that Hamas and Israeli delegations are in Doha to discuss the ceasefire proposal.

“There is a positive engagement right now. The mediation teams – the Qataris and the Egyptians – are working around the clock to make sure that there is some consensus built on the framework towards the talks,” Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 57,500 Palestinians, internally displaced nearly the entire population of the enclave and placed hundreds of thousands of people on the verge of starvation.

United Nations experts and rights group have described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide.

Netanyahu suggested on Monday that the US and Israel are working to ensure the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza – an idea first proposed by Trump in February.

Israeli officials have been framing the push to remove all Palestinians from Gaza Gaza as an effort to encourage “voluntary migration” from the territory.

“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 told reporters.

Rights advocates said the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, which would amount to ethnic cleansing, cannot be considered voluntary.

Prominent legal expert Ralph Wilde said that with the widespread destruction, siege and daily attacks in Gaza, the concept of free choice to stay there or leave “is a lie”.

“It’s forced displacement because that isn’t a choice that is made freely,” Wilde told Al Jazeera.

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.

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.

This is a story about two Europeans who devoted their lives to the Palestinian cause and paid the ultimate price.

Francoise Kesteman was a French nurse who worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 80s. She was a communist and saw the displacement of millions of Palestinians as a fundamental injustice that needed to be addressed. She joined armed Palestinian groups resisting the Israeli occupation.

Franco Fontana was an Italian photographer who cofounded a Marxist-Leninist political group in the 1970s and organised exhibitions to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause. As a photojournalist, he visited Palestine and Lebanon, where he also joined groups fighting to liberate Palestine.

Kesteman was killed in 1984 in a paramilitary operation in Lebanon. Fontana fell ill in 2015 and chose to return to a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where he died and was buried, as was his dying wish.

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”.

Sanctions relief

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”.

The UN says almost half a million Afghans have left Iran in just a month, as Iranian authorities continue a mass deportation drive of undocumented migrants. Iranian authorities have accused some Afghans of spying for Israel and say undocumented migrants present a security threat.

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.

‘Recipe for catastrophe’

“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.

Coveted Nobel nomination

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:

Why did the US envoy visit Lebanon?

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.

What was the Lebanese government’s response to the US demand?

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:

• abide by the ceasefire,
• return Lebanese prisoners it took, and
• adhere to United Nations  Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for a cessation of hostilities, for Hezbollah to withdraw from south of the Litani, and for financial and economic reforms, among other provisions.

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.

What are the demands for Hezbollah to disarm?

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.

What pressures are there on the Lebanese government to comply?

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.

What are the obstacles to Hezbollah disarming?

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.

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.

A July 5 CNN article reported on three incidents in Melbourne, Australia: attempted arson at a synagogue, a confrontation at a restaurant and three cars set on fire near a business. The piece was scant on the details of the alleged crimes and the identities of the perpetrators, but it did clarify that the business “has been targeted by pro-Palestine protesters in the past”.

That the author chose to conflate activism in support of the Palestinian cause with violent acts that are low on facts and high on conjecture is indicative of how Western media have come to operate. Media reports are increasingly linking by default acts of aggression to activism they call “pro-Palestinian”.

Here are more examples: Before his name was released, we learned that a gunman shouted, “Free, free Palestine,” in a shooting rampage that killed two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on May 21. Reports linked the suspect to what news outlets described as “pro-Palestinian” advocacy.

When on June 1 an Egyptian national attacked demonstrators voicing support of Israel in Colorado, the media also linked the incident to “pro-Palestinian protests”.

Softly landing on the term “pro-Palestinian” allows reporters to meet editorial standards for brevity. But brevity is not a fixed journalistic value. Accurately informing the public is.

The word “pro-Palestinian” has become political shorthand for a well-worn and misleading coupling: Palestinian advocacy and violence. Stripped of critical context, the term offers news consumers a reductive explanation – a violent act distilled and opaquely linked to “Palestinian” entities as imagined and understood through a narrow and distorted lens.

A failure to engage with contexts is not neutral omission. Rather, it is an affront to knowledge processes and a bow to power structures that govern mainstream journalistic storytelling.

What historical, cultural and religious claims do Palestinians make? Most news consumers in the West are unprepared to answer this question. In a closed information ecology, they rarely encounter these claims in full – or at all.

Like many who have followed the historical arc of all things Palestine or reported on it, I’ve used the term pro-Palestinian myself. It felt functional at the time: concise and seemingly understood.

Now, however, that shorthand misleads. Any word that is prefaced by “pro-” demands honest re-examination. When circumstances shift and new meanings emerge, the hyphenation clanks as anachronistic. We’re in one of those moments – a circumstance that is the epicentre of global opprobrium, humanitarian collapse and spectacular moral failure.

To describe activism and peaceful protests against the genocidal violence in Gaza as “pro-Palestinian” is disparaging. Opposing the strategic starvation of a trapped population is hardly pro-Palestinian. It is pro-humanity.

Is it “pro-Palestinian” to call for the end of violence that has claimed the lives of more than 18,000 children? Is it “pro-Palestinian” to call for the end of starvation that has killed dozens of children and elderly? Is it “pro-Palestinian” to express outrage at Gaza parents forced to carry body parts of their children in plastic bags?

The term “pro-Palestinian” operates within a false linguistic economy. It flattens a grossly unequal reality into a story of competing sides as if an occupied, bombarded and displaced people were an equal side to one of the most advanced armies in the world.

Gaza is not a side. Gaza is, as one UNICEF official put it, a “graveyard for children”. It is a place where journalists are killed for bearing witness, where hospitals are obliterated and universities reduced to rubble, where the international community is failing to uphold minimal standards of human rights.

In an era of impatience with rigour, “pro-Palestinian” is the rhetorical crutch that satisfies the manufactured need for immediate alignment (fandom) without critical thought. It permits bad-faith actors to stigmatise dissent, dismiss moral clarity and delegitimise outrage.

To call Elias Rodriguez, who carried out the shooting in Washington, DC, a “pro-Palestinian” shooter is a framing device that invites readers to interpret words of Palestinian solidarity as potential precursors to violence. It encourages institutions, including universities, to conflate advocacy with extremism and put a chill on free expression on campus.

Obfuscations in the conventions of reportage, euphemism or rhetorical hedging are the last things we need in this catastrophic moment. What’s needed is clarity and precision.

Let us try something radical: Let us say what we mean. When people protest the destruction of lineage and tillage in Gaza, they are not “taking a side” in some abstract pro-and-con debate. They are affirming the value of life. They are rejecting the idea that one people’s suffering must remain invisible for another’s comfort.

If people are advocating for human rights, then say so. If they believe that Palestinian life is worthy of dignity, safety and memory, say so.

And if they are calling for the “liberation” of Palestine and use phrases like “free Palestine” – phrases charged with decades of political, historical and emotional weight – that too deserves clarity and context. Liberation and freedom in most of these calls do not imply violence but a demand for freedom from occupation, siege, starvation, statelessness, and killing and imprisonment with impunity.

Collapsing these diverse expressions into a vague label like “pro-Palestinian” blurs reality and deepens public misunderstanding.

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

The move follows the lifting of sanctions on Damascus after the fall of the al-Assad government last year.

The United States will revoke its designation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO) as Washington softens its approach to post-war Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government last year.

The decision, which takes effect on Tuesday, comes as part of US President Donald Trump’s broader strategy to re-engage with Syria and support its reconstruction after more than a decade of devastating conflict.

“This FTO revocation is an important step in fulfilling President Trump’s vision of a stable, unified, and peaceful Syria,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Monday.

HTS had been designated as a “terrorist” group by the US since 2018 due to its former ties to al-Qaeda.

The group emerged out of the al-Nusra Front, once al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, but formally severed those ties in 2016 after HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa declared the group’s independence.

Al-Sharaa, who led the opposition forces that removed al-Assad in a lightning offensive last December, has since become Syria’s president.

He has launched what many experts have described as a charm offensive aimed at Western powers, including meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron and, most recently, Trump in Riyadh in May.

The Trump administration and the European Union have since lifted sanctions on Syria.

“In line with President Trump’s May 13 promise to deliver sanctions relief to Syria, I am announcing my intent to revoke the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation of al-Nusrah Front, also known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Rubio said.

“Tomorrow’s action follows the announced dissolution of HTS and the Syrian government’s commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms.”

HTS was dissolved in late January, with its forces folded into the official Syrian military and security forces.

Damascus welcomed the US decision as a step towards normalisation. In a statement, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the delisting of HTS was a “positive step toward correcting a course that previously hindered constructive engagement”.

The ministry added that it hoped the move would “contribute to the removal of remaining restrictions that continue to impact Syrian institutions and officials, and open the door to a rational, sovereign-based approach to international cooperation”.

Meanwhile, HTS remains under United Nations Security Council sanctions, which were imposed in 2014 over its previous affiliation with al-Qaeda. Al-Sharaa also remains under UNSC sanctions, which can only be removed by the Council itself.

Al-Sharaa is reportedly preparing to attend the UN General Assembly in New York this September.

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.

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.

Negotiations resume in Qatar as the Israeli leader is set to hold talks with the US president, who has said a deal could be reached this week.

Israel and Hamas are set to hold indirect talks in Qatar for a second day, aimed at securing a ceasefire and a captive deal in Gaza, ahead of a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump in Washington, DC.

The latest round of negotiations on the war in Gaza began on Sunday in Doha, aiming to broker a deal on a truce and the release of captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The US president has said a deal could be reached this week.

Before departing for the US on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israeli negotiators were given clear instructions to achieve a ceasefire under conditions that Israel has accepted.

“We’ve gotten a lot of the hostages out, but pertaining to the remaining hostages, quite a few of them will be coming out,” he told journalists, adding that his meeting with Trump could “definitely help advance this” deal.

Of the 251 captives taken by Palestinian fighters during the October 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 people the Israeli military says are dead.

Netanyahu had previously said Hamas’s response to a draft US-backed ceasefire proposal, conveyed through Qatari and Egyptian mediators, contained “unacceptable” demands.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Jordan because Israel has banned the network from reporting in Israel and the occupied West Bank, said Netanyahu “cannot seem to be going against Trump’s wishes”, adding that the Trump-Netanyahu meeting is being set up as a “very important meeting” for Israel’s regional agenda, not just on Gaza.

“There are disagreements within the Israeli cabinet that it will find difficult to adopt, especially on the issues of redeployment and food aid distribution,” she said, stressing that Netanyahu is under pressure both from Trump and his coalition back home.

Trump is expected to meet the Israeli leader around 6:30pm local time (22:30 GMT) on Monday, the White House said, without the usual presence of journalists.

The truce talks have been revived following last month’s 12-day Israeli and US air strikes on Iran.

Ending war the sticking point

The US-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire envisages a phased release of captives, Israeli troop withdrawals from parts of Gaza and discussions on ending the war entirely.

Concluding the war has been the main sticking point in past rounds of talks, with Hamas demanding a full end to the conflict in return for releasing all captives, and Israel insisting it would fight on until Hamas is dismantled.

Some of Netanyahu’s hardline coalition partners oppose ending the fighting. But, with Israelis having become increasingly weary of the 21-month-old war, his government is expected to back a ceasefire.

Since Hamas’s October 2023 attack and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, mediators have brokered two temporary halts in the fighting. They have seen captives freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

Recent efforts to broker a new truce have repeatedly failed, with the primary point of contention being Israel’s rejection of Hamas’s demand for a lasting ceasefire.

Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza has killed more than 57,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health authorities, led to a hunger crisis, displaced nearly all the population, and left most of the besieged territory in ruins.

Leaders of the BRICS bloc have sharply rebuked the United States and Israeli bombardments of Iran in June, calling them a “blatant breach of international law” while voicing strong support for the creation of a Palestinian state.

But their joint declaration on Sunday, issued at a summit in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, was largely silent about another major war that is now in its fourth year and in which a founding BRICS member – Russia – is the aggressor: the conflict in Ukraine. Instead, it criticised Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil.

The carefully worded declaration, released amid escalating trade tensions with the US, condemned aggressive economic policies without directly naming US President Donald Trump. Almost all 10 members of BRICS, a bloc of emerging world economies, are currently engaged in sensitive trade talks with the US and are trying to assert their positions without provoking further tensions.

However, the BRICS statement did take aim at “unilateral tariff and non-tariff barriers” that “skew global trade and flout WTO [World Trade Organization] regulations”, a clear, though indirect critique of Trump’s protectionist agenda, before a deadline on Wednesday for new US tariffs to potentially kick in.

Trump responded to the BRICS declaration within hours, warning on his social media platform, Truth Social, that countries siding with what he termed “anti-American policies” would face added tariffs.

“Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy,” he wrote.

Which countries are part of BRICS, and who attended the summit?

The first BRICS summit was held in 2009 with the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China coming together. South Africa joined in 2010, and the bloc has since become a major voice for the Global South.

Last year, Indonesia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined the group, expanding its influence further and turning the bloc into a 10-nation entity.

There is growing interest from emerging economies to join the bloc with more than 30 nations queueing up for membership. Argentina was expected to join but withdrew its application after ultra-conservative President Javier Milei, an ally of Trump, took office in December 2023.

The Rio summit was led by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Most other member countries were represented by their leaders with three exceptions: Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian were absent.

Xi had attended all previous BRICS summits since taking office in 2013 while Putin has avoided most international trips since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him over his role in the war on Ukraine in March 2023. Brazil is a member of the ICC and would have been required under the Rome Statute, which established the court, to arrest Putin if he visited.

Russia and Iran were represented by their foreign ministers and China by Premier Li Qiang.

This was the first summit attended by Indonesia after its induction into the bloc this year.

The BRICS statement also welcomed Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Nigeria, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Uganda and Uzbekistan as new BRICS partner countries – a status that places them on a perch below full membership and allows the bloc to increase cooperation with them.

Condemnation of US-Israel strikes on Iran

In their declaration, member states described the recent Israeli and American attacks on Iran as a “violation of international law”, expressing “grave concern” about the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East.

The conflict began on June 13 when Israel launched air strikes on Iranian military, nuclear and civilian sites, killing at least 935 people, including top military and scientific leaders. Iran’s Ministry of Health reported 5,332 people were injured.

Tehran retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Israel, killing at least 29 people and injuring hundreds more, according to figures from Israeli authorities.

A US-brokered ceasefire came into effect on June 24 although the US had supported Israeli strikes just days earlier by dropping bunker-buster bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 21.

The BRICS statement underscored the importance of upholding “nuclear safeguards, safety, and security. … including in armed conflicts, to protect people and the environment from harm”.

Gaza war and Palestinian statehood

As Israel’s 21-month-long war on Gaza continues, BRICS denounced the use of starvation as a weapon of war and rejected the politicisation or militarisation of humanitarian aid.

The bloc threw its support behind UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, which has been banned by Israel.

In late May during its blockade on aid for Gaza, Israel allowed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US organisation, to provide food to the people in the enclave. The move has been widely criticised by global rights bodies, especially since hundreds of Palestinians seeking aid have been shot and killed while approaching the GHF’s aid distribution sites.

BRICS also reaffirmed its position, one that is widely held globally, that Gaza and the occupied West Bank are both integral parts of a future Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

On October 7, 2023, nearly 1,200 people were killed in Israel in Hamas attacks, during which Palestinian fighters also took more than 240 people captive. Since then, Israel has waged a war on Gaza, killing more than 57,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, and destroying more than 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure. In that same period, Israel has also killed more than 1,000 people in the West Bank.

Opposition to unilateral sanctions

The BRICS declaration strongly condemned the imposition of “unilateral coercive measures”, such as economic sanctions, arguing that they violate international law and harm human rights.

BRICS members Iran and Russia have been targets of longstanding US sanctions.

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the attack on the US embassy in Tehran, Washington imposed a wide range of sanctions. Those were ramped up in the 2010s as the US under then-President Barack Obama tried to pressure Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal in exchange for sanctions relief. But two years after that deal came into effect, Trump, who succeeded Obama as president, pulled out of the agreement and slapped tough sanctions back on Iran. Since then, the US has imposed more sanctions on Iran, including a set of measures last week.

Russia, formerly the US’s Cold War rival, has also faced repeated waves of sanctions, particularly after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump tariffs called a ‘threat’

With the global economy in turmoil over Trump’s trade policies, BRICS voiced concern over his tariffs regime.

Trump has set Wednesday as a deadline to finalise new trade agreements, after which countries failing to strike deals with Washington will face increased tariffs.

The BRICS bloc, a major force in the global economy, is projected to outpace global average gross domestic product growth in 2025.

According to April data from the International Monetary Fund, the economies of BRICS countries will collectively grow at 3.4 percent compared with a 2.8 percent global average.

The world’s top 10 economies by size include the wealthy Group of Seven nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and US – and three BRICS nations – Brazil, China and India.

The group warned that protectionist trade policies risk reducing global trade, disrupting supply chains and heightening economic uncertainty, undermining the world’s development goals.

Pahalgam attack condemned

Two months after the Pahalgam attack in India-administered Kashmir, in which gunmen killed 26 civilians, BRICS condemned the incident “in the strongest terms”.

But even with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi present, the statement did not mention Pakistan, which New Delhi has accused of supporting the attackers in April.

The two countries fought a four-day war in May after Indian strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has denied involvement in the Pahalgam attack and called for a “credible, transparent, independent” investigation.

The BRICS statement urged “zero tolerance” for “terrorism” and rejected any “double standards” in counterterrorism efforts.

Silence on Ukraine war

The lengthy statement made no direct mention of Russia’s war in Ukraine except to call for a “sustainable peace settlement”.

However, it did condemn Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure in May and June, citing civilian casualties and expressing its “strongest” opposition to such actions.

US President Donald Trump says a ceasefire deal on Gaza could be reached within days, but major hurdles include the status of the US- and Israeli-backed food distribution system that has been described as a ‘death trap’.