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That brings the press conference to a close, as Netanyahu takes a moment to acknowledge both his and Rubio’s staff who are sat in the front row.
The main takeaways from the event, which lasted just over half an hour, are that the US views international efforts to recognise the Palestinian state as a hindrance to peace efforts and that Netanyahu refuses to rule out future strikes on Hamas leaders – wherever they are.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: For decades, Gulf states have believed that a close relationship with US will guarantee their safety. That is no longer the case
Good morning. Last Monday, Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, announced that his country had accepted the US ceasefire proposal to end the devastating war in Gaza. The very next day, Israel attempted to kill Hamas’s negotiating team while they were in Qatar’s capital to discuss that same proposal.
Israel, initially bullish about the success of the operation, has since grown more doubtful that it killed any Hamas leaders in Doha. Hamas said that while six people were killed in the bombing – including the son of Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy head of its political bureau – the top leadership including the negotiating team survived.
UK news | Britain will “never surrender” to far-right protesters who use the English flag as cover for violence and to instil fear, Keir Starmer has said, condemning attacks against police officers and racist harassment after more than 110,000 people attended an extremist London rally.
Crime | Christian Brueckner, prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan police before his pending release from prison in Germany, Scotland Yard has said.
US | The Utah governor, Spencer Cox, has said 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk, “does come from a conservative family – but his ideology was very different than his family”. Robinson was not cooperating with authorities, said Cox.
Europe | Poland’s foreign minister has said the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace was an attempt by the Kremlin to test Nato’s reactions by incremental escalations without prompting a full-scale response, as Romania became the second Nato country to report an incursion in a matter of days.
Television | It was a full sweep for Adolescence at the Emmys, winning every award in which the show was nominated tonight. Fifteen-year-old Owen Cooper made history as the youngest ever actor to win the Emmy for best supporting actor in a limited series. Emmy awards 2025 – full list of winners
Continue reading...Stars read Michael Rosen’s 2014 poem Don’t Mention the Children in film released by Save the Children
Guy Pearce, Annie Lennox and Vanessa Redgrave are among the celebrities calling for an end to the “normalised horror” of children being killed in Gaza, as part of new short film.
Released by Save the Children and Choose Love, it features the stars reciting the words to a poem by Michael Rosen. Titled Don’t Mention the Children, the poem was written in 2014 in response to a Guardian article about the Israeli government banning a radio advert naming children killed in Gaza. It begins:
Continue reading...US secretary of state says Trump ‘not happy’ about Israeli attack that targeted Hamas officials in Doha for Gaza talks
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has held talks in Israel with Benjamin Netanyahu aimed at limiting the diplomatic damage to both countries by Israel’s attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders in Qatar, its continued demolition of Gaza, and the accelerated expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli prime minister took Rubio on a tour of the Western Wall, where both men placed written prayers between the stones, before taking his American visitor underground to view archeological excavations.
Continue reading...Doctors at Nasser medical complex say it will not be able to cope with large numbers of people fleeing Gaza City
Doctors and medical staff at the largest hospital still functioning in Gaza say they will be overwhelmed by a wave of new wounded and sick patients if hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee the north of the devastated territory in the face of an intensifying Israeli offensive.
Dr Mohammed Saqr, the director of nursing at the Nasser medical complex near Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, said there were not enough staff to cope with even existing demand and that supplies of medicine and fuel were running low.
Continue reading...Director Basel Adra reports his property was stormed while he was at a hospital with relatives injured in settler attacks
Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra has said that Israeli soldiers have conducted a raid at his West Bank home, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.
Israeli settlers attacked his village on Saturday, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told the Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.
Continue reading...Educational bodies from Europe to South America are boycotting Israeli institutions, though Universities UK said it did not support the action
A growing number of universities, academic institutions and scholarly bodies around the world are cutting links with Israeli academia amid claims that it is complicit in the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 63,000 people have been killed in the territory – the majority of them civilians – with the true toll likely far higher. UN-backed experts have confirmed parts of Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble, are now in a “man-made” famine.
Continue reading...The attack in Doha upended a decades-old assumption – and left Arab leaders questioning how much they can still rely on Washington
On Thursday, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, led a funeral at the state mosque. Flanked by officials in white thobes, he prayed over six caskets – one draped in a Qatari flag and five bearing Palestinian flags.
Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha on Tuesday, which also killed a Qatari officer, marked an unprecedented moment for the Gulf kingdom. The attack undercut the assumption that has underpinned Qatari foreign policy for three decades and reverberated across the Arab region: be useful to the United States, and it will protect you.
Continue reading...Retired general Herzi Halevi says ‘not once’ had legal advice constrained Israel’s military decisions in the strip
A former Israeli army commander, Herzi Halevi, has confirmed that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured in the war in Gaza, and that “not once” in the course of the conflict were military operations inhibited by legal advice.
Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.
Continue reading...Decision expected soon after reports in Cairo about status of imprisoned dual-national human rights activist
Keir Starmer has spoken to Abdel Fatah al-Sisi amid reports the Egyptian president has directed his officials to study an internal request to grant a pardon to release the British-Egyptian human rights activist and writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
Abd el-Fattah’s British-based family are not commenting on developments save to say they are praying for his release.
Continue reading...Officials hurriedly remove nearly three decades of finds in ‘high-risk operation’
An official in charge of nearly three decades of archaeological finds in Gaza has described how the artefacts were hurriedly evacuated from a Gaza City building threatened by an Israeli strike.
“This was a high-risk operation, carried out in an extremely dangerous context for everyone involved – a real last-minute rescue,” said Olivier Poquillon, director of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), which housed the relics.
Continue reading...Belgian organisers are accused of ‘naked antisemitism’ after cancelling performance by Lahav Shani
A Belgian classical music festival has axed a leading German orchestra from its programme over concerns about its Israeli conductor, drawing accusations of antisemitism from Berlin.
Flanders Festival Ghent announced it had cancelled a concert by the Munich Philharmonic scheduled for 18 September, citing insufficient clarity over Lahav Shani’s attitude to the Israeli government.
Continue reading...More than 10 Infidels MC members deployed to sites run by US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
Senior members of an anti-Islamic biker gang have been hired by US contractors and deployed to Gaza to oversee security at food distribution sites backed by the US and Israeli governments, according to a BBC investigation.
The investigation found that more than 10 members of Infidels MC, a US biker gang that uses the Crusader cross as its symbol and whose members have anti-Islamic tattoos, have been hired by UG Solutions and deployed to food aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. According to the BBC, seven members of the gang are in “senior positions overseeing [GHF] sites”.
Continue reading...Many of 1 million residents say they will not leave as they do not believe al-Mawasi humanitarian zone is safe
The Israeli military has killed at least 41 people in Gaza, including 12 aid seekers, over the last 24 hours as it continued to order the population of Gaza City to evacuate before its planned offensive.
The evacuation orders were accompanied by intensified Israeli bombing of the city, the Israeli military interspersing orders with announcements of high-rise towers they had bombed.
Continue reading...Two leaders have competing visions for Israel’s security and Palestinian self-rule with little chance of finding common ground
A meeting in London between Keir Starmer and the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, could not come at a more difficult time for either leader, and far from easing British-Israeli relations, the encounter risks setting them back yet further.
Once the meeting on Wednesday was in the diary, there was a faint hope within Downing Street that the two men would at least listen to each other about their competing visions for Israel’s future, including a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, a vision Herzog once shared.
Continue reading...Global Sumud Flotilla says no passengers or crew harmed by alleged incendiary device dropped on boat in Tunisian port
A flotilla seeking to break Israel’s aid blockade of Gaza has said it was attacked by a drone for the second time in less than 24 hours.
The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), which is carrying pro-Palestinian activists, including Greta Thunberg, said in a statement early on Wednesday that it had been attacked by another drone, which dropped an incendiary device on one of its boats, the Alma, as it was moored in the port of Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia. None of the passengers or crew were harmed and no structural damage was caused, it said
Continue reading...Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, says agreement with Tehran is ‘important step in the right direction’
Tehran and the UN nuclear inspectorate have reached an agreement that will allow UN inspectors to return to inspect all of Iran’s nuclear sites, including those bombed by Israel and the US in June.
The breakthrough, confirmed by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came during a three-hour meeting on Monday between Grossi and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Cairo.
Continue reading...The White House is caught between supporting Israel’s war against Hamas and patching up relations with a key US ally in the region
In the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas negotiators in the heart of Qatar’s capital Doha, the White House appeared sidelined from halting a conflict that Donald Trump has claimed only he could mediate.
As details of the diplomatic flurry before Tuesday’s extraordinary strike were revealed, it was claimed that the White House had little say in how Israel opened its latest front in its war against Hamas – this one on a US ally hosting negotiations days after Trump had claimed he was close to reaching a deal.
Continue reading...Elizabeth Tsurkov, who entered Iraq to do research for Princeton, had gone missing in Iraq in early 2023
Israeli-Russian academic and Princeton student Elizabeth Tsurkov has been released after being kidnapped by Kata’ib Hezbollah and spending more than two years in captivity, Donald Trump said in a post on social media.
“I am pleased to report that Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton Student, whose sister is an American Citizen, was just released by Kata’ib Hezbollah (MILITANT Hezbollah), and is now safely in the American Embassy in Iraq after being tortured for many months. I will always fight for JUSTICE, and never give up. HAMAS, RELEASE THE HOSTAGES, NOW!” the US president wrote in a TruthSocial post on Tuesday.
Continue reading...‘Immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages and a huge surge in aid into Gaza’ only route to peace, says PM
Keir Starmer has condemned Israel’s strike on Qatar before a meeting with the Israeli president in London on Wednesday.
The UK prime minister said the military strike, which targeted Hamas leaders stationed in Doha, was a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty and risked “further escalation across the region”.
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