Netanyahu returns to White House holding all the cards in Gaza talks

Joint attack on Iran puts Israeli PM in powerful position as he dangles prospect of Trump-brokered ceasefire deal

Donald Trump will host Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC on Monday as the US president seeks again to broker a peace deal in Gaza and the Israeli prime minister takes a victory lap through the Oval Office after a joint military campaign against Iran and a series of successful strikes against Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.

Netanyahu and Trump have a complex personal relationship – and Trump openly vented frustration at him last month during efforts to negotiate a truce with Iran – but the two have appeared in lockstep since the US launched a bombing run against Iran’s nuclear programme, fulfilling a key goal for Israeli war planners.

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Israeli strikes kill at least 38 in Gaza as ceasefire talks reach critical point

Benjamin Netanyahu travels to Washington as momentum gathers in negotiations for a US-sponsored deal

Israeli warplanes launched a wave of strikes in Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 38 Palestinians, according to hospital officials, as talks over a ceasefire in the devastated territory reached a critical point.

Officials at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said 18 people were killed by strikes in al-Mawasi, a nearby coastal area that is crowded with tented encampments of those displaced by fighting elsewhere.

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Britain re-establishing relations with Syria, announces David Lammy

Foreign secretary says it is in UK’s ‘interests to support new government’ in first visit by British minister for 14 years

Britain is re-establishing diplomatic relations with Syria after the country’s years-long civil war, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, has announced during a visit to the capital, Damascus.

“There is renewed hope for the Syrian people,” Lammy said in a statement. “It is in our interests to support the new government to deliver their commitment to build a stable, more secure and prosperous future for all Syrians.”

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Israel sends team to Qatar for negotiations, but rejects Hamas demands to change ceasefire proposal

Hopes that pause to the killing may be agreed were boosted despite 24 Palestinians being killed including 10 seeking aid

Israel has continued to launch waves of airstrikes in Gaza, hours after Hamas said it was ready to start talks “immediately” on a US-sponsored proposal for a 60-day ceasefire.

The announcement by the militant Islamist organisation increased hopes that a deal may be done within days to pause the killing in Gaza and possibly end the near 21-month conflict.

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Europe is scrambling to form a united front and regain relevance in the Iran crisis

Tehran now places little faith in the European countries who played a key role in brokering the Iranian nuclear deal

Exposed as divided and marginalised during the Iran crisis, European nations are scrambling to retrieve a place at the Middle East negotiating table, fearing an impulsive Donald Trump has diminishing interest in stabilising Iran or the wider region now he believes he has achieved his key objective of wiping out Tehran’s nuclear programme.

On Tuesday the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, was the latest senior European figure to phone the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, offering to be a facilitator and urging Tehran not to leave the crisis in a dangerous limbo by keeping UN weapons inspectors out of Iran.

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A ceasefire in Gaza appears to be close. Here’s why it could happen now

A weakened Hamas plus Israel’s war with Iran have given Netanyahu a boost, raising hopes of a pause in fighting

After nearly 21 months of bloody war, it now appears a question of when rather than if a new ceasefire brings a pause to the fighting that has devastated Gaza, destabilised the region and horrified onlookers across the world.

On Friday, Donald Trump said he expected Hamas to agree within 24 hours to a deal that Israel has already accepted. Analysts predict a formal announcement after Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, arrives in Washington on Monday on his third visit to the White House since Trump began his current term.

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Hamas says it is ready to enter ceasefire negotiations in ‘positive spirit’

Group said to want stronger guarantees of permanent end to war as Netanyahu prepares to meet Trump in US

Hamas said it had responded on Friday in “a positive spirit” to a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire proposal and was prepared to enter into talks on implementing the deal which envisages a release of hostages and negotiations on ending the conflict.

US president Donald Trump earlier announced a “final proposal” for a 60-day ceasefire in the nearly 21-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, stating he anticipated a reply from the parties in coming hours.

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Austria deports man to Syria for first time in 15 years

Syrian man, 32, was granted asylum in 2014 but lost refugee status because of a criminal conviction

Austria has returned a Syrian with a criminal conviction to his birth country in what it described as the first such deportation since the fall of the Assad regime.

“The deportation carried out today is part of a strict and thus fair asylum policy,” Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, said in a statement.

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Israel steps up deadly bombardment of Gaza before ceasefire talks

Officials say about 90 people killed since Wednesday night as Israeli security cabinet prepares for meeting

Israel has escalated its offensive in Gaza before imminent talks about a ceasefire, with warships and artillery launching one of the deadliest and most intense bombardments in the devastated Palestinian territory for many months.

Medics and officials in Gaza reported that about 90 people were killed overnight and on Thursday, including many women and children. On Tuesday night and Wednesday the toll was higher, they said. Casualties included Marwan al-Sultan, a cardiologist and director of the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, who died in an airstrike that also killed his wife and five children.

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Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal

Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crime

The Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – when it attacked a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.

Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.

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Skeleton found in pot is first ancient Egyptian to undergo whole genome analysis

Unusual burial of man, thought to have been a potter, in sealed vessel may have helped DNA survive past four millennia

A man whose bones were shaped by a lifetime of hard labour more than 4,500 years ago has become the first ancient Egyptian to have his entire genetic code read and analysed by scientists.

The skeleton of the man, who lived at the dawn of the Age of the Pyramids, was recovered in 1902 from a sealed pottery vessel in a rock-cut tomb in Nuwayrat, 165 miles south of Cairo, and has been held in a museum since.

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More than 400 media figures urge BBC board to remove Robbie Gibb over Gaza

Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle and Mike Leigh among signatories to letter criticising Jewish Chronicle ties

More than 400 stars and media figures including Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle, Juliet Stevenson and Mike Leigh have signed a letter to BBC management calling for the removal of a board member, Robbie Gibb, over claims of conflict of interest regarding the Middle East.

The signatories also include 111 BBC journalists and Zawe Ashton, Khalid Abdalla, Shola Mos-Shogbamimu and the historian William Dalrymple, who express “concerns over opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine”.

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Witnesses describe grim aftermath of Israeli strike on busy Gaza cafe

Women, children and elderly people among at least 24 killed by attack that turned beach spot into scene of carnage

Witnesses have described the bloody aftermath of an Israeli strike on a crowded seaside cafe in Gaza, which left at least 24 dead and many more injured.

Al-Baqa cafe, close to the harbour in Gaza City, was almost full in the early afternoon on Tuesday when it was hit by a missile, immediately transforming a scene of relative calm amid the biggest urban centre in Gaza into one of carnage.

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Tuesday briefing: How weakened is Iran after Operation Midnight Hammer – and where might it go from here?

In today’s newsletter: With its nuclear capabilities down but not out and domestic support strong, the question is where Iran goes next

Good morning. The term “cakeism” – the false belief that one can simultaneously enjoy the benefits of two mutually exclusive choices – may forever be associated with the Brexit negotiations, when keeping the advantages of EU membership while also shedding its costs became the UK’s official bargaining position.

But the appeal of cakeism endures, and over the last week the US president’s approach to the conflict with Iran has started to look distinctly gateau-shaped. Donald Trump wants the glory of a decisive victory on the battlefield but is not so keen on the long-term repercussions that come with it: tit-for-tat retaliations, unforeseeable conflict spillage, focused diplomacy, or even regime change – the kind of talk the Maga movement associates with Trump’s predecessors.

Welfare | Downing Street’s plans to see off a major Labour welfare rebellion were in chaos on Monday night, amid continued brinkmanship between MPs and the government over the scale of the concessions. There was significant division between government departments over how to respond to rebels’ demands ahead of the knife-edge vote on Tuesday.

UK news | Police have formally opened a criminal investigation into comments made by Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury after reviewing video and audio footage of the performances. Meanwhile on Monday, the BBC said that it should not have allowed chants of “Death to the IDF” at Bob Vylan’s performance to be broadcast.

Crown Estate | King Charles is set to receive official annual income of £132m next year, after his portfolio of land and property made more than £1bn in profits thanks to a boom in the offshore wind sector.

Arms trade | Britain’s decision to allow the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, despite accepting they could be used in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza, was lawful, London’s high court has ruled. The judges ruled that the “acutely sensitive and political issue” was “a matter for the executive … not for the courts”.

Crime | A 92-year-old man who evaded justice for almost 60 years has been convicted of raping and murdering a woman in Bristol, after a review by a cold case police team and scientists. Officers believe the 58-year gap between the crime and the conviction may be the biggest in modern English policing history.

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Trump signs executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria

White House says move will help stabilise country after ousting of Assad and could lead to broader sanctions relief

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria in a move that the White House says will help stabilise the country after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.

The order was designed to “terminate the United States’ sanctions programme on Syria”, a White House spokesperson said, cancelling a 2004 declaration that froze Syrian government property and limited exports to Syria over Damascus’s chemical weapons programme.

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Israel launches waves of Gaza airstrikes after new displacement orders

Scores of Palestinians reported killed as senior Netanyahu adviser due to arrive in Washington for ceasefire talks

Israel ramped up its offensive in Gaza on Monday, with new displacement orders sending tens of thousands of people fleeing the north of the devastated territory and waves of airstrikes killing about 60 Palestinians, according to local officials and medical staff.

The violence in Gaza came as a senior adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, was due to arrive in Washington for talks on a new ceasefire, a day after Donald Trump called in a social media post for a deal to end the 20-month war and free 50 hostages held by Hamas.

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Sleeper cells and threat warnings: how the US-Iran conflict is spinning up fear

Experts stress that a weakened Iran isn’t in a position to attack on US soil and doesn’t want to invite Trump’s wrath

As the war between Iran and Israel intensified, teasing the eventual involvement of the US military, American security agencies began to warn of a looming threat of Tehran-backed “sleeper cells” known to be active stateside that could be called in for retaliatory attacks.

But as the B-2 bombers struck nuclear sites across Iran and the Iranian military responded with a missile barrage on US bases in the region, a ceasefire took shape. In the end, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iran’s elite military and intelligence branch, wielding a global web of terrorist groups and agents acting on its behalf – didn’t appear to sponsor or carry out any covert operations inside the US, nor has it since.

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Benjamin Netanyahu corruption trial delayed on diplomatic and security grounds

The Israeli court’s decision to cancel this week’s hearing in the long-running trial came after Donald Trump said the case should be thrown out

An Israeli court has cancelled this week’s hearings in Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial, accepting a request made by the prime minister on classified diplomatic and security grounds.

“Following the explanations given … we partially accept the request and cancel at this stage Mr Netanyahu’s hearings scheduled” for this week, the Jerusalem district court said in its ruling, published online by Netanyahu’s Likud party.

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Iran’s nuclear enrichment ‘will never stop’, nation’s UN ambassador says

Amir-Saeid Iravani says Tehran is ready for negotiations but Trump’s ‘unconditional surrender is not negotiation’

Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that the Islamic republic’s nuclear enrichment “will never stop” because it is permitted for “peaceful energy” purposes under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The enrichment is our right, an inalienable right, and we want to implement this right,” Iravani told CBS News, adding that Iran was ready for negotiations but “unconditional surrender is not negotiation. It is dictating the policy toward us.”

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Tens of thousands flee Gaza City after Israel warns of major offensive

Israeli forces urge people to evacuate eastern areas before ‘military operations that will escalate and intensify’

Tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing eastern parts of Gaza City in the north of the territory on Sunday after Israel warned of a major offensive.

The messages on social media from the Israel Defense Forces warned of “military operations [that] will escalate, intensify, and extend westward to the city centre to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organisations” and directed those living in several crowded neighbourhoods to al-Mawasi, a coastal area much further south that is already overcrowded and has very limited facilities.

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