Dua Lipa says criticism of Israeli war in Gaza was for ‘greater good’

Singer due to headline Glastonbury embraces risk of backlash over ‘Israeli genocide’ post on Instagram

The pop star and soon-to-be Glastonbury headliner Dua Lipa has said she is willing to risk a backlash over political statements after she recently described military operations in Gaza as “Israeli genocide”.

In an interview with the Radio Times, the 28-year-old said she repeatedly checked herself before making a statement, but did so if she felt it was for the “greater good” and worth the risk.

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Benjamin Netanyahu dissolves Israel’s war cabinet – as it happened

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Hostilities continue in Rafah and southern Gaza despite the Israeli military’s announcement on Sunday of tactical pauses in operations to allow humanitarian aid to enter, Reuters reports Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini, told the media in Oslo on Monday.

In its latest operational update, Israel’s military has claimed it is still operating in the Rafah area of Gaza, where it says “IDF troops located numerous weapons and struck a number of structures rigged with explosives that posed a threat to the forces.”

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Benjamin Netanyahu dissolves Israeli war cabinet

Move is apparent rebuff to far right and attempt to tighten grip on decision-making over Hamas and Hezbollah

Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the Israeli war cabinet that had been overseeing the conflict in Gaza, rebuffing his far-right allies who had been seeking seats, and apparently moving to solidify his grasp on decision-making over the fighting with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah across the Lebanese border.

The prime minister announced the move to ministers, saying the war cabinet had been established as part of an agreement in which the moderate politician Benny Gantz and his National Unity party joined an emergency coalition last year.

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Netanyahu reportedly criticises military tactical pause in Gaza amid divisions with IDF

Israel’s prime minister is said to have called the decision ‘unacceptable’ after Itamar Ben-Gvir said whoever decided it was a ‘fool’

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly criticised plans announced by the military to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into Gaza to facilitate the delivery of aid

On Sunday the military announced a daily pause that would begin in the Rafah area at 8am and remain in effect until 7pm along the main Salah al-Din road, to allow aid trucks to transit between the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, adding that the pause would take place every day until further notice.

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Democrat Khanna: Biden is ‘running out of time’ with young voters over Gaza war

Representative Ro Khanna says he will skip Netanyahu’s address to Congress and that young people want war to end

Progressive California Democrat Ro Khanna warned Sunday that Joe Biden is running out of time to win over young voters opposed to his administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict and that he will not attend Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress next month.

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Representative Khanna said the erosion of support that the US president is seeing among young voters is a “challenge for our party” and the Democrats could be “running out of time” to restore support with “more people dying” in the conflict.

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Israeli military announces daily ‘tactical pause’ in southern Gaza to allow in aid

Eleven-hour window to allow in aid via Kerem Shalom crossing will take place every day until further notice, military says

The Israeli army has said it will observe a limited daily “tactical pause” along one of the main roads in the Gaza Strip to allow delivery of increased quantities of humanitarian aid, as UN agencies have suspended deliveries from a US-built pier.

The Israel Defense Forces, however, added that the pause should not be seen as a “cessation of hostilities in the southern Gaza Strip”.

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UK ‘morally incoherent’ for sending arms to Israel and aid to Gaza, says Oxfam chief

Exclusive: Charity granted permission to intervene after ministers rejected calls to suspend weapon sales

Supplying arms to Israel while simultaneously providing humanitarian aid to Gaza is “intellectually and morally incoherent”, the head of Oxfam GB has said.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 37,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Israel and Hamas have both been accused of breaking international law.

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Labour sends activists to 13 seats where it fears losing Muslim voters over Gaza

Concern continues after local elections and George Galloway win that party’s position on Israel-Gaza war still eroding support

Labour is directing activists to campaign in seats with substantial Muslim populations, over fears that some voters have been alienated by the party’s stance on Gaza.

Its campaigning efforts are mostly being concentrated on Conservative and SNP seats in an attempt to secure a potentially record-breaking majority. However, there are 13 Labour-held seats where Muslims make up at least a fifth of the electorate which the party is telling its activists to target.

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Israel is fighting a war on two fronts. No end is in sight for either one | Peter Beaumont

Israel’s conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are destined to grind on indefinitely

In 2019, Aviv Kochavi, then the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) chief of staff, delivered a bullish speech. The IDF, he proclaimed, is “all about victory”.

Assessing that the primary threats to Israel’s security were from nonstate actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Kochavi would the following year usher in a new operational doctrine titled “decisive victory”.

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Eight Israeli soldiers killed in southern Gaza, military says

Deaths will likely fuel calls for ceasefire and heighten Israeli public anger over military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox

Eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in a blast that engulfed their armoured vehicle in southern Gaza, in the biggest loss of life for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in a single incident since January.

The deaths came amid continuing fighting around Rafah in which at least 19 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes.

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Houthi attack forces crew to abandon coal carrier in Red Sea

The strike on Tutor from Yemeni militants left the vessel unable to manoeuvre, while one crew member remains missing

The crew of a Greek-owned vessel damaged in an attack by Yemen’s Houthi militants has been evacuated, and the abandoned ship is drifting in the Red Sea, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO).

One crew member from Tutor, the Liberia-flagged coal carrier, remains missing, officials in the Philippines said, after an attack near the Yemeni port of Hodeidah on Wednesday caused severe flooding and damage to the engine room, leaving the vessel unable to manoeuvre.

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Pro-Palestinian Canadian students’ post for ‘teach-in’ features masked guerrillas

Zionist group claims antisemitism as McGill students advertise ‘revolutionary’ summer program at protest camp

A pro-Palestinian student encampment at a prominent Canadian university has announced a “revolutionary youth summer program” with posts featuring photos of masked, armed guerrillas reading communist literature, drawing criticism from a Canadian Zionist organization decrying what it said was metastasizing antisemitism.

The student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) McGill called for students to sign up for “revolutionary” trainings to be held on the university campus this month. Since April SPHR McGill has been occupying part of the Montreal campus to protest against Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

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US imposes sanctions on ‘extremist Israeli group’ for blocking Gaza aid

US says Tsav 9 activists have blockaded key crossing, set trucks on fire and injured drivers as hunger spreads inside Gaza

The US state department has imposed sanctions on Tsav 9, “a violent, extremist Israeli group”, for blocking convoys taking humanitarian aid to Gaza, and attacking trucks.

The US said Tsav 9 activists began blockading a key crossing, Kerem Shalom, at the start of the year, and later set trucks on fire and injured drivers and Israel Defense Forces soldiers, as hunger spread inside Gaza.

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Middle East: Hamas official says nobody knows how many of the remaining hostages are alive – as it happened

Speaking to CNN, Hamas spokesperson says any deal to release the hostages would need to include a permanent ceasefire

Fuel shortages are pushing hospitals in Gaza to the “brink of collapse”, with people facing dehydration, disease and starvation, the charity ActionAid has warned.

Dr Mohammad Salha, acting director of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, said a lot of services at the hospital were affected by the lack of fuel. In a voice note message, he told ActionAid:

The [World Health Organization] [was] providing fuel and medical supplies and medication.[But] from 22 April [until] now they are not providing because the Israeli [military] refused to [let] the fuel and medical supplies [enter]. So, [for] more than 50 days the hospital is without fuel and medical supplies and the fuel that they are bringing is only [enough] for two weeks.

[As a result] we are decreasing our intervention and we are not running the big generators. We are running the small generators only to recharge the batteries. And [on this] we are doing the surgeries related to life saving.”

Our laboratory is also affected. We can’t do many analyses, related to orthopedic analysis [and] we are dealing with many patients … 70% of people who [are] affected from the Israeli aggression need orthopedic surgery.”

Fuel is absolutely crucial to keep the infrastructure needed to sustain life operational in Gaza. It is shocking that hospitals are having to reduce their services due to shortages and that life-saving equipment could be forced out of action.

The trickle of aid currently entering Gaza is nowhere near enough to meet the enormous and ever-growing humanitarian need.

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‘No one has any idea’ how many Israeli hostages are alive, says Hamas official

Osama Hamdan’s comments signal group’s position on ceasefire proposal remains largely unchanged

A senior Hamas official has said the group does not know how many of the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza are still alive, as Israeli and Hamas sources set out positions that could undermine the possibility of an imminent ceasefire deal.

The Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of the remaining 120 hostages captured on 7 October last year were still alive, amid Israeli estimates that at least a third had died in captivity or were killed when seized.

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University of Sydney orders students protesting in support of Gaza to leave after almost two months

Spokesperson says ‘the encampment has taken over this shared space to the exclusion of others’

The University of Sydney has ordered students protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza to leave a controversial encampment that has been on the campus since April.

A university spokesperson said on Friday that it had told the encampment’s leadership “we require them to vacate the encampment to allow other students to use the space”.

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G7 summit live: Biden says lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Kyiv’s ability to defend itself

Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy hold a joint press conference just over two hours behind schedule

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has just arrived at the venue.

This is the scene at the Borgo Egnazia resort as G7 leaders are scheduled to begin arriving.

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Israeli tanks advance in Rafah as fleeing Palestinians ‘face death and starvation’

UN warns that more than a million people are being forced to flee to areas in which there is little food, water or shelter

Israeli tanks rolled into the western part of Rafah on Thursday as the city came under intense helicopter, drone and artillery fire in what residents described as one of the worst bombardments of the area so far.

The assault on Rafah has driven out more than a million Palestinians who had been sheltering there, forcing them into areas with little or no access to food, water or shelter. The UN has warned that more than a million people are expected to “face death and starvation by the middle of July”.

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Unrwa accuses Israel of frequently preventing aid deliveries to Gaza

UN relief agency says authorities are hampering operations by failing to grant requests for access permits

The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory.

“We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.

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‘Abhorrent antisemitism’: homes of Jewish Brooklyn Museum leaders vandalized

Police look into red paint splattered with possible symbol of Palestinian resistance and banner calling director a Zionist

Police are investigating reports of vandalism after the homes of Jewish leaders and board members, including the director, of the Brooklyn Museum were splattered with red paint early Wednesday.

In images circulating on social media, red paint is visibly splashed across the homes of director Anne Pasternak and several others affiliated with the Brooklyn Museum. Police said five homes – three in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn – were vandalized in the attack.

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