Gaza conflict led to record rise in UK antisemitic attacks, charity says

Community Security Trust recorded 639 incidents in May, 49% of the total for the first half of 2021

A charity that monitors antisemitism and provides security for British Jewish groups has said the Gaza conflict that broke out in May resulted in its highest recording of anti-Jewish hate incidents.

The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 1,308 such incidents nationwide between January and June 2021, a 49% increase on the same period in 2020 and the highest recorded in the first half of a year.

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Suspected tanker hijacking off UAE coast is over, says British military

Armed group has left the Panama-registered Asphalt Princess, says British navy, after initial reports Iranian-backed forces had raided vessel

A group of armed men who boarded a tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf of Oman have left the targeted ship, the British navy has said without elaborating.

The notice on Wednesday came after the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) warned of a “potential hijack” under unclear circumstances underway the night before.

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Palestinians facing eviction from East Jerusalem offered deal

Judge proposes compromise to settle dispute over home ownership with Israeli settlers in Sheikh Jarrah

Palestinian residents of the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah facing forcible eviction from their homes have been offered a compromise deal with Jewish settlers by Israel’s supreme court, in an unexpected development in the high-profile case.

The session on Monday, which was supposed to reach a final decision on whether to accept an appeal from four Palestinian families over eviction orders in the decades-old legal battle, was instead met with a surprise entreaty from the judges for the two sides to accept a “practical solution”.

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‘Highly likely’ Iran was behind fatal oil tanker attack – Dominic Raab

Foreign secretary backs Israeli PM’s claims Iran was behind drone strike that killed Briton and Romanian

The UK has said it is “highly likely” that Iran carried out an “unlawful and callous attack” on a ship in the Middle East, which left a Briton dead.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the government believed the drone attack on the oil tanker off the coast of Oman was “deliberate, targeted, and a clear violation of international law by Iran”.

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Israel supreme court decision expected on Sheikh Jarrah evictions

Verdict due in case that could lead to Palestinians being forcibly displaced to make way for Jewish settlers

Israel’s supreme court is due to make a decision on whether to evict Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in a final hearing in the controversial case that helped spark communal violence inside Israel and a new war with Hamas earlier this year.

A verdict in the deeply contentious case, which could lead to the neighbourhood’s current residents being forcibly displaced to make way for Jewish settlers in a decades-old dispute, is expected on Monday morning.

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US consultants lined up to run fund that owns Israeli spyware company NSO

Investors in talks to transfer management of Novalpina Capital to Berkeley Research Group, following long-running dispute

Public investors in the private equity firm that owns a majority stake in the Israeli spyware company NSO Group are in talks to transfer management of that fund to Berkeley Research Group, a US consulting firm.

Related: US voices concern with Israeli officials about Pegasus revelations

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Israel blames Iran for attack on tanker that killed Briton and Romanian

Israeli foreign minister contacts Dominic Raab and says ‘Iran is not just an Israeli problem’

Israel has blamed Iran for a suspected drone attack on a tanker in the Arabian Sea that killed two crew, including a British national, and has vowed a harsh response.

The Liberian flagged Mercer Street, which is linked to an Israeli tycoon, was hit off the coast of Oman late on Thursday in what is thought to have been a swarm attack involving multiple drones.

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US voices concern with Israeli officials about Pegasus revelations

Top Biden administration official reportedly raised questions about spyware sold by NSO Group

The White House has raised concerns with top Israeli officials about allegations that spyware sold by Israeli surveillance company NSO Group has been used by governments around the world to monitor journalists and activists and – potentially – government officials with close ties to the US.

Brett McGurk, a top Biden administration adviser on the Middle East, raised questions privately about NSO in a meeting last week with Zohar Palti, a senior Israeli defence ministry official, according to reports by Axios and the Washington Post.

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Israel to offer Pfizer Covid booster shots to people over 60

Announcement makes Israel the first country to offer a third dose of a western vaccine to its citizens on a wide scale

Israel’s prime minister has announced that the country would offer a coronavirus booster shot to those people over 60 who have already been vaccinated.

The announcement by Naftali Bennett makes Israel, which launched one of the world’s most successful vaccination drives earlier this year, the first country to offer a third dose of a western vaccine to its citizens on a wide scale.

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Israeli authorities inspect NSO Group offices after Pegasus revelations

Officials visit offices near Tel Aviv as Israeli defence minister meets French counterpart in Paris

Israeli authorities have inspected the offices of the surveillance outfit NSO Group in response to the Pegasus project investigation into abuses of the company’s spyware by several government clients.

Officials from the defence ministry visited the company’s offices near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, at the same time as the defence minister, Benny Gantz, arrived for a pre-arranged visit to Paris in which the Pegasus revelations were discussed with his French counterpart.

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‘We will return’: the battle to save an ancient Palestinian village from demolition

Activists say Lifta, abandoned during the 1948 war, must be preserved in the face of Israeli construction plans

The ancient Palestinian village of Lifta sits on a quiet hillside minutes from Jerusalem’s bustling modern centre. Abandoned when its residents fled during the 1948 war, it has been left unchanged – frozen in time – ever since.

Today, however, its overgrown domed stone houses with arched windows, built during the early Ottoman Empire and resting on even older ruins dating back to the Iron Age, are at risk of being demolished to make way for a luxurious resort of villas, hotels and shops.

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Corporate activism is too often cynical. In Ben & Jerry’s case, it offers hope | Nesrine Malik

The company’s stand against illegal Israeli settlements is a small but welcome contribution to an ongoing shift in opinion

There is possibly only one thing worse for social justice movements than getting no recognition, and that is getting too much. Over the past few years, the subversive energy of popular movements for equality, whether #MeToo or Black Lives Matter, has regularly been appropriated by corporations.

Big businesses tend to have a good nose for trends that could affect their bottom lines, and so move early to show support for whatever fashionable cause has broken through. There is little actual activism going on here. These solidarity shout-outs are a safe, low-cost way both to get ahead of any internal issues that might end up being exposed, and to win over the sorts of customers who make political change part of their consumer habits. But the appearance of change, rather than any seismic shift, is what these corporates seem to prefer. The year since the Black Lives Matter protests has exposed the gap between internal practices and pledges of support for racial equality in many companies, with employees coming out to protest against what they see as tokenistic gestures.

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Emmanuel Macron ‘pushes for Israeli inquiry’ into NSO spyware concerns

French president reportedly spoke to Naftali Bennett to ensure ‘proper investigation’ after Pegasus project

Emmanuel Macron has reportedly spoken to the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to ensure that the Israeli government is “properly investigating” allegations that the French president could have been targeted with Israeli-made spyware by Morocco’s security services.

In a phone call, Macron expressed concern that his phone and those of most of his cabinet could have been infected with Pegasus, hacking software developed by the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group, which enables operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones from infected devices.

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Israeli PM: Ben & Jerry’s sales ban will have ‘serious consequences’

Naftali Bennett hits back at Unilever after subsidiary stops selling ice-cream in occupied territories

The decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice-cream products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has been met with fierce criticism from the Israeli political establishment, including a warning from the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, that the decision will have “serious consequences” for Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company, Unilever.

The announcement from the ice-cream maker, which has also taken political stances on the climate crisis and social justice issues such as Black Lives Matter, is one of the highest-profile rebukes of Israeli settlement building to date by a well-known brand.

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Ben & Jerry’s to stop sales in occupied Palestinian territories

Vermont-based company says sales in the occupied lands were ‘inconsistent with our values’

Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream has announced that it will no longer sell its ice-cream in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying the sales are “inconsistent with our values.”

The announcement on Monday was one of the highest-profile rebukes by a well-known brand of Israel’s settlements which are regarded as illegal under international law.

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Israel offers Covid vaccine booster shots to at-risk adults

Third Pfizer jabs made available to those with weak immune systems as Delta variant fuels rise in infections

Israel said on Sunday that it would begin to offer a booster shot of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to adults with weak immune systems, but that it was still weighing up whether they should be given to the general public.

The rapid spread of the Delta variant has fuelled a rise in the number of new infections from single digits a month ago to around 450 a day, and the country has moved to fast-track its next Pfizer shipment.

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Israeli PM suffers setback in vote on Arab citizenship rights law

Parliament fails to renew law barring Arab citizens from extending citizenship rights to spouses

The Israeli parliament has voted down an extension to controversial legislation that bars Arab Israelis from extending residency or citizenship rights to Palestinian spouses, in an early blow to the country’s new coalition government.

After a marathon all-night voting session that ended on Tuesday morning, the Knesset decided not to renew the law in a 59-59 vote. The outcome is widely seen as a stinging defeat for the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who failed to unite the coalition’s disparate ideological wings in what he reportedly himself referred to as a “referendum” on the new government.

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‘I can’t give up on my leg’: the Gaza protesters resisting amputation at all costs

Despite chronic pain and deadly infections, Palestinians wounded in protests three years ago still hope to recover without surgery

Sitting on his hospital bed, with external fixators screwed into his right leg, Mohammed al-Mughari has been in pain and on medication since he was shot in the leg more than three years ago.

He lives with a chronic bone infection – from bacteria now resistant to most antibiotics. Doctors, including in Jordan and Egypt where he sought treatment previously, have all recommended that an amputation could end his long-term suffering, but he has steadfastly refused.

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Reporting on Israel: ‘Thirty years on, we are still covering the same old enmities’

The Guardian’s outgoing Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes talks to predecessor Ian Black about how much – and how little – the job has changed over the years

It was the end of the 1980s and the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Ian Black, was talking shop with his competitor at the Sunday Times, the late Marie Colvin. “We were discussing when there might be a Palestinian state,” Black recalls of their conversation in Jerusalem. “We thought maybe it would happen in two or three years.”

Israel and the Palestinian territories were deep into the first intifada, an uprising against the occupation that lasted from 1987 until the early 90s. It was a period in which violence spiked, but also a time of nascent hope that the lengthy military grip over Palestinian life might finally end.

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