Everyone loses from Netanyahu’s territorial ambitions

The land grab in the West Bank will damage the region, the international community and Israel itself

It was always about land. Arabs possessed it, Jews claimed it. Both believed they were in the right. Since the 1930s, when the flight from fascism in Europe trebled the Jewish population of Palestine to 33%, this elemental, foundational struggle has intensified inexorably – with Israelis gaining ground time after time. Now Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister and co-leader of a powerful 74% Jewish majority state, wants to finish the job.

Netanyahu’s plan is to annex large parts of the West Bank and the Jordan valley, but his starting date of 1 July may slip amid disagreements with the US and internally over its scope and pace. Last week, Jordan’s King Abdullah described annexation as “unacceptable” and threatened to slash diplomatic ties. Hamas militants in Gaza called the plan a “declaration of war”.

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Israel’s cabinet meets to finalise annexation plans

Calls for sanctions are intensifying as the cabinet meets and Netanyahu awaits US approval

The Israeli cabinet will meet on Sunday to finalise plans to annex parts of the West Bank amid growing international opposition and calls for sanctions to be imposed if the proposal is implemented.

Related: Lisa Nandy urges ban on imports of West Bank goods

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Lisa Nandy leads calls for sanctions on Israel over West Bank annexations

Labour hardens stance to apply imports ban if highly controversial proposals go ahead in face of mounting international opposition

The UK must ban the import of goods from illegal settlements in the West Bank if the Israeli government presses ahead with annexation plans this week, Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, has said.

The move would be a “major step” and require “courage that so far ministers have not been willing to show”, she told the Observer. But “such a blatant breach of international law must have consequences”.

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Israel brings back tracking system amid surge in Covid-19 cases

Knesset votes to approve bill authorising domestic security agency to track infections

Israel is experiencing an alarming surge in coronavirus cases, which has prompted the government to approve reimposing a controversial tracking system administered by the country’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, over the reported objections of the agency.

Cases in the country have surged again after Israel eased restrictions at the end of May – a move that coincided with the Shavuot holiday, when people crowded beaches on both the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee.

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UN chief urges Israel to back away from West Bank annexation

António Guterres says plans to annex around 30% of the disputed territory would ‘destabilise’ the region

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed hope that Israel will hear global calls and will not go ahead with annexation of parts of the West Bank, which would undermine a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The UN has been consistently conveying the message “that annexation would be not only against international law but it would be a major factor to destabilise the region”, he told Associated Press in an interview.

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Global report: South Korea has Covid-19 second wave as Israel ponders new lockdown

New infections in and around Seoul; Spain reports 36 new outbreaks; New Zealand strengthens borders

Authorities in South Korea have said the country is experiencing a second wave of the coronavirus in and around Seoul, and warned that stronger physical-distancing measures will be reimposed if the daily increase in infections does not come down.

Confirmation of the new wave came as the Israeli government said a lockdown could be reintroduced amid a sharp rise in cases, and a team of contact tracing experts prepared to deploy to the Australian state of Victoria to tackle a new outbreak in Melbourne.

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Israeli spyware used to target Moroccan journalist, Amnesty claims

Amnesty alleges phone of Omar Radi in Morocco was infected by NSO’s Pegasus software

As NSO Group faced mounting criticism last year that its hacking software was being used illegally against journalists, dissidents and campaigners around the world, the Israeli spyware company unveiled a new policy that it said showed its commitment to human rights.

Now an investigation has alleged that another journalist, Omar Radi in Morocco, was targeted with NSO’s Pegasus software and put under surveillance just days after the company made that promise.

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Coronavirus mass surveillance could be here to stay, experts say

Use of invasive digital and physical tracking measures soars as the pandemic spreads

Extensive surveillance measures introduced around the world during the coronavirus outbreak have widened and become entrenched, digital rights experts have said, three months after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.

The measures have often been billed as temporary necessities rushed into place to help track infections, but governments have been accused of denting civil rights with the widespread use of techniques such as phone monitoring, contact tracing apps, and physical surveillance such as CCTV with facial recognition.

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Palestine says it will declare statehood if Israel annexes West Bank

Shtayyeh calls on world powers to threaten Netanyahu with sanctions over expansion plans

Palestine will declare statehood over all of the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital, and push for global recognition if Israel goes ahead with plans to annex land it occupies, the Palestinian prime minister has said.

Mohammad Shtayyeh described the possible step pledged by the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as an “existential threat” to a decades-long international effort for Israelis and Palestinians to reach an agreement that establishes two states side by side.

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2,500 rare texts from Islamic world to go online for free

National Library of Israel is digitising collection of manuscripts and books dating back to ninth century

More than 2,500 rare manuscripts and books from the Islamic world covering a period of more than a thousand years are to be made freely available online.

The National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem is digitising its world-class collection of items in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, dating from the ninth to the 20th centuries, including spectacularly beautiful Qur’ans and literary works decorated with gold leaf and lapis lazuli.

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Israel’s West Bank plans condemned by leading British Jewish figures

Simon Schama and Sir Malcolm Rifkind among those warning that annexation ‘would have grave consequences’ for Palestinians

Some of the most prominent and respected names in British Jewry have raised alarm over the Israeli government’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank, saying such a move would be an existential threat to Israel.

Among more than 40 signatories of an unprecedented letter to the Israeli ambassador to the UK are Sir Ben Helfgott, one of the best-known Holocaust survivors in Britain; the historians Sir Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore; the former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind; the lawyer Anthony Julius; the philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield; the scientist Lord Robert Winston; the former MP Luciana Berger; the Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein; and the author Howard Jacobson. 

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Ancient DNA is offering clues to puzzle of Dead Sea scrolls, say experts

Study may shed light on material and debated origins of some of the 25,000 fragments

With myriad fragments and an extraordinary past, the Dead Sea scrolls are quite a puzzle. Now experts say ancient DNA has helped them piece together which fragments come from the same scrolls, as well as which texts may have travelled a distance, and how widespread the writings were.

The scrolls are one of the most remarkable discoveries of the 20th century. Found in the caves of Qumran as well as other sites around the Judean desert, the ancient texts cover parts of the Hebrew bible canon as well as writings about religious practices, legal documents, and hymns.

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‘Palestinian lives matter’: Israeli police killing of autistic man draws US comparison

Caregiver for Iyad Halak says she told police he was disabled shortly before he was shot

A caregiver for an unarmed, autistic Palestinian man killed in Jerusalem by Israeli police has said she repeatedly warned officers he was disabled before they opened fire, in a case that has drawn parallels with US police violence.

The body of Iyad Halak, 32, was buried late on Sunday night. He was shot dead the day before, reportedly after becoming confused by shouting police and fleeing in a panic to hide among rubbish bins.

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Wars without end: why is there no peaceful solution to so much global conflict?

A new study shows that 60% of the world’s wars have lasted for at least a decade. From Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Congo DRC, has endless conflict become normalised?

Libya’s civil war entered its 7th year this month with no end in sight. In Afghanistan, conflict has raged on and off since the Soviet invasion in 1979. America’s Afghan war is now its longest ever, part of the open-ended US “global war on terror” launched after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks.

Yemen’s conflict is in its sixth pitiless year. In Israel-Palestine, war – or rather the absence of peace – has characterised life since 1948. Somalis have endured 40 years of fighting. These are but a few examples in a world where the idea of war without end seems to have become accepted, even normalised.

Why do present-day politicians, generals, governments and international organisations appear incapable or uninterested in making peace? In the 19th and 20th centuries, broadly speaking, wars commenced and concluded with formal ultimatums, declarations, agreed protocols, truces, armistices and treaties.

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Israeli police shoot dead ‘unarmed’ Palestinian man in Jerusalem

Officers chased man suspected of carrying a pistol in Old City amid heightened tensions

Israeli police officers have shot dead a Palestinian they suspected was carrying a weapon in Jerusalem’s Old City, but the man was later found to have been unarmed, Israeli media reported.

“Police units on patrol spotted a suspect with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol,” the police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. “They called upon him to stop and began to chase after him on foot. During the chase officers also opened fire at the suspect.”

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Malka Leifer can be extradited to Australia, Israeli court rules

Momentous ruling comes six years after extradition request first filed for alleged child sex abuser

An Israeli court has ruled that the alleged child sex abuser Malka Leifer is mentally fit to stand trial and can be extradited to Australia, where the former Melbourne headteacher is wanted on 74 sexual assault charges.

The pivotal ruling comes six years after Australian police first filed an extradition request, and follows dozens of hearings and setbacks in a dramatic court saga in Jerusalem that has deeply strained relations between Israel and Australia.

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Palestine cuts off all ties with Israel and US: is it a bluff?

Mahmoud Abbas says all agreements with US and Israel are void but others call move a cry for help

It was a speech intended to define a new era. In a final, do-or-die attempt to block what appeared to be Israeli plans for a permanent land grab, the Palestinian president announced he would renege on decades of diplomacy.

From the 1990s-era Oslo accords – the first steps of a peace process – to deep security coordination between the Palestinian leadership, Israel and US intelligence agencies, all were now void, Mahmoud Abbas said in a late-night speech last week. He said the Palestinian leadership was “absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments”.

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Benjamin Netanyahu appears in court on corruption charges

Israeli PM could face more than a decade in prison if convicted in three separate cases

Defiantly railing against attempts to “overthrow” him before donning a face mask to enter court, Benjamin Netanyahu sat for the first day of his high-profile corruption trial, which threatens to put Israel’s longest-serving leader behind bars and open deep divisions within the country.

Speaking in the corridors of the courthouse ahead of the hearing, Netanyahu decried police and prosecutors he accused of attempting to topple him. “When there is a strong rightwing leader like me, everything is permitted to bring him down,” he said, flanked by loyal ministers. “This is an attempt to overthrow us.”

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Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas ends security agreement with Israel and US

Declaration follows the creation of a new Israeli government which is officially contemplating annexation of some areas of the West Bank

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has declared an end to security cooperation with the Israel and the United States, citing the imminent threat of Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank.

“The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] and the state of Palestine are absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments and of all the commitments based on these understandings and agreements, including the security ones,” Abbas said in his speech.

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Netanyahu takes office in deal that could see West Bank annexation

Rival Benny Gantz to take over as PM of Israeli unity government after 18 months

Benjamin Netanyahu has been sworn in as Israel’s prime minister, heading a unity government in which he will rotate the leadership with his former rival, Benny Gantz, in a deal that could see the annexation of large parts of the West Bank.

The coalition agreement ends a deadlock that has dragged on for more than 500 days. In that time, the country has held three back-to-back elections with neither side clinching an outright victory.

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