Category Archives: Israel

Syria calls Israeli air strikes on Damascus a ‘dangerous escalation’

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Benjamin Netanyahu says strikes intended to deter Syria’s new leadership from any hostile move against the Druze

Syria’s new rulers have angrily denounced raids launched by Israel’s air force against unidentified targets near the presidential palace in Damascus, warning of a “dangerous escalation”.

Israeli officials said the attacks were intended to send a message to the Syrian government after days of bloody clashes near Damascus between pro-government militia forces and fighters from the Druze minority sect.

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Israel declares national emergency as wildfires force evacuations

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Witnesses tell of ‘walls of flame’ surging across woodland, while high winds disrupt Independence Day events

Wildfires continued to threaten swaths of forest and fields in Israel on Thursday, though firefighters successfully reopened the main road linking the country’s two principal cities.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, declared a national emergency after the fires broke out on Wednesday along the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, prompting police to shut the route and evacuate thousands of people from nearby communities.

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Lammy confirms UK and France in talks over Palestine recognition

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Two permanent members of UN security council could make move at conference in June on two-state solution

The UK is in discussion with France and Saudi Arabia over the recognition of a Palestinian state at a June conference convened by the two countries on keeping alive the political path to a two-state solution in the Middle East, the UK foreign secretary has said.

David Lammy’s comments mark the first time the UK has acknowledged that a discussion with France about a recognition process around the conference is under way.

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Iran executes man accused of helping Israel kill Revolutionary Guards colonel

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Mohsen Langarneshin is accused of being ‘senior spy’ for Mossad, but human rights groups say he was innocent

Iran has executed a 36-year-old man it accused of helping the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, kill a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran in 2022.

Iranian state media said Mohsen Langarneshin was hanged, the usual method of execution in Iran, at Ghezel Hesar prison early on Wednesday morning.

Langarneshin’s family and human rights groups insisted the former IT consultant was innocent of the charges against him and that any reported confessions were obtained by torture or blackmail.

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Unrwa says Israel has abused detained staff and used some as human shields

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Accusation from UN agency comes as Red Crescent medic held since deadly Israeli attack on ambulances is freed

The embattled UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, has accused Israel of abusing dozens of its staff in military detention and using some as human shields.

The head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, said that more than 50 staff members, including teachers, doctors and social workers, had been detained and abused since the start of the 18-month-long war in Gaza.

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Israel’s Shin Bet security chief says he will resign after Netanyahu row

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Ronen Bar to leave role in June, having been sacked by the PM only for the supreme court to block that decision

Ronen Bar, the director of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, has said he will resign in less than two months, after weeks of tension with Benjamin Netanyahu, who has tried to fire him, bringing Israel to the brink of a constitutional crisis.

“After 35 years of service, in order to allow an orderly process for appointing a permanent successor and for professional handover, I will end my role on 15 June 2025,” Bar told a Shin Bet memorial event on Monday.

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Israel seems set on destroying system of international law compliance, ICJ hears

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Country accused of obstructing UN as court considers its decision to end cooperation with Unrwa

Israel appears set on destroying the framework created to ensure compliance with international law in a way that will have profound consequences that reverberate far beyond Palestine, the international court of justice has heard.

The warning was made at the start of five days of proceedings in The Hague that may prove critical to Israel’s future within the world body. The UN’s top court will hear from dozens of nations and organisations in order to draw up an advisory opinion on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to Palestinians more than 50 days into its total blockade on aid entering Gaza.

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Israel has turned Gaza into a ‘mass grave’, top UN court hears – as it happened

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ICJ holding hearing about Israel’s obligation to facilitate aid to Gaza and the West Bank amid the outlawing of Unrwa. This live blog is closed

Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 24 people across the territory since dawn, Al Jazeera is reporting. In Jabalia, in northern Gaza, 10 family members were reportedly killed in an airstrike, while eight people in another family were killed in a separate airstrike.

Tehran has accused Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to dictate US policy in negotiations after the Israeli prime minister repeated calls for Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure to be dismantled.

Israel’s fantasy that it can dictate what Iran may or may not do is so detached from reality that it hardly merits a response.

What is striking, however, is how brazenly Netanyahu is now dictating what President Trump can and cannot do in his diplomacy with Iran…

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Israeli airstrike hits Beirut suburb despite ceasefire with Hezbollah

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Army spokesperson says storage sites housing militant group’s missiles were destroyed in Dahiyeh in south of the city

Israel conducted an airstrike on a residential neighbourhood of Dahiyeh in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday afternoon despite a November ceasefire that officially ended fighting with the militant group Hezbollah.

Videos showed three bombs hitting a building in Dahiyeh and rescue crews working to extinguish blazes after the blast; however, no casualties were reported. The Israeli military issued an evacuation warning before the bombing, prompting panic as residents fled the area.

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Gaza on brink of catastrophe as aid runs out and prices soar, groups warn

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Palestinians face starvation and severe malnutrition as Israel’s blockade continues, say aid agencies

Soaring prices of basic foodstuffs, diminishing stocks of medical supplies and sharp cuts to aid distribution threaten newly catastrophic conditions across Gaza, Palestinians and international aid officials in the battered territory are warning.

Humanitarian organisations including the World Food Programme and Unwra, which supplies food and services to more than 2 million Palestinians across Gaza, have now distributed the last of their stocks of flour and other foodstuffs to the dozens of community kitchens in the territory that serve basic meals to those with no other option.

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Israel faces legal pressure at UN’s top court over Unrwa ban

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Hearings over bar on cooperation with Palestinian aid agency are test of Israel’s defiance of international law

Israel will come under sustained legal pressure this week at the UN’s top court when lawyers from more than 40 states will claim the country’s ban on all cooperation with the UN’s Palestinian rights agency Unrwa is a breach of the UN charter.

The five days of hearings at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague have been given a fresh urgency by Israel’s decision on 2 March to block all aid into Gaza, but the hearing will focus on whether Israel – as a signatory to the UN charter – acted unlawfully in overriding the immunities afforded to a UN body. Israel ended all contact and cooperation with Unrwa operations in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem in November, claiming the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation that has been contested.

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Palestinian president names Hussein al-Sheikh vice-president of PLO and his likely successor

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Mahmoud Abbas appoints veteran aide to newly created role, making him frontrunner to replace ageing leader

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday named a veteran aide and confidant as his new vice-president. It’s a major step by the ageing leader to designate a successor.

The appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh as vice-president of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president. But it makes him the frontrunner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party who hope to succeed the 89-year-old Abbas.

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New details on killing of paramedics in Gaza appear to contradict IDF’s account

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Haaretz report comes as supreme court gives Israeli PM more time to respond to affidavit from fired Shin Bet chief

New developments have come to light in the killing of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip last month, with evidence reportedly contradicting the Israel Defense Forces’ claim that soldiers did not fire indiscriminately at the medical workers.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Wednesday that its analysis of the IDF’s own materials collected as part of an internal investigation into the incident contradicted the army’s claim that soldiers did not shoot indiscriminately at Palestinian ambulances and a fire engine in the early hours of 23 March.

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US writers at growing risk of crackdown on free speech, says PEN America

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China again biggest jailer of writers in 2024, followed by Iran – with Israel in fifth place, says organisation’s annual report

Writers in the US are at growing risk amid a worldwide crackdown on free speech that has begun to spread to countries previously renowned for unfettered expression and openness, according to a leading writers’ advocacy group.

PEN America said it was concerned about an emerging threat from the Trump administration as it published its annual Freedom to Write index report, which showed that the number of writers jailed worldwide had jumped for the sixth year running to 375 in 2024, compared with 339 the year before.

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Spain scraps €6.6m arms order from Israeli company after outcry

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Coalition allies of Pedro Sánchez said the purchase of millions of bullets jeopardised country’s efforts to hold Israel to account over war in Gaza

Spain has scrapped a €6.6m (£5.7m) order for millions of bullets from an Israeli company after the junior partners in its coalition government denounced it as a “flagrant breach” of the alliance agreement that jeopardised the country’s sustained efforts to hold Israel accountable for its actions in Gaza.

The country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza, questioning whether it is following international humanitarian law and calling the number of Palestinian deaths “truly unbearable”.

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Eleven killed in Gaza school shelter as Israel continues bombing campaign

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Wave of airstrikes claim at least 25 lives while Arab negotiators make new ceasefire proposal

At least 25 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza, including 11 in the bombing of a school turned shelter, the strip’s civil defence agency said, as Israel’s war against Hamas in the besieged Palestinian territory grinds on despite a new ceasefire proposal from Arab mediators.

Intense Israeli bombings hit several areas of Gaza on Wednesday, killing 11 in a school sheltering displaced people in al-Tuffah, a neighbourhood of Gaza City. The strike ignited a huge fire that claimed most of the casualties, said a civil defence spokesperson, Mahmoud Bassal.

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Sharon Osbourne urges US to revoke Kneecap rappers’ visas after Israel criticism

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Irish language group uses Coachella gig to denounce Gaza attacks, saying ‘Palestinians have nowhere to go’

Sharon Osbourne has urged US authorities to revoke work visas for Kneecap after the Irish language rap group used a performance at Coachella to denounce Israeli attacks on Gaza.

The TV presenter accused the band of hate speech and supporting terrorist organisations and said it should not be allowed to perform in the US. “I urge you to join me in advocating for the revocation of Kneecap’s work visa,” she exhorted followers on X on Tuesday.

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Humanitarian agencies reject IDF claim Gaza medic killings caused by ‘professional failures’

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UN, Palestinian Red Crescent and civil defence service condemn lack of accountability after Israeli investigation

The UN’s humanitarian agency, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Gaza’s civil defence service have rejected the findings of an Israeli military investigation that concluded the killings of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers in Rafah last month were caused by “professional failures”.

Eight PRCS paramedics, six members of the civil defence rescue agency and one employee of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, were carrying out two rescue missions when they were shot and killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza in the early hours of 23 March.

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Despair in Gaza as Israeli aid blockade creates crisis ‘unmatched in severity’

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Palestinians pushed into new misery as supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out in seven-week siege

Gaza has been pushed to new depths of despair, civilians, medics and humanitarian workers say, by the unprecedented seven-week-long Israeli military blockade that has cut off all aid to the strip.

The siege has left the Palestinian territory facing conditions unmatched in severity since the beginning of the war as residents grapple with sweeping new evacuation orders, the renewed bombing of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, and the exhaustion of food, fuel for generators and medical supplies.

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Israeli minister met David Lammy on ‘private’ visit to UK, Foreign Office says

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Activist groups make request for arrest warrant to be issued for Gideon Sa’ar after unannounced trip to London

The UK Foreign Office has confirmed that the foreign secretary, David Lammy, met his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar, while Sa’ar was on an unannounced visit to London.

The Foreign Office described Sa’ar’s visit as “private”, though it said Lammy had discussed a full range of Middle East issues with the Israeli foreign minister. News of Sa’ar’s presence in the UK – at a time when Israel is intensifying its offensive in Gaza, having ended a ceasefire last month – has triggered outrage among critics of Israel, and a formal request from activists for an arrest warrant to be issued against him on charges of alleged complicity in war crimes.

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