In today’s newsletter: Despite protests and the fact that almost three-quarters of Israelis want the PM to quit, huge obstacles stand in the way of his exit
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Good morning. Almost three-quarters of the Israeli public want Benjamin Netanyahu to resign as prime minister. More than two-thirds say he is handling the war in Gaza badly. And more than half think his government is not doing enough to bring the Israeli hostages held by Hamas home.
Now the ultranationalists he relies on to prop up his fragile coalition are warning that they will bring the government down if he does not go ahead with a major assault on Rafah – and the opposition leaders who joined his war cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, are coming under increasing pressure to step down. With tens of thousands of people joining renewed protests calling for Netanyahu’s removal, his political prospects would appear to be dire.
Gender identity | Thousands of vulnerable children questioning their gender identity have been let down by the NHS providing unproven treatments and by the “toxicity” of the trans debate, a landmark report has found. Read the key findings, an interview with author Dr Hilary Cass, and views from young trans people and their families.
Israel-Gaza latest | David Cameron has confirmed the UK government will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week. The foreign secretary said that he had reviewed the most recent legal advice about the situation on the ground, but this left the UK’s position on export licences “unchanged”.
Politics | William Wragg has resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues’ personal phone numbers to someone he had met on a dating app. Wragg, who represents Hazel Grove, will now sit as an independent MP.
Museums | A staff member who put his own art on display at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne has been fired. The 51-year-old man had smuggled his work “in the hope of achieving his artistic breakthrough”.
Peter Higgs | Nobel prize-winning physicist, Peter Higgs, who proposed a new particle known as the Higgs boson, has died. Higgs was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 2013 for his work in 1964 showing how the boson helped bind the universe together by giving particles their mass.
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