conflict

Presidents of Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador, along with Spain’s King Felipe VI, are expected to attend Friday’s ceremony.

Colombia’s outgoing defence minister has warned of a heightened risk of “terrorism” ahead of Friday’s inauguration of President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella.

Minister of Defence Pedro Sanchez told radio station La FM on Wednesday that authorities were tracking a “threat” against Friday’s proceedings. “Most likely, these criminals would attempt to disrupt this democratic event with acts of terrorism,” he said.

The handover of the presidency will take place in the region of Cali in Colombia’s southwest, which has recently seen a series of militia attacks.

De la Espriella, 48, who narrowly won the June presidential run-off, had asked Congress to move the event from the capital, Bogota, to the country’s third-largest city despite its proximity to areas under the control of rebel groups.

Several foreign leaders, including the presidents of Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador, along with Spain’s King Felipe VI, are expected to attend the inauguration ceremony.

To secure the event, Colombia’s military is deploying roughly 11,000 troops and has imposed a no-fly zone on drones over Cali and its surroundings. Rebel fighters have previously used drones to drop explosives.

In the department of Cauca, near Cali, a dissident faction of the FARC armed group operates under the command of Ivan Mordisco, the alias of Colombia’s most wanted rebel leader.

The hard-right de la Espriella campaigned on dismantling outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” negotiation strategy with armed groups.

Petro has disputed the election result and said he will not attend Friday’s ceremony.

Israeli forces have entered homes and shops in the occupied West Bank’s Qalandiya refugee camp, near Ramallah, issuing demolition threats against businesses.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Wednesday that eight Palestinian people were taken to hospital after suffering injuries.

Mohammad Aslan, spokesman for the committee that runs the affairs of the camp, told the AFP news agency that the Israeli army had arrested at least 20 people and took up positions on residents’ roofs.

In 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government advanced plans for the construction of an illegal 9,000-unit settlement on the grounds of Jerusalem’s former Atarot airport, adjacent to Qalandiya.

Palestinian residents have since voiced fear that raids and home demolitions could be tied to a strategy of eviction before illegal settlement construction, without any official word from Israeli authorities.

A deal between the US and Iran could be signed within 48 hours, according to US officials. The agreement would reportedly focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and could mark a first step towards broader negotiations.

Al Jazeera’s Marah Ryan has the latest.

Every Palestinian born in the West Bank before the start of the occupation in 1967 has witnessed the extent to which Israel has transformed the landscape through spatial planning, military closures, and settlement, infrastructure and road construction. Sixty years on, what used to be a straightforward journey from point A to point B within the West Bank has become an arduous and frequently hazardous undertaking.

As a foreigner living in the West Bank in the 1980s and visiting it off and on ever since, this transformation revealed itself in incremental leaps and bounds, on each occasion provoking a shock of recognition mixed with consternation at how things looked the same but different.

I remember driving from Jerusalem to Ramallah in the 1980s, for example. The two cities were linked by a single highway with an Israeli army checkpoint at Qalandia refugee camp. To get to my destination would take me from 20 minutes to half an hour, at most, depending on traffic and the mood of the soldiers that day.

Fast forward to 2000. I had not visited for several years on the day I took my rental car along the old road out of Jerusalem. Ten minutes into my journey and not having taken any turns, I suddenly found myself inside an Israeli settlement, a suburb of occupied East Jerusalem.

Backtracking, I discovered that the way to Ramallah now required leaving the main highway for a lesser road. I proceeded. Yet before another 10 minutes had passed, I ended up at the entrance to another Israeli settlement, this time in the occupied West Bank, having again missed the relevant exit.

Looking back at those days, I now remember such unexpected forced deviations as annoyances that barely consumed additional time. Today, by contrast, travelling from Jerusalem to Ramallah can take an hour, or hours, as the army slows down or holds up traffic at all the available access points to Ramallah at will.

For Palestinians, the experience is 10 times worse. Ever growing in number and impact, Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement have come in various types. One class includes army checkpoints, both stationary and mobile, on West Bank arteries, makeshift earthen embankments blocking roads to villages and refugee camps, and steel gates that the army can close and open via remote control.

A second category involves access to occupied East Jerusalem and Israel, which is possible only by obtaining a permit from the military authorities. This affects Palestinians wishing to visit Islam’s and Christianity’s holy sites as well as those employed inside Israel.

And a third category of restrictions concerns West Bank Palestinians’ ability to travel abroad via the Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan.

Movement restrictions intensified after the October 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel. Their cumulative impact has been to fragment Palestinian society and the way it functions. They have disrupted the economy, in particular.

A combination of military no-go zones and settler violence has made the 61 percent of the West Bank that constitutes Area C, where most agricultural lands are located, increasingly inaccessible.

Curbs on movement have affected trade, raising the cost of commerce when transport is delayed at checkpoints and perishable goods spoil.

Imports and exports also face impediments, harming a Palestinian economy that is heavily dependent on trade with Israel and the outside world (representing roughly 67 percent of its GDP).

Restricted hours at Allenby and an untransparent, elastic definition of “dual-use” goods cause costly delays for imports, stymying development. Traders’ inability to meet their Israeli counterparts in person forces them to use intermediaries at additional expense.

Movement restrictions have created their own self-perpetuating cat-and-mouse dynamic as Palestinians find ways to circumvent them and the army imposes additional curbs, forcing people to pursue evermore inventive bypass tactics. But their clever manoeuvring may carry additional costs or even risks to their lives.

Take, for example, efforts by Palestinians – desperate to put food on the table – to illegally cross into Israel for work. Some have been shot dead when breaching Israel’s separation barrier while others have been detained.

In the months before October 2023, about 193,000 West Bank and Gaza workers were employed in Israel or Israeli settlements, mainly in construction and agriculture, contributing 20 to 25 percent to the Palestinian GDP.

Israel stopped workers from crossing the Green Line on the heels of the Hamas attack, citing security concerns, even though it has offered no evidence that Palestinian workers employed in Israel in any way played a role in the events of October 2023. Since then, the number of those permitted to go to their Israeli jobs is estimated at a mere 44,000, mostly in skilled professions.

The loss of what may be a family’s primary income has been calamitous, affecting about 750,000 people (based on an average family size of five) in a population of about 3.3 million. Meanwhile, an economic downturn has further swelled the ranks of the West Bank unemployed. Poverty rates have shot up.

Movement restrictions have also disrupted family networks, limiting participation in large gatherings, such as weddings and funerals, as extended families are spread throughout the West Bank. Curbs on movement additionally complicate access to emergency or specialised medical care and even to education. Since October 2023, Palestinian institutions of higher education have reduced in-class teaching as students have faced repeated delays – often of unpredictable length – in coming to school. Online classes can only partially compensate for this disruption.

What purpose do the myriad movement restrictions serve? Palestinians often describe their experience of navigating army checkpoints as a humiliation and a form of harassment, an effort by Israeli soldiers to both show who is boss and make the population’s life difficult. Many Palestinians see in soldiers’ conduct a way of taking revenge for the Hamas attacks.

Yet by increasing the occupation’s severity, checkpoints and other restrictions on Palestinians’ movement could well have the opposite effect of triggering greater violence and thus making Israel and its citizens, including those residing in illegal settlements, not more but less secure.

While the Israeli army might argue that a certain checkpoint at a given location and time is justified on the grounds of maintaining security, in their ubiquity and seeming arbitrariness, these restrictions have, over the years, gone far beyond what could reasonably be termed a security rationale.

A motive other than maintaining security must, therefore, be at play. It is not hard to find one when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a two-state solution and champions annexing the occupied West Bank to Israel while some members of his cabinet, like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, openly espouse policies that would encourage West Bank Palestinians to emigrate.

Whatever the declared policy, the compounding impact of Israel’s movement restrictions has been to break up the West Bank into smaller zones that the Israeli army and intelligence apparatus can more easily penetrate and control. Palestinian politics remains vibrant in these localities (elections to West Bank municipal councils were held most recently this past April) while national politics and governance have eroded, partly as a result of obstacles to movement.

And Israel has been able to suppress, for now, armed resistance to the occupation, which has assumed an increasingly local character. The army made short work of small armed groups like the Lions’ Den, for example. These had emerged five years ago in the northern West Bank, spontaneously and largely uncoordinated between localities.

Yet even as Israel splits Palestinian society into separate enclaves, it has found no effective answer to Palestinians’ enduring aspirations to free themselves from the military occupation. To the contrary, it is sowing the seeds for further resistance through its annexationist agenda and unremittingly punitive actions.

A version of this article appeared first on Al Jazeera Arabic’s website. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

More than 100 Palestinians whose bodies were trapped beneath rubble for nearly three years have been laid to rest in Gaza City, in one of the largest mass funerals held in the enclave since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began.

Thousands of people gathered on Tuesday to bury the remains of 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families after rescue teams recovered their bodies from the site of a November 2023 Israeli attack in the Sabra neighbourhood.

According to Palestinian officials, the November 22, 2023 attack killed 308 members of the two families, including 40 children, 30 women and seven people with disabilities.

Rescue teams recently recovered more than 100 bodies from the site, allowing families to hold funeral prayers and burials. Palestinian authorities say about 157 people remain missing, either still beneath the rubble or otherwise unaccounted for.

Rows of coffins draped in Palestinian flags were carried through Gaza City as mourners gathered for the funeral. Large banners bearing photographs of the victims were displayed alongside calls for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza that began in October 2023.

‘Exceptional and painful scene’

The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza described the funeral as one of the largest held in the territory during the war, with spokesman Mahmoud Basal posting on X that Gaza was “set for an exceptional and painful scene”.

He said the funeral procession reflected the scale of the human losses suffered by Palestinian families who have waited years to bury their relatives.

The funeral also prompted an outpouring of grief from Palestinian researchers, activists and human rights advocates, many of whom said it symbolised the suffering of families still waiting to recover loved ones buried beneath the rubble.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, described the funeral as potentially being “the largest funeral in Palestinian history”.

Palestinian researcher Mahmoud Hamed al-Aila said Gaza was “extracting the bodies of its children from under the rubble after years of genocide”.

“What heart can bear this pain?” he asked.

Activist Mohammed Haniyah said dozens of other bodies have decomposed or are still missing under the rubble.

Another activist, Ali Abo Rezeq, said the procession turned “massacre statistics into coffins and shrouds”, highlighting that some families searched through the rubble with their bare hands because of the shortages of heavy equipment.

Online bloggers, including Malik Al-Shanbari and Khaled Safi, viewed the funeral not merely as a burial ceremony, but as a “renewed testament to the scale of the tragedy left behind by the war”.

Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said around 200 members of the Abu Sharia family are still believed to be beneath the rubble, and that their remains may have decomposed.

The funeral also highlighted the fate of thousands of other Palestinian families who are still waiting to recover the remains of their relatives believed to be missing beneath the rubble across Gaza.

The funeral was held amid ongoing Israeli violations of a “ceasefire” agreement in October. As of Monday, continued Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,250 Palestinians and injured 4,110 others.

The so-called ceasefire deal was signed after more than two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed at least 73,375 Palestinians and wounded at least 174,220, most of them women and children.

About 90 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has also been damaged or destroyed during the genocide.

Meanwhile, the Assembly of Palestinian Clans and Families called on the Western-backed Board of Peace to accelerate efforts to recover bodies still trapped beneath the rubble, clear the debris and support the reconstruction of Gaza.

It said the burial of 112 Palestinians may have marked the end of the long wait for some families, but it did not end the search for thousands of others still missing.

Just over one month into the war on Iran, US President Donald Trump made an apocalyptic threat that raised the alarm in Washington and Middle Eastern capitals alike, attached to a tight deadline.

If Iran didn’t immediately reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz, Trump warned on April 7, “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.

Tehran didn’t blink. And with two hours to the deadline, Trump walked back the threat and instead announced a two-week ceasefire, brokered by Islamabad.

Since then, the US president has repeated this pattern multiple times. It goes like this: Trump ups the ante, shaking up the markets, and then dials it back down at the 11th hour, apparently hoping this strategy will influence negotiations.

On Monday, Trump again insisted that negotiations were close to ending the war – and, yet again, gave “duplicitous” Iran “one last chance” to make a deal or suffer catastrophic strikes.

For its part, Tehran denies any ongoing talks with the US, saying it is only talking to Oman about how to manage the Hormuz strait, the closure of which has caused oil prices to soar amid havoc in energy markets around the world.

The war is now in its 23rd week, with no end to hostilities in sight, and both Washington and Tehran are more entangled than before, with additional variables in the conflict that could determine its direction.

So, how many times has Trump given Iran “one last chance” to make a deal or suffer the consequences, before walking his threat back? And how many times have we heard from the US president that a deal is just around the corner?

The times Trump threatened heavy attacks – before backing down

There have been several times since February 28, when the US and Israel launched their first joint attacks on Iran, that Trump has threatened an attack but did not follow through.

March

Less than a month into the war, Trump threatened Tehran over its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US would strike Iran’s power plants if the critical waterway was not reopened. Two days later, he postponed the strikes for five days, citing “progress” in talks.

As the delayed deadline neared on March 26, Trump delayed the strikes again, this time for 10 days, claiming that Tehran requested it.

April

Then came the April 7 threat that a whole “civilisation will die”, before Trump called off those strikes and announced a two-week ceasefire, to give Iran a chance to reach a peace deal.

No deal emerged. And then, after threatening to strike Iran “harder”, and in the final hours of the ceasefire, on April 21, Trump announced an indefinite ceasefire, saying Pakistani mediators had asked him to do so.

May

With those talks making no progress, Trump returned to his threats to strike Iran on May 17, saying “nothing will be left” of Iran if Tehran did not make a deal with the US.

But the next day, Trump again told reporters that he had decided to “put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever, but possibly for a little while, because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran”.

By May 27, US strikes were back on after negotiations faltered, once again.

June

On June 11, after two days of back-and-forth strikes, Trump threatened the US would take “total control” of Iran’s oil and gas industries. But then, a few hours later, he posted on social media, claiming there had been a breakthrough in negotiations and called off the attacks.

On June 17, the US and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), announcing a ceasefire and a 60-day period to complete negotiations for a lasting peace. Within days, that had fallen apart over the glaring gaps in the two sides’ positions over the contents of the MoU, triggered mainly by who had control of the Strait of Hormuz – and both sides returned to tit-for-tat, widening strikes.

July-August

On July 27, Trump halted the strikes, claiming the “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to, but noting that Washington “is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II”.

On Monday this week, Trump told reporters again that negotiations were close to ending the war and that this was Iran’s “last chance before decapitation”. The US has not followed up on this latest threat yet.

Iran denies it is talking to the US, although it may be holding indirect talks via mediators, analysts say.

The times Trump said Iran peace deal was imminent

Trump has insisted that Iran is “desperate” to cut a deal, or that a deal is imminent, multiple times since the start of the war.

March

Two days after launching the first attacks on Tehran on February 28, which the US initially appeared to believe would be a quick operation, Trump seemingly conceded it might take a bit longer when he said at the White House: “We projected four to five weeks [to end Iran war], but we can go far longer than that.”

The US president changed tack again on March 9, when he told CBS that “the war is very complete, pretty much”, and that the US military operation was “way ahead of schedule”.

Later the same day, he shifted his stance again, saying the war is “both complete and just beginning”. And later that day again, he said: “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.”

On March 23, Trump told reporters outside Air Force One that “major points of agreement, I would say – almost all points of agreement” had been reached with Iran. Tehran was denying that it was party to negotiations at this point.

Two days after that, Trump repeated that Iran wanted to “make a deal so badly”. The next day, he also told a cabinet meeting that Iran was “begging to make a deal”.

April

On April 7, Trump said, again, that Washington was “very close to a deal” with Iran, before threatening to blow up a “whole civilisation”, but then walked back on that to announce a ceasefire the next day.

Over the following days, throughout April, Trump reiterated that the war was, in fact, pretty much over. But it continued.

Trump repeatedly claimed on separate occasions that Iran had “agreed to everything”, that “I think we will get a deal in the next day or two”, and that “I don’t think there’s too many significant differences” between the US and Iranian positions.

May

On May 23, Trump said the administration was “getting a lot closer” to a deal, which was “largely negotiated, [and] subject to finalisation”.

June

On June 8, Trump called for “total victory” in the next two weeks and claimed Iran was “willing to give us everything”. Still, no peace deal has materialised and the conflict began again in July.

August

On Monday this week, Trump again told reporters that Iran was “desperate” for a deal and warned Tehran it had “one last chance” before “decapitation” to make an agreement. Iran denies it is even holding talks with the US, saying that it is only speaking with Oman about management of the Strait of Hormuz.

Netanyahu and board director Maldenov meet amid tensions over Gaza disarmament roadmap and recent Israeli attacks.

The US-led Board of Peace has said that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will only take place after the disarmament of Hamas is complete, following a meeting between the body’s director, Nickolay Mladenov, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The meeting on Monday in West Jerusalem came as Israeli politicians signalled their displeasure with the deal, announced by US President Donald Trump last Thursday.

“Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the [Israeli military] beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators,” the Board of Peace, established by Trump in January to oversee the administration of Gaza after Israel’s genocidal war, said. “This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.”

The “Yellow Line” is the term used to refer to the demarcation line behind which Israeli forces continue to base themselves in Gaza.

“The goal is clear and is not in question: the complete decommissioning of weapons in the Strip and the transition away from rule by the gun to civilian governance,” the Board of Peace added in a social media post after the meeting.

For its part, Hamas has insisted that the deal will not be implemented unless Israel implements its part of the agreement.

During the talks, Mladenov urged Netanyahu to stop attacks on Gaza, two people familiar with the meeting told The Associated Press news agency. Israel has steadfastly refused to do so, despite an October 2025 “ceasefire”, since which it has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, including more than 36 after the disarmament deal was announced.

Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since its genocidal war began in October 2023.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu’s office said that the version of the agreement made public “does not reflect Israel’s positions”, and that its concerns had been shared with the US.

Members of the Israeli prime minister’s far-right government have already signalled that they want to backtrack on the deal.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the agreement was “completely different” to the one the Israeli government had approved, and demanded a new vote “immediately”.

Israel has repeatedly flouted agreements and has been accused of being unwilling to make concessions during negotiations. The latest reversal comes despite a push from Trump to secure a deal, but months ahead of an Israeli election in which the government is under pressure from its base to demonstrate it has achieved total victory in Gaza.

Mladenov criticised the strikes over the weekend, without directly naming Israel. “Achieving a lasting peace is hard but achievable if everyone makes their best efforts,” he wrote.

Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye, which mediated the disarmament deal, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s targeting of civilians and healthcare facilities as a “flagrant violation of international law”.

Hamas said it and other Palestinian factions remained committed to the completion of the second phase of the ceasefire, and were awaiting a clear, official response from Mladenov and the mediators.

The US president says Gulf allies and Tehran urged him to delay planned strikes.

United States President Donald Trump has said that negotiations with Tehran are set to begin on Monday after he decided to hold off on new strikes on Iran in pursuit of a deal.

Trump said on Sunday that a plan was in place for the US to launch “the biggest attack since World War II” against Iran but that he halted it to give diplomacy a chance.

“Obviously, they don’t want to be attacked. They knew the extent of the attack because they saw it forming,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday.

“Now what we’re doing is talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon.”

He gave no details about the venue or participants in the talks.

Trump pulled back from threats of an attack on Saturday after saying the “perimeter” of a deal was in place.

In his latest comments, Trump said Iran and US partners Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had urged him to hold off on the strikes.

“When the allies asked to call it off, you’ve got to sort of say, ‘Well, let’s see.’ And the reason they ask is they think there’s a deal,” he said.

“There’s a deal on [the Strait of] Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearisation of Iran.”

He said Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had also urged against the strikes, warning of possible unintended consequences.

“I mean, will they be flooded with people pouring into their country and disaster? A lot of bad things can happen,” Trump said.

Regional diplomacy intensifies

Trump’s announcement came hours after Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi held a second phone call with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, joined by Pakistani Army Commander Asim Munir, to discuss recent diplomatic efforts.

The officials exchanged views on the current situation and on “initiatives aimed at maintaining and strengthening security and stability” in West Asia, Araghchi said in a Telegram post. They also stressed the need to use regional cooperation and political solutions, he added.

Earlier on Sunday, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that negotiations between Tehran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz were in their final stages, citing Araghchi.

Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the negotiations focused on agreeing to a new route through the strait, adding that this had “no link to the Strait of Hormuz being opened or closed. That is a separate discussion”.

The war began on February 28, when the US and Israel launched surprise strikes against Iran, although months of on-and-off diplomacy have led to periods of relative calm.

A previous ceasefire deal, which included the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for global energy supplies, fell through. Iran has since tightened its control over the waterway as the two countries resumed attacks against each other in recent weeks.

Oil prices fall as escalation fears ease

Oil prices dropped sharply in early trading after Trump abandoned plans for a new military operation against Iran, easing fears of further disruption to Gulf energy supplies.

Brent futures were down $4.08, or 4.64 percent, at $83.85 a barrel on Sunday. West Texas Intermediate lost $4.01, or 4.74 percent, to trade at $80.66, according to the Reuters news agency.

The decline reversed part of last month’s surge, when both benchmarks gained more than 20 percent as renewed US-Iran fighting and attacks on commercial vessels near Oman intensified concerns over shipping through the region.

On Thursday, United States President Donald Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to disarm and move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal in Gaza. The announcement was received positively by various regional actors while the US president characterised it as a “historic agreement”.

The problem is that the disarmament is unlikely to take place. That is because Hamas has made clear that it has conditioned relinquishing its weapons on Israel abiding by its obligations under the agreement, which the latter has failed to do since it was reached in October. The Board of Peace, the body tasked with overseeing the ceasefire and Gaza’s reconstruction, has done nothing to pressure it into compliance.

This is one of the many failures of this body, which has very little to show for its six-month existence. It lacks the power, financing, enforcement mechanisms and legal standing within the international legal system to fulfil its self-declared mandate. Rather than creating a pathway towards de-escalation, it has created an appearance of diplomatic progress that provides political cover for the continuation of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The only way to move forward is for the board to be abandoned and responsibility returned to the United Nations.

Achieving nothing

The Board of Peace was established under Article 9 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, announced in October. Its mandate is to oversee a temporary Palestinian technocratic body that would manage Gaza and an International Stabilization Force (ISF) of multinational peacekeepers. In theory, the board would supervise Gaza’s reconstruction and Israel’s gradual withdrawal. In practice, it has not achieved any progress on either of these processes.

Despite lofty promises from the Trump administration about transforming Gaza into a modern urban landscape, there has been no movement in that direction. The majority of the population still lives in abhorrent conditions in tents.

Last month, the board scaled down the reconstruction plan to a pilot project near Rafah, close to the Egyptian border, which is under the control of the Palestinians who collaborate with Israel. Israel would vet the Palestinians who are allowed to stay in that development.

Worse still, the board is trying to give itself the right to confiscate Palestinian properties or use them “free of charge”. This signals its willingness to serve as a facade for continuing Israeli theft of Palestinian land.

An Israeli withdrawal – the other major process the board should oversee – has been all but forgotten. Instead, Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in regular bombardments and encroach on more and more Palestinian land.

Since the ceasefire began in October, Israel has killed more than 1,100 Palestinian civilians. It has continued to carry out demolitions of Palestinian homes and to move its “Yellow Line”, expanding its control to about 70 percent of Gaza’s territory, up from 53 percent at the start of the ceasefire.

The Board of Peace has taken no action in response to these Israeli colonial practices and has not issued any public statements condemning them.

Meanwhile, the board has framed Palestinians as responsible for the lack of progress. Its high representative, Nickolay Mladenov, has described Hamas as the “principal obstacle” to implementing the ceasefire despite no recorded Palestinian attacks since its beginning.

This one-sided scrutiny reveals the board’s function: not peacemaking but providing cover for the ongoing occupation.

The Board of Peace has also maintained arrangements that allow Israel to control the flow of aid into Gaza. Although Trump’s plan stipulates that neither Hamas nor Israel should interfere with the entry and distribution of assistance, the Israeli military continues to determine both the quantity and type of assistance allowed into the Gaza Strip.

Major European countries and China have declined to join the Board of Peace. States that initially signalled a willingness to contribute to the ISF have since frozen or withdrawn their commitments.

This lack of confidence is also reflected in funding failures. Despite initial pledges of $10bn from the US and a further $7bn from other countries, the World Bank account established for the board reportedly has received no funds. Instead, it has relied on a few million dollars deposited into a private JP Morgan account, much of which has been spent on salaries and administrative overhead rather than reconstruction or civilian protection.

The return of the UN

Perhaps the starkest sign of the failure of the Board of Peace is that it is seeking to give itself immunity from prosecution. In a draft resolution, the board appears to pursue protections for its members and administrative bodies, including the Office of the High Representative, Palestinian technocrats, international military forces and nonresident contractors.

In other words, the board wants to operate above the law. The goal is clear: impose a foreign governance structure that obscures Israeli colonisation of Gaza behind an international body.

The continuing existence of such a body is an international disgrace, and it needs to end.

The appropriate response is a collective push by states that support the two-state solution and the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to bring the process back to the United Nations umbrella. Palestinian factions should be at the forefront of this effort.

The UN should assume responsibility and transfer any relevant functions away from the board to established UN bodies.

Critics may counter that the UN has failed to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for more than seven decades. That is true. But its umbrella offers an international legal framework that anchors action in international law and readily identifies violations. That provides structure and legal levers the Palestinians can use to continue pushing for their rights.

What is more, there is a dedicated UN agency – UNRWA – that deals with Palestinian refugee problems and is best equipped to handle the vast challenges of a displaced and impoverished population. The return of UNRWA is important not only as a service-provision body but also as an entity that protects the rights and status of Palestinian refugees.

The UN and its associated bodies have established accountability and transparency mechanisms that can minimise the misuse of resources needed for rebuilding Gaza. While ending the occupation depends on the political will of the world’s foremost powers, the UN umbrella maintains the legal status of Gaza as occupied territory and protects the rights of the occupied population.

The UN can also play a role in the deployment of the ISF. The force should be deployed not just in Gaza but also the West Bank to protect Palestinians from settler attacks. Giving the ISF a UN mandate would encourage more countries to contribute to its creation and help build a wider coalition of countries invested in the stabilisation and protection of Gaza and the West Bank. This could be a preliminary step that sets up Israel’s withdrawal from these occupied territories.

The international community must act now. The Board of Peace must be abandoned, and all responsibility for Gaza must be transferred back to the UN system. The UN must be empowered to take the lead in any future arrangements.

Continuing to maintain the current situation in Gaza means the continuation of Palestinian suffering and the deepening of uninhabitability, in effect paving the way for the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land. What is urgently needed is a UN-led mechanism that is immediately enforceable and grounded in international law.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Strikes hit Gaza homes two days after US unveiled plan for Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli forces have killed at least five Palestinians in strikes across the Gaza Strip.

At least two people were killed and several wounded in a strike on a house in central Deir el-Balah, while three others were killed in a strike on an apartment in northern Gaza City, according to local officials.

The strikes came on Sunday, two days after US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace published a 15-point roadmap for implementing last year’s Gaza ceasefire agreement, extending a pattern of continued Israeli strikes despite diplomatic breakthroughs.

The roadmap has yet to be implemented on the ground. Hamas has said it will hand over its weapons for storage only after Israel halts military operations and withdraws its forces in line with last year’s agreement. An Israeli official told the Reuters news agency there would be no withdrawal from current positions unless Hamas undergoes “genuine disarmament”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly commented on the initiative, but far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called it unacceptable and said Israel should continue targeting Hamas leaders.

Former senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan, based in the United Arab Emirates, said Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser on the US initiative, told him he was working with Israel to halt the attacks on Gaza. Dahlan said talks with Washington were continuing, and that the agreement’s success now depended on Israel fully ending its daily strikes.

Separately, Israeli strikes destroyed a medical supply warehouse in central Gaza on Saturday, leaving a crater 20 metres (66ft) wide and 10 metres (33ft) deep, part of a broader wave of attacks that has continued despite the ceasefire push.

Clashes near Sheraro mark one of the most serious threats yet to the fragile 2022 Pretoria peace deal.

Fighting has broken out in western Tigray, in one of the most serious breaches yet of the three-year-old peace deal between Ethiopia’s federal government and fighters in the northern region.

Tigray’s regional government said in a statement from Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, that federal forces opened the assault at dawn on Saturday, advancing from the direction of Sheraro, near the Sudanese border.

Abraham Belay, a government minister who led Tigray’s transitional government during the war, confirmed the clashes but accused Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) chairman Debretsion Gebremichael’s forces of starting them.

“Enough war! Let us resolve our differences through dialogue,” he said in a post on Facebook.

The fighting follows months of deteriorating relations between Addis Ababa and the TPLF, the party that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018.

Both sides have accused each other of failing to implement the provisions of the 2022 peace agreement.

Tigrayan authorities said Ethiopia’s ruling Prosperity Party has waged a long blockade and drone campaign against the region, adding that this had now escalated into full-scale war.

The regional government urged Tigrayan forces, civil society and religious institutions to prepare for a struggle it called one of national survival, using the slogan “No to National Destruction”.

Getachew Reda, a former TPLF spokesman who now advises Abiy, separately urged the Tigray Defence Forces commanders to abandon Debretsion, accusing him of relying on Eritrea and Amhara’s Fano militia to force his way back to power.

Reda and Redwan Hussein, Ethiopia’s intelligence chief, who signed the Pretoria deal for TPLF and the federal government respectively in 2022, co-wrote an Al Jazeera op-ed in June warning that war was imminent.

Kjetil Tronvoll, an Ethiopia specialist at Oslo New University College, told Al Jazeera that the fighting marked the “most serious incident” since the 2022 peace deal. The deal, Tronvoll added, halted the war between the two parties but left “the core reasons of conflict between Mekelle and Addis” unresolved.

In the days running up to the armed clashes, Ethiopian state media ran a campaign accusing Debretsion by name of rallying Tigrayans toward war.

The fighting caps months of escalating confrontation since the Pretoria Agreement of November 2022, which ended a war that began two years earlier and killed hundreds of thousands, but left unresolved deeper disputes over disarmament and the TPLF’s legal status.

In June, the United States imposed visa restrictions on what it said were TPLF “hardliners” accused of blocking peace. The TPLF described it as being based on an “incomplete and imbalanced” picture of the standoff.

By mid-July, TPLF had declared the Pretoria agreement “effectively dead”, even as US Ambassador Ervin Massinga travelled to Mekelle to try to preserve the deal.

Faisal Roble, a regional analyst, told Al Jazeera that the beginning of the fighting was a sign that efforts to resolve the dispute between the parties by the US had not succeeded.

“Without a powerful international intervention,” he said, “we could be heading to a much larger war.”

United States President Donald Trump has been triumphal since the announcement that Palestinian group Hamas had agreed to hand over its weaponry in Gaza.

But the terms of Thursday’s disarmament agreement also stipulate that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian enclave, and gradually transfer power to a Palestinian administration – conditions that have been met with a frosty reception by Israeli politicians and in the Israeli press.

The Israeli government has yet to officially comment, but one unnamed senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday that, despite “various publications” reporting “diplomatic progress in the Gaza Strip”, there would be no withdrawal from Israel’s current positions within Gaza before what it determines to be “the genuine disarmament of Hamas”.

Trump, for his part, has said that Israel was “very happy” with the deal.

Electoral suicide

Many Israelis continue to espouse a hard line towards Palestinians in Gaza after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which was launched from the territory. That is despite Israel subsequently conducting a genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and destroying the enclave.

A May poll found that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza – the same poll found that 56 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes too.

Another poll, a month later, found that 64 percent of those surveyed believed there were “no innocents” among the Palestinians in Gaza.

And many Israeli politicians – including government ministers – have said that illegal Jewish settlements, akin to the ones dividing the occupied West Bank, will soon come to Gaza.

The prospect, therefore, of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and steps towards the enclave’s reconstruction are unpalatable to many Israelis, with politicians quick to condemn the disarmament agreement.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir denounced it as “unacceptable”.

“A commitment to stop the assassinations of [Hamas’s] murderers is tantamount to agreeing to Hamas organising for the next massacre,” Ben-Gvir wrote on social media. “The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of emigration must happen. Israel must win.”

The term “encouragement of emigration” is widely regarded as referring to ethnic cleansing.

Politicians regarded as centrists, such as former chief of staff and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leading rival in the coming election, Gadi Eisenkot, were equally sceptical. He said that any deal that stopped short of the war’s objectives – the destruction of Hamas’s military-political power – was a total failure.

“Nearly three years have passed since the morning of October 7,” Eisenkot wrote, “and Hamas has renewed its strength with a number of terrorists similar to the evening of October 6.”

Politics of peace

Netanyahu has yet to comment, but US-Israeli pollster and consultant Dahlia Scheindlin suggested the stakes are high for the prime minister with an election only a few months away.

Netanyahu’s likely best chance of avoiding a jail sentence if he is found guilty of numerous corruption charges rests on him winning the October elections.

But the opposition are currently leading in many polls, and may be able to gain enough seats to form a government.

“Netanyahu’s considerations have nothing to do with public trauma [from the October 7 attack],” Scheindlin said, and everything to do with politics. “He will care primarily – probably exclusively – about what his current coalition partners think.”

Withdrawing from Gaza was out of the question, Scheindlin said, adding that whatever gambit Netanyahu undertook to maintain his coalition and encourage right-wing voters to support him had to be accomplished without further alienating his allies in the US, who appear to have grown increasingly frustrated with him.

“[Netanyahu] will not want to be seen by Trump and the Americans as undermining any possible moves towards implementing this agreement. And so, therefore, he might manage some very symbolic moving of the Israeli army within Gaza,” she said.

One tactic, Scheindlin suggested, could be for the Israeli military to withdraw back to the positions it was supposed to be in as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. Israel has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians since that agreement, and also repeatedly expanded the territory under its control, ignoring the deal.

Keeping Trump happy

Managing US expectations of Israel is likely to be a problem, not just for Netanyahu, but for all of the politicians vying for leadership of the country.

One anonymous US official has already said that Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel did not adhere to the disarmament agreement.

“Netanyahu already faces an uphill battle in forming any government, more so if he agrees to this,” said Dov Waxman, professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Netanyahu has previously been able to sidestep requirements placed on Israel when it comes to Gaza, maintaining unity within his far-right coalition, with some members repeatedly threatening to bring the government down if the war ended without Hamas’s total defeat.

He may be silent on the latest deal for now, but he will eventually have to speak.

“That could be a real problem,” Waxman said, “because, if he criticises the deal, he risks angering Trump who – though he hasn’t endorsed him [in the Israeli election] yet – he must be hoping will deliver him some kind of present during the election cycle, whether that’s a further call for his pardon or normalisation with Saudi Arabia, maybe both. But he has to keep Trump on his side.”

And while the Israeli public has grown sceptical that Israeli security remains at the forefront of the Trump administration’s priorities, the need for the US security umbrella is accepted by the vast majority of the public and political establishment, elements of which have seized upon any potential fracturing in it as a means to criticise Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu has shown himself to be very good in the past at handling these kinds of things,” Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, said.

“He’ll make sure Trump gets his announcement, his signing ceremony and all the optics are in place, but I don’t see him withdrawing from Gaza,” Goren said.

“I think the idea of him withdrawing goes further than just public opinion,” the Israeli analyst added. “It goes against his whole philosophy, ideology and worldview: that Israel needs to be present beyond its borders and everywhere bad intentions could be turned into action. If anything, I see him escalating in the build-up to the election rather than discussing withdrawal.”

Russia claimed this week to be advancing into Ukraine’s regions of Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk, as Ukraine installed new political leadership in its defence ministry and a new military leadership in its armed forces.

The changes followed the unprecedented firing of both defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov and commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii within a week.

Most concerning was the news from Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern region of Donetsk that Russia was “effectively cutting off” Kostiantynivka, the southernmost of four “fortress cities” Russia had pledged to overthrow in a bid to capture the remaining free territory of the region by the end of the year.

Kostiantynivka was “the key to liberating the entire territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said.

“Things are very bad in Kostiantynivka. It’s not a question of whether we’ll lose [it] or not – we’ve effectively already lost it,” a soldier told the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske. “If there’s a large number of Russians there, you can’t really say we’re holding it. They’re just pushing our guys into a corner.”

A local Ukrainian commander told Hromadske that Russians were moving into the villages of Molocharka and Izhevka north of the city, and his units could find themselves surrounded in “another month or two” unless reinforcements arrived or containment tactics changed.

Shortly before he was dismissed on July 21, Syrskii had painted a more optimistic picture, saying there were an estimated 145 Russian infiltrators in the city who were suffering “significant losses” of about 25 people a day, as Ukrainian drone units hunted them down in their urban shelters.

The commander of a group called Kurt and Company shared that more optimistic view with the news outlet Suspilne.

“Heavy fighting and gunfire are going on all over the city,” said the commander, identified by the call sign Kurt. “But we still control most of the city and the enemy is mainly on the flanks. They are trying to bypass us, cut us off, but we are holding our defence there. We are just constantly under attack from the KABs – they are just taking out positions with aerial bombs. This is the only thing that still gives the Russians success and this is a big problem for us.”

KABs are massive aerial ordnance with payloads of between 500kg and 3,000kg, which Russia has been dropping on Ukrainian positions at a rate of more than 200 and sometimes more than 300 a day. Ukraine has repeatedly placed aerial defence equipment at the top of its list of requirements from allies.

As recently as three weeks ago, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, estimated that Russian forces had a presence in just 37 percent of Kostiantynivka, mostly in the form of “infiltrations” rather than firm control. Its most recent assessment of Russian infiltration suggests that it has spread to most of the city, however.

Overall, Russian forces have been slowing down, though. The ISW estimated that they were capturing 16.6sq km a day in the first half of 2025, but just 1km a day in June this year. In July, the ISW has assessed that Russia has been losing territory at a rate of 1.6sq km a day.

Now, it appears that Russia has been mounting an effort to regain the offensive. The commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS), Robert Brovdi, said “the actual number of enemy personnel involved in offensive operations along the front line” during the month had increased by 12 percent compared with June and 18 percent compared with May, based on analysis from the SBS intelligence centre. Russian casualties increased by similar proportions, he said.

In the northern Kharkiv and Sumy regions, Russia claimed to have destroyed 10 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control centres on July 27, killing 70 personnel.

Three days later, it said its troops had routed defenders in Nova Sich, Mogritsa and Malaya Slobodka in Sumy and Yurchenkovo in Kharkiv, by copying the Ukrainian tactic of using drones to disrupt ammunition deliveries.

“Russian servicemen found large amounts of abandoned weapons, ammunition and military equipment,” according to a Russian report.

A local Russian official claimed Moscow had captured 13 settlements in Kharkiv this month.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the Russian claims, which have in the past been inflated or premature, and Ukraine denied Nova Sich had fallen.

An autumn offensive?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week he had received intelligence that Russia was preparing an “expanded mobilisation” to counter losses of 225,000 this year, versus recruitment of 221,000 people. Six out of 10 casualties were fatalities, he said.

Zelenskyy told Sky News Putin aimed to raise 300,000 to 500,000 troops in early October, after Russian parliamentary elections had taken place in September. “He will not be able to quickly prepare these people. This, again, means that he will send poorly trained people to the battlefield, which will inevitably lead to heavy losses,” Zelenskyy said.

More worrying, perhaps, were the 30,000 North Korean troops Russia was preparing barracks for in Voronezh, in southwestern Russia, according to Zelenskyy. Russia received 3,000 North Korean soldiers in 2024, and used them to reclaim territory Ukraine had counterinvaded in Kursk.

Fedorov announced a plan in June to attract foreign fighters by raising the salary for a front-line soldier to $7,000 a month. “I believe that 50 percent of the front line or among the attack aircraft could be foreigners,” he told Ukrainska Pravda this week.

Russia estimates that Ukraine currently employs about 4,000 foreign troops. Ukraine’s armed forces are estimated at 900,000 people.

Long-range strikes

Ukraine struck blows in its economic war against Russia, hitting refineries and oil depots.

Those included confirmed hits against the Subkhankulovo oil tank farm in Bashkortostan, 1,350km from Ukraine, six refineries, an oil loading terminal at Rostov-on-Don, and fuel and lubricant depots at Ishki in occupied Crimea and Udmurtia.

Ukraine has recently struck targets as far afield as 2,500km, and Zelenskyy said it had now acquired range of at least 3,000km.

Ukraine claims to have disabled 42 percent of Russian refining capacity this year. A Financial Times investigation using satellite photographs confirmed that it had disabled 45 percent of nominal capacity and 30 percent of actual capacity, causing damage lasting weeks or months.

Russia, which has been experiencing a fuel crisis as a result, extended a fuel export ban from the end of August to the end of January.

Ukraine also struck military production targets, including the Avitek plant in Kirov city, producing components for aviation and missiles, and an S-400 radar. On July 27, it downed a Forpost-R heavy drone used to carry KABs – only the sixth such prize of the entire war.

Brovdi’s forces continued to starve Crimea of electricity and fuel, striking 37 electricity substations and four oil tankers during the week, bringing the total number of electricity infrastructure nodes struck in July to 164, and the total number of tankers hit in the Black and Azov seas to 205.

Brovdi’s forces focused much of their fire on the warehouses of the Wildberries online retailer, suspected by Ukraine of providing equipment to mobilising troops.

During the past week they have struck warehouses in Voronezh, Leningrad, Simferopol, Udmurtia and Penza, bringing the total number of warehouses set ablaze to 12 and the estimated damage to $2.2bn.

Russia also claims to have hit military targets in massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, but many of the hits were civilian.

One person died when a supermarket in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, was struck on July 26, and the entire Voronov family was wiped out in Radushne in central Ukraine when their house was blown to smithereens on July 30. A record 56,000 people spent the night sheltering in the Kyiv Metro that night.

Egyptian officials have now confirmed that the port facility of Damietta was hit by a drone strike yesterday, the first public acknowledgment that the country has come under fire during this conflict. Though Cairo did not say who launched the attack, it raises the specter of another part of the region being brought into fighting that is largely centered on the flow of energy supplies.

The attack came as the Houthis began to consider imposing tolls on shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where they have already established a blockade on Saudi shipping and attacked its vessels and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Iran continues to lob missiles and drones across the region as tit-for-tat strikes have resumed after a short pause.

“Following the successful containment of the fire, the relevant authorities conducted initial investigations into the incident, which indicated that a drone was responsible,” the Egyptian cabinet said in a statement on Thursday, according to state-funded Middle East News Agency. The cabinet added that “no party has claimed responsibility for the attack.”

“The competent authorities are continuing their investigations to determine the full circumstances surrounding the incident and to take the necessary measures to safeguard Egypt’s interests and national security,” the official government outlet added.

As we reported yesterday, the Ambrey maritime security firm said two vessels were struck by drones at Damietta. One of the ships was a U.S.-owned and operated, Marshall Islands-flagged liquefied natural gas (LNG) floating storage facility and the other was a Greek-owned and operated, Bermuda-flagged LNG tanker, Ambrey stated.

A maritime security specialist told us that the U.S.-owned and operated, Marshall Islands-flagged floating gas storage facility was the Energos Winter while the other ship was the Gaslog Salem.

While there has been no official claim or attribution, U.S. President Donald Trump hinted that it was an Iranian attack.

Asked during a press conference whether Iran was behind the drone attack on the Egyptian port, Trump said “it’s a little more of the same, but it’s going to be straightening out, it’s going to be straightening out. But in the meantime, we are going to be hitting them very hard, because it is our turn to hit ’em. They know it’s coming, they are asking us not to do it.”

“We’re going to hit them very hard.”

President Trump warns adversaries that the U.S. is prepared to respond forcefully following a drone attack on an LNG tanker off the coast of Egypt.

Trump signaled that retaliation is imminent despite requests from adversaries to hold back.… pic.twitter.com/SMOUuj5qGT

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 29, 2026

The New York Times later reported that two Iranians, who asked not to be named to discuss security matters, “said the explosion was a drone attack designed to show that global shipping and energy supplies could be more deeply disrupted if Iran chose to escalate. The individuals did not say whether Iran or an Iran-allied militia in the region had launched the attack, or from where.”

The Iranians are not the only ones targeting energy facilities in the region. Several of their proxies have as well. It is part of a larger effort to impose cost on the U.S. and its allies.

The Saudis claim their oil infrastructure has been attacked by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq in addition to actions by the Houthis in Yemen. That in part prompted a joint U.S.-Saudi strike on militia targets across that country. It was the first publicly confirmed instance where U.S. and Saudi forces worked in concert.

The Iranian-backed Houthis, who, as we noted above, are striking Saudi oil infrastructure, on Thursday denied involvement in this incident.

“There is no truth to the rumors about Yemen targeting a ship in the port of Damietta in the Arab Republic of Egypt,” the group stated on Telegram. “The Yemeni position is clear, declared, and explicit, and it only targets the Saudi regime for its unjust blockade and ongoing aggression against the Yemeni people.”

A senior political official from Yemen’s Houthi movement has denied reports that the group plans to impose fees on commercial ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Hizam al-Assad, a member of the political bureau of the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah), said in a… pic.twitter.com/PtSGc5XOPj

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) July 30, 2026

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, deferred questions about the incident to Egypt.

Regardless of who attacked Damietta, expanding the conflict to Egypt’s Mediterranean ports marks a significant potential escalation. The region’s two main sea arteries for energy shipments are already being choked off. The Iranians have largely closed down the Strait of Hormuz and there is an ongoing U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. The Houthis, as previously noted, have halted Saudi transits through the BAM, which has had a cascading effect on other nations not wanting to risk attack.

As the Iranian threats to the Strait of Hormuz increased, the kingdom diverted millions of barrels of oil per day through pipelines to its Yanbu port on the Red Sea in an effort to minimize the energy shortages due to the hostilities in the Persian Gulf. 

That workaround served its purpose until the Houthi blockade, at which point Saudi Arabia began boosting shipments through the Suez Canal. Exports via that route “rose 106% for the week of the embargo announcement to 1.06 million barrels per day, up from the week starting July 13, according to Kpler data,” The National News recently noted.

The port of Damietta, where yesterday’s attack took place, is 33 miles west of Port Said, which is at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. Closure of the canal, or even a significant drop in traffic through it, would add to the pressures on the global economy already reeling from what is taking place in the Strait of Hormuz and the BAM.

In a post on X, the Windward maritime intelligence firm called the attack on Damietta “a third front, separate from the Gulf and Red Sea.”

“The strike is assessed as separate from the Houthi Saudi-blockade campaign. Iranian state television had named Damietta as a retaliation target two days earlier, citing Ukraine’s strike on an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, pointing toward an Iranian-directed operation rather than a Houthi one,” Windward explained in a related analysis.

A drone struck ENERGOS WINTER, a U.S.-managed LNG unit at Damietta, Egypt on July 29, with fire spreading to a second tanker alongside. Iranian state TV had named Damietta as a retaliation target two days earlier. This is a third front, separate from the Gulf and the Red Sea. pic.twitter.com/6bmWtST9XH

— Windward (@WindwardAI) July 30, 2026

Operation Aspides, the European-led task force created to provide security to shipping in the Red Sea region, told us it is monitoring reports that the Houthis are considering placing a toll on transits through the BAM, similar to what Iran has tried to impose in the Strait of Hormuz.

“At this moment, there has been no official statement from the Houthis confirming such a measure,” a spokesman told us Thursday morning. “We continue to monitor developments closely and are going to implement our mandate within our means and capabilities.”

On Thursday, Aspides posted an image of one of its member warships, the Italian frigate Bergamini, escorting merchant vessels in the Red Sea region.

The Italian 🇮🇹 Frigate BERGAMINI operating under EUNAVFOR ASPIDES provided support to merchant vessels, crossing the Area of Operations.

ASPIDES plays a crucial role in safeguarding shipping and supporting the safe passage of vessels through critical maritime routes. pic.twitter.com/9FNQL6Y00C

— EUNAVFOR ASPIDES (@EUNAVFORASPIDES) July 30, 2026

Meanwhile, Iran is continuing to lash out across the region.

Kuwaiti officials said one person was killed in an Iranian barrage today.

“The sinful Iranian aggression targeted a building belonging to one of the Chinese companies in the north of the country, resulting in the death of one worker and causing serious material damage to the building,” the Kuwait Defense Ministry (MoD) stated on X. “The Armed Forces affirm that they will continue carrying out their tasks and duties with high efficiency, and taking all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and preserve its security and stability, in coordination with the competent authorities, in a way that safeguards the safety of citizens and residents.”

The Jordanian military said it foiled an Iranian attempt to target the kingdom with five missiles. There were no casualties, officials said.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed missiles made it through and that three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters were destroyed and three more damaged at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base (MSAB) in Jordan. The IRGC said it was in response to deaths caused by yesterday’s attacks by CENTCOM. However, the IRGC frequently fabricates claims or greatly exaggerates them and we cannot independently confirm this one.

As we have pointed out in the past, the base has been frequently targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed in a strike there on July 17.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video of what they say were missiles launched by their naval forces targeting US aircraft at Jordan’s Al Azraq air base, in retaliation for US strikes on Qeshm Island that killed three people. pic.twitter.com/HRxGlWC6AN

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 30, 2026

We reached out to CENTCOM for comment, which a short while later put out a statement on X denying the IRGC claim.

Over the past few hours, Iranian state media have continued to report false claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – three in particular.

🚫 FIRST CLAIM: The IRGC (again) claims free and open routes through the Strait of Hormuz are dangerous for commercial… pic.twitter.com/J34ILmDvyk

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 30, 2026

Regardless of the claims, the constant Iranian bombardment is beginning to stir unrest in Jordan, where public dissent is banned.

“Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal and other figures signed an open letter last week calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Jordan,” The New York Times reported. “People who signed the letter said they were driven by a sense of national responsibility and concern that the troop presence endangered Jordanian sovereignty.”

“We maintain that their presence exposes Jordan to security, political, and economic risks that serve no national interest and increases the likelihood of our country being dragged into a regional conflict to which it is not a party,” the letter said.

🇺🇸🇯🇴 “Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal and other figures signed an open letter calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Jordan in a rare public challenge to the government, after Iranian attacks on bases”https://t.co/yYYutkRzEU via @NYTimes @MazMHussain @GerardAraud

— Karim Emile Bitar (@karimbitar) July 30, 2026

As this conflict drags on, CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper, “has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

“Now, as Trump moves to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go,” the newspaper noted. “He could greenlight Cooper’s option of 10 to 14 days of intensive airstrikes intended to cripple Iran’s missile capability despite warnings that the U.S. is running low on air-defensive munitions. Or, he could opt for a more limited military strike in the hopes diplomacy could be pursued.”

Cooper has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks, people familiar with the matter said.

Now, as Trump vows to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go. W @mgordonwsj…

— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) July 29, 2026

Iran, working to rearm as the fighting continues, is expected to receive “a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers,” Reuters reported, citing three sources familiar with the deal.

“The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air defenses since the outbreak ‌of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure,” the outlet noted.

China isn’t just buying Iranian oil— it’s re-arming the regime.

We need to enforce the sanctions against China now. https://t.co/qvasMaBkOa

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 29, 2026

That’s it for now. We’ll update this when there is more information to share.

UPDATE: 4:58 PM EDT –

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed the drone strike on Damietta. In a post on X, he hinted at Israeli involvement but did not explicitly deny that Iran carried it out.

“Egypt is considered a friend and important partner in the region, and its security constitutes an utmost priority for us,” Araghchi stated. “We must all remain vigilant toward Israeli schemes and ‘false flag’ operations that aim to undermine regional peace. The threat is clear, shared, and fears Muslim solidarity.”

تُعدُّ مصر صديقًا وشريكًا مهمًا في المنطقة، ويُشكّل أمنُها أهميةً قصوى بالنسبة لنا.
يجب علينا جميعًا أن نكون يقظين تجاه المخططات الإسرائيلية وعمليات “العَلَم الزائف” التي تهدف إلى تقويض السلام الإقليمي.
إن التهديد واضح، ومشترك، ويخشَى تضامن المسلمين.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 30, 2026

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Dozens of Israeli soldiers have abandoned their weapons and walked out of the Sde Teiman military base in a dispute with a senior commander reportedly trying to restore discipline. Soldiers at the base have long been accused of flagrant violations of laws, including torture of Palestinian detainees.

Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori has been granted permission to challenge the UK government’s decision to designate the group a terrorist organisation at the Supreme Court.

Dr Anthony Fauci, a former top United States public health official, has declined to answer questions at a Republican-led Senate committee hearing into the origins of COVID-19 and the handling of the pandemic.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Wednesday.

Fauci was called to testify by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who accuses him of misleading Congress and questions whether US-funded research in China played a role in the pandemic, allegations Fauci denies.

Although former President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon in 2025, Republicans claim it does not protect him from any alleged crimes committed after it was issued, such as perjuring himself at a Senate hearing.

Fauci’s lawyers advised him not to testify, arguing that anything he said under oath could expose him to new legal risks.

Here is what to know:

Who is Anthony Fauci?

Fauci, 85, is a physician and immunologist who led the US NIAID for 38 years, advising seven presidents, both Republican and Democratic.

He became the public face of the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, after helping lead the country’s response to health crises including HIV/AIDS, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks.

He became a target of conservative criticism over pandemic policies, including mask recommendations, vaccines and school closures.

During his last year in government, Fauci was also chief medical adviser to Biden until he retired in 2022.

During the pandemic, between 2019 and 2022, he kept more than 1,000 pages of diary entries documenting his work advising the White House and responding to the pandemic.

The notes chronicle his interactions with senior officials and the media.

Why is Fauci being questioned?

He was subpoenaed to testify over his handling of the pandemic and its origins before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The hearing, led by Paul, focused on several issues:

• COVID-19’s origins: Paul has long argued that the coronavirus that causes COVID may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and questioned whether US-funded research played a role in the outbreak.
• Gain-of-function research: Republicans say Fauci misled Congress about whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, involving modifying viruses to understand how they evolve and assess pandemic risks. Fauci says the NIH did not fund research that caused COVID-19.

• Allegations of a cover-up: Paul accused Fauci of making false statements to Congress and concealing the NIH’s involvement in research in Wuhan. Fauci denies that.
• Fauci’s diary: Before the hearing, Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s typewritten diary. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said the notes were government record because they were written by a federal employee on a government computer during a public health emergency and they were found on government property.
• Paul said the diary showed differences between Fauci’s private discussions and his public statements. Fauci’s supporters say the entries reflect the uncertainty scientists faced as they learned more about a new virus.

What happened at the hearing?

The tense hearing lasted about three hours.

After a brief opening statement, Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer more than 100 questions.

He accused committee chairman Paul of having an “obsession” with prosecuting him.

The hearing included several tense moments:

• Contempt vote: Paul said the committee would vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress over his refusal to answer questions, threatening “consequences for refusing to answer”.
• Lawyer removed: Paul directed Capitol Police to remove Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, after he tried to speak without being recognised by the committee. “This testimony is from Anthony Fauci. This is not a game with his lawyers,” Paul said. Schertler later described the hearing as an “obsessive vendetta”.
• Democrats defend Fauci: Democratic senators said the hearing was politically motivated. Senator Gary Peters called it “a partisan exercise” designed to support “a predetermined conclusion” rather than offering legitimate oversight.

Closing the hearing, Paul asked rhetorically: “Did [Fauci’s] actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?”

Why did Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment?

Fauci said he invoked the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his lawyers because he believed his answers could expose him to new legal risks.

He argued that Paul was trying to build a criminal case against him rather than conduct legitimate congressional oversight.

Although Biden’s pardon protects Fauci from prosecution for actions before January 2025, Republicans say any false statements made under oath during this hearing could still expose him to perjury charges.

The Fifth Amendment protects people from being forced to give evidence that could incriminate them in a criminal case. Invoking it is a constitutional right and does not imply guilt.

What do scientists believe about COVID-19’s origins?

Most scientists believe COVID-19 likely spread naturally from animals to humans, known as zoonotic spillover, pointing to a wildlife market in Wuhan as the most likely place where it first spread.

Fauci has consistently said he believes that scientific evidence points to a natural origin, while remaining open to other possibilities.

Notes from his diary detail a January 2020 call with 11 top virologists and evolutionary biologists – only two were convinced the virus had a natural origin, while the rest debated whether it could have been engineered.

Today, most scientists favour a natural origin, while the US intelligence community is divided.

The FBI said in 2023 that a laboratory-related incident is the most likely origin of the pandemic. The CIA reached the same conclusion in 2025, but with low confidence. Other agencies and the National Intelligence Council continue to favour a natural origin or remain undecided.

Does Biden’s pardon protect Fauci?

Yes, but only what happened before the pardon was issued.

On January 19, 2025, Biden granted Fauci a full and unconditional pardon covering any federal offences he may have committed since 2014, saying the move aimed to protect Fauci from “politically motivated prosecutions”.

The pardon does not cover actions taken after it was issued. Fauci could face legal consequences if he were accused of committing a new crime, such as making false statements under oath during Wednesday’s Senate hearing.

Paul and other Republicans also argue that because Biden’s pardon shields Fauci from criminal liability for his past actions, he can no longer claim that his testimony about those actions would incriminate him and should not be able to invoke his Fifth Amendment.

The legal standing of this argument is not clear, and Paul has acknowledged that it is a novel “legal question that the courts may have to decide”.

Can Fauci be held in contempt or prosecuted?

Potentially, but it remains unclear whether either will happen.

Paul said the Senate committee will vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer more than 100 questions.

Being held in contempt means lawmakers believe a witness has refused to cooperate with a lawful investigation. It does not automatically lead to criminal charges, but can trigger further legal action.

If the committee approves the measure, it could refer the case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, ask a federal court to pursue a civil action, or, in the rarest case, ask the Senate to use its powers to detain a witness through the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

Paul has not said which option, if any, he plans to pursue.

Taiz, Yemen – Fuad Mohammed has been working as a construction labourer for more than 25 years. The 46-year-old has seen things get progressively worse in Yemen’s construction industry since the war in the country started more than a decade ago, and then further deteriorate after the US-Israel war on Iran began in late February, with its devastating economic impact on the wider region.

“We can barely eke out a living for our families,” Fuad told Al Jazeera.

The ongoing regional war has damaged economies across the Middle East, with government-controlled areas of Yemen bearing a heavy burden as commodity prices soar. Among the hardest-hit sectors is fuel: in January, 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of diesel cost 25,000 Yemeni riyals ($17), but today that price has skyrocketed to 45,000 riyals ($30). That massive spike has triggered a domino effect, driving up the costs of all goods and services dependent on fuel and transportation – including construction.

As a result, countless construction projects across those areas – in Yemen’s east and southwest – have ground to a halt.

Pausing construction

Fuad explained that, before the US-Israel-Iran war, he was able to find work for around two weeks every month. But this year, he has now gone several months with barely any work.

“The price hikes in building materials have frustrated both homeowners and construction labourers,” Fuad said. “Those who want to build find that their budgets are no longer enough, and we are left with no work.”

Fuad recalled that he briefly found work in May for a woman who had saved money to build a home for her family. However, when a fresh wave of price increases hit the market, she paused construction to wait for prices to drop.

“I also work with construction contractors, but most of them have paused their projects at the request of homeowners,” he added. “When I call them, they tell me they are waiting for regional conditions to improve.”

As an example of the rising costs, the price of a truckload of sand increased from 130,000 Yemeni riyals ($87) to 190,000 riyals ($127), while the average cost of one metre of window glass rose from 90,000 riyals ($60) to 130,000 riyals ($87).

Fuad’s situation at home is desperate. Relying entirely on daily wages but having no work, he can not provide basic essentials for his family. He has considered finding another job, but he lacks professional experience in other fields.

In a desperate attempt to find work, he has lowered his daily wage from 25,000 Yemeni riyals ($17) to 20,000 riyals ($13).

“My situation is getting worse every day,” he said.

Economic division

An official from the Yemen Petroleum Company in Aden told the Reuters news agency in May that the increase in the price of diesel was caused by the worsening supply crisis and rising global fuel prices, driven by regional tensions and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, alongside increased transportation and marine insurance costs. The official noted that the measure was temporary and would remain in place until the end of the crisis and conditions returned to normal.

Wafeeq Saleh, executive director of the Taiz Center for Yemeni-Gulf Studies, explained that the Yemeni economy was particularly susceptible to external economic shocks.

“Any disruptions in global commodity markets directly affect the local market because [Yemen] imports nearly 90 percent of its needs,” Saleh told Al Jazeera. “Consequently, the local rise in commodity and fuel prices is a natural outcome of surging global prices, shipping tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as increased maritime insurance and freight fees.”

In areas controlled by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, however, including the capital Sanaa, there has not yet been a sharp increase in fuel prices, and therefore no impact on the construction industry – yet.

Yemen’s war has entrenched two separate economic structures in the country, with the central bank bifurcated between Aden and Sanaa, and two different exchange rates operating for the Yemeni riyal.

The Houthi group is already facing popular anger over a weak economy, as it grows increasingly isolated regionally and internationally. The group has so far avoided an increase in the price of fuel, with 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of diesel costing 9,500 Yemeni riyals, which at the exchange rate set in Sanaa is the equivalent of roughly $18.

“[The Houthis] may have sufficient inventory from previous months, which is why the local market hasn’t been affected,” Saleh said. “However, the impact will appear in the coming period when imports are made at the new price.”

The actions of the pro-Iranian Houthis themselves have contributed to the increase in global oil prices. Having sat out the Iran war for its first few months, the Houthis recently began attacks against Saudi ships passing through the Red Sea, after the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition that backs it refused to allow a plane from Iran to land in Sanaa. The Houthi attacks mean that the transportation of oil from the Gulf is now disrupted in both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, and has contributed to oil prices going past $100 a barrel for the first time since May.

Will prices come down?

Lutf Zuraiqi, 58, had saved some money to build a home, but the dramatic increase in the cost of building materials forced him to pause the project until “things get better”.

“Price increases aren’t new in Yemen, but I believe this current surge is regional. I believe as soon as the regional war ends, building materials will return to their old prices,” Zuraiqi told Al Jazeera.

Zuraiqi has been following news of the Iran war on a daily basis because its end would mean lower material costs for him and the chance to resume building his planned home.

“The government promised that prices will go back down after the [US-Iran] war ends,” he said. “So this time I’m choosing to believe them and hope I will manage to finish my home.”

Mohammed Jameel, on the other hand, hasn’t been following the news – but the building contractor has been tracking prices of building materials instead. The 59-year-old believes that, based on his experience, once the price of the materials goes up, they never come down.

“I have worked in construction for more than four decades now, and throughout this entire period, building material prices have consistently risen,” Jameel said. “We have never witnessed a price drop. So, I advise those who have paused their construction to resume, as today is always better than tomorrow.”

Jameel said that he has been forced to reduce his rates and cut profit margins on major contracts to keep some work.

“My experience tells me it is normal for owners of homes and projects to pause work until they adapt to the new prices,” he added. “But eventually, construction labourers’ wages will rise, and the total cost of building will increase.”

Jameel feels for the plight of construction labourers, but he views this as a temporary phase and believes the suffering will ease once work picks up again. “We are all in the same boat, not just the daily wage labourers,” he said. “But we hope things will get better.”

Berlin, Germany – Music is a major part of Rayhan Butt’s life. The 18-year-old from the west German city of Bielefeld discovered his passion for the piano a few years ago, and now plays daily, sometimes for 12 hours a day. Picking up singing along the way, he performs regularly across the country.

Butt has now found a way to combine his love of music with his love for Germany. Next month, he will travel to Berlin for an internship with the German Armed Forces, and in autumn he will be joining full-time as part of the army’s marching band.

“Music, especially piano and singing, is not a hobby – it’s my whole life, and I want to build my future around it,” Butt tells Al Jazeera. “The Bundeswehr [German Armed Forces] has an excellent reputation, and there are a lot of opportunities to perform at a very high professional level, for example, in front of the German chancellor.

“I have decided to enrol because I can continue receiving musical training alongside learning valuable skills within the army such as teamwork and discipline.”

As he looks ahead to joining, Butt says that he supports voluntary military and civic duty and believes all young people should pursue one of these paths. “If tomorrow I’m called away from the marching band to fight, I would not hesitate in stepping up as a soldier. I’m a child of immigrants, and I’ve had a lot of opportunities growing up here, such as freedom and a great education. I would definitely defend this country with my life,” adds Butt, who Al Jazeera met through his participation with Generation Global, an initiative by the Liz Mohn Foundation that aims to prepare young people for future leadership roles.

That’s a sentiment the German government is desperately counting on, as it seeks to ramp up its military recruitment.

Germany’s expanded military ambitions

The Bundeswehr wants to increase its active-duty force by 80,000 men and women to 260,000, through a voluntary recruitment drive. In addition, it wants 200,000 men and women in the reserves.

The drive forms part of the Military Service Modernisation Act, which came into effect on January 1 and lays out a new set of requirements for young Germans. Since January, more than 300,000 letters have been sent to 18-year-olds to gauge their willingness to join the armed forces, as well as requesting information on their physical fitness and education. Women have also been sent the letter but, unlike young men, are not legally required to respond.

It’s one strand within Germany’s broader military expansion plans, initiated in 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In one of his first major speeches as chancellor last year, Friedrich Merz pledged to build the “strongest conventional army in Europe”.

Most recently, a new military concept outlining how Germany intends to fight and a capability profile were published three months ago.

Moritz Graefrath, an assistant professor of international security at the University of Oklahoma’s School of International Studies, said that more than this new document, the timing of its publication is what’s significant.

“One of the most plausible explanations is that it’s part of an effort to show, particularly to Washington as well as potentially other European allies within NATO, how serious the German government now is about ‘Europeanising’ European security and taking on more of the burden of continental defence,” he told Al Jazeera. “In many ways, this is a relatively costless signal of commitment to that idea of burden shifting within NATO, to that idea of taking on more responsibility.”

Opposed to conscription

Yet the latest measures on conscription are not being welcomed by all.

Official figures published on July 14 showed that so far this year,  6,000 young men have applied to remain out of the military service on “religious” and “moral” grounds, more than the number throughout the whole of last year.

A clause in the new law that required young men between the ages of 17 and 45 years old to seek prior approval for long stays abroad was repealed following a backlash by opposition voices, including student activists who have arranged three large-scale demonstrations attended by a reported 50,000 young people across 90 German cities since December.

Bela Breitner is a 22-year-old computer science student living in Bochum in western Germany. He is part of the Schulstreik Gegen Wehrpflicht (School Strike Against Conscription) campaign group, which formed late last year in response to what they see as the “militarisation” of German society.

“Our main focus point is conscription,” he tells Al Jazeera. “Many students are in opposition to these measures because within the last few years, we feel like we haven’t received anything positive from the state.

“Many young people lost opportunities during the COVID pandemic, the school system in Germany is criminally underfinanced, and now they want to implement conscription to force us to be trained in combat. Many of us feel like our voices are not being listened to.”

History of conscription in Germany

Conscription was first introduced in Germany in the mid-1950s, and suspended only in 2011. Graefrath says the suspension was driven by societal factors as well as government calculations around things such as budgets.

“On the one hand, there was a sense of post-Cold War peace where it seemed inconceivable for another war in Europe to take place, let alone one that would involve Germany, so the conscription framework was seen as a relic of the past,” he said. “On the other hand, it became apparent, especially to young Germans at the time, that if the model was abandoned, they could study, start apprenticeships and enter the workforce, rather than having at least one year of compulsory service. So there was that societal element there.”

While the Bundeswehr says it is optimistic about achieving its targets, only about 500 recruits have been enrolled so far this year. The figures prompted one senior politician earlier this month to say that Germany will have to decide by next July at the latest whether to reintroduce compulsory military service.

Analyst Graefrath said that Germany would need to decide the future of conscription based on its reading of wider geopolitical challenges. “This would be how unreliable the United States is right now and in the foreseeable future, and how big a threat Russia actually poses.”

Meanwhile, the clause for young men to seek permission before shifting abroad remains repealed but only as long as conscription remains voluntary.

Student activist Breitner says the issue doesn’t just affect students, but people from across society, and the campaign group will continue efforts to mobilise wider support.

“I don’t know any Russians, but I believe there are many people in Russia and around the world who have dreams and want to achieve something else with their life other than fighting a war,” he said. “I believe that there are more people who share values such as peace, freedom and the right to choose over what may separate us.”

Oman’s proposal is based on the Strait of Malacca in East Asia, a model whereby ships that use the strait provide voluntary fees.

Iran and Oman have exchanged proposals regarding the future management of the Strait of Hormuz, as points of contention continue to exist between the two nations whose territorial waters border the strategic waterway.

Oman presented a proposal to Iran ⁠for ⁠a joint regional mechanism to manage the Strait of Hormuz with “voluntary fees”, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Under the Omani proposal, which reportedly has regional backing, Iran would not exercise sole control ⁠of the strait, an unnamed Gulf source and Western diplomat ⁠told the news agency.

Oman’s proposal is reportedly based on the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore ask ships that use the strait to voluntarily contribute to fund navigation, environmental protection, and ‌search-and-rescue operations.

This proposal aims to contribute to ending the global disruption to trade caused by the strait’s closure in the US-Israeli war on Iran. Tehran, however, says the strait ⁠cannot go back to its pre-war status where shipping flowed freely,

In comments to Iranian state media on Tuesday, Kazem Gharibabadi, the country’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said Tehran rejects an Omani proposal for an equal division of transit routes between the two countries, as such a plan does not address Tehran’s security concerns.

Gharibabadi said that Tehran proposed to Oman that Iran would manage shipping through its side of ‌the strait and Muscat would manage part but not all of the opposite lane.

He added that Tehran has “no plans to negotiate with the US”, but affirmed talks are proceeding “step by step” with Oman, warning that Tehran will consider “any action” to maintain control over the strait, including the resumption of war.

“The Omanis are now suggesting three lines for the maritime traffic: one that runs through Iran’s territorial waters, an international one, and one through Omani territorial waters,” said Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran. “Despite public statements, our sources tell us Iran is demonstrating some flexibility.”

Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, also reporting from Tehran, said there remain many “points of contention” between Oman and Iran on Hormuz. These include the trajectory of the ships, the fees, the question of who will define the arrangements, and mine clearances – which will reportedly be Iran’s responsibility.

Paul Musgrave, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said Oman’s proposal to Iran to get the Strait of Hormuz running again is positive, but it remains to be seen if hardliners in Iran will go for it.

Musgrave noted that under the Strait of Malacca model, voluntary contributions raise about $70m annually, far from the $1m per ship that’s reportedly been proposed by Tehran as a “service fee” in the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign ministers met via video call on Tuesday to discuss the latest developments in the conflict, including ways to improve cooperation on issues surrounding freedom and navigation through the waterway, a statement from the Qatari Foreign Ministry said.

The United States suspended a nearly two-week-long campaign of air strikes against Iran over the weekend after pressure from regional mediators to find a diplomatic solution and to return to the memorandum of understanding signed in June, which would allow shipping to resume in the Strait of Hormuz. The strait carried one-fifth of global energy supplies before ⁠the February 28 start of the US-Israel war on Iran.

WASHINGTON — President Trump hosted the leaders of Ukraine and Israel — two nations at war — at the White House on Tuesday, as Washington’s role in both conflicts reaches a critical stage.

Trump’s meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came as the wars in Ukraine and Iran have recently expanded and overlapped in their footprint.

Over the weekend, Ukraine struck an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, an attack condemned by Iranian leaders, who are dealing with their own uncertainty with a broadening war with the United States and Israel.

Both meetings took place in the Oval Office without the presence of reporters, and while few details were disclosed about the discussion, the White House described the sessions as “positive and productive.”

Yet there were signs of discord ahead of Netanyahu’s visit, his eighth during Trump’s second term and the first since the start of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran on Feb. 28.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning, Trump was asked about reports that Netanyahu planned to present him with intelligence about new activity at Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected underground nuclear site in Iran.

“Well, I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved,” Trump said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “We know exactly what is going on.”

Trump seemed frustrated that Netanyahu was putting out that information ahead of the meeting, but added that the United States would “take out Pickaxe if we don’t make a deal.” Netanyahu also came into the meeting with Trump as he pursues campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, all with the backdrop of intensifying unrest across the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Following the meeting, however, Netanyahu issued a video statement insisting the two had an “excellent” session.

“It was one of the best conversations I’ve had with our friend, U.S. President Trump,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel and the U.S. were meeting “with full cooperation, with mutual support, with understanding on the joint goal that Iran won’t have nuclear weapons, and also other goals.”

With Zelensky, there were fewer signs of strain, showing improved relations between the two leaders, at least compared with their first meeting last year, which devolved into a shouting match in the Oval Office in front of television cameras.

In a social media post, Zelensky described his meeting with Trump as “good,” and thanked him for working with him to “protect the lives of Ukrainians and advance peace.”

Zelensky said the two leaders discussed Trump’s pledge to allow Kyiv to produce U.S. Patriot air defense missiles, which are vital in its military efforts against Russia.

“We also spoke about diplomacy,” Zelensky said in an apparent reference to Trump’s interest in helping Ukraine and Russia reach a peace deal.

Trump’s relationship with Zelensky has shown signs of improvement since the start of the Iran war, as Ukraine has helped Americans with drone technology to use in the Middle East conflict.

Following the meetings, all three men attended the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who up until his death on July 11 was a staunch supporter of both Ukraine and Israel.

Zelensky was also scheduled to meet with a group of senators at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday evening to talk about legislation that would impose harsher sanctions on Russia and its trading partners. Graham was an author of the proposed measure.

In recent days, Israeli settlers have ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, vandalizing properties, commandeering homes and fields, and establishing settlements that are illegal under international law.

At the same time, Israeli soldiers have intensified their incursions across the West Bank, arresting more than 100 Palestinians and demolishing homes.

The escalation followed a clash between settlers and Palestinian residents Friday that turned lethal, killing four Palestinians and two Israelis in what was considered the deadliest single attack in the West Bank this year.

Israeli attacks have also persisted in Gaza despite a ceasefire signed nine months ago. On Tuesday, health authorities in the enclave said 22 Palestinians were injured in Israeli strikes.

The rise in hostilities comes as Israel continues to push the United States to press on with a conflict that experts say carried political risks for the Trump administration with its supporters at home and international allies.

Last week, the U.S. war escalated again as Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen attacked two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea, causing global oil prices to surge. The development prompted fears of yet another vital energy corridor being choked off by the Iran war.

As the November elections approach, Trump has downplayed the economic toll the war has taken on his supporters. On Monday, he told a crowd in Michigan that if they ever question why the United States is at war, it’s because “we’re not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.”

Meanwhile, the cycle of claims and counterclaims by the U.S. and Iran has continued.

On Tuesday, Ebrahim Zolfaqari, a spokesperson for the unified command of Iran’s armed forces, warned any country or company accepting frozen Iranian funds as compensation for damaged vessels — as per Trump’s proposal over the weekend — would be struck.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei also contradicted Trump’s assertions of ongoing discussions between Iran and the U.S. and that Tehran was asking for a meeting.

Negotiations with the U.S. are “not in our DNA,” Baghaei said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s strike on an Iranian ship has raised the possibility of a growing footprint in that war. Ukraine said the ship was carrying military equipment between Iran and Russia.

Iran condemned the attack, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi slamming it as a “violation done at Israel’s behest” and the ministry spokesman comparing Zelensky to pre-World War I “anarchists” whose “theatrical yet highly dangerous acts” ignited a Europe-wide conflict.

“There is no guarantee that a dramatic gesture intended to attract attention and assert one’s position in the international arena, where that position is not particularly strong, will remain limited in scope,” Baghaei said during a news conference in Tehran on Monday.

He added: “The consequences, both for Ukraine and for the entire region drawn into this conflict, could be unpredictable.”

Ceballos reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.