Opinions

The recent opinion article by senior Ethiopian officials Redwan Hussein and Getachew Reda, published on Al Jazeera English’s website, attempts to portray Ethiopia as an innocent victim being reluctantly “dragged” into conflict by external actors. In doing so, the piece seeks to absolve the ruling Prosperity Party of responsibility for Ethiopia’s mounting domestic crises.

More dangerously, this narrative serves as a diplomatic smoke screen designed to normalise the unprovoked hostility, state-sponsored inflammatory rhetoric and aggressive military mobilisations that the Ethiopian government has directed towards Eritrea since late 2023.

By trying to reframe contemporary internal tensions as the direct product of external overreach or unresolved past grievances, the current Ethiopian security discourse represents a profound and dangerous inversion of reality. It distorts the true drivers of instability in the region to shield the federal authorities from international scrutiny.

The catastrophic war that engulfed northern Ethiopia for two years, from the initial outbreak of hostilities on November 4, 2020, until the signing of the cessation of hostilities agreement on November 2, 2022, did not arise from regional external manipulation or cross-border instigation. It was the product of Ethiopia’s long-standing internal ethnic cleavages and institutionalised political polarisation, rather than any external machinations.

The historical record confirms that Eritrea did not instigate this conflict, nor did it harbour expansionist designs on sovereign Ethiopian territory. Instead, Eritrea was reluctantly drawn into an imposed war at the explicit request and formal invitation of the Ethiopian federal government and for cogent reasons of self-defence.

Indeed, the broader objectives of the war agenda explicitly included and targeted the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Eritrea from its very inception. This reality is not a matter of speculative interpretation; it is an unalterable component of the public record.

Getachew’s own extensive public statements and numerous real-time posts under his official X handle during those tragic years easily validate that the targeting of Eritrea was a deliberate, premeditated strategy by regional forces rather than an accidental byproduct of a domestic policing action.

Following the formal cessation of hostilities, the political and military leadership of the Prosperity Party, extending from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed downward, profusely and publicly expressed their profound gratitude to Eritrea. These acknowledgements were made through official statements, parliamentary discussions, state media and remarks by senior military officials. For Redwan and senior Prosperity Party officials to now retroactively frame Eritrea as an inherent antagonist or a constant spoiler of domestic peace runs completely counter to these explicit, recorded admissions.

This tendency towards revisionism is further illustrated by the highly romanticised anecdotes propagated by Getachew and Redwan regarding the tense environment during the Pretoria peace talks. Both officials have concocted a heavily theatrical and entirely fictitious story concerning the alleged consternation of their South African hosts, who supposedly feared that “the negotiating teams from the two warring Ethiopian parties might get into a fistfight in the middle of the conference hall if not continuously shepherded to steer clear of one another”.

According to this manufactured narrative, the hosts were then stunned to witness a “cordial tone”. This narrative of sudden, miraculous reconciliation between bitter enemies serves a specific propaganda purpose: it portrays the Pretoria Agreement as a spontaneous triumph of domestic unity over external division.

However, this narrative ignores the reality that months before the formal talks in South Africa, confidential contacts had already taken place in Djibouti and the Seychelles under the sponsorship of external mediators. As later acknowledged by Getachew himself, the warring parties had already established channels of communication while the war was still raging.

Under the deliberate prodding of elements within the Prosperity Party, the two teams explored options to join forces and redirect their combined military capacities towards a war of aggression against Eritrea. In their contorted views, a sovereign and stable Eritrea constituted the ultimate threat to their respective political futures.

When the Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was finally signed, it was fundamentally understood as a peace pact between internal warring sides within Ethiopia. It is, and remains, an Ethiopian affair, purely and exclusively. Its provisions concerned domestic constitutional arrangements, the disarmament of armed groups, and the restoration of federal authority.

Eritrea’s position regarding Pretoria has remained consistent and principled. It supports any genuine effort that promotes peace, stability, and predictability in Ethiopia and the wider region. A peaceful, stable, and united Ethiopia that respects the sovereignty of its neighbours is in the strategic interest of every state in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea possesses neither the political appetite nor the strategic interest to scuttle an agreement between competing Ethiopian political forces. A peaceful, unified, and stable Ethiopia that respects its neighbours is in the vital national security interest of every state in the region.

Against this backdrop, the current propaganda campaigns and transparent disinformation efforts, as epitomised by the recent opinion article, are systematically designed to re-package an unprovoked agenda of conflict and hostility that Addis Ababa has unleashed against Eritrea since December 2023.

During this period, the Prosperity Party abruptly shifted its state rhetoric, launching a manufactured campaign centred on what it termed “sovereign access to the sea”. To build legitimacy for this legally untenable and historically flawed narrative, the ruling party has systematically mobilised a vast, state-backed apparatus. Instructors, researchers, media figures, cultural icons and academic lecturers, both Ethiopian nationals and co-opted foreign commentators, have been aggressively deployed across international forums, television networks and digital platforms to push this warped sovereign access narrative.

This coordinated campaign seeks to normalise the idea that colonial boundaries in the Horn of Africa are negotiable in order to attempt to challenge inviolable principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that have long underpinned regional stability.

This aggressive rhetoric has not been confined to speeches and opinion pieces. In a direct attempt to pull Eritrea into a militarised conflict, the ruling party has massed substantial military formations, heavy artillery, and mechanised divisions in close proximity to the Eritrean border.

This pattern of behaviour is directly mirrored along the northern frontier, where provocative pronouncements are accompanied by unremitting sabre-rattling regarding the acquisition of Assab and other Eritrean coastal lands through negotiations if possible, and by force if necessary.

The broader pattern extends beyond Eritrea. Ethiopia’s recent foreign policy conduct has increasingly generated tensions with several neighbouring states. The Memorandum of Understanding signed with Somaliland, which sought access to coastal territory without the consent of Somalia’s central government, triggered a major diplomatic crisis and raised serious questions regarding respect for established principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Similarly, Ethiopia has repeatedly pursued interventionist policies in neighbouring conflicts in the quest for short-term geopolitical objectives. Whether in Somalia, Sudan or elsewhere, Addis Ababa’s reckless regional agenda of expansionism has contributed significantly to regional mistrust and destabilisation.

Thus, the narrative that Ethiopia is an involuntary victim being dragged back into war by external forces ignores the reality of the ruling party actively moving military assets, signing illegal treaties and threatening the borders of sovereign states. This explicitly coercive stance directly undermines the foundational principles of peaceful coexistence and good neighbourliness that are essential for the Horn’s stability.

Ultimately, peace in the Horn of Africa cannot be bargained away to appease the shifting calculations of a restless neighbour. The path forward demands an immediate end to the reckless sabre-rattling in pursuit of illicit “sovereign maritime access”, the unconditional cessation of cross-border proxy alignments, and a return to the foundational principles of non-interference and territorial integrity.

Until the international community confronts the true internal drivers of Addis Ababa’s aggressive posture rather than entertaining its manufactured grievances, the region will remain perilously vulnerable to dangerous miscalculation. Eritrea stands firm in its resolve, anchored in legal permanence and historical facts. Those who look to externalise their domestic ruin through regional destabilisation will find that Eritrea’s sovereignty is neither negotiable nor penetrable, and that lasting security can only be achieved when boundaries are respected and international law is upheld without exception.

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

Thomas Warrick, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, says the 60-day US-Iran talks face hurdles with regards to nuclear issues and sanctions, and will require time, willingness, and patience to achieve lasting results.

On June 14, the United States and Iran agreed to a framework to end their war. The Strait of Hormuz is to reopen, the bombing of Lebanon is to end and – most importantly – the killing is to stop. After more than 100 days of war that killed thousands, including Iran’s most senior leaders, and pushed the world economy to the brink, even a fragile truce feels like first light.

Let us welcome it, but also let us understand it. To grasp why this war happened, and the string of wars before it, we must name their common cause. That cause is “Greater Israel” – not the country of Israel but an idea of it – a terrible one. The idea of “Greater Israel” has been the cause of wars in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

It holds that Israel should stretch over all of historic Palestine – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – and to parts of neighbouring countries as well.  According to United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a fundamentalist Protestant whose geopolitical compass is set by biblical texts from 500 BC, “Greater Israel” stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Last summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu professed to be “very” attached to a vision of “Greater Israel” that, he said, takes in the Palestinian territories and neighbouring Arab lands.

This absurd and dangerous doctrine has two parents. The first are secular hardliners like Netanyahu who say that Israel must control all the land from the river to the sea to be safe, and damn the eight million Palestinians in the way.

The second is the Jewish supremacist creed of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that God gave the land to the Jews alone: There is, in Smotrich’s words, “no such thing as a Palestinian”. Asked recently how Israel should answer its collapsing global standing, Smotrich vowed Israel would not relinquish military control of the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanese or Syrian territory: “We won’t commit suicide to make them happy.”

“Greater Israel” is paranoia, megalomania and religious zeal braided into a single programme. The doctrine should have been repudiated on its first airing decades ago. Instead, it has driven Israel’s foreign and military doctrine for three decades – and has survived until today because Netanyahu has taken the US for a ride.

He has done it with two American constituencies: Jewish Zionists who love Israel and will forgive it anything and Christian Zionists who love the prophecy of the End Times and the Second Coming of Christ more than they love any living Palestinian or, for that matter, any living Israeli.

Delusion has led on to delusion, and the road has run from one war to the next.  We are 30 years into this fiasco now.

The war on Iran was simply the latest “Greater Israel” fantasy. The government of 90 million people was to be toppled in a single, glorious day. Of course, it did not happen. Israeli and American bombs killed Iran’s leaders on February 28, but that did not deliver the promised collapse. It resulted instead in thousands of dead, a choked Strait of Hormuz and a global oil shock.

We have seen this film before. The Israel-US plan to bring down President Bashar al-Assad in Syria was also meant to be quick, one or two years at the most. Instead came a dozen years of carnage, fed by a covert war armed and financed by the CIA with Israel’s ardent backing. The result was an ancient country reduced to rubble. The promised one-day victories always become decade-long graveyards.

US President Donald Trump has been battered by joining the “Greater Israel” delusion, and he knows it. The new agreement with Iran is his escape valve, a way out of a fatuous war that was never his to win.

That is precisely why Israel’s “Greater Israel” politicians are trying to strangle the new agreement in the cradle, for peace with Iran is a defeat for “Greater Israel”. Even after the deal was sealed, Israel has continued to bomb Lebanon, killing 47 people in a single day on Friday and another 32 on Saturday hours after a Lebanon-Israel ceasefire took effect.

Here is the deeper truth: “Greater Israel” is not saving Israel. It is killing it. The friction now visible between Trump and Netanyahu is only the surface. Beneath it lies the collapse of Israel’s standing throughout the world. According to a recent Pew opinion survey, the world now holds an overwhelmingly unfavourable view of Israel. In the US, Israel’s indispensable patron, six in 10 adults view it unfavourably.

A state that makes itself hated by the world, and by its only protector, is not pursuing security. It is threatening its own survival to feed a delusion.

So the way to peace in West Asia is to stop “Greater Israel”. End the war on Iran, stop the genocide in Gaza and halt the strangulation of the West Bank. Most importantly, do the thing the doctrine forbids, which is to create the State of Palestine as the 194th United Nations member state alongside the State of Israel on the 1967 lines with genuine security for both countries and a regional framework to guarantee it, which should include Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and Syria.

The Iran ceasefire makes the case in miniature: It was won not on the battlefield but through mediation. It became possible when Washington decided it wanted peace more than it wanted “Greater Israel’s” war.

Israel can survive, but not as “Greater Israel”, a disastrous idea that has marched it and the US from one war to the next.

The glimmer of hope today is real. Whether it becomes a true dawn depends on whether the US finally lets Palestine be born, and thereby lets Israel live. The Arab world and Iran need to keep insisting to the US that breaking with “Greater Israel” is the only path to lasting peace.

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

Analyst Alexandru Hudisteanu warns that Iran’s overuse of Strait of Hormuz as leverage could transform the strategic chokepoint from a deterrence tool into an instrument of extortion, potentially turning the country into an international pariah.

Henry Ensher, a former US ambassador, says the US–Iran agreement is not a final settlement but only the start of a process, with many ways it could still go wrong.

Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, says that Iran’s renewed missile strikes on Israel aim to restore deterrence without reigniting full scale war.

Pro-Palestine activists interrupted an army recruitment event during German Armed Forces Day. They climbed onto a tank and unfurled a banner reading ‘Genocide with German weapons’ and named Rheinmetall, a key arms supplier to Israel’s military.

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In April, I accompanied a friend on a visit to villages in Daikundi province, central Afghanistan. The purpose of the trip was to speak to farmer beneficiaries of a project that an NGO operating in the agriculture sector had carried out and to follow up on its impact. The week I spent travelling with him was quite eye-opening regarding the state of the non-profit sector in the country.

The project in question provided zero-energy storage houses to preserve harvests, such as fruit and vegetables, in rural areas. On the surface, the idea was promising: provide farmers with storage space so they could sell their produce over a few months.

However, the farmers we spoke to in several villages showed us heaps of apples decaying beneath the trees. They complained that the storage houses had space for the apples of only two to three families in the entire village.

In another village, we saw frustration with another project from a different NGO. That organisation had bought imported seeds for various vegetables and distributed them among farmers. Staff members provided training, conducted weeks of workshops on cultivation methods and techniques, and regularly monitored the crops.

The local participants invested significant time, energy, land, and water in the project. But the harvest they got from these imported seeds was very little and of poor quality. Despite the enormous amount of money spent by the NGO on surveying, training, logistics, transportation, and staff salaries, the vegetables for each family amounted to about 450 Afghans (roughly $7). There was no accountability for the farmers’ losses.

Such stories are common across rural communities in Afghanistan. While aid organisations publish reports of their achievements, many beneficiaries gain little from poorly designed projects that fail to address the real challenges they face. The cost of these projects is extremely high, but the output is often too little.

Since the Taliban took over Kabul and the US-led coalition withdrew from the country, humanitarian aid and funding in Afghanistan have dramatically collapsed. The struggle to secure funds, however, has not led to better efficiency, accountability, and transparency among the NGOs still operating in Afghanistan.

This is not a recent phenomenon. Between 2001 and 2021, Afghanistan became the poster child for corruption, embezzlement, and waste of foreign aid. One US journalist described it as “the $148 bn failure”.

According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), set up by the United States to investigate fraud with US funds, between $26bn and $29bn was lost due to embezzlement or wasteful spending. This was just funding provided by the US government; there is no estimate for how much was wasted from other donors.

While much of the foreign funds went to the security sector, a significant amount went to the non-profit sphere, where waste was also widespread. Millions, if not billions, worth of projects became a missed opportunity to improve the lives of Afghans, especially in rural areas. This is a legacy that persists to this day.

This situation is not unique to Afghanistan. The development sector across the world is known for waste and inefficiency. In the Afghan context, that is exacerbated by the lack of control and difficulty of ground work.

Many foreign NGOs do not directly implement their projects; instead, they work through implementing partners (IPs), which themselves outsource implementation to subcontractors. This extended chain of actors means that often there is a lack of proper quality control and supervision, and there is motivation to carry out lower-quality work in order to increase profit.

Furthermore, the primary concern of IPs is securing funding. So they often present project proposals that look great on paper but do not necessarily have a substantial impact on the circumstances of the local population or address their most urgent needs.

Finally, there is a lot of waste in remuneration, especially when it comes to international staff. Foreign employees often have salaries as high as $10,000–20,000 for doing work that a local hire can do for much less.

It is clear that amid global cuts to donor funding, the development sector is struggling. This should be a moment of change. In Afghanistan, where the need of the local population is enormous while available financing is shrinking, NGOs can take this change into their own hands.

The simplest first step NGOs can take is to employ qualified locals to plan and lead projects. They would know the local culture, realities, and actual needs of communities, as well as market prices and field conditions. They can help not only optimise project costs but also ensure that they actually have a real, measurable impact.

In addition, NGOs should avoid having an extended chain of IPs and subcontractors. They should also regularly collect feedback from local communities and field workers directly in order to evaluate project effectiveness during implementation in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Projects are more likely to produce sustainable results if NGOs invest in addressing pressing nationwide challenges, such as unemployment, infrastructure, and market access.

Improving efficiency and effectiveness would not only ensure Afghan beneficiaries get better services and help, but it would also make organisations more competitive for the dwindling pool of funding. This is the only way to salvage the NGO sector not only in Afghanistan but in the rest of the world.

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

Recent arguments advocating for the international recognition of an integral part of Somalia called Somaliland rest on a series of assumptions that deserve closer scrutiny. While proponents portray Somaliland as a unified, stable, and strategically indispensable state deserving immediate recognition, the realities on the ground tell a far more complicated story.

The first and most fundamental misconception is that the former British Somaliland Protectorate exists today as a coherent political entity. It does not.

The territory that briefly gained independence in June 1960 ceased to exist when it voluntarily united with the Trust Territory of Somalia to form the Somali Republic. More importantly, the geographic and political boundaries claimed by today’s Somaliland administration are neither uncontested nor uniformly accepted by the populations living within them.

Over the past two years, the eastern regions of Sool, Sanaag, and parts of Cayn (SSC) have demonstrated precisely this reality. Following prolonged conflict and popular mobilisation, local communities overwhelmingly rejected rule from Hargeisa and established the North Eastern administration, which has since aligned itself with the Federal Government of Somalia. The people of these regions have made clear that they do not share Somaliland’s secessionist project and instead seek their future within a federal Somali state alongside the vast majority of the Somali people. This development alone undermines the central claim that Somaliland represents a unified political community exercising uncontested authority over the territory it claims.

In the west of the Somaliland region, growing political movements in Awdal have increasingly questioned Hargeisa’s perceived monopoly over political and economic decision-making. Calls for a distinct regional administration have gained momentum, reflecting longstanding grievances regarding political representation, economic development, and governance. These dynamics suggest that the future political map of northwestern Somalia is far more fluid than some advocates of recognition acknowledge.

Recognition advocates frequently point to Somaliland’s stability. Yet, stability cannot be measured solely by the existence of institutions or periodic elections. Genuine stability requires political inclusion, territorial legitimacy, and social consensus. None of these conditions currently exists within the Somali territory of Somaliland.

The reality is that the Somaliland secessionist project faces significant internal opposition. Political disagreements, clan-based tensions, territorial disputes, and competing visions of governance remain unresolved. International recognition cannot erase these challenges. Indeed, it risks intensifying them by encouraging zero-sum political calculations among communities that already feel excluded from decision-making processes.

Equally problematic is the argument that Somaliland’s recognition should be driven primarily by geopolitical competition in the Red Sea. The Horn of Africa should not become another arena where local political disputes are transformed into instruments of broader regional rivalries. Moreover, the attempts to frame Somaliland as a strategic asset in competition with Iran, the Houthis, China, or other global actors overlook a basic reality: sustainable security arrangements cannot be built on unresolved sovereignty disputes.

History offers numerous examples of external powers pursuing short-term strategic gains only to discover that local realities ultimately prevail. Durable partnerships emerge from political legitimacy and regional consensus, not from efforts to bypass internationally recognised states.

Recent developments surrounding Israel’s engagement in the region further illustrate this danger. Rather than producing greater cohesion, external involvement has generated new political tensions and heightened anxieties among local communities concerned about militarisation, foreign influence, and the future direction of regional governance.

The disingenuous assumption that foreign recognition of the Somaliland part of Somalia automatically translates into stability is not supported by any evidence. Moreover, recognition of Somaliland would not simply affect Somalia, as it would carry implications far beyond the Horn of Africa.

The African Union has consistently maintained its commitment to preserving inherited borders and resolving disputes through dialogue. This principle has been essential in preventing countless territorial conflicts across the continent. Creating exceptions without a broad regional consensus risks opening debates that many African states have spent decades working to contain.

The path to lasting peace and stability in Somalia, like in most post-conflict states, lies not in fragmentation but in reconciliation, dialogue, and constitutional settlement among Somalis themselves. Significant progress has already been made through federal institutions, expanding political participation, and locally driven governance arrangements. While challenges remain, they are best addressed through inclusive internal political processes rather than externally imposed outcomes in line with international law.

The Somali government remains committed to dialogue, reconciliation, and constitutional processes that allow all Somali communities to participate in shaping the country’s future. Sustainable peace and stability globally and, specifically, in the Horn of Africa at this most challenging time in human history will be achieved not through fragmentation, but inclusive political solutions that strengthen cooperation, legitimacy, and national unity.

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

Suggestions that criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic in Australia risk hardwiring a dangerous confusion. Questioning the behaviour of a foreign state is not the same as denigrating or attacking a people who may have links with that state. The State of Israel is represented by its embassy in Canberra, not by the Jewish community in our cities and suburbs.

But the knee-jerk reaction to the attack on a Jewish celebration in Sydney is solidifying that confusion. On December 14, 2025, as Jewish families gathered near Sydney’s Bondi Beach to celebrate Hanukkah, two gunmen opened fire, killing 15 people and injuring many others in one of the worst attacks in Australia’s history. In response, the federal government set up a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, led by former High Court justice Virginia Bell. On April 30, 2026, the commission delivered its interim report, raising serious concerns about how we define anti-Semitism.

The commission has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. The IHRA offers examples that include criticism of Israel as evidence of anti-Semitism. But such a broad definition collapses critical commentary on Israel’s policy in Gaza, its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli officials’ dehumanising comments about Palestinians into a racist attack on Australia’s Jews. How does that make sense to anyone?

This is not an abstract question. The blurring of these categories acts as a brake on public debate. It narrows the range of permissible language used to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where Australians have watched entire neighbourhoods destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians killed.

The official line from governments in relation to Israel is that Israel has a “right to exist” and an obligation to defend its citizens, which appears to give Israel carte blanche to decimate the entire Gaza Strip and kill tens of thousands of Palestinians. But no other state enjoys this exceptional treatment. No other state can do what it wishes simply because it has a “right to exist”. Australia has that right, but that right has never shielded governments in Canberra from fierce criticism, whether over First Nations dispossession, offshore detention or climate inaction. When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2008 for the wrongs past governments had done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australia’s legitimacy as a state was not under threat. Rudd was reflecting the public mood by distancing his government from the policies of the past. It was not seen as challenging Australia’s right to exist.

Yet in debates about Israel, the invocation of the “right to exist” and anti-Semitism operates as a conversation stopper. It closes the door to a frank discussion about the State of Israel and its behaviour. We cannot talk about occupation, apartheid and war crimes because that is anti-Semitic. This is a troubling precedent that insulates Israel from moral and political accountability.

The commission was established in response to a real and deeply upsetting surge in anti-Semitic violence. But its framework could cast suspicion on genuine inquiry into the behaviour of Israel. It entrenches a form of exceptionalism that actually weakens Australia’s democratic norms.

A liberal society must be able to draw a clear line: hatred, discrimination or violence against Jews is anti-Semitic and unacceptable; criticism of a foreign government is not.

There is also a cost to Jewish Australians when that line is blurred. Public debate routinely treats “the Jewish community” as a single, pro-Israel bloc, represented by a handful of bodies. This is simply not true. Many Australian Jews are alarmed to see the destruction of Gaza in their name. Some have mobilised against Israel’s actions.

To assume unanimous Jewish support for Israeli actions is to deny Jewish Australians their agency. Worse, it risks casting Jewish dissenters as inauthentic. If the policy settings shaped by this commission casts such voices as anti-Semitic, they will be erased twice over: excluded from the definition of the community and penalised for speakingup. This is silencing dissent, masquerading as protection.

If public institutions reinforce the idea that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews, they risk feeding anti-Semitism.

Images of Gaza’s destruction on the news have galvanised global public opinion. Many young Australians have marched for an end to Israeli policies and freedom for Palestine. The message that such protests against Israel are anti-Semitic could not be any more counter-productive and harmful for Australian democracy. That will only breed resentment against the Australian political system for ignoring what everyone sees on their TV screens, and, dangerously, feed the very anti-Semitic narratives the commission should be challenging. Those who already hold anti-Semitic views will feel confirmed in their belief that Jews act collectively through Israel. The commission cannot afford to fall into this trap.

To the credit of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), they have avoided the conflation of Israel and Jewish people and have not adopted the IHRA definition. The interim commission report has not embraced the most heavy-handed proposals in circulation; there is no rush to ban protest slogans or criminalise political expression. There is room for optimism that the commission can still address the issue in its final report.

Here are the standards it needs to uphold to protect social cohesion in Australia:

First, an unambiguous distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. Second, a recognition of the diversity of Jewish opinion, including among those who oppose Israel’s actions, and the inclusion of those voices in efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Third, a defence of political space for Palestinians and their allies to describe their experiences of occupation, dispossession and siege in their own terms, while  rejecting any dehumanising or racist language about Jewish people.

Anti-Semitism in Australia is a threat to the Jewish community (regardless of political views) and the very foundation of our social cohesion. But seeking to address the scourge of anti-Semitism by conflating critical views of the State of Israel with hatred of Jews will only make matters worse. Such approach will suppress debate, limit freedom of speech and inquiry that has already led to self-censorship at our universities and entrench the very confusion that sustains anti-Semitism.

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

Somalia is entering one of the most dangerous moments in its recent history without an agreed path towards elections or a political transition. United States and United Kingdom-led talks between the government and the opposition collapsed on May 15, the date on which President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s original four-year term was due to expire, leaving the legitimacy of key federal institutions under serious strain.

Justin Davis, the US chargé d’affaires to Somalia, and the UK’s ambassador, Charles King, had been trying to persuade political leaders from both sides to reach an agreement on a political transition roadmap. Their failure leaves the country without an agreed way forward at the worst possible time.

Since 2008, Somalia has frequently been ranked as one of the world’s most fragile states. Under President Mohamud’s leadership, the country is now facing a political deadlock that threatens its survival. This crisis is unfolding amid insecurity, humanitarian distress, economic fragility, widespread corruption and shifting geopolitical rivalries.

At the heart of the crisis is the contested nature of the Somali state itself. Somaliland seeks independence, while Puntland and Jubbaland have broken ties with the Federal Government. Al-Shabab controls significant parts of the country and key roads. The Federal Government and at least three Federal Member States are also operating beyond their mandates. The scheduled electoral calendar has lapsed without a vote: parliament’s four-year mandate expired in April 2026, and the president’s term ran out a month later, yet no agreed roadmap for elections or political transition exists to replace them.

In a controversial process, the government unilaterally changed the constitution, passed an electoral law viewed by its opponents as self-serving, and established an election commission they reject as one-sided. Over the past four years, executive, legislative and judicial powers have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of President Mohamud.

Somalia’s national opposition, along with Puntland and Jubbaland, has characterised the government’s actions as a power grab and rejected them. They argue that the 2012 constitution, which reflects Somalia’s political settlement, remains the law of the land. As a result, Somalia is now caught between two competing claims to constitutional legitimacy. For its part, the government maintains that it is advancing a democratic goal long sought for Somalia, a move from indirect, clan-mediated selection to one-person, one-vote elections, and that the constitutional amendments extending the presidential term from four to five years were lawfully approved by parliament.

Universal suffrage and party-based politics remain a distant aspiration for Somalis. Acknowledging this reality, both the government and the opposition continue to accept the clan-based power-sharing system. However, they disagree on how members of parliament representing clans should be selected at the state and federal levels. The government seeks a one-year term extension and proposes an electoral system for clan representatives that critics say would help it maintain its hold on power. The opposition, by contrast, advocates an improved indirect election process through which clans would choose their representatives.

This political rupture is unfolding in a country already facing severe security and governance challenges. Although security in the capital has improved, widespread violence persists, particularly in south-central Somalia. According to the ACLED database, national fatalities reached a record high in 2025, and al-Shabab is responsible for the large majority of conflict deaths recorded over the past two decades. During the current administration’s four years in office, the same data points to tens of thousands of deaths nationwide, primarily concentrated in Banadir, Lower Shabelle, Lower Jubba and Hiran.

The crisis is also taking place against a worsening humanitarian and economic backdrop. Despite the arrival of rains across the country, humanitarian agencies warn that millions of Somalis are food insecure. International humanitarian efforts are struggling to raise funds to assist those affected by poverty, displacement and conflict. Foreign aid has been declining since the Trump administration dismantled USAID in 2025, while Somalia’s domestic revenue-to-GDP ratio remains in the low single digits. Concerns over the viability and affordability of the state have led many to look towards a resource-based economy, particularly as Turkiye expands its involvement in Somalia’s oil and fisheries sectors.

Corruption has further weakened public trust in state institutions. According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, Somalia has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world over the past decade. Widespread corruption has undermined almost every aspect of governance. The government’s approach to land management has deepened these concerns, with critics accusing it of forcibly evicting people who occupied public lands during the war and selling some of these lands to merchants without due process. Many citizens with legal documents from previous governments have also lost their homes.

These domestic pressures are being sharpened by regional and global rivalries. Somalia is struggling to navigate intensifying competition in the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean. Its divided political class is managing these challenges not as a cohesive state, but through regions, clans and rival political blocs. Different groups have aligned themselves with various regional powers and neighbouring countries.

Regional players, including Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Egypt, are increasingly active in the Horn of Africa. Israel became the first country to officially recognise Somaliland late last year, intensifying competition among rival regional powers and drawing further attention to Somalia and Somaliland amid the region’s shifting geopolitics.

The political, security, economic and humanitarian pressures have also had serious implications for civic space. The government has been accused of silencing dissent by jailing journalists and civic activists. The opposition is now calling for demonstrations, while the government is openly discouraging public participation.

What should happen now

Somalia stands at a critical juncture. Timely intervention by the international community could help redirect the country away from violence and political fragmentation. In the past, traditional donors, mainly the US, the European Union and the UK, helped facilitate Somalia’s last five political transitions, in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2022.

The American and British diplomats in Mogadishu made important efforts to bring the parties together and facilitate dialogue, although these efforts came late. A final push may now require more direct involvement from Washington and London, as well as engagement with non-traditional Gulf donors. Turkiye has also expressed interest in contributing to mediation efforts. This should be welcomed, as Ankara has influence with political actors in both the government and the opposition.

The international community should first pressure the government to negotiate a political roadmap in good faith, with a focus on a workable and timely election process. Villa Somalia should also stop using state institutions, including security forces, the aviation agency and international assistance, as tools in the political dispute.

At the same time, the opposition should be encouraged to engage constructively with the government and avoid initiating a parallel process that could lead to the formation of an alternative government. Most importantly, the international community should impose targeted sanctions on political spoilers who use extrajudicial means to destabilise the country.

Beyond the immediate political impasse, there is also a pressing need for genuine national dialogue and reconciliation. Previous peace processes in Djibouti and Kenya involved a wider range of actors in peacebuilding and helped establish the Third Republic. One lesson from those processes is that institutions built by people who have not fully reconciled cannot last. Somalis have never had the opportunity to engage in a serious and inclusive national dialogue. They need an open forum, genuine reconciliation and state institutions they collectively own.

Somalia is on the brink of political disintegration, but it remains at the prevention stage. That is precisely why the broader international community must act now, as it has in the past. There is still time to guide Somalia away from a self-destructive path and safeguard decades of investment in state-building and peacebuilding.

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

It has been more than four years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, expanding its occupation of Ukrainian lands, which started in 2014. In the chaos and violence of the first months of the invasion, families were separated, and childcare institutions were cut off from the control of the central authorities in Kyiv. As a result, the occupation forces forcibly transferred more than 20,000 Ukrainian children to Russia.

Russian officials claimed that they did not abduct Ukrainian children, but “saved” them through humanitarian evacuations. However, international investigations have since found that many such transfers were unlawful under international humanitarian law. In many documented cases, transfers were carried out without the consent of the living parent or legal guardians of the child.

International humanitarian law prohibits all forcible transfers and deportations of protected people from occupied territory, except for evacuations strictly required to ensure the population’s safety. Even then, evacuation must happen within occupied territory, be temporary, preserve family unity and return evacuees home as soon as hostilities cease.

Today, the lives of thousands of Ukrainian children are devastated by this forcible transfer. Instead of abiding by international legal obligations and returning them to their homeland, Russia has transformed the issue into yet another bargaining chip against the Ukrainian people.

But Ukraine refuses to abandon its children. For the past four years, there have been intense efforts from families, NGOs and the Ukrainian government to bring them back.

Take the case of Lesya (the name has been changed to protect her identity), whose testimony was recorded by The Reckoning Project— a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting and publicising atrocities committed in the war. Lesya was 15 years old when Russian forces occupied her village in the Kherson region in 2022. When the occupation authorities imposed a mandatory evacuation, she was put on a truck with more than 30 other children and was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Feodosia, Crimea. A woman accompanying the children told her that her mother would join her shortly.

At the facility, Lesya and other Ukrainian children were subjected to a strict routine, forced to do chores and study in Russian, using Russian textbooks. They were kept under surveillance indoors most of the time in a building with windows that could not be opened. Two days a week, the children underwent military training.

Eventually, a relative located her, and with the help of Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian NGO facilitating children’s return, her mother managed to bring her back.

But Lesya’s case is the exception rather than the rule. More than 2,000 Ukrainian children have been brought back thanks to efforts by NGOs, the government and foreign mediators.

Pressure through international institutions has also been pursued, but that has not accelerated the process of return.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants of arrest for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.

In July 2025, the European Court of Human Rights, in Ukraine and the Netherlands v Russia, found Russia responsible for a number of human rights violations, including the organised removal of children. The court also required Russia to cooperate in establishing a mechanism to find and safely return children.

In March this year, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Russia’s deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children amount to crimes against humanity. The report identifies the removal of Ukrainian children as a part of a well-planned and systematically executed policy, conceived at the highest level.

On May 11, the European Union sanctioned 16 individuals and seven entities, while the United Kingdom sanctioned 29 individuals and entities responsible for the deportation, forced transfer, forced assimilation, indoctrination, militarisation and unlawful adoption of Ukrainian children. Overall, the EU has sanctioned more than 130 people and organisations for these actions. The United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland and several other countries have introduced similar measures.

The lack of progress on this issue has driven families to desperation. Some have tried to bring their children back on their own or through often-daring missions by Save Ukraine and five other Ukrainian NGOs.

There should be no need for these risky missions. Under international humanitarian law, Russia is obligated to identify and register Ukrainian children in their care, facilitate family reunification, and permit access to neutral actors assisting Ukrainian children.

As negotiations for the end of the war have stalled and other global events have displaced Ukraine from global headlines, we urgently need to put the issue of the abducted Ukrainian children back in the spotlight.

There are several areas in which existing efforts can expand.

First, a comprehensive tracing mechanism needs to be established and financed to track abducted Ukrainian children and prevent their disappearance into dispersed care and adoption systems.

Second, ongoing legal efforts to hold to account Russian officials involved in the abduction should be intensified. This means coordinated prosecutions in states where the universal jurisdiction principle can be applied, as well as joint investigation strategies supported by Eurojust, the EU’s judicial hub. Ukraine’s partners should support its judicial processes launched against Russian officials and cooperate where needed, including through extraditions where legally applicable and other lawful transfer mechanisms. While justice may be slow, the prospect of accountability can have a deterrent effect.

Third, states can and should fully implement sanctions, trade restrictions and other obligations they assumed but did not consistently observe in practice. The sanctions regime on Russia has severely hurt its economy, but it has also seen continuous evasion. A strict implementation can help put more pressure on the regime in Moscow.

While stories of family reunions are heartening, they are just a drop in a bucket compared with the number of children who continue to be separated from their families and absorbed into a system of indoctrination and militarisation.

We must not allow the issue of returning Ukrainian children to be yet another negotiating chip for Moscow. It cannot be put on hold because negotiations have stalled or because other priorities have captured the world’s attention.

Four years is a long time in a child’s life. Each passing day further erodes their national identity and deepens the pain of separation, as they grow up in a hostile environment. There is no principle more universal than the belief that children belong with their parents and loved ones, and Ukrainian children deserve this basic human right today, not at some point in the future.

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

On May 7, Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka announced in parliament that the government would return 67 farms seized during the country’s land reform programme to European nationals from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The farms, he said, were protected under bilateral investment protection agreements signed between Zimbabwe and the four European states before the land seizures.

The measure forms part of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s effort to restore relations with Western governments and international financial institutions after more than two decades of crisis, sanctions, isolation and debt default linked in part to the fast-track land reform programme of the early 2000s.

Zimbabwe is trying to restructure about $11.7bn in external debt, including $7.7bn owed to multilateral and bilateral creditors. On May 20, the International Monetary Fund approved a staff-monitored programme to support reforms and debt restructuring.

Resolving disputes linked to land reform has become central to that re-engagement process. In July 2020, Zimbabwe signed a $3.5bn compensation agreement with former white commercial farmers for infrastructure and improvements on acquired land. Last year, it began compensating treaty-protected foreign farmers, including claimants from Germany, Switzerland and Belgium.

But this development also exposes a deeper contradiction embedded in the global order governing land and property rights in former settler colonies: European claims arising from postcolonial redistribution are treated as urgent, enforceable and respectable, while African claims arising from colonial dispossession remain largely outside the same legal and moral framework.

The colonial dispossession that created white land ownership in Rhodesia never received the same urgency as the one now directed at restoring European claims after postcolonial redistribution. At independence in April 1980, no comparable mechanism forced Britain, Rhodesia or settler beneficiaries to compensate Africans dispossessed through conquest, racial legislation and forced removal. Yet once postcolonial Zimbabwe attempted to redistribute that land, its protection suddenly became tied to legality, investor confidence and international respectability.

In October 1889, Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC) received a royal charter from the British Crown, accelerating white settler expansion across the territory that became Southern Rhodesia. The 1893 war against King Lobengula’s Ndebele kingdom opened vast areas of land to settler occupation, while the crushing of the 1896-97 First Chimurenga, led by resistance figures such as Mbuya Nehanda, consolidated British control across the colony.

Early dispossession was not only territorial. After 1893, BSAC forces seized cattle on a large scale in Matabeleland, weakening the economic foundations of local communities. By 1958, Southern Rhodesia’s European population of roughly 207,000 controlled almost 48 million acres of prime agricultural land, while about 2.55 million Africans had 41.95 million acres of poorer, overcrowded and less arable land.

From the 1890s onwards, colonial land seizures in Rhodesia were enforced and legitimised through the selective application of British imperial law and BSAC decrees. African ownership of land was never recognised with the same standing granted to settler occupation.

That legal order survived the expansion of settler rule through the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and continued to shape later legal frameworks.

That lopsided inheritance still shapes the global response to Zimbabwe’s land question decades after independence.

Bilateral investment treaties signed between Zimbabwe and foreign states gave protected investors the right to seek compensation when property covered by those agreements was expropriated. In practice, certain foreign-owned farms seized during fast-track land reform entered an international system backed by arbitration mechanisms, treaty enforcement and diplomatic pressure, even though the land itself had been acquired through conquest and war. The 67 farms covered by Masuka fall into that category.

Africans dispossessed under colonial rule were never granted comparable access to international reparations or protected claims against empire.

Part of this asymmetry is structural: European farmers can invoke treaties their governments signed and a compensation deal Zimbabwe itself agreed, while the dispossessed have no counterparty to sue, no instrument to enforce and, in Rhodesia, no surviving state to hold to account. But that is precisely the point. The legal architecture was built to recognise one kind of loss and not the other.

In April 2009, Dutch farmers protected under a bilateral investment treaty brought Funnekotter and others v Zimbabwe before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), and the tribunal ordered Zimbabwe to compensate them for expropriated farms. In 2015, another ICSID tribunal ruled in favour of European claimants linked to Swiss and German property interests in von Pezold and others v Zimbabwe after land seizures under fast-track reform.

The contrast is stark for everyday Zimbabweans.

My maternal grandparents lived in what was the Seke Reserve in Mashonaland, a place where most people were settled on small plots of land with “rather poor sand veldt with a lot of bush”. The reserve was created in 1899 along a boundary that ran roughly along the Hunyani River to the north and northeast, separating African-occupied land from areas soon to be claimed by white settlers.

On the other side of that line, colonial authorities allocated fertile, riverfront and midslope land to white commercial farmers, while families who had once farmed across that broader landscape were confined to a narrow, overcrowded reserve with low-grade soils and limited water.

This was part of a wider colonial regime that, from 1894, also pushed many Ndebele communities into the dry, low-rainfall and tsetse-fly-infested Gwaai and Shangani reserves in Matabeleland North.

Their subsequent, imposed impoverishment and losses, of land, cattle, livelihoods, political authority and economic autonomy, were absorbed into colonial history rather than treated as enforceable claims demanding compensation from the imperial system that created them.

They all died landless and economically broken, largely invisible to the global legal order and without meaningful redress, much like countless Indigenous communities around the country.

Yet Zimbabwe’s compensation framework, shaped largely by external pressure and Western imperatives, recognises losses arising from fast-track land reform and treaty-protected commercial farms. It does not recognise losses like those experienced by my grandparents, or by countless families whose land, cattle and livelihoods were taken under colonial rule.

For years, Zimbabwe’s debt re-engagement process has been tied to arrears clearance, economic reforms and the settlement of land-related disputes. The restoration of treaty-protected European claims has therefore become intertwined with Zimbabwe’s attempts to regain access to international finance and repair relations with Western creditors, chiefly the IMF and World Bank.

Compensation agreements and investor protections are presented as proof that Zimbabwe is becoming governable, predictable and safe again for international capital. In effect, Zimbabwe is being asked to rehabilitate confidence in settler-derived property rights as part of its return to global financial legitimacy.

Launched in 2000, Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme was characterised by widespread economic disruption and violence against Black farmworkers, white farmers and opposition MDC supporters. Those failures do not erase the history of land theft that made redistribution a central political question in the first place.

The unresolved collision between colonial property systems and African restitution claims extends far beyond Zimbabwe. In former settler colonies such as Zimbabwe and Namibia, it is overwhelmingly Black Africans who are expected to absorb mass land dispossession without compensation.

Colonial seizure is treated as inconvenient background history, while postcolonial attempts to restructure ownership are framed as threats to “markets” and “investor confidence”.

African efforts to recover land face more obstacles than the colonial systems that stole it.

Land reform should be lawful, accountable and economically productive. Nonetheless, international law cannot treat property rights created through settler colonialism as morally untouchable while dismissing African compensation as dangerous or illegitimate.

The 67 farms are standing remnants of an old and unresolved colonial atrocity.

My grandmother’s people also have rights.

Zimbabweans are still waiting for justice.

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

Tehran, Iran – “The fundamental principle is distrust towards America” – this is how senior lawmaker Abbas Moghtadaei described the situation to state television on Tuesday afternoon.

It came after an Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, returned to Tehran from Qatar amid efforts to reach an understanding with the United States on ending the nearly three-month-long war on the country.

Hours earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Washington of committing a “blatant violation” of the shaky ceasefire reached on April 8 by attacking the southern province of Hormozgan on Monday night. It added that the strikes validated the “deep suspicion” Iran harboured towards the US.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iranian armed forces fired back and shot down a US-made RQ-4 drone, using a domestically-made air defence system called Arash-e Kamangir – named after a hero in Persian mythology. State television aired footage of the remains of a downed drone.

The US military said it was hitting missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to lay sea mines in a “defensive” move, but IRGC commanders said they have the right to retaliate.

On Tuesday afternoon, a tanker reported an external explosion and fuel leak some 60 nautical miles (about 111 kilometres) east of Oman’s capital city Muscat, according to British maritime intelligence. Iranian officials did not comment on the incident.

The escalation comes as the two sides try to hammer out the final details of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoM) that could potentially facilitate increased transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely frozen since the US and Israel launched a wave of strikes on Iran on February 28.

The deal would also grant Iran access to some of its own overseas funds that have been frozen due to US sanctions and offer a pathway for a future agreement over the country’s nuclear programme.

Nicole Grajewski, an assistant professor at Sciences Po’s Center for International Research, said many in the Iranian leadership appear concerned that an agreement could simply provide operational pause, intelligence access or political cover before the US and Israel launch another round of large-scale attacks on the country.

“For the deal to be politically sellable internally, Tehran likely needs to frame it not as capitulation under military pressure but as a managed stabilisation that preserved core sovereign red lines,” she told Al Jazeera.

“That probably means maintaining some form of enrichment capability for now, avoiding immediate surrender of the stockpile, securing meaningful sanctions or asset relief, and preserving regional deterrence structures, at least formally outside the agreement.”

‘Negotiating with the enemy is pure loss’

From relatively moderate Iranian politicians in the government to the most hardline military-security factions, all have pledged that the Islamic Republic will not accede to a deal that amounts to “surrender”.

President Masoud Pezeshkian told state television earlier this week that he wants to assure the international community “we are not after nuclear weapons, we are not after insecurity in the region”.

But Majid Mousavi, the influential aerospace commander of the IRGC, wrote in a post on X, in reference to former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “As our martyred imam said, negotiating with the enemy is pure loss.”

Mousavi said he would follow the orders of the country’s new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, who said in a message to mark the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha on Tuesday, that “nations and territories of the region will no longer be the shield of American bases”. He also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 15 years’ time, as foreshadowed by his slain father.

Ali Abdollahi, the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters and a leading figure in the war, made a first public appearance on Monday to urge the Iranian armed forces to make the “defeat” of the enemy a priority.

“The Americans talk too much and keep changing their story in a moment. We’ve said many times that we will show on the battlefield what we are capable of,” he told state television on the sidelines of a ceremony in Tehran to commemorate Iranian leaders killed during the war.

In his first public message as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, released on Monday, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a top IRGC general, pledged, “there will be no retreat”.

IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi has also expressed readiness to resume military confrontations with the US if necessary.

Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said decision-makers in Tehran are not just concerned about a ‘bad deal’ but also one that could force Iran to give up key leverage in the event of future disputes.

“Hardliners are especially alarmed by any discussion involving Hormuz, sanctions sequencing or nuclear concessions because they increasingly view coercive leverage, especially maritime pressure, as Iran’s main post-war bargaining asset,” he told Al Jazeera. That is why the debate inside Tehran has shifted from ‘should we negotiate?’ to ‘what exactly are we giving up?” he told Al Jazeera.

For a deal to succeed, the Iranian leadership will need to believe that some sanctions relief will be tangible and fast, he added.

Iran will also seek to preserve enough of a deterrence mechanism and symbolic dignity to avoid looking defeated, and ensure that the agreement prevents another war from breaking out in the future.

But as it stands – and there is scant information on it – Vatanka said the emerging memorandum “looks less like a historic peace settlement and more like a ceasefire-management mechanism designed to buy time, reduce immediate war risks, reopen parts of Hormuz, and defer the hardest nuclear questions into later rounds”. This would mean lingering suspicion and uncertainty would persist.

Concern for assassination

Iranian state media pundits have also claimed that senior Iranian figures would be vulnerable to assassination if military operations resume.

“If the US, at any point during the current agreement talks, gains access to our supreme leader, it will strike without any consideration for its other interests or consideration for intermediaries like Pakistan and Qatar,” Nima Akbarkhani, an IRGC-linked pundit, said on state television on Tuesday.

Ali Samadzadeh, another state-linked analyst, claimed the emerging US-Iranian agreement could even be a “honeypot” scheme to draw out leaders.

According to US media outlets, Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from in public since the start of the war, except for written messages attributed to him, is hiding in an undisclosed secure location where even many government officials have no access to him. US officials have said this has slowed the process of talks.

Sciences Po’s Grajewski said over the next few days, the key issue for the Islamic Republic will be securing internal approval. Hardline factions will also scrutinise any concessions made to the US, even those made as part of a crisis-management memorandum that leaves more difficult issues to be faced at a later date.

“So, the realistic outcome in the near term is probably an unstable interim arrangement rather than a comprehensive settlement,” she said.

“Whether it evolves into something more durable depends almost entirely on whether the follow-on nuclear negotiations produce concrete mechanisms both sides can live with.”

It has been almost nine months since rebel groups imposed a fuel blockade on Mali’s capital Bamako. In late April, the conflict escalated further. The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), along with members of Tuareg separatist movements, launched a coordinated attack on the Malian army and its Russian allies, the African Corps (formerly Wagner), which killed the Malian Defence Minister Sadio Camara.

The rebels seized control of military camps, recaptured the largest northern city of Kidal, and tightened the blockade on Bamako. This latest offensive is part of a long series of rebellions in what the Tuareg call Azawad, an area comprising the regions of Timbuktu, Taoudenit, Kidal, and Gao, which is predominantly populated by Tuareg communities.

The present crisis is compounded by the weakening of the Malian state following the 2021 coup and foreign intervention. In the absence of any serious effort to address it, instability could spill over across the whole Sahel region.

Ever since the country announced independence from France in 1960, Mali’s north has seen repeated upheaval as local Tuareg communities have demanded self-determination. Fourteen years ago, Tuareg groups allied with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda launched yet another rebellion. They managed to seize several cities in northern Mali, and had it not been for a French military intervention in 2013, they could have marched on Bamako.

Two French operations resulted in the weakening of the Tuareg movements and groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. This helped persuade them to participate in negotiations with the government, which ultimately ended with the signing of the Algiers Accords in 2015.

One of the most prominent clauses of this agreement was decentralisation in the Azawad region, which gave local leaders more power. Through this agreement, the Malian government secured the country’s territorial integrity in return for promises like the enhancement of development in the Azawad region, the integration of separatist fighters into the army, and the appointment of their leaders to political positions.

These accords helped maintain relative stability in Mali and the Sahel region by containing the sources of tension and secessionist calls. However, peace did not last long. Several challenges emerged, the most important of which was the failure of the government to honour its commitments to implement development projects in the north.

The situation got worse after the 2021 military coup led by General Assimi Goita. France, Algeria, and members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) refused to recognise the new authorities in Bamako. As a result, in 2022, the military government expelled French troops, and in 2024, abolished the Algiers Agreement. Thereafter, instead of diplomacy and dialogue, it adopted a militarised approach to controlling the restive north.

These steps strained Mali’s relations with Mauritania, Algeria, and France, with Bamako accusing them of providing logistical support to the rebels and interfering in its internal affairs. Consequently, the Malian state was weakened militarily and economically, as military coordination and trade with neighbours declined.

JNIM and the separatist movements exploited the situation. They sought to choke the capital by attacking key transport arteries where most imports and exports are routed. They disrupted supplies of gasoline and diesel coming from Senegal and the Ivory Coast, and began attacking Moroccan trucks carrying food supplies via Mauritania.

Like in 2012, the alliance between the Tuareg movements and al-Qaeda affiliates has proven successful. It has routed the Malian military, capturing more territory and operating freely close to Bamako.

This time, foreign forces have not been able to help the Malian army, as its Russian allies were forced to withdraw following the attack in late April. Meanwhile, Turkiye has seen its involvement in Mali grow amid growing instability. In early May, following the attacks on the Malian military, Ankara signed several defence agreements with the Malian military government.

The danger here is that the Malian crisis may not be contained only within the political crisis between the government and the separatist movements. It could also invite more foreign intervention as regional and global rivalries transfer onto Malian territory.

There is also the issue of the alliance between Azawadi movements and al-Qaeda affiliates, which could prove to be a ticking time bomb. There are clear contradictions within this relationship, as the two sides have no common ground except the agreement to overthrow the military regime in Bamako. This is why a future war in the north between the Azawadi movements and the Islamist groups is quite likely.

The Malian crisis inevitably has regional repercussions. The ongoing humanitarian crisis could trigger a major migration wave towards Europe and North America. Continuing instability in the north could open more space for the growth of extremist movements, which can expand their attacks across the region. Consequently, the Malian crisis can become a direct security threat to neighbouring countries, the region, and the world.

As the situation stands now, no warring side is able to achieve a decisive military victory. Therefore, a resolution of the conflict can only be achieved through dialogue and negotiation. Bamako needs to seriously consider the grievances of Tuareg communities in the north and their demands.

It is in the collective interest of neighbouring countries and regional powers to bring the parties to the negotiating table and seek peaceful solutions to this crisis. Under the threat of a regional spillover, there is no time to waste.

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

Harlan Ullman of the Killowen Group argues that US President Donald Trump is chasing any deal to relieve mounting pressures at home, even as key nuclear and Hormuz issues remain unresolved.

The crisis caused by the US-Israel war on Iran has affected the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at different levels.

Oman has barely felt any shock as its ports and terminals continue operating as usual. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been able to reroute some oil exports through terminals in Yanbu and Fujairah, respectively, to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, on the other hand, have been practically cut off from the global market and are facing the prospect of economic contraction.

Under these circumstances, the GCC states more than ever need to demonstrate unity and address the crisis through collective action. The issue of solidarity is not about showing benevolence to neighbours. It is about setting up mechanisms now that can diminish the consequences and value of any future threat of closure. It is about the survival of the whole idea of GCC unity and the leverage it has on the global scene.

Collective action, common interest

Even if some sort of agreement is reached between the warring sides today, the GCC will continue to suffer under the shadow of the nearly three-month closure. States face the risk of losing clients due to the risk of not fulfilling their obligations or being perceived as a risky supplier. Only a joint effort can stop a free fall.

So far, self-interested approaches are winning over collective action. For instance, the UAE’s exit from OPEC was largely driven by the perception of the Emirati leadership that the Strait of Hormuz crisis was an opportunity to grab greater oil market share.

If this trend of unilateral crisis response continues, it would have grave economic consequences for the whole GCC and threaten its existence. With no burden-sharing mechanism, Gulf countries would end up competing against each other in a zero-sum game. This would reduce the influence the GCC has as a regional bloc and diminish its ability to sway energy markets.

Up until now, there have been some demonstrations of solidarity in rhetoric. During the GCC consultative meeting in Jeddah on April 28, Gulf leaders attempted to show unity and discuss possible ways out of the crisis. The meeting led to discussions about what the GCC states could do in practical terms, yet there are still no signs that these discussions have moved beyond the expert level.

Nevertheless, there are practical steps the GCC can take now that could help address the present crisis and ensure stability in the face of future risks. One of them could be the introduction of swap arrangements.

Swap as an instrument of solidarity

There are three relevant swap mechanisms that the GCC could consider: physical, contractual and quality swap deals. Physical and contractual swap deals allow one party to deliver an equivalent commodity to fulfil a contract on behalf of another.

A quality swap, on the other hand, exchanges one grade or product for another to align the feedstock needs of refineries or optimise transport costs.

Thus, instead of Kuwaiti, Qatari or Bahraini cargo physically passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a buyer can receive an acceptable substitute at Yanbu, Fujairah, Duqm, Ras Markaz, Sohar, Qalhat, Singapore, India, Korea, Japan or Europe, while the parties involved settle the accounts through future delivery, cash compensation, product exchange, or a retained-volume fee.

The swap does not require the trapped commodity to move immediately. It requires a transparent title, valuation and reconciliation, so that a substitute commodity can be delivered to the end user.

The strongest swap deals, therefore, resemble clearing systems. They are most reliable when they are established before the crisis, but they can also be assembled during a crisis if the parties already have pre-existing experience of trading, a trusted customer base or alternative physical infrastructure to be utilised.

In fact, the swap deals are not something completely unfamiliar to the GCC member states. In 2013, when Egypt failed to fulfil its contractual gas obligations, Qatar agreed to export its own liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly to the customers that Egypt otherwise could not serve while it channelled its gas for domestic needs.

In 2021, the UAE’s Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) won a tender to swap 84,000 tonnes of Iraqi fuel oil for 30,000 tonnes of Grade B fuel oil and 33,000 tonnes of gas oil to supply to Lebanon. In 2024, the state-owned Oman LNG conducted about two swap tenders per month, with Atlantic cargoes originating from the United States delivered to Spain, while the company delivered its LNG to clients in Asia.

All of these examples show that Gulf countries and their national energy companies have the required expertise to carry out intra-GCC swaps.

The most practical way to implement such deals now would be to establish an energy swap facility through a coordinated clearing mechanism among national oil companies, major regional refiners, selected traders, insurers, banks and key Asian and European buyers.

Its function would be to match blocked obligations with delivery alternatives and to reconcile the value later.

Insurance for the future

The implementation of any swap arrangement would require substantive effort to operationalise, not to mention a high level of political will, trust and mutual determination. Moreover, at present, there are physical limitations before any arrangement, as the GCC infrastructure does not have the capacity to reroute export volumes that pass through the Strait of Hormuz completely.

In the immediate term, swap arrangements imply that one group of countries – Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE – would sacrifice a bit of income and market share to the advantage of the others, namely Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, by allocating part of their current export, storage or transport capacities. But in the longer term, all would benefit.

The critical call is on Saudi Arabia, which has the largest options to bypass Hormuz and provide the largest pool of deliverable crude. Its command of customer credibility, global familiarity with Saudi oil grades, Red Sea export infrastructure and Aramco’s trading capacity make it the main pillar of any future swap system.

Complementing its role as market regulator within OPEC/OPEC+ with the leadership within the GCC, Riyadh can help stabilise the market by covering priority cargoes for strategic buyers.

The UAE can also play a major role by utilising its export capacity through Fujairah, and so can Oman, which has crude storage capacity at Ras Markaz, refining capacity at Duqm, LNG experience and ports that can receive and dispatch cargoes without having to cross the Strait of Hormuz.

If such swap deals are implemented, they can strengthen the GCC unity and help the members avoid internal economic rivalry in the future. More importantly, they can encourage the launch of a larger regional infrastructure drive that would lessen dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and diminish its value as a geopolitical tool to be used against the Gulf.

If there are a well-functioning swap mechanism and infrastructure in place that can be used whenever a threat of closure is made, then clients would feel more confident in continuing their relationships with all Gulf suppliers. In the longer term, this could serve as the GCC’s insurance against any new turbulence in the region.

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

Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar called Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin ‘monsters’ during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, where he wore a Palestine solidarity pin.

In too many parts of the world, giving birth still comes with more fear than hope: a clinic without electricity, a nurse without supplies, a mother who knows that giving life may cost her own. These fears are not merely emotional, they are borne out by the facts. Every two minutes worldwide, a woman dies while giving life. Every year, nearly five million children do not live to see their fifth birthday. A toll that will rise if aid cuts continue. The Lancet medical journal estimates that by 2030, more than 14 million additional people could die, including 4.5 million children under five – the equivalent of erasing a city the size of Abuja, Brasilia or Rome.

The true measure of global progress is not found in financial markets or summit declarations. It is found in whether a woman survives pregnancy and childbirth, whether a child is vaccinated and nourished, and whether an adolescent can grow up healthy, safe and hopeful. When women, children and adolescents thrive, societies are stronger, economies are more resilient, and nations are better prepared for the future. When they are failed, the costs are measured not only in preventable deaths and suffering, but in lost human potential on a massive scale.

This is why investing in women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health is one of the most important investments any government can make. The evidence is overwhelming. Closing the gap in women’s health alone could add at least $1 trillion to the global economy every year by 2040. Every dollar invested in childhood vaccination or adolescent mental health returns about $20 over a lifetime – in healthcare savings, in productivity, in lives that go on to build something. Healthy women anchor families and economies. Healthy children grow into workers and citizens. Healthy children and adolescents are better equipped to participate in society, build livelihoods and shape more stable, prosperous futures.

Yet health systems around the world are being pushed to breaking point by aid cuts, debt, conflict and shrinking fiscal space. In 2025, official development assistance fell by 23 percent – the largest annual drop in history. In more than 50 countries, health workers are losing their jobs and training pipelines are breaking down. In some places, maternal care, vaccination and emergency response have been cut by 70 percent. At the same time, sexual and reproductive health rights are under intensifying political attack, putting hard-won progress at risk.

Women and girls bear the heaviest burden. In 2023, six in 10 maternal deaths worldwide were in countries in conflict or fragility. In fact, a woman living in a conflict-affected country is five times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than her counterpart in a stable country. Too many women still lack access to quality maternal healthcare, contraception and essential reproductive services. Too many girls face violence, discrimination and barriers to healthcare that limit not only their well-being, but their freedom and future. When budgets tighten, women and children are too often the first to feel the cuts and the last to be protected.

This is not inevitable. It is a matter of political choice.

In South Africa, we are working to strengthen primary healthcare, expanding equitable access to quality services, investing in the health workforce and building a more inclusive health system that reaches those most in need. We understand that progress in health is inseparable from progress in equality and development. A society cannot prosper if women are denied care, if children are left unprotected, or if adolescents are excluded from the services and opportunities they need to thrive.

In Spain, a public national health service has delivered universal coverage and one of the world’s lowest maternal and infant mortality rates. We believe – with vision, determination and solidarity – that what we have achieved at home can be achieved globally. This is why Spain’s Global Health Strategy 2025–2030 places equity, resilient health systems and sexual and reproductive health rights at the centre of our international action, and why we are working to raise the global ambition on sustainable development financing and to defend gender equality as a democratic and development imperative.

At the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla last year, through the Sevilla Commitment and the Sevilla Platform for Action, we helped focus international attention on debt distress, sustainable investment and reform of the global financing architecture.

These issues may appear technical, but their consequences are deeply human. They determine whether health systems can recruit and retain workers, whether medicines reach clinics, whether women can access care safely, and whether children and adolescents are given a fair chance at life.

We must also be unequivocal in defending sexual and reproductive health and rights. These rights are not secondary, and they are not negotiable. They are central to dignity, equality and public health. No woman or girl should be denied access to life-saving care because of politics, poverty or discrimination. No society can claim to value justice while tolerating persistent gender-based violence or the systematic erosion of women’s autonomy and rights.

The question before the international community is therefore not whether we can afford to invest in women, children and adolescents. It is whether we can afford not to. The answer is clear. The long-term costs of inaction – greater instability, deeper inequality, weaker economies and millions of preventable deaths – are far higher than the cost of acting now. Higher than the cost of keeping the lights on in that clinic.

This is the spirit in which Spain is joining the Global Leaders Network, which brings together 12 heads of state and government committed to advancing the health and rights of women, children and adolescents. But this effort must not stop with us. The challenges are too large, and the stakes are too high, for leadership to remain limited to a few countries.

We need more governments to step forward, to protect essential health services, invest in frontline health workers, defend sexual and reproductive health and rights, and ensure that financing reforms deliver for the people who need them most. We need more leaders to recognise that women, children and adolescents are not a peripheral concern of global policy. They are its clearest test.

This is a moment for political courage. A moment to choose investment over retreat, solidarity over indifference, and action over complacency. Above all, it is a moment to recognise a simple truth: if women, children and adolescents are not at the centre of our decisions, then the future will not be fair, stable or sustainable. But if they are, then a better future remains within reach.

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

Former UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced he will run against Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour leader if an election is to take place. Streeting voiced strong support for rebuilding ties with Europe, saying the UK should pursue “a new special relationship” with the EU and potentially rejoin the bloc in the future.

When European Jewish settlers embarked on brutal ethnic cleansing to establish Israel in 1948, they thought the Palestinian population would be the least of their problems. In fact, Zionist leaders like David Ben-Gurion believed that “the refugee problem would resolve itself”.

There was deep-seated conviction among Zionists that the Palestinians lacked an identity, and they would just flee to neighbouring Arab countries and assimilate. They would not come back to claim their stolen land.

But what happened was the exact opposite.

Decade after decade, the Palestinian national cause grew stronger. Today, few survivors of the Nakba of 1948 remain, but the national commitment to Palestinian rights and historical justice is as strong as ever. That is because the older generations did not teach the younger ones to forget the trauma and move on; they taught them to remember and to keep the keys to their ancestral homes in their minds.

The “refugee problem” did not “resolve itself” not just because of Palestinian determination and resilience, but also because the Israeli policies of violence and dispossession backfired.

Israel’s theft of land and resources and violent displacement of Palestinians was the starting point for every Palestinian generation to reject and resist occupation.

As Israel succeeded in usurping more and more Palestinian land, it failed miserably in controlling the Palestinian consciousness.

Despite continuous Israeli efforts to turn refugee camps into isolated enclaves, recruit agents and collaborators to undermine unity, and introduce international bodies to redefine the refugee issue as a purely humanitarian one, it failed to dismantle the Palestinian national cause.

Those who were dispossessed and violated – the Palestinian refugees – became the most ardent carriers of the idea of resistance. Refugee camps became the centres of peaceful and armed struggle. These camps gave birth to prominent Palestinian thinkers, doctors, educators and leaders, who spread one message: the rejection of the Israeli occupation and the insistence on Palestinian rights.

Palestinian refugees were the drivers of the first Intifada of 1987 and the second Intifada of 2000. They were at the centre of any subsequent mobilisation to resist the Israeli occupation.

The colonial project saw no option but to ratchet up its brutality. Repeated massacres, mass imprisonment and relentless efforts to uproot communities did not achieve subjugation. This approach failed and the Gaza Strip – where 80 percent of the population are refugees – stands as the clearest evidence of that failure.

After the launch of its genocidal assault on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli government repeatedly described the war as “existential”. If Israel itself acknowledges today that the fourth generation of Palestinians, the descendants of the survivors of the Nakba, represent a threat to its existence, then this is in itself an admission of the collapse of Ben-Gurion’s prediction and the strategic failure of the Israeli project to eliminate the Palestinian people.

But Israel has not just failed, it has also become trapped. It is stuck in the paradox of the futility of its own brutal power. The more violence, mass killings and displacement it carries out and the more it reproduces the Nakba, the more determined the Palestinian people become to resist. Repression is not uprooting Palestine, it is helping it take deeper root.

The Gaza genocide is perhaps the best illustration of this deadly paradox. More than 72,000 Palestinians have been massacred, more than 170,000 injured, and 1.9 million displaced. Most homes have been damaged or destroyed.

What is the result of all this? When a Palestinian child is born today in a tent and grows up without most of his family, without a school, a playground, proper healthcare, or a home, he or she won’t need a complex historical narrative to understand who is responsible for this and what needs to be done to achieve justice.

But the self-defeating impact of Israeli brutality is not limited to Palestine alone. Israel’s genocide has backfired on a global scale. It has allowed the Palestinian cause to grow beyond the confines of a marginal, left-wing issue into one that increasingly attracts attention across the political spectrum in the West but also elsewhere in the world.

Activists and ordinary citizens of different political convictions now stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Many do so, despite facing retribution, arrest and prosecution for their support of Palestinian rights.

The Palestinian cause has also become an influential factor in local elections in many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, where support for the Israeli occupation and genocide can cost candidates an electoral win.

As a result, the Palestinian issue has grown beyond a regional struggle to become a defining moral question for people across the world.

This has left the occupation locked in a permanent confrontation with what cannot be defeated: memory. The more it tries to erase the Palestinian cause, the more it is etched in the Palestinian and global consciousness.

If he had been alive today, Ben-Gurion would have been dismayed to learn that Zionism secured its own defeat the moment it embarked on the Nakba.

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