Israel News Review

Trump signs executive order to sanction ICC, accusing court of targeting US and its ‘close ally’ Israel – live

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 21:33:37 -0400

Order says ICC issued ‘baseless’ arrest warrants targeting Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s ex-defense minister Yoav Gallant

Spain’s foreign minister José Manuel Albares on Thursday rejected the suggestion by Israeli defence minister Israel Katz that Spain should accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza.

More details soon …

Palestinians ‘going to have to live somewhere else in the interim’ under Trump’s Gaza plan, US state secretary says – live

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 18:16:40 -0400

Marco Rubio called ‘interim’ movement of Palestinians ‘realistic reality’; Egypt says Trump’s proposals would have ‘catastrophic consequences’

More details soon …

Middle East crisis live: Trump’s Gaza plan ‘an international crime’, says Unrwa chief as Egypt warns it would ‘squash’ ceasefire

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 17:13:13 -0400

Unrwa’s future ‘dire’, chief says; Egyptian foreign ministry says Trump’s proposals for Gaza would have ‘catastrophic consequences’

More details soon …

Netanyahu gives Trump ‘golden pager’ in apparent reference to Lebanon attack

Anna Betts in New York — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 16:17:29 -0400

Photos show gift, reportedly nod to Israel’s deadly attack on Hezbollah, during which devices simultaneously detonated

Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly gave Donald Trump a “golden pager” during their meeting in Washington DC this week, in an apparent reference to Israel’s deadly attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.

In photos circulating online, the golden pager can be seen mounted on a piece of wood, accompanied by a golden plaque that reads in black lettering: “To President Donald J. Trump, Our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Middle East crisis live: Trump’s plan for Gaza would ‘squash’ ceasefire and ‘incite return of fighting’, Egypt says

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 15:59:07 -0400

Egyptian foreign ministry says Donald Trump’s proposals for Gaza would have ‘catastrophic consequences’

More details soon …

‘Worst nightmare’: Egypt and Jordan put in impossible bind by Trump Gaza plan

Jason Burke International security correspondent — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 15:24:39 -0400

Though heavily dependent on US aid, Amman and Cairo face political calamity at home should they comply

Middle East crisis – live updates

International outrage in recent days has focused on Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take “ownership” of Gaza, and that more than two million Palestinians be displaced to allow the territory to be transformed from “a demolition site” into a “riviera” in the Middle East.

In Jordan and Egypt, the demand that both countries accept huge numbers of Palestinians from Gaza – potentially on a permanent basis – has prompted equal concern. Leaders of both countries immediately rejected the proposal, and the Jordanian king, Abdullah II, and Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president, are heading for Washington in an attempt to convince Trump to change course.

Ben Jennings on Donald Trump’s plans for Gaza – cartoon

Ben Jennings — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:05:55 -0400

US slaps sanctions on Iranian tanker network

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:04:50 -0400

White House resumes campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ on the Islamic Republic

US slaps sanctions on Iranian oil tanker network

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:04:50 -0400

White House resumes campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ on the Islamic Republic

Israel tells army to prepare plans for Palestinians to voluntarily leave Gaza

Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:45:29 -0400

Order comes after Donald Trump suggested US take over territory and resettle its residents elsewhere

Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel’s defence minister has ordered the military to prepare plans to allow Palestinians “who wish to leave” Gaza to exit, after Donald Trump suggested the US take over the territory and resettle its residents in other countries.

A Hamas official attacked the proposal as a “declaration of intent to occupy” Gaza, as Egypt, which Trump named as a possible destination for Palestinians, launched an intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic campaign to block it going further.

Saudi Arabia’s high-wire act wobbles amid Trump’s Gaza gambit

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:33:32 -0400

But the kingdom should remember that it still has considerable leverage over the US president

Trump says Gaza will be ‘turned over to the US by Israel’

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:07:40 -0400

President says plan to take over and resettle Palestinians elsewhere ‘in the region’ won’t require American troops

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is an indictment of Iran’s regime dressed as a crackling domestic thriller

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:00:17 -0400

A lawyer asserts control over his wife and teenage daughters in Mohammad Rasoulof’s admirable Oscar contender

Trump doubles down on Gaza takeover proposal despite bipartisan opposition

Robert Tait in Washington — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 12:39:10 -0400

President says territory would be ‘turned over’ to US by Israel as it emerges idea was not discussed with aides

Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has restated his proposal to take over Gaza amid widespread opposition – even from his own supporters – saying the territory would be “turned over” to the US by Israel after it concludes its military offensive against Hamas.

Trump reinforced his commitment to the idea in a rambling post on his Truth Social network on Thursday, even as it emerged that the proposal – announced without warning during a White House visit by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister – was purely his own and had not been subject to detailed discussion with aides.

Who will show Trump and Netanyahu that they're not above the law? It has to be Europe | Steve Crawshaw

Steve Crawshaw — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 12:22:13 -0400

The US president is quick to roll out the red carpet for an ally wanted for war crimes. Now Europe must stop placating them

Donald Trump’s proposal to evict 2 million Palestinians from Gaza is an unashamed declaration of support for ethnic cleansing. As so often, he seems ready to ignore moral and legal codes alike. “Deportation or forcible transfer of population” is listed in the Rome statute of the international criminal court as a crime against humanity. And yet a US president has put that idea on the table. Trump insists this would be in everybody’s interest. According to him, Palestinians would not want to return to their homes. “I have heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them,” he recently said. The population is, in Trump’s words, “living in hell”, with “death and destruction and rubble and demolished buildings falling all over”. He made no mention of Israel’s responsibility for that death and destruction and rubble.

More than 30 years ago, during the early months of the bloody Bosnian war that I had been reporting on as the eastern Europe editor of the Independent, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić, explained to me that the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population that was then under way was, in fact, doing the Bosnians a favour. “We let them go,” Karadžić explained with a smile, “with their luggage and everything.” Like Karadžić, Trump does not hide the fact that Palestinians who are forced to abandon their homes would have no choice in the matter. Sitting next to Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump suggested: “I don’t think they’re going to tell me no.”

Steve Crawshaw is author of Prosecuting the Powerful: War Crimes and the Battle for Justice

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Middle East crisis live: Trump repeats wish to control Gaza, saying region would be ‘turned over’ to US by Israel

Christy Cooney (now); Amy Sedghi, Martin Belam and Philip Wen (earlier) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 12:05:51 -0400

Region would be ‘one of the greatest and most spectacular developments on Earth’ and no US troops would be required, claims president

More details soon …

Trump’s proposal to take over Gaza threatens decades of US policy

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 10:00:46 -0400

Also in today’s newsletter, bookmark our new US trade tracker for all the latest data amid the prospect of an all-out trade war

Middle East crisis live: countries which opposed military operations in Gaza such as Spain, Ireland and Norway should take Palestinians, says Israeli minister

Martin Belam (now); Amy Sedghi and Philip Wen (earlier) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 08:19:58 -0400

Israel Katz, defence minister, orders Israeli army to prepare plan to allow ‘voluntary departure’ of residents from Gaza as Spain rejects suggestion it should accept displaced people

More details soon …

Israel tells army to prepare plan for Palestinians to voluntarily leave Gaza

Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 08:19:10 -0400

Order comes after Donald Trump suggested US take over territory and resettle its residents elsewhere

Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel Katz said the military plan would include options to leave via land, air and sea. “The people of Gaza should have the right to freedom of movement and migration,” he said in a statement on X, although it was clear that the journeys would only be in one direction.

Trump might want to revive America’s imperial heyday – but does his base?

J Oliver Conroy — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 08:00:51 -0400

The president’s Gaza proposal is a signal that old-school, blunt-force US expansionism seems to be back in fashion

Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take ownership of the Gaza Strip, expel and resettle the people there, and turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” has outraged Palestinians, shocked the international community and even confused many of his own conservative voters.

Yet the announcement seems like yet another sign that the president, while sometimes distancing himself from the neoconservative foreign policies that entangled the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, is willing to pursue – or at least entertain pursuing – an undisguised US imperialism that has more in common with the expansionism of Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, the 19th and early-20th century presidents associated with some of American’s most brazen and violent conquests.

White House insists Trump has ‘not committed’ to sending US troops to Gaza

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 07:35:04 -0400

Republican party divided amid uproar over US president’s plan to take over enclave

Middle East crisis live: Israel’s defence minister says countries which opposed military operations in Gaza should take Palestinians

Amy Sedghi(now) and Philip Wen (earlier) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 07:17:29 -0400

Israel Katz orders army to prepare plan to allow ‘voluntary departure’ of residents from Gaza as Spain rejects suggestion it should accept displaced people

More details soon …

Palestinians fear their Trump nightmare has begun

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 07:00:57 -0400

US president’s plan to expel Gazans may embolden Israeli ultranationalists bent on annexing West Bank

Middle East crisis live: Israel defence minister orders army to plan for ‘voluntary’ departures from Gaza

Amy Sedghi(now) and Philip Wen (earlier) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 04:09:34 -0400

Israel Katz orders army to prepare for ‘any Gaza resident who wishes to leave to do so, to any country willing to accept them’ as international backlash grows

More details soon …

Middle East crisis live: White House walks back Trump’s Gaza ‘takeover’ comments in face of widespread international anger

Amy Sedghi(now) and Philip Wen (earlier) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 03:41:00 -0400

Secretary of state Marco Rubio says Trump comments should not be seen as ‘hostile move’; Netanyahu says ‘remarkable idea’ should be pursued

Even by his own wild standards, Donald Trump shocked the world on Tuesday evening by suggesting the US should take over the Gaza Strip, displace millions of Palestinians and turn the territory into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.

It was a plan casually announced by the US president and immediately denounced around the world. In particular, the idea that the Palestinians of Gaza should be resettled in neighbouring Arab countries seems to amount to a form of ethnic cleansing.

Trump’s Gaza remarks are no surprise: ethnically cleansing was always the plan | Arwa Mahdawi

Arwa Mahdawi — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 03:00:06 -0400

If Trump executes his plans, it’s because the media helped pave the way. It’s beyond time for more of my colleagues to speak up

“They make a desert and call it peace,” said Tacitus, paraphrasing Calgacus.

Israel, meanwhile, has made a graveyard of Gaza, and Donald Trump is calling it a real estate opportunity. The president, as you will know, has decided the US should just take over the Gaza Strip. As for the Palestinians who are inconveniently there at the moment? According to Trump, they can just be moved somewhere else. They can be dumped in Jordan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia. They won’t mind. Those Arabs are all the same anyway.

Trump’s grotesque Gaza proposal is appalling on every level | Kenneth Roth

Kenneth Roth — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 03:00:05 -0400

The US president’s plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza clashes with his desire to be a dealmaker. He should push for a Palestinian state instead

Donald Trump’s proposal to expel all 2 million or more Palestinians from Gaza is so mind-bogglingly outrageous that it seems designed to stun us into paralyzed acquiescence. It is the latest example of the US president’s tendency to normalize the unthinkable, to bring ideas that were rightly considered beyond the pale and force them into the realm of policy discussion. Yet there are plenty of reasons to overcome our shock and reject this appalling scheme.

It does have its supporters. The Israeli far right is salivating at the proposition. It has long sought to “solve” the Palestinian problem by getting rid of the Palestinians. No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu, sitting next to Trump during their White House press conference, could barely contain his glee.

‘How often do you see Palestinian stories in fiction?’: the film-maker trying to adjust our focus

Saeed Kamali Dehghan — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 03:00:05 -0400

After a career making documentaries, Mahdi Fleifel has created To a Land Unknown, a feature film about the refugee experience

Palestinian stories, according to Mahdi Fleifel, are always “stranger than fiction” yet too often are told only in documentaries.

Now, after a career making factual films, the Danish-Palestinian’s debut feature, To a Land Unknown, will be released in the UK on 14 February.

Thursday briefing: The outlandish plan to turn Gaza into a ‘riviera of the Middle East’

Archie Bland — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 02:52:45 -0400

In today’s newsletter: Donald Trump’s proposal is an attempt to reshape political reality that has historical precedent, explains architect and researcher Eyal Weizman

Good morning. Donald Trump’s suggestion that Palestinians should be forced out of Gaza so that it could be rebuilt as a US-run “Riviera of the Middle East” is so outlandish that many have returned to the reminder that we should beware of taking what he says too literally. And, it’s true, the comments don’t seem as if they came on the back of a detailed feasibility study; White House officials spent much of yesterday trying to walk his comments back.

But it’s also true that his proposal, which if enacted would amount to an unambiguous case of ethnic cleansing, tells us something about who Trump understands to be the stakeholders in Gaza’s future: not Palestinian civilians, but the United States, Israel, and the contractors who could make it happen. And the idea has so delighted the Israeli right that it is easy to see how, even if no American soldier ever sets foot in Gaza, it creates the space for serious discussion of the same project by other means.

UK economy | Bank of England policymakers are poised to cut interest rates and downgrade forecasts for economic growth, underlining the risks facing Rachel Reeves’s budget plans. With inflation falling, the Bank’s monetary policy committee is expected to cut rates by a quarter point to 4.5% – the lowest level since June 2023 – on Thursday.

Democratic Republic of the Congo | Hundreds of women were raped and burned alive after a Rwandan-backed rebel group entered the Congolese city of Goma last week. The female inmates were attacked in their wing inside Goma’s Munzenze prison during a mass jailbreak, according to a senior UN official.

Energy | Keir Starmer will unveil plans for a historic expansion in nuclear power across England and Wales, pledging to use Labour’s large majority to make new sites across the country available for new power stations. The prime minister said that he anticipated small modular reactors could be built by 2032 and could become commonplace across Britain.

UK news | The families of Valdo Calocane’s victims have called for doctors responsible for his treatment to be named and held accountable. The intervention followed the publication of a report detailing Calocane’s mental health treatment before the attacks in Nottingham in 2023.

Media | A high court judge has criticised lawyers representing Noel Clarke for “unacceptable” allegations against Guardian journalists which “should not have been made and publicly aired without foundation”. Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed claims there had been any fabrication of evidence by them and said any deletion of documents was “not in breach of any rule or duty” to preserve them.

Trump’s Gaza power-trip tells us this: he is just another coward denying the need for a Palestinian state | Simon Tisdall

Simon Tisdall — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 02:20:54 -0400

Benjamin Netanyahu called it ‘ground-breaking’ thinking, but it isn’t. It is idiocy that will make a bad situation worse

Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator

It’s easy to mistake sheer ignorance for brilliance. Seeming empathy conceals unfeeling stupidity. In demanding the permanent emptying of Gaza and the forcible resettlement of Palestinian civilians on a wholly imaginary “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land”, Donald Trump tried to break the mould. Instead, he broke hearts – and the US’s word. His so-called simple, brilliant big idea is for the simple-minded only – unworkable, unjust and tainted by wilful deceit, recklessness and the monstrous weight of his unleashed ego.

Trump’s incoherent rambling does not amount to groundbreaking thinking, as Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggests, let alone a plan. It’s more akin to bar-room talk by a loudmouthed boor. And yet it’s very dangerous. The fundamentalist aim lurking beneath his mock concern is an enlarged and consolidated Israel occupying and “owning”, through some bizarre form of US lend-lease, all of Gaza and possibly the West Bank. It means death to hopes of a Palestinian state. No wonder far-right Jewish nationalists and religious extremists cheer. No wonder today’s stern warning against “ethnic cleansing” from UN secretary general, António Guterres and today’s prediction from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas that any such move would “put oil on the fire” in the region.

Trump sets his sights on Gaza property deal

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 01:00:00 -0400

And Iraqi president says his country is finally at peace

Gaza, trade wars and the chaos of Trump diplomacy - podcast

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:02:28 -0400

The Guardian diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, talks through Donald Trump’s latest moves on the world stage, from proposing that the US takes over Gaza to starting trade wars with America’s biggest trading partners

Donald Trump shocked the world on Tuesday evening by suggesting the US should take over the Gaza Strip, displace millions of Palestinians and turn the territory into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.

It was a plan casually announced by the US president and immediately denounced around the world. In particular, the idea that the Palestinians of Gaza should be resettled in neighbouring Arab countries seems to amount to a form of ethnic cleansing.

Gaza, trade wars and the chaos of Trump diplomacy | podcast

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 23:00:04 -0400

The Guardian diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, talks through Donald Trump’s latest moves on the world stage, from proposing the US takes over Gaza to starting trade wars with America’s biggest trading partners

Even by his own wild standards, Donald Trump shocked the world on Tuesday evening by suggesting the US should take over the Gaza Strip, displace millions of Palestinians and turn the territory into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.

Trump officials try to walk back president’s Gaza comments – as it happened

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 20:51:44 -0400

This liveblog is now closed.

Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says his government continues to support a two-state solution in the Middle East, “where both Israelis and Palestinians could live in peace and security.”

“We’ve supported a ceasefire, we’ve supported hostages being released and we’ve supported aid getting into Gaza,” he told reporters Wednesday in Canberra when asked about Trump’s remarks. “That is consistent with what Australia governments have always done, which is to provide support.”

Albanese did not directly respond to reporters’ questions about how he would characterise Trump’s Gaza plan.

“I’m not going to have a running commentary on statements by the president of the United States,” he said. “I’ve made that very clear.”