What now for Gaza and Brexit? Readers debate a path forward
Suresh (MetroTalk, Fri) calls for peace in Palestine and an end to the suffering of the people of Gaza.
The problem with that is Hamas doesn't want peace.
Hamas doesn't care about innocent civilians either, that's why it uses them as shields. And yet it still enjoys Palestinian support, despite being a terrorist organisation.
I'm not saying that what Israel is doing in its bombing and aid blockade is justified – it could never be justified in doing such things.
But both sides are responsible for what's happening, not just Israel as the 'free Palestine' crowd would have you believe. Matt, Sheffield
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Julian Self (MetroTalk, Thu) and those of the self-righteous left seem to think that everyone who supported Brexit lacks a few brain cells.
He cites the £350million a week promised to the NHS as a Leaver lie but the NHS budget has increased by £20bn since 2016.
And don't forget the scaremongering spread by the Remainers – eg 500,000 people were going to lose their jobs, banking jobs would move to the EU… These things never actually materialised.
We never got a proper Brexit and therefore have never got to see the full benefits – and with Sir Keir Starmer's betrayal of a 'reset' deal with the EU, we most probably never will. David, London
Perhaps Julian could use his massive intellect to explain why the political far-right has made such large gains in EU member states over the past few years? Several countries have far-right parties as part of their governments, while other states have needed to form unlikely coalitions to keep the far-right from taking power.
There is nothing to show that the rise of the right is slowing in those countries. It is blatantly obvious that, if the EU were functioning properly, such extreme views would not be gaining traction.
So while Julian bemoans British right-wing parties, he is at the same time advocating the joining of a bloc where the right could soon hold a majority. More Trending
Rather than seeming intellectual, Julian and his Remainer colleagues give the impression of being the only lifeboat passengers in history who want to climb back aboard the ship! John, London
Brexiteers are overlooking the fact that the UK must now negotiate a trading deal with the EU, the world's largest trading bloc, just as they've done with all the other countries so far. This can't be seen as a sell-out but as another needless burden due to Brexit. Hyden Andrew, Luton
I found the stories you featured last week in partnership with Alzheimer's Society – as part of Dementia Action Week – of people who have been affected by the condition very moving and informative.
The memory boxes (Metro, Thu) – where everyday items from people's personal history, such as soap bars and shampoos, are used to stimulate memory and conversations – are a lovely idea. Sara, Cheltenham
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North Wales Chronicle
13 minutes ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Military pause not enough to ease Gaza suffering, Lammy warns
The Foreign Secretary welcomed the resumption of humanitarian corridors in the enclave but called for access to supplies to be 'urgently' widened over the coming hours and days. He said Israel's announcement that it would suspend fighting in three populated areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day and open secure routes for aid delivery to desperate Palestinians was 'essential but long overdue.' 'This announcement alone cannot alleviate the needs of those desperately suffering in Gaza,' the Foreign Secretary said in a statement on Sunday. 'We need a ceasefire that can end the war, for hostages to be released and aid to enter Gaza by land unhindered. 'Whilst airdrops will help to alleviate the worst of the suffering, land routes serve as the only viable and sustainable means of providing aid into Gaza. 'These measures must be fully implemented and further barriers on aid removed. The world is watching.' Britain is working with Jordan to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children needing medical assistance, with military planners deployed for further support. However, the head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency has warned that such efforts are 'a distraction' that will fail to properly address deepening starvation in the strip, and could in some cases harm civilians. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said: 'A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. 'Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements and dignified access to people in need.' On Sunday, Israel announced military pauses to enable the 'safe movement' of food and medicine to Gaza via designated UN convoys amid mounting international alarm at humanitarian conditions in the strip. Images emerging from Gaza in recent days of emaciated children have seen the country's government criticised for its conduct during the 21-month war. Food experts have warned for months of the risk of famine as Israel continued to restrict aid, which it says is because Hamas siphons off goods. Ceasefire talks between the two sides ground to a standstill this week after the US and Israel withdrew negotiating teams from Qatar, with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of a 'lack of desire' to reach an agreement. Sir Keir Starmer is expected to press Donald Trump on the revival of talks as he meets the US President during his visit to Scotland on Monday. The deal under discussion was expected to include a 60-day ceasefire, and aid supplies would be ramped up as conditions for a lasting truce were brokered. Sir Keir will raise Washington's work with partners in Qatar and Egypt during his talks with Mr Trump and seek to discuss what more can be done to urgently bring about a ceasefire, it is understood. Later in the week he will chair a Cabinet meeting, with further updates on the UK's next steps expected in the coming days as Mr Lammy prepares to attend a UN conference on a two-state solution in New York. Speaking to broadcasters on Sunday, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray acknowledged that airdrops come with 'real limits and drawbacks' but that the situation was 'desperate and urgent.' 'Until the restrictions are lifted, until aid is able to get in at the scale and quantity that is needed, we need to be doing everything we possibly can to help,' he told Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips show. It comes after the Prime Minister held crisis talks with French and German counterparts on Saturday, during which Number 10 said they agreed 'it would be vital to ensure robust plans are in place to turn an urgently-needed ceasefire into lasting peace'. A Downing Street readout of the call made no mention of Palestinian statehood, which Sir Keir has faced calls to immediately recognise after French President Emmanuel Macron announced his country would do so in September. Some 221 MPs from Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and independents have signed a letter pressuring the Government to follow suit at a UN meeting next week. The majority of those who have signed, 131, are Labour MPs. #Gaza: airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving is a distraction & screensmoke. A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates & guarantee safe movements… — Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 26, 2025 The Government says it is a question of 'when, not if' statehood is recognised but that its immediate focus should be on getting aid into the territory. Mr Murray said on Sunday: 'As a Government, we're committed to the recognition of Palestine, but we need to work with international partners and we need to use that moment to galvanise change. 'It needs to be part of a pathway to peace.' He added: '140 countries have already recognised Palestine. 'The suffering is still continuing.' Sir Keir and Mr Trump, who is in South Ayrshire on a private visit to his Turnberry golf course, are expected to meet on Monday.
Glasgow Times
43 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
Military pause not enough to ease Gaza suffering, Lammy warns
The Foreign Secretary welcomed the resumption of humanitarian corridors in the enclave but called for access to supplies to be 'urgently' widened over the coming hours and days. He said Israel's announcement that it would suspend fighting in three populated areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day and open secure routes for aid delivery to desperate Palestinians was 'essential but long overdue.' 'This announcement alone cannot alleviate the needs of those desperately suffering in Gaza,' the Foreign Secretary said in a statement on Sunday. 'We need a ceasefire that can end the war, for hostages to be released and aid to enter Gaza by land unhindered. 'Whilst airdrops will help to alleviate the worst of the suffering, land routes serve as the only viable and sustainable means of providing aid into Gaza. 'These measures must be fully implemented and further barriers on aid removed. The world is watching.' Britain is working with Jordan to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children needing medical assistance, with military planners deployed for further support. However, the head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency has warned that such efforts are 'a distraction' that will fail to properly address deepening starvation in the strip, and could in some cases harm civilians. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said: 'A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. 'Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements and dignified access to people in need.' On Sunday, Israel announced military pauses to enable the 'safe movement' of food and medicine to Gaza via designated UN convoys amid mounting international alarm at humanitarian conditions in the strip. Images emerging from Gaza in recent days of emaciated children have seen the country's government criticised for its conduct during the 21-month war. Food experts have warned for months of the risk of famine as Israel continued to restrict aid, which it says is because Hamas siphons off goods. Ceasefire talks between the two sides ground to a standstill this week after the US and Israel withdrew negotiating teams from Qatar, with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of a 'lack of desire' to reach an agreement. Sir Keir Starmer is expected to press Donald Trump on the revival of talks as he meets the US President during his visit to Scotland on Monday. The deal under discussion was expected to include a 60-day ceasefire, and aid supplies would be ramped up as conditions for a lasting truce were brokered. The US president is visiting his Turnberry golf course in Scotland (Robert Perry/PA) Sir Keir will raise Washington's work with partners in Qatar and Egypt during his talks with Mr Trump and seek to discuss what more can be done to urgently bring about a ceasefire, it is understood. Later in the week he will chair a Cabinet meeting, with further updates on the UK's next steps expected in the coming days as Mr Lammy prepares to attend a UN conference on a two-state solution in New York. Speaking to broadcasters on Sunday, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray acknowledged that airdrops come with 'real limits and drawbacks' but that the situation was 'desperate and urgent.' 'Until the restrictions are lifted, until aid is able to get in at the scale and quantity that is needed, we need to be doing everything we possibly can to help,' he told Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips show. It comes after the Prime Minister held crisis talks with French and German counterparts on Saturday, during which Number 10 said they agreed 'it would be vital to ensure robust plans are in place to turn an urgently-needed ceasefire into lasting peace'. A Downing Street readout of the call made no mention of Palestinian statehood, which Sir Keir has faced calls to immediately recognise after French President Emmanuel Macron announced his country would do so in September. Sir Keir Starmer discuss the crisis with Donald Trump on Monday Some 221 MPs from Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and independents have signed a letter pressuring the Government to follow suit at a UN meeting next week. The majority of those who have signed, 131, are Labour MPs. #Gaza: airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving is a distraction & screensmoke. A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates & guarantee safe movements… — Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 26, 2025 The Government says it is a question of 'when, not if' statehood is recognised but that its immediate focus should be on getting aid into the territory. Mr Murray said on Sunday: 'As a Government, we're committed to the recognition of Palestine, but we need to work with international partners and we need to use that moment to galvanise change. 'It needs to be part of a pathway to peace.' He added: '140 countries have already recognised Palestine. 'The suffering is still continuing.' Sir Keir and Mr Trump, who is in South Ayrshire on a private visit to his Turnberry golf course, are expected to meet on Monday.
BBC News
44 minutes ago
- BBC News
Bowen: Israel's aid measures a gesture to allies horrified by Gaza starvation
Israel has responded to sustained and growing international condemnation that it is responsible for starvation in Gaza by announcing a series of measures the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said would 'improve the humanitarian response.'It is allowing airdrops of aid, carrying out the first one itself during the night and allowing the United Arab Emirates air force to follow with another later on IDF also announced that it would allow a 'tactical pause in military activity' in some areas and set up 'designated humanitarian corridors… to refute the false claim on international starvation.'Hamas has condemned the moves as a "deception". Israel, it said, was "whitewashing its image before the world".Follow live updates Israel later carried out an airstrike during the 'tactical pause.' Reports from the scene say a mother called Wafaa Harara and her four children, Sara, Areej, Judy and Iyad were Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are already the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last year, accused of joint criminal responsibility for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". Netanyahu, Gallant and the Israeli state deny the Israel continues to insist it is not responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and does not impose restrictions on aid entering Gaza, those claims are not accepted by its close allies in Europe, or the United Nations and other agencies active in new measures might be a tacit admission by the Israelis that they need to do likely they are a gesture to allies who have issued strong statements blaming Israel for starvation in latest, on Friday 25 July, from Britain, France and Germany was stark."We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation. Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law."Israel followed a total blockade of all aid into Gaza with restrictions on the approval of the contents and movement of aid convoys. With the Americans, it has also set up a new system of distributing aid through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) intended to replace the aid network run by the United Nations. Israel claims that Hamas stole aid from the UN system. The UN says it is still waiting for the Israelis to back their claims with UN and other agencies will not cooperate with the GHF system, which they say is inhumane and militarised. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been shot dead trying to reach the GHF's four sites, according to the UN. The GHF operates in zones controlled by the IDF and it deploys armed American security personnel at its sites.A retired US special forces colonel who worked for the GHF in Gaza told the BBC that he saw American colleagues and IDF soldiers opening fire on civilians. Both deny they have targeted Whittall, the head in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the UN's office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) has already condemned the methods used by the GHF. Israel told him his visa would not be renewed after he posted on social media a month ago that the GHF system had brought to Gaza "conditions created to kill… what we are seeing is carnage. It is weaponised hunger. It is forced displacement. It's a death sentence for people just trying to survive. It appears to be the erasure of Palestinian life".After Israel announced its new measures, Whittall told the BBC that "the humanitarian situation in Gaza has never been worse".He said for Israel's new measures to change matters for the better it would have to reduce the time it takes to allow trucks to transit the crossings into Gaza and improve the routes provided by the IDF for the convoys to would also need to provide "meaningful assurances that the people gathering to take food off the back of the trucks won't be shot by Israeli forces".Israel released grainy footage of a transport plane dropping pallets of aid into Gaza. Lines of parachutes billowed out the back of the aircraft in the dark of the night. The IDF said it had delivered seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar and tinned other wars I have seen aid being dropped, both from the aircraft themselves and close up on the ground as it dropping aid is an act of desperation. It can also look good on television, and spread a feel-good factor that something, at last, is being is a crude process, that will not on its own do much to end hunger in Gaza. Only a ceasefire and an unrestricted, long term aid operation can do that. Even big transport planes do not carry as much as a small convoy of Iraqi Kurdistan, after the 1991 Gulf War, the US, UK and others dropped aid from C-130 transport aircraft, mostly army rations, sleeping bags and surplus winter uniforms to tens of thousands trying to survive in the open in mud and snow high in the mountains on Iraq's border with Turkey. I flew with them and watched British and American airmen dropping aid from the rear cargo ramps of the planes several thousand feet above the people who needed was welcome enough. But when a few days later when I managed to reach the improvised camps in the mountains, I saw young men running into minefields to get aid that landed there. Some were killed and maimed in explosions. I saw families killed when heavy pallets dropped on their Mostar was besieged during the war in Bosnia in 1993, I saw pallets of American military 'meals ready to eat', dropped from high altitude, scattered all over the east side of the city that was being constantly shelled. Some aid pallets crashed through roofs that had somehow not been destroyed by artillery involved in relief operations regard dropping aid from the sky as a last resort. They use it when any other access is impossible. That's not the case in Gaza. A short drive north is Ashdod, Israel's modern container port. A few more hours away is the Jordanian border, which has been used regularly as a supply line for aid for was one of the world's most densely populated places before the war when the population of more than two million Palestinians had access to the entire strip. In British terms, the Gaza Strip is slightly smaller than the Isle of Wight. Compared to American cities, it's roughly the size of Philadelphia or Israel has forced most of Gaza's people into a tiny area on the southern coast, amounting to around 17% of Gaza's land. Most of them live in densely packed tents. It is not clear if there is even an open space for despatchers high in the sky to aim of aid dropped by parachute often land far from the people who need pallet will be fought over by desperate men trying to get food for their families, and by criminal elements who will want to sell it for profit.
