Israeli opposition MP forcefully removed from podium after blasting Gaza war
Ayman Odeh, a member of the Arab-Jewish Hadash party, was forcefully removed from the podium in the Israeli parliament as he criticised Israel's war on Gaza and the mounting death toll
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The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
Fears Trump will veto G7 joint statement on Russia sanctions and Israel
Efforts by the world's biggest democracies to toughen sanctions against Russia and hold a joint position on the Middle East crisis look set to be thrown into chaos by Donald Trump. The US President, who landed in Alberta, Canada late on Sunday night, opened off his remarks at the G7 summit by suggesting it had been a 'mistake' to boot Russia out of the former G8. It had already been reported by CBS News that Trump does not intend to sign a G7 statement related to Israel and Iran, citing unnamed U.S. officials. A draft document discusses monitoring Iran, calls for both sides to protect civilians and reups commitments to peace, according to CBS News. With the crisis escalating between Iran and Israel, the Middle East has become the top priority of the summit with Sir Keir joining others in urging for a 'de-escalation'. But the situation with the Ukraine war is an added complication for those present. In a briefing with journalists ahead of a session discussing sanctions on Russia, the UK prime minister's spokesman was unable to confirm if there would be a joint position on sanctions. While details of a new sanctions regime are set to be revealed on Tuesday, the second and final day of the summit, it is widely believed that President Trump will not support the other members of the G7. The Downing Street spokesman said he 'did not want to get ahead of the meetings' and would not comment specifically on the UK's understanding of the US position while underlining Sir Keir's 'warm relationship' with the president. Trump has been seeking to end the war in Ukraine by attempting to force a ceasefire which has been resisted by Moscow. However, with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky also joining leaders at the G7 memories of President Trump's furious attack on him in the Oval Office in March still hang over proceedings. The sanctions would be aimed at choking off Russia's military industrial complex with Sir Keir saying it is important that 'Russia does not hold all the cards' in the conflict. The remark appeared to mirror the claim made by Trump to Zelensky in the Oval Office that 'Ukraine does not hold any cards'. However, the divisions were evident at a photocall at the top of President Trump's meeting with Canadian P Mark Carney at the start of the summit. In it the US president suggested China should be allowed into the top club of the G7 and claimed it was a mistake Russia had been thrown out. Downing Street said is "happy with the make-up" of the G7, Downing Street said after Donald Trump's suggested that kicking Russia out of the group was a mistake. Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with the US president's remarks, a Number 10 spokesman said: "I think obviously those comments are a matter for the US." He added: "The Prime Minister goes ahead with the G7 and is happy with the make-up of it." A former British diplomat has said European nations might try to send "co-ordinated messages" to Donald Trump at the G7 summit. Earlier, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, a former UK ambassador to the United Nations, told the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 that all the members of G7 had a "negative consensus". He said: "No-one participating wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. They are all concerned about escalation and particularly spillover - attacks on their own nationals or interests in the region, or indeed their own countries. None of them wants to get directly involved. "Japan and Canada have been the most critical of Israel, the USA and Germany are more standardly pro-Israel and other Europeans are somewhere in the middle. "Much depends on President Trump. He clearly doesn't want to get involved but is talking about the countries doing a deal, which is unrealistic. "Europeans ganging up on President Trump doesn't work very well. He is so unpredictable, it is difficult to see where he will come out.
Telegraph
21 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The Netanyahu I met is not wrong about everything
He would speak softly, never interrupting or hectoring, and sometimes I would strain to hear him in the cavernous expanse of the Foreign Secretary's office. Yet I never saw a leader with a more sure-footed ability to control a meeting than Benjamin Netanyahu. He would let his interlocutor do most of the talking while skilfully guiding the conversation, shutting down unwelcome subjects with an archly raised (dyed) eyebrow or sardonic aside, before returning to his abiding theme that the nuclear-tipped ambitions of Iran's messianic rulers posed the greatest threat to peace. In nearly eight years at the Foreign Office and Downing Street, I witnessed plenty of encounters with Israel's supremely assured prime minister. Now Mr Netanyahu's struggle against Iran is reaching its climax as he strives to reshape the Middle East by wielding more power more effectively than any other leader in the region. However this crisis ends, it will change the world. So how should our representatives react to Mr Netanyahu? The easy option would be to recoil with fastidious disdain and mouth the empty platitudes that David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, has made his own ('we are urging restraint and de-escalation'). Or they could do something difficult and counter-cultural. They could try to understand how Mr Netanyahu thinks and what he wants. They might even be humble enough to admit that they have something to learn. When I watched Mr Netanyahu in action, what I found most striking was that, for better or worse, he has a coherent and comprehensive analysis of the geopolitics of the Middle East and the wider world. As the longest-serving prime minister in his country's history – and now the most historically consequential – he is completely different from leaders and foreign ministers who rely on their briefings and say whatever they have been programmed to say without any great thought or conviction. Over the years, I would listen to him describe how the rise of Iran as a nuclear threshold state and its sponsorship of terrorist movements across the Middle East – from Lebanon to Gaza and Yemen – was transforming the strategic balance of the region. He would emphasise how this threatened the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf at least as much as Israel. As long ago as 2017, I remember him describing how Arab leaders increasingly saw Israel as a vital counterweight to their real enemy, Iran's revolutionary Shia leaders. At the time, I suspected this was fanciful. After all, that venerable American diplomat, John Kerry, had roundly dismissed the notion that any more Arab states would make peace with Israel without settling the Palestinian conflict first. As US secretary of state in 2016, Mr Kerry declared: 'There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world,' adding: 'Everybody needs to understand that.' So what happened? In 2020 four Arab countries made a separate peace with Israel, including the Gulf monarchies of Bahrain and the UAE, vindicating Mr Netanyahu and proving Mr Kerry hopelessly wrong. As I look back, I can remember other examples of Mr Netanyahu's prescience. In 2018 we asked him about Bashar al-Assad at a time when conventional wisdom held that Syria's blood-soaked dictator was secure in power, having effectively won the civil war. Mr Netanyahu begged to differ. He pointed out that Assad was utterly dependent on Russia and Iran. If they ever withdrew their support, the tyrant would inevitably fall. Sure enough, five years later they abandoned Assad to a life of obscure exile in Moscow. That sequence of events was triggered by Mr Netanyahu himself when he eviscerated Hezbollah, whose fighters had been instrumental in propping up Assad, during Israel's offensive in Lebanon last year. The Syrian despot, shorn of any independent power, had been living on borrowed time – and power is all that matters. Running through everything that Mr Netanyahu would say was his visceral belief that power is the currency of international relations and all else is wishful thinking and delusion. International rules and institutions count for nothing unless they are backed with power and, in the last resort, a willingness to use force. Today British diplomats and politicians are re-learning these eternal lessons thanks to Vladimir Putin. But they are learning the hard way having spent the past three decades pretending that diplomacy and hard power can be separated, and spending ever greater sums on international development can somehow compensate for dismantling the Armed Forces. We are now having to correct these errors at greater cost and risk than would otherwise have been necessary. If we had paid more attention to the view of the world expounded by Mr Netanyahu, these mistakes would never have been made. And of course, the more I listened the more I saw the gaping holes in his analysis. I was astonished by how his strategic clarity on Iran was matched by near total blindness on the Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu has no discernible plan for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is against the two-state solution and against the one-state solution. He is against any solution, except perhaps walling up the Palestinians in various overcrowded enclaves, where they would have municipal powers over street-cleaning and rubbish disposal and not much else. On this vital subject he is just as vacuous in private as he is in public. Mr Netanyahu was also wrong to oppose the Iran nuclear agreement of 2015, which limited the Islamic Republic to 5,000 enriching centrifuges, all of them obsolete, and just 300kg of uranium, all of it a long way from weapons grade. By wrecking that agreement, Donald Trump and Mr Netanyahu broke the constraints on Iran's nuclear programme and today their enemy has around 20,000 centrifuges and more than eight tons of enriched uranium, much of it a hair's breadth from weapons grade. Nor can anything any longer justify Mr Netanyahu's Carthaginian campaign in Gaza, where he seems determined to create a wasteland and call it peace, even after being indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. But listing where he is wrong is easy. In one crucial respect, he is right. He instinctively understands the cold reality that hard power is the basis of diplomacy and a willingness to use force is the only way for any country to deter its adversaries. Our diplomats and politicians should admit that we would be in a far stronger position if we had never lost sight of these verities. Mr Netanyahu, for all his faults, never did and never would.
Sky News
42 minutes ago
- Sky News
Irish politician faces deportation from Egypt after trying to cross into Gaza
An Irish politician who was detained in Egypt trying to cross into Gaza says the police were violent towards the group after seizing his phone. People Before Profit-Solidarity TD (MP) Paul Murphy was part of a large demonstration attempting to march to the Rafah crossing in a bid to get aid into the region. The opposition politician said his phone and passport were confiscated on Friday before he was put on a bus to Cairo airport for deportation. Footage of the seconds before his phone was seized shows authorities forcibly dragging protesters away from the sit-down demonstration. Ireland's deputy premier said several Irish citizens who were detained have now been released. Mr Murphy confirmed he was among the released protesters, posting a photo on his Facebook page saying he was back in Cairo and "meeting shortly to decide next steps". In a message from Mr Murphy after he was detained, posted online by his social media team, he said: "I'm ok, but they still have my phone. "Egyptian police say we're going to airport but this isn't the road we came on because there are 1000s of marchers on the streets. They're taking us south past a lake, then west towards Cairo. "Violence got worse after they seized my phone. "One American woman in my group was badly kicked & beaten, and had her hijab torn off." Sky News has contacted Egypt's police regarding Mr Murphy's claims of violence towards the group. Mr Murphy previously said other Irish citizen were among those who had been stopped from entering Gaza. "The world has watched a horrific genocide for the past 20 months. Since March, a total attempt of starvation," he added. "And that this is a peaceful march to demand that it be ended and demand that western governments stop their complicity." Appeal to foreign affairs minister Mr Murphy's partner, Councillor Jess Spear, had previously appealed to Ireland's Foreign Affairs Minister and deputy premier Simon Harris to make a public statement on Mr Murphy's detention. She expressed "relief" that the group had been released from detention. 3:59 She said: "However, they still want to reach Rafah to try and get humanitarian aid into Gaza. That has been the sole purpose of being in Egypt. "Paul has appealed to Tanaiste Simon Harris to put pressure on the Egyptian authorities to let the marchers reach Rafah. The situation of the people of Gaza worsens by the day as they suffer starvation imposed by Israel."
