Macron calls for UN peacekeepers to ‘stabilise' Strip: as it happened

Times

5 hours ago

A man accused of spraying graffiti on the city's Western Wall and Great Synagogue will be treated on a psychiatric ward, according to Hebrew media reports.
The suspect, 27, from the Haredi community, was arrested after 'There is a holocaust in Gaza' was scrawled on the holy sites early on Monday.
A police request to hold him for five days was rejected by the judge, at Jerusalem Magistrate Court, who called the incident a 'sad case,' according to Kan, the public broadcaster.
He added: 'I do not ban Jews from the Western Wall,' Ynet reported.
The patient's parents reached out to the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, stating he had a mental illness, Ynet added.
Anas Al-Sharif celebrated the protagonists of the October 7 terrorist attacks as 'heroes' while the pogrom was under way, an Israeli journalist has claimed.
Al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera correspondent killed by Israel's military on Sunday, allegedly sent a Telegram message during the 2023 massacres that read: '9 hours and the heroes are still roaming the country killing and capturing … God, God, how great you are,' and added three green hearts, a colour associated with Hamas.
He deleted the post, according to Eitan Fischberger, a former Israeli soldier who describes himself as an 'accidental investigative journalist'. Fischberger's claim was shared by pro-Israel accounts and organisations. However, both Sharif and Al Jazeera, have rejected the IDF accusations that the correspondent was a team commander in Hamas' northern brigade, and therefore a legitimate military target.
The IDF said his details were published in the East Jabaliya Battalion's directory, which included his full name, Anas Jamal al-Sharif, a phone number and a codename, Tabit 5.
Israel's defence minister has warned Tehran that the country's drones are still flying over the city, after the Islamic Republic published a graphic list of Israeli political and army leaders as targets.
'I suggest to the Iranian dictator Khamenei that when he emerges from his bunker, he occasionally looks up to the sky and listens carefully for any buzzing,' Israel Katz wrote on X.
'The participants of the 'Red Wedding' are waiting for him there,' Katz added, referring to the IDF's opening gambit against Iran in June, when senior commanders and nuclear scientists were assassinated.
Katz appeared to be referring to the infamous scene in the hit series Game of Thrones in which leaders were massacred during a wedding party.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund — the world's largest — is selling its investments in 11 Israeli companies after revelations it had invested in an Israeli jet-engine maker.
'These measures were taken in response to extraordinary circumstances,' said Nicolai Tangen, chief of Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the $2 trillion fund.
'The situation in Gaza is a serious humanitarian crisis. We are invested in companies that operate in a country at war, and conditions in the West Bank and Gaza have recently worsened.
'In response, we will further strengthen our due diligence.'
The Al Jazeera correspondent who was killed in Gaza on Sunday worked with a Hamas communication office at the start of his career, according to local journalists who knew him.
Anas al-Sharif's former job was to publicise events organised by the militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2006, they said. However, the Committee to Protect Journalists said that Israel had failed to provide any evidence to back up its claims that Sharif was a terrorist posing as a reporter.
'Journalists are civilians. They must never be targeted in war. And to do so is a war crime,' Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the independent advocacy group, said. 'International law is clear that active combatants are the only justified targets in a war setting. So unless the IDF can demonstrate that Anas al-Sharif was still an active combatant, then there is no justification for his killing.'
Palestine Action is a 'violent organisation' that has committed 'significant injury', Downing Street said.
Asked about people arrested as part of protests linked to the group, the prime minister's spokesman said: 'We've said that many people may not yet know the reality of this organisation, but the assessments are very clear: this is a violent organisation that has committed violence, significant injury, extensive criminal damage, and as I say, it has met the tests as set out under the Terrorism Act to be proscribed.'
Sir Keir Starmer is 'gravely concerned' about the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza, his spokesman has said.
'Reporters covering conflicts are afforded protection under international humanitarian law, and journalists must be able to report independently, without fear, and Israel must ensure journalists can carry out their work safely,' the prime minister's spokesman said.
Asked about the claim that one of the journalists was linked to Hamas, the spokesman said: 'That should be investigated thoroughly and independently, but we are gravely concerned by the repeated targeting of journalists.'
Instead of an Israeli military occupation of Gaza, President Macron said an international coalition under a UN mandate should be used to 'stabilise' and secure the territory.
'No to an Israeli military operation. Yes to an international coalition under a UN mandate to fight terrorism, stabilise Gaza and support its populations, and establish a governance of peace and stability,' the French president told BFMTV.
He called on the UN security council to 'work to establish this mission and give it a mandate'.
'I have asked my teams to work on it without delay with our partners,' he said, adding that it is 'the only credible way out of an unacceptable situation for the families of hostages as well as for the Gazans' and 'the only credible way to begin to emerge from the permanent war and rebuild peace and security for all'.
President Macron has described Israel's plans to step up its military operation in Gaza as 'a disaster of unprecedented gravity'.
The French president told BFMTV on Monday: 'We must end this war now with a permanent ceasefire. The Israeli cabinet's announcement of an expansion of its operations in Gaza City … and a reoccupation [of Gaza] by Israel constitutes a disaster of unprecedented gravity and a headlong rush into permanent war.'
He added: 'Israeli hostages and the people of Gaza will continue to be the first victims of this strategy.'
Anas al-Sharif wrote a 'will and … final message' designed to be published online in the event that 'Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice'.
The Al Jazeera correspondent wrote that he had 'lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification — so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent … doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half'.
In the message, dated April 6, 2025, he wrote of his family, including his wife Umm Salah, and 'my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission'.
'Do not forget Gaza … And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance,' he added.
A 27-year-old suspect has been arrested on suspicion of vandalising the Western Wall and is due to appear in court later on Monday.
Israeli police said that they would request that the suspect's detention be extended. The graffiti, reading 'there is a holocaust in Gaza' in Hebrew, appeared earlier this morning on the southern portion of the wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray.
A similar message was also scrawled on the wall of the Great Synagogue, elsewhere in the city, prompting an outcry across the political spectrum in Israel.
Bezalel Smotrich, the hardline finance minister, said the perpetrators 'forgot what it means to be Jewish'.
Benny Gantz, the former defence minister who is now an opposition leader, called the vandalism 'a crime against the entire Jewish people'.
The UN human rights office on Monday condemned the killing of six Palestinian journalists in Gaza as a 'grave breach of international humanitarian law' by Israel's military.
The post on X was accompanied by a photograph of flattened blue tents next to a bullet-ridden wall in Gaza City.
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Palestinians reported the heaviest bombardments in weeks on Monday in areas east of Gaza City after Binyamin Netanyahu said he expected to complete a new expanded offensive in the territory 'fairly quickly'.
Witnesses said Israeli tanks and planes attacked Sabra, Zeitoun, and Shejaia, three eastern suburbs of Gaza City in the north of the territory, on Monday, pushing many families out of their homes westwards. Some Gaza City residents said it was one of the worst nights in weeks, raising fears of military preparations for a deeper offensive into their city, which according to Hamas is now sheltering about a million people after the displacement of residents from the territory's northern edges.
The Israeli military said its forces fired artillery at Hamas militants in the area.
'It sounded like the war was restarting,' said Amr Salah, 25. 'Tanks fired shells at houses, and several houses were hit, and the planes carried what we call fire rings, whereby several missiles landed on some roads in eastern Gaza,' he told Reuters via a messaging app.
Greta Thunberg and other activists are set to sail a new flotilla loaded with humanitarian aid to Gaza to break what they called the 'illegal Israeli siege' of the territory.
The actors, Susan Sarandon, of the US, Gustaf Skarsgard, of Sweden, and Liam Cunningham, of Ireland, are due to take part in the 'Global Sumud Flotilla' which will include activists from 44 countries.
'On August 31st we are launching the biggest attempt ever to break the illegal Israeli siege over Gaza with dozens of boats sailing from Spain,' the Swedish campaigner wrote on Instagram late on Sunday. 'We will meet dozens more on September 4th sailing from Tunisia and other ports.' The exact number of ships due to take part in the flotilla was not specified.
Two previous attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to Gaza, in June and July, were boarded by Israeli troops, and the activists were detained.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Monday condemned the 'acknowledged murder by the Israeli army' of the Al Jazeera correspondent, Anas al-Sharif, and other journalists in Gaza.
Where Israel accused Sharif of being a 'terrorist' affiliated with Hamas, the press freedom campaign group said he was 'one of the most famous journalists from the Gaza Strip [and] the voice of the suffering Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza'.
RSF called the Israeli allegations that Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, posing as a journalist, 'baseless'. It called on other countries to intervene, saying the UN security council should meet to insist on the protection of journalists in conflict zones.
The co-founder of the civil liberty group which organised the protest in support of Palestine Action on Saturday said hundreds of people 'want to be arrested for terrorism because they see it as a badge of honour'.
Tim Crosland told Times Radio that the next protest will be 'on a different scale'. 'Already, we've had hundreds and hundreds of people saying that they want to be arrested for terrorism because they see it as a badge of honour, as resistance to genocide,' he said.
Asked if he sees it as a 'badge of honour' himself, Crosland replied: 'In this context, yes, I do. I would not be able to look myself in the mirror if I thought I was a bystander to genocide.'
He added that the goal of the action is 'to expose the government's hypocrisy over what's happening in Gaza'.
The rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, has condemned the graffiti on the holy site as a desecration and urges police to investigate.
'A holy place is not a venue for expressing protests — whatever they may be — and all the more so when it is done at the holiest site to the entire Jewish people,' he said in a statement issued by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which manages the site. 'The police must investigate the incident, locate the perpetrators of this desecration, and bring them to justice.'
The Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism, being the last remnants of the Second Jewish Temple, has been graffitied with the words: 'There is a holocaust in Gaza.'
The message, written in Hebrew, is the first time in recent memory that such vandalism has occurred at the protected site, which is inside the Old City and part of a larger wall surrounding the contested Temple Mount compound.
The site is in active use, with areas for segregated prayer, and is under heavy security with checkpoints in two of the entrances. It was placed under Israeli control after the war in 1967.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, tweeted that he was shocked to see the graffiti and vowed to bring the perpetrator to justice. 'I was shocked to see the harm and disrespect at the holiest site for the Jewish people — the Western Wall. The Israel police will act with lightning speed to apprehend the offender and bring them to justice,' he wrote.
Tom Kington, Rome
Guido Crosetto, Italy's defence minister, accusing the Israeli government of 'losing its ability to reason, and its humanity', and comparing its war in Gaza to Russia's attacks on Ukraine.
In remarks to Italy's La Stampa newspaper, Crosetto said Binyamin Netanyahu was resorting to policies in Gaza that 'dangerously resemble' those used by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
Referring to Netanyahu's plan to occupy Gaza, Crosetto said: 'The motive of a legitimate defence of a democracy after it suffers a terrible terrorist attack is no longer convincing. We are watching a very different undertaking: the conquest of a foreign territory which involves a humanitarian catastrophe.'
Crosetto said Italy did not have plans to recognise the Palestinian state. 'No, because there is no state, and recognising a state which does not exist risks becoming a political provocation in a world which is already dying from too many provocations,' he said.
Israel's ambassador to the UN responded to the strike that killed six journalists, saying that a 'terrorist with a camera is still a terrorist'.
On Monday, Danny Danon called Sharif 'a terrorist operating under the guise of an Al Jazeera journalist' on X.
However Ayman Odeh, an Israeli opposition MP, bemoaned that any profession in Gaza is 'marked for death'. 'Journalists must not be in Gaza. Doctors must not be in Gaza. Football players must not be in Gaza. Children must not be in Gaza. Women must not be in Gaza. Human beings must not be in Gaza,' Odeh wrote on X.
He added: 'Because for the Israeli government, it is permissible to kill journalists. It is permissible to erase witnesses. It is permissible to silence voices that report what is happening there.'
A video showing the fatal shooting of a Palestinian rights activist by an Israeli settler was published on Sunday by an Israeli human rights group.
Odeh Hadalin, who contributed footage to the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land, was killed on July 28 by Yinon Levi. Levi has previously been sanctioned by the US for violence against Palestinians and was arrested after he shot Hadalin, only to be released and placed under house arrest over claims of self defence.
In the video, Hadalin, from Umm al-Khair in the south Hebron Hills, is shown standing in close range of the shooter. There has been no allegation that he posed any threat.
He was buried last week after the army released his body ten days after his death.
Bono and the other members of U2 have published a lengthy criticism of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
The statement on the Irish band's website, with quotes from all four members of the group, starts with reflections on the atrocities committed when Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023 — which Bono repeatedly calls 'evil' — before condemning Israel for the humanitarian crisis created in Gaza.
'The blocking of humanitarian aid and now plans for a military takeover of Gaza City has taken the conflict into uncharted territory,' the band writes. 'We are not experts in the politics of the region, but we want our audience to know where we each stand.'
Bono, an activist for numerous social causes, writes: 'Our band stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine who truly seek a path to peace and coexistence with Israel and with their rightful and legitimate demand for statehood.'
At least 145 of the 193 UN members now recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state at the general assembly, which Israel's prime minister has criticised as 'shameful'.
Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that international calls to recognise Palestinian statehood would 'not bring peace, it will bring war'.
'To have European countries and Australia march into that rabbit hole, just like that, fall right into it and buy this canard is disappointing, and I think it's actually shameful,' he added.
Israel's ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, said Albanese's decision was symbolic and 'will not change the reality on the ground'.
After similar moves to recognise a Palestinian state by France, Britain and Canada, Winston Peters, New Zealand's foreign minister, said his government could follow suit when the country's cabinet meets next month.
Peters said he and his fellow ministers would 'weigh up the issue carefully and then act according to New Zealand's principles, values and interests'.
He added that New Zealand's recognition of a Palestinian state was a 'matter of when, not if'.
Australia's announcement that it will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly in September came close to a week after an estimated 200,000 people marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge in protest against Israel's ongoing military campaign in Gaza.
On Monday, Australia's prime minister said that his nation would formally recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations general assembly in September.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting in Canberra, Anthony Albanese said Australia would 'recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state of their own, predicated on the commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority'.
He added: 'We will work with the international community to make this right a reality. Australia is making this statement today following our cabinet meeting as part of a co-ordinated global effort, building momentum for a two-state solution.'
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an American non-profit organisation, has confirmed the deaths of 186 journalists since the start of Israel's military offensive in Gaza in October 2023. After this latest attack, the CPJ said it was 'appalled' to learn of the journalists' deaths.
'Israel's pattern of labelling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,' Sara Qudah, the CPJ regional director for the Middle East, said.
'Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.'
Israel's military said that Sharif was the head of a Hamas cell and 'was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops', citing intelligence and documents found in Gaza as evidence.
Last October, Israel's military had named Sharif as one of six journalists in Gaza whom it alleged were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing documents it said showed salaries and lists of people who completed training courses.
Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, said it categorically rejected the accusations. Israel does not allow foreign journalists to report independently from Gaza.
Anas al-Sharif, 28, was among a group of four Al Jazeera journalists and an assistant who died in a strike on a tent near al-Shifa Hospital in eastern Gaza City.
A sixth journalist, Mohammad al-Khaldi, a local freelance reporter, was also killed in the attack, medics at the hospital said on Monday.
Calling Sharif 'one of Gaza's bravest journalists', Al Jazeera said the attack was a 'desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza'.
Al Jazeera named the others killed in the strike as Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.
A prominent Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously been threatened by Israel, was killed with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, in an attack condemned by journalists and rights groups.
Israel's military said it had targeted and killed Anas al-Sharif, alleging that he led a Hamas cell and was involved in rocket attacks against Israel, which Al Jazeera denies.
Before his death Sharif had denied being connected to Hamas.