First Thing: ‘Humanitarian city' would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM

The Guardian

a day ago

Good morning.
The 'humanitarian city' Israel's defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian.
Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.
'It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,' he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.
What did Olmert say about the rise of anti-Israel sentiment? 'In the United States there is more and more and more expanding expressions of hatred to Israel. We make a discount to ourselves saying: 'They are antisemites.' I don't think that they are only antisemites, I think many of them are anti-Israel because of what they watch on television, what they watch on social networks. This is a painful but normal reaction of people who say: 'Hey, you guys have crossed every possible line'.'
It's been nearly a month since immigration raids in LA and the surrounding region sparked massive protests. But as the weeks wear on and the demonstrations die down, the Trump administration's enforcement operations show no sign of slowing.
Lawyers and advocates say that those arrested, including some US citizens, have been targeted for arrest at random – and likely because of how they look.
In a legal complaint, legal aid and immigrant rights groups have accused the Department of Homeland Security of engaging 'in an extraordinary campaign of targeting people based on nothing more than the color of their skin, and in some cases, where they live or work'.
Have there been any legal developments to disrupt the raids? Yes. On Friday, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against the government's aggressive immigration sweeps, barring federal agents from stopping people in the district unless there was 'reasonable suspicion' that a person was violating immigration law.
EU ministers are meeting on Monday for urgent talks after the US president, Donald Trump, threatened to impose 30% tariffs on the bloc – despite what they believed were promising talks with the US administration on how to avoid them.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called on the EU to 'defend European interests resolutely'. It came as the EU moved to de-escalate tensions after the blunt move by Trump on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Trump said he would be making 'a major statement' on Russia on Monday, indicating the US would announce a plan to sell Patriot air defence systems and other weapons to Ukraine, amid growing White House exasperation with Russia's refusal to agree to a ceasefire.
Why else is Trump in the news? He attended the Fifa Club World Cup final at a sold-out MetLife Stadium on Sunday in East Rutherford, New Jersey but was greeted by widespread boos.
Rosie O'Donnell has shrugged off a threat from Donald Trump to revoke her US citizenship on the grounds that she is 'a threat to humanity'. The New York-born comedian said she was the latest in a long list of artists, activists and celebrities to be threatened by the US president.
The historic Grand Canyon Lodge on the monument's North Rim has been destroyed by a fast-moving wildfire, the park said yesterday. The blaze has forced officials to close access to that area for the season.
A century after Irish nuns first began to bury hundreds of infants in what would become a mass, unmarked grave, archaeologists and other specialists will start excavating the site in Tuam, County Galway.
Economic instability is keeping the housing market at a standstill, with the number of new homeowners at its lowest point in three decades. Last year, the average age of a first-time homebuyer was 38 years old, a record high; in the 1980s the average was in the late 20s. How did we get here?
Researchers have found extensive evidence that social media amplifies the loudest and most extreme voices while muting the nuanced and the boringly reasonable. And much of that distortion, it turns out, can be traced back to a handful of hyperactive online voices: just 10% of users produce roughly 97% of political tweets. But there's a way out, say researchers.
The devastating 4 July floods in Texas struck as the climate crisis worsens, and as the Trump administration's hollowing out of federal agencies has left critical services under severe strain. Yet, despite the scale of devastation, there has been little public reckoning over climate breakdown or the erosion of essential public services. Why is the most disaster-prone US state is so allergic to preparing for disasters?
Scientists have detected ripples in space-time from the violent collision of two massive black holes about 10bn light years from Earth. The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, began circling each other long ago and finally slammed together.
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