Israel pounds Gaza killing 123 in last 24 hours
The 24-hour death toll was the worst in a week and added to the massive fatalities from the nearly two-year war that has shattered the enclave housing more than 2 million Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated an idea - also floated by US President Donald Trump - that Palestinians should simply leave.
'They're not being pushed out, they'll be allowed to exit,' he told Israeli television channel i24NEWS. 'All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us.'
Arabs and many world leaders are aghast at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another 'Nakba' (catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during the 1948 war.
Israel's planned re-seizure of Gaza City — which it took in the early days of the war before withdrawing — is probably weeks away, officials say. That means a ceasefire is still possible though talks have been floundering and conflict still rages.
Israeli planes and tanks bombed eastern areas of Gaza City heavily, residents said, with many homes destroyed in the Zeitoun and Shejaia neighbourhoods overnight. Al Ahli hospital said 12 people were killed in an air strike on a home in Zeitoun. Tanks also destroyed several houses in the east of Khan Yunis in south Gaza, while in the centre, Israeli gunfire killed nine aid-seekers in two separate incidents, Palestinian medics said. Israel's military did not comment.
Eight more people, including three children, have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Hamas chief negotiator Khalil al Hayya's meetings with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Wednesday were to focus on stopping the war, delivering aid and 'ending the suffering of our people in Gaza,' Hamas official Taher al Nono said in a statement.
Egyptian security sources said the talks would also discuss the possibility of a comprehensive ceasefire that would see Hamas relinquish governance in Gaza and concede its weapons.
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Observer
an hour ago
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Hamas rejects Israel's Gaza relocation plan
CAIRO: Palestinian group Hamas said on Sunday that Israel's plan to relocate residents from Gaza City constitutes a "new wave of genocide and displacement" for hundreds of thousands of residents in the area. The group said the planned deployment of tents and other shelter equipment by Israel into southern Gaza was a "blatant deception". The Israeli military has said it is preparing to provide tents and other equipment starting from Sunday ahead of its plan to relocate residents from combat zones to the south of the enclave "to ensure their safety". Hamas said in a statement that the deployment of tents under the guise of humanitarian purposes is a blatant deception intended to "cover up a brutal crime that the occupation forces prepare to execute". Israel said earlier this month that it intended to launch a new offensive to seize control of northern Gaza City, the enclave's largest urban centre. The plan has raised international alarm over the fate of the demolished strip, which is home to about 2.2 million people. The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. About 20 of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza are believed to be still alive. Israel's subsequent military assault against Hamas has killed over 61,000 Palestinians, Gaza's health ministry says. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced most of Gaza's population and left much of the enclave in ruins. Meanwhile, thousands of Israelis took part in a nationwide strike on Sunday in support of families of hostages held in Gaza, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement with Hamas to end the war and release the remaining captives. Demonstrators waved Israeli flags and carried photos of hostages as whistles, horns and drums echoed at rallies across the country, while some protesters blocked streets and highways, including the main route between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Ahead of Sunday, some businesses and institutions said they would allow staff to join the nationwide strike, which was called by the hostages' families. While some businesses closed, many also remained open across the country on what is a working day in Israel. On Sunday, Netanyahu told the cabinet: "Those who call today for an end to the war without defeating Hamas are not only hardening Hamas' position and delaying the release of our hostages. They are also ensuring that the horrors of October 7 will repeat themselves over and over again." The prime minister, who leads the country's most right-wing government in history, said his government was determined to implement a decision for the military to seize Gaza City, one of the last major areas of the enclave it does not already control. That decision is widely unpopular among Israelis and many of the hostages' families, who fear an expanded military campaign in Gaza could risk the lives of their loved ones still held captive. There are 50 hostages held in Gaza, of which Israeli officials believe around 20 are still alive. After nearly two years of war in Gaza, most of the hostages who have been freed so far emerged as a result of diplomatic talks. Negotiations towards a ceasefire that could have seen more hostages released collapsed in July. The Palestinian group Hamas has said it would only free the remaining hostages if Israel agrees to end the war, while Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas cannot stay in power. The Israeli government has faced sharp criticism at home and abroad, including from some of its closest European allies, over the announcement that the military would soon seize Gaza City. — Reuters
Observer
13 hours ago
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International students turn to Asian universities as a refuge
SEOUL, South Korea — For Jess Concepcion, a microbiology student from the Philippines, obtaining a doctorate from a university in the United States had been a dream. It was where most of his academic mentors had studied and done research, and he wanted to follow in their footsteps. But when the United States, under President Donald Trump, started pausing visa interviews during peak season this spring, threatening to deport international students for political speech and slashing funding for academic research, he quickly changed plans. Applications for doctoral programs take years and have to be tailored to specific schools, so he is aiming for programs in Switzerland and Singapore instead. 'That uncertainty made me stop in my tracks and choose another country,' Concepcion, 24, said. 'Immigration policy is quite restrictive, and I'm on a different side of the world. So living in that kind of instability that far away isn't healthy for me.' It's a quandary facing many young people around the world. According to the United Nations, 6.9 million people studied outside their home country in 2022. The United States has long attracted the most foreign students, 1.1 million in the 2023-24 academic year. It's too soon to know whether more foreign students will choose not to attend U.S. schools. But warning signs abound. Major international education search platforms, including IDP and Keystone Education Group, have detected a marked decline in student interest in American programs. Among academic administrators polled by the Institute of International Education this spring, more than usual reported drops in international applications for the coming year. These are not the first signs that American higher education is losing its dominant position. For years, countries in Asia have been strengthening their universities and marketing them to students around the world. With more appealing alternatives, the Trump administration's hostile stance may hasten the decline in U.S. higher education preeminence. 'We're shifting from a world in which there were only a few primary target destination countries to a much more multipolar world,' said Clay Harmon, the executive director of the Association of International Enrollment Management, which represents recruitment agencies. 'It's all adding up to this narrative that 'maybe that's not the right destination for me after all,'' Harmon said. ''And there are a whole bunch of other countries that are eager to take my money instead.'' Asia Steps Up For decades, in the English-speaking world, Oxford and Cambridge in Britain, the Ivy League in the United States, and other name-brand universities in Australia and Canada tended to top application checklists. Gradually, schools in China, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore started showing up in annual rankings of the top universities — and with lower prices. Governments dispatched representatives to college fairs and set goals for the number of students they wanted to bring in every year. So when Trump, soon after starting his second term, began pushing international students away, Asian nations started welcoming students who couldn't continue their studies at American schools. Take South Korea, where Concepcion went for his master's degree after winning a scholarship from the South Korean government that covered living expenses and tuition. He added a year of mandatory language study and enrolled at Korea University in Seoul, where his program starts in earnest this fall. In the spring, Korea University was among several institutions to offer relief measures as the U.S. government began canceling some student visas and terminating funding programs. Another South Korean school, Yonsei University, will open rolling admissions for undergraduate transfers year round starting in 2026 and is planning a customized visiting program for students whose coursework is interrupted in the United States. Trump has added urgency to such plans, but this effort has been underway in Asia for decades. South Korea has for years sent students to other countries, while attracting few from overseas. In the early 2000s, leaders started to think of that imbalance as a kind of trade deficit and set out to boost their international recruitment. They took guidance from a similar effort in Japan, which had about 337,000 foreign students last year and is aiming for 400,000 by 2033. South Korea's latest target was set in 2023: 300,000 international students by 2027. For 2026, Seoul was named the top city for international students in the closely followed Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings. Early on, the South Korean government's work was intended to buoy flagging schools in smaller towns, where low birthrates and emigration to larger cities have shrunk classes of high school graduates. Foreign students are also not subject to tuition caps that apply to domestic students, creating a new revenue stream to keep universities afloat. Meekyung Shin, the director of educational globalization for South Korea's Ministry of Education, said that at first those foreign students were generally expected to return home after their studies. More recently, officials have started to see foreign students as an answer to the nation's labor shortage as well. Seoul established a support center to help foreign students get jobs, and visa policies have been loosened to help them work after graduation. 'Now we are very interested in how we help them decide to stay here,' Shin said. There are about 70,000 students in South Korea from China and 50,000 from Vietnam. Myanmar and Nepal send thousands each year. For South Korean companies, the students offer an opportunity: potential hires who could help expand the business into their home countries or manage overseas factories. Hyundai, for example, makes many of its cars in Vietnam and is trying to sell them in Singapore. Kyle Guadana is a Singaporean student studying at Yonsei University, where he leads the Foreign Student Union. He said Hyundai, among other companies, had reached out directly. 'They are looking for foreigners who will be able to work with them,' Guadana, 24, said. 'They are specifically targeting Southeast Asian students, because they are trying to expand their bases here.' The recruiting drive has had some complications, however. To hit its targets, the government has accepted a wider range of language proficiency tests and lowered the minimum bank balance required to obtain a visa. It has also increased the number of hours students can work in a week. Some students have used university enrollment primarily as a way to earn money in South Korea, which is not otherwise easy to do. That's particularly true outside Seoul, according to Jun Hyun Hong, a professor at Chung-Ang University who was involved in earlier efforts to bring international students to South Korea's higher education system. Local governments are happy to have more people willing to work in factories and on farms, something that colleges facilitate. 'If we focus mainly on achieving the numerical goal,' Hong said, 'and ignore the quality of international students and the educational capacity of the university, there are concerns about whether maintaining these numbers will be sustainable in the long term.' Shin, the education official, said the government was working to ensure the quality of the programs. Right now, international students make up about 10% of the total student population, and she thinks that's a good ratio to maintain. But the larger challenge may be making sure that those who come primarily to study are able to work in South Korea when they graduate — and that they want to stay. Keity Rose Mendes, 21, grew up in Mozambique and received the same scholarship granted to Concepcion, studying industrial engineering at Seoul National University. She chose South Korea for its safety and because she wanted to learn about its manufacturing techniques. But after three years of classes, she felt that collaboration wasn't valued and that foreign students weren't well integrated. 'A lot of them, especially non-Asian international students, just want to finish their studies and leave,' said Mendes, who is the president of the school's International Student Association. 'I wish that the same effort that they're putting into bringing international students, they also tried to put into creating facilities to maintain them here.' Hedging Their Bets For millions of students deciding where to study, the United States is still the leading destination. Degrees from top American universities command societal respect — and lucrative job offers — in countries like South Korea. But even that shine has been dulled by new obstacles since Trump took office, said Pierre Huguet, the CEO of the global admissions consulting firm H&C Education. 'Many saw the U.S. as offering more freedom and an escape from rigid social pressures in Korea,' Huguet said. 'Now they fear visa revocations, invasive online presence reviews, and a chilled campus climate, which is the opposite of what they were hoping for.' Huguet said his clients were focusing on Britain and Australia. The number of South Korean students studying abroad overall has been dropping as the country's universities climb the rankings. And the United States isn't the only developed country to push back against international students. Canada and Australia limited international student visas last year, while Britain raised visa fees and was contemplating shortening postgraduate work visas. 'No country is being extremely welcoming at this stage,' said Yash Sharma, who runs an admissions consultancy called Longshore Education focused on the market in India. 'Everywhere in the English-speaking world, there is anti-immigration sentiment going around.' To add to political uncertainty, post-graduation job opportunities are changing. Tech companies, which have long been a strong draw to the United States, have pulled back on hiring entry-level workers as artificial intelligence reduces the number of people needed to do simpler tasks. That's what ultimately changed Divyank Rawat's mind. After working as a data analyst in India after college, he decided to pursue a master's degree in the United States because he felt it was the only place he could learn certain skills. Rawat, 25, was admitted to a handful of good programs. But after he spoke with other Indians who had recently graduated in the United States, the job market looked grim. Combined with the risk of not getting a student visa and new threats to the three-year, post-graduation period when students are allowed to work using their student visas, he decided to stay in India to work for the time being. 'Let's suppose I end up in the U.S. with $70,000 debt and no kind of job security,' Rawat said. 'It is really scary to imagine that.' He regrets not applying to European programs: 'The mistake was that I didn't have a backup plan.' This article originally appeared in
Observer
13 hours ago
- Observer
Arab countries reject Israeli settlement plan
Sayyid Badr bin Hamad al Busaidy, Foreign Minister, has condemned the statements made by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, in a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of 30 Arab and Islamic countries, as well as the Secretaries-General of the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The statement strongly denounced Netanyahu's remarks regarding the so-called Greater Israel. The joint statement emphasised that Netanyahu's statements represent a blatant violation of international law and stable international relations. They pose a direct threat to Arab national security, state sovereignty; and regional and international peace. Arab and Islamic countries reiterated their commitment to international legitimacy and the UN Charter, particularly the article prohibiting the use or threat of force. They pledged to adopt policies that promote peace and benefit all countries and peoples by prioritising security, stability and development over control and coercion. Furthermore, the statement condemned the approval by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of a settlement plan in the E1 area and his racist rejection of a Palestinian state. These actions were deemed a violation of international law and an attack on the Palestinian people's right to establish an independent state within the 1967 borders. Israel was reminded that it has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory. The foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic countries also rejected the settlement plan and all illegal Israeli measures, citing Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territories. They supported the International Court of Justice's Advisory Opinion, which called for an immediate end to the Israeli occupation and reparations for damages caused. Additionally, the ministers warned against Israeli policies aimed at annexing Palestinian territories and expanding settlements in the West Bank. They highlighted the threats posed to Islamic and Christian holy sites, such as the Al Aqsa Mosque, as well as settler terrorism and the displacement of Palestinians. These actions were seen as fuelling violence and hindering prospects for a comprehensive peace. — ONA
