Wednesday, Jul 02nd
Last update06:57:18 AM GMT
International Glance
Arab leaders at an annual summit in Baghdad called Saturday for an immediate end to Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip and to allow aid into the Palestinian territories without conditions. They promised to contribute to the reconstruction of the territory once the war stops.
In March, an emergency Arab League summit in Cairo endorsed a plan for Gaza’s reconstruction without displacing its roughly 2 million residents.
The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News.
The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said.
In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago, those three people said.
No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said.
A recent United States ambassador to Ukraine has published an opinion column explaining her decision to resign her post, and criticising President Donald Trump for siding with Russia over Ukraine.
On Friday, former diplomat Bridget Brink published an article in the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper in her home state of Michigan, expressing concern about current US foreign policy.
The US has long been an ally of Ukraine, and since 2014, it has provided the war-torn country with military assistance, as it fends off Russia’s attempts at invasion and annexation.
Israel has announced a major new offensive in Gaza after launching a wave of airstrikes on the territory that killed more than 100 people, in what it said was a fresh effort to force Hamas to release hostages.
In a statement late on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had “launched extensive attacks and mobilized forces to seize strategic areas in the Gaza Strip, as part of the opening moves of Operation Gideon’s Chariots and the expansion of the campaign in Gaza, to achieve all the goals of the war in Gaza”.
The announcement came as Donald Trump finished a visit to the region that included stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but not Israel.
An original copy of the Magna Carta has been found in a Harvard University library, stunning British academics who hailed the school’s previously perceived imitation as “one of the world’s most valuable documents.”
The historic charter, which dates back to England’s King Edward I in 1300, was declared an original by eagle-eyed historians in the U.K. who launched an investigation into its authenticity after coming upon it online, Harvard University said in a release Thursday.
Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, said it took “all of 30 milliseconds” for him to recognize the document’s authenticity after it was flagged to him by David Carpenter, a fellow professor of medieval history at King’s College London.
Multiple airstrikes hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis overnight into Thursday, killing more than 50 people in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing, while another airstrike in the north of the Palestinian territory left more than a dozen people dead, authorities said.
The strikes come as U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel. There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
An Associated Press cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser Hospital. It took time to identify some of the bodies due to the extent of their injuries. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
Vladimir Putin has sacked the chief of the Russian military’s land forces, Gen. Oleg Salyukov, according to a decree published by the Kremlin, in the latest removal of a high-profile figure from Russia’s military during its war on Ukraine. Salyukov, 70, will become a deputy to the also-sacked defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who was removed in 2024 and made secretary of the security council.
The development came as the Russian president snubbed peace talks that he suggested in Turkey with Ukraine. Putin instead sent a lower-level delegation to Istanbul, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who had promised to attend if Putin did – reciprocated with a Ukrainian negotiating contingent. Putin had insisted on the Istanbul meeting instead of agreeing to the longstanding offer by Ukraine and its allies of a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.
Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said Putin and Russia would face new sanctions as a consequence. “The fact that President Zelenskyy travelled to Istanbul despite this is an enormous gesture,” Merz posted. “Putin didn’t show up – and that put him in the wrong. A new sanctions package is ready. We will adopt it in Brussels on Tuesday.”
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