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A framework agreement signed between Lebanon and Israel has drawn warnings that a clause in the deal could effectively shield Israel from accountability for war crimes.

Article 13 of the 14-point trilateral framework, signed on 26 June, commits Israel and Lebanon to "take good faith measures that demonstrate positive intent, including the cessation of all hostile or adverse actions in international political or legal fora."

The provision has raised alarm among Lebanese human rights and legal experts. 

"The violations committed in Lebanon give the Lebanese state and people the right to seek reparations," Halima Kaakour, a Lebanese MP who is also an international law expert and human rights advocate, told Middle East Eye.

"This provision disregards that right and deprives the Lebanese people of justice. The right to justice is more important than any agreement," she said.

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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the nation to break free from its military reliance on the U.S. and establish its own weapons production capabilities, a move seen as a strategy to fortify Israel's stance in its ongoing conflict with Iran.

Netanyahu expressed his views during a meeting with reserve combat officers in the West Bank's Gush Etzion on Tuesday. While he acknowledged the support received from the U.S., he stressed the importance of Israel having an independent weapons-production system, reported the Times of Israel.

"…But today I say: We need our own independent weapons-production system. We must manufacture our own armaments," said Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister stated, "We are now confronting Iran and its proxies. We have struck them hard. It is not over yet, but it depends on our strength." He further added that Israel's position in the next 30 years would be determined by its strength and independence in armament capability.

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The frequency and intensity of hate crimes and terrorist acts against Palestinian Christians - including pilgrims, worshippers, clergy, nuns, Christian property, holy sites and religious symbols - carried out by Israeli extremists are steadily increasing.

These attacks are not the isolated or spontaneous incidents that Israel portrays them as to evade responsibility as a government and a state. They are premeditated crimes, committed by individuals and groups - including members of the police and military - who draw their ideological framework from extremist Religious Zionist doctrine, particularly the Hardal (Haredi Leumi, or nationalist Haredi) movement, an ultra-Orthodox nationalist current whose leading figures form part of the current governing coalition headed by Bezalel Smotrich. This ideology also has historical and biblical roots.

These crimes include verbal abuse; spitting at worshippers, holy sites and their entrances; physical violence; storming holy places and cemeteries and vandalising or desecrating them; destroying statues, gravestones and graves; writing racist slogans; throwing stones; theft, looting and arson against property; and occupying buildings and converting them for other uses.

These attacks are carried out across all areas under Israeli control but are particularly concentrated in the Old City of Jerusalem and its quarters, especially the Via Dolorosa and the Armenian Quarter. They also affect other Christian towns in the West Bank, the Palestinian communities within Israel's 1948 borders, and Gaza.

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As the sun sets on a vast farm field, soldiers in full body armor pull over on a dirt road and unload what looks like a miniature jet from a truck.

"Our beautiful drone," one of the soldiers says.

This drone, made by Fire Point, a Ukrainian defense technology company, can travel between 800 and 1,200 miles. Ukraine's military has used drones like these to repeatedly hit oil refineries and depots deep inside Russia, including Moscow and even Siberia. On June 18, Ukraine launched its largest drone offensive yet on Moscow and hit an oil refinery. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky as residents reported a flurry of "oil rain."

The drones have also hit targets in Russian-occupied Ukraine, including the southern peninsula of Crimea, which Russia overran and annexed in 2014. In the last few weeks, Ukrainian drones have struck supply routes for Russian troops as well as railroad bridges, ferry crossings and oil refineries. "Crimea is being isolated by drones," Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with a prominent Ukrainian journalist. "And in the near future, it looks as though Crimea will become an island."

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The UN-sanctioned Board of Peace announced by Donald Trump earlier this year to rule Gaza is planning a sweeping grant of legal immunity for itself, according to a draft of the resolution obtained by the Guardian. The draft language would also let the organization obtain public property in Gaza “free of charge”.

The four-page resolution, labeled “sensitive but unclassified”, extends broad protections to every member of the Board of Peace and its administrative affiliate, the office of the high representative (OHR), as well as to the Palestinian technocrats, international military forces and nonresident contractors lined up to perform work in Gaza. It defines legal processes from which they would have immunity as “any arrest, detention or legal proceedings in the courts or other entities in Gaza”.

It is unclear if the document is attempting to relieve the Board of Peace and its affiliates from prosecution in international courts, in addition to potential claims in Gaza.

The Board of Peace’s chair, Donald Trump, would have the right to waive someone’s legal immunity, pending majority support from his peace board, the June 2026 draft resolution states.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky outlined Ukraine’s core diplomatic priorities ahead of the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara, placing air defense, energy resilience, European integration and sustained pressure on Russia at the center of Kyiv’s agenda.

In his evening address, the president announced that Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko had returned to Kyiv following the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk, where the Ukrainian delegation secured 160 agreements worth more than €10 billion.

The new agreements primarily target energy infrastructure, reconstruction and the resilience of Ukraine’s regions and communities, according to Zelensky.

“This is fundamental,” the president stressed, adding that Ukraine must use the summer months to implement as many of these projects as possible.

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