UK re-establishing diplomatic ties with Syria as Lammy visits Damascus

The United Kingdom has announced it is formally restoring diplomatic ties with Syria as British Foreign Secretary David Lammy travelled to the capital Damascus to meet with interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Al-Sharaa received Lammy on Saturday alongside Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, according to photos of the meeting released by the presidency.

“After over a decade of conflict, there is renewed hope for the Syrian people,” Lammy said in a statement released by his office, noting that the visit was the first by a British minister to Syria in 14 years.

“The UK is re-establishing diplomatic relations because it is in our interests to support the new government to deliver their commitment to build a stable, more secure and prosperous future for all Syrians,” he said.

Syria has been improving relations with Western countries after longtime President Bashar al-Assad was removed from power in December 2024 in an offensive led by al-Sharaa’s  Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group.

In April, the British government lifted sanctions against a dozen Syrian entities, including government departments and media outlets, to help the country rebuild after al-Assad’s fall.

Weeks earlier, the UK had dropped sanctions against two dozen Syrian businesses, mostly banks and oil companies.

On Monday, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle a web of sanctions against Syria that had crippled the country’s economy under al-Assad.

In a statement posted on X, al-Shaibani – the Syrian foreign minister – welcomed Trump’s decision, saying it would “open the door of long-awaited reconstruction and development”.

“It will lift the obstacle against economic recovery and open the country to the international community,” he said.

Supporters of banned Palestine Action group arrested at London protest

Police have arrested protesters in London for supporting activist group Palestine Action, which was banned at midnight in the United Kingdom.

“Officers have arrested more than 20 people on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. They have been taken into custody. Palestine Action is a proscribed group and officers will act where criminal offences are committed,” the Metropolitan Police wrote on X on Saturday.

Campaign group Defend Our Juries said in a press release that 27 people, including a priest and a number of health professionals, had been arrested for offences under the Terrorism Act.

They were holding cardboard signs, saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action. ”

Passersby reacted to the arrests as the police intervened in the demonstration at noon.

“Met Police, you are puppets of the Zionist state” and “leave them alone”, they were quoted as shouting by the Press Association, the British news agency.

Other supporters, not directly involved in the Palestine Action protest, shouted: “Who do you protect? Who do you serve? ” and “British police off our streets. ”

There were further chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during the incident.

The ban

Police warned on Friday that expressing support for Palestine Action would be a criminal offence after the ban kicked in at midnight.

“This includes chanting, wearing clothing or displaying articles such as flags, signs or logos,” said the force.

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said: “We commend the Counter Terrorism police for their decisive action in protecting the people of London from some cardboard signs opposing the genocide in Gaza and expressing support for those taking action to prevent it. ”

The proscription cleared parliament on Thursday, with a court challenge to try to stop it becoming law failing on Friday.

The government announced last week it would ban Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000, days after activists from the group broke into an air force base in southern England.

Two aircraft at the base were sprayed with red paint, causing an estimated 7 million pounds ($9. 55m) in damage.

Four Palestine Action activists were remanded in custody on Thursday after appearing in court over the incident.

Palestine Action has condemned the proscription as an attack on free speech.

The ban will make it a criminal offence to belong to or support the group, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

A Palestine Action activist speaks to supporters and members of the media on Friday [Benjamin Cremel/AFP]

State-sponsored Islamophobia in France encourages violence

On June 27, El Hidaya Mosque in Roussillon in Southern France was attacked and vandalised. Windows were smashed and furniture overturned; the walls were plastered with racist flyers. Earlier the same month, a burned Quran was placed at the entrance of a mosque in Villeurbanne of Lyon.

Unfortunately, virulent Islamophobia in France has not stopped at vandalism.

On May 31, Hichem Miraoui, a Tunisian national, was shot dead by his French neighbour in a village near the French Riviera; another Muslim man was also shot but survived. A month earlier, Aboubakar Cisse, a Malian national, was stabbed to death in a mosque in the town of La Grand-Combeby by a French citizen.

There has been a significant spike in Islamophobic acts in France – something the French authorities remain reluctant to publicly comment on. One report showed a 72 percent increase in such incidents between January and March 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.

There are various factors that have contributed to this, but central among them is the French state’s own Islamophobic rhetoric and anti-Muslim policies.

The most recent iteration of this was the release of a  report titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism in France” by the French government. The document claims that the Muslim Brotherhood and “political Islamism” are infiltrating French institutions and threatening social cohesion and names organisations and mosques as having links to the group.

The report came out just days before Miraoui was shot dead and two weeks after the French authorities raided the homes of several founding members of the Brussels-based Collective Against Islamophobia in Europe (CCIE) living in France.

With the rise of anti-Muslim attacks and discrimination in France, it is increasingly hard to believe that the obsession of the French state and government with what they call “Islamist separatism” is not, in fact, inciting violence against the French Muslim population.

The idea that French Muslims are somehow threatening the French state through their identity expression has been championed by the French far right for decades. But it was in the late 2010s that it entered the mainstream by being embraced by centrist politicians and the media.

In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron, who also embraced the term “separatism”, called for the creation of a “French Islam”, a euphemism for domesticating and controlling Muslim institutions to serve the interest of the French state. At the heart of this project stood the idea of preserving “social cohesion”, which effectively meant suppressing dissent.

In the following years, the French state started acting on its obsession with controlling Muslims with more and tougher policies. Between    2018 and 2020, it shut down 672 Muslim-run entities, including schools and mosques.

In November 2020, the French authorities forced the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), a nonprofit organisation documenting Islamophobia, to dissolve; the organisation then reconstituted in Brussels. In December of that year, they targeted  76 mosques, accusing them of “Islamist separatism” and threatening them with closure.

In 2021, the French Parliament passed the so-called anti-separatism law, which included a variety of measures to supposedly combat “Islamist separatism”. Among them was an extension of the ban on religious symbols in the public sector, restrictions on home schooling and sports associations, new rules for organisations receiving state subsidies, more policing of places of worship, etc.

By January 2022, the French government reported that it had inspected more than 24,000 Muslim organisations and businesses, shut down more than 700 and seized 46 million euros ($54m) in assets.

The Muslim Brotherhood boogeyman

The report released in May, like many official statements and initiatives, was not aimed to clarify policy or ensure legal precision. It was supposed to politicise Muslim identity, delegitimise political dissent and facilitate a new wave of state attacks on the Muslim civil society.

The report names various Muslim organisations, accusing them of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood. It also argues that campaigning against Islamophobia is a tool of the organisation. According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood uses anti-Islamophobia activism to discredit secular policies and portray the state as racist.

This framing is aimed to invalidate legitimate critiques of discriminatory laws and practices, and frames any public recognition of anti-Muslim racism as a covert Islamist agenda. The implication is clear: Muslim visibility and dissent are not just suspect — they are dangerous.

The report also dives into the Islamo-gauchisme or Islamo-leftism conspiracy theories – the idea that “Islamists” and leftists have a strategic alliance. It claims that decolonial movement is challenneling Islamism and references the March Against Islamophobia of November 10, 2019, a mass mobilisation that drew participants from across the political spectrum, including the left.

The report that was commissioned under the hardline former Interior Minister and now Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who back in 2021 accused far-right leader Marine Le Pen of being “too soft” on Islam.

All of this – the report, the legislation, the police raids and rhetorical attacks against the French Muslim community – follows the long French colonial tradition of seeking to rule over and control Muslim populations. The French political centre has had to embrace Islamophobia to contain its falling popularity. It may help with narrow electoral victories over the rising far right, but those will be short-lived. The more lasting impact will be a sigmatised, alienated Muslim community which will increasingly face state-incited violence and hatred.

‘Going hungry’: More than 700 Palestinians killed seeking aid in Gaza

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food in the Gaza Strip over the past few weeks, according to new figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, spurring renewed condemnation of a contentious United States and Israeli-backed aid scheme.

The Health Ministry said on Saturday that at least 743 Palestinians were killed and more than 4,891 others were injured while seeking assistance at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution sites.

The GHF, which began operating in the bombarded Palestinian enclave in late May, has drawn widespread criticism amid multiple reports that its contractors as well as Israeli forces have opened fire on aid seekers.

“The tragedy is that this is again a conservative reading of casualties who were at these distribution points, waiting for food parcels,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said of the ministry’s latest figures.

Reporting from Gaza City, Mahmoud said the attacks on aid seekers come as Palestinian families are desperate to feed their families amid dire shortages caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

“People are going hungry. People are rationing supplies. A lot of families are not eating. Mothers here skip meals in order to provide for their children,” he said.

Earlier this week, a report by The Associated Press news agency quoted American contractors who said live ammunition and stun grenades have been fired at Palestinian civilians seeking aid at GHF distribution points.

Two unnamed US contractors told AP that heavily armed staff members appeared to be doing whatever they wanted.

The GHF denied the news agency’s reporting as “categorically false” and said it takes “the safety and security of [its] sites extremely seriously”.

The administration of US President Donald Trump also has stood by the GHF, with a State Department spokesperson telling reporters on Wednesday that the group is the “one entity that has gotten food and aid into the Gaza Strip”.

In late June, the Trump administration pledged $30m in direct funding for the organisation.

On Saturday, the GHF said two US workers at one of its sites in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis were injured when grenades were thrown at them at the end of food distribution. “The injured Americans are receiving medical treatment and are in stable condition,” the group said.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack.

Leading humanitarian and human rights groups have demanded the immediate closure of the GHF, which they accused of “forcing two million people into overcrowded, militarized zones where they face daily gunfire and mass casualties”.

Amnesty International has described the group’s operations as an “inhumane and deadly militarized scheme”.

“All the evidence gathered, including testimonies which Amnesty International is receiving from victims and witnesses, suggest that the GHF was designed so as to placate international concerns while constituting another tool of Israel’s genocide,” Amnesty said.

Still, faced with dire shortages of food, water and other humanitarian supplies under Israel’s blockade, many Palestinians in Gaza say they have no choice but to seek assistance from the group, despite the risks.

“I was forced to go to the aid distribution centre simply because my kids had not eaten for three days in a row,” Majid Abu Laban, a Palestinian man who was wounded in an attack at a GHF site, told Al Jazeera.

“We try to fool our children by all means, but they are starving,” Abu Laban said.

“So I decided to risk my life and head to [an aid distribution point] at Netzarim,” he said, referring to an Israeli military-established corridor south of Gaza City.

Izmir, villages in Turkiye affected by wildfires now under control

A forestry worker injured in a wildfire in the western Turkish province of Izmir has died from his injuries, raising the death toll in recent days from the fires to three, as the blaze in villages of the Odemis district was brought under control but emergency crews continued to battle one in a province bordering Syria.

Worker Ragip Sahin “who was injured while fighting the fire in Odemis and was being treated in hospital, has died”, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said on Saturday in a post on X. Yumakli also said the blaze in Odemis had been brought under control by Friday evening alongside six other wildfires, mostly in western and central Turkiye.

He added that firefighters were still trying to control a blaze in the southern coastal area of Dortyol in Hatay province.

Turkiye was mostly spared the recent searing heatwaves that engulfed the rest of southern Europe, but firefighters have battled more than 600 fires since June 26 in the drought-hit nation, which have been prompted by high winds.

The fire in Odemis, about 100km (60 miles) east of the resort city of Izmir, had on Thursday killed a bedridden 81-year-old man and a backhoe operator who died while helping firefighting efforts.

In a video on X, Odemis Mayor Mustafa Turan said the fire had ravaged about 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of land. “The fire came violently to this area, there is nothing left to burn. About 5,000 hectares was reduced to ashes,” said Turan.

On Monday, rescuers evacuated more than 50,000 people to escape a string of fires.

“According to the authorities, the fires that lasted for four days started in : Tosunlar village … you can still see smoke coming out from this evacuated village,” said Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Odemis.

“Nothing is left in this village, no one is living here and there is nothing left to reside in. After the fires erupted due to electrical cables in this village, it quickly spread to the nearby villages on this side and then to other villages. Just on the first night [of the wildfires], authorities had to evacuate five villages,” she added.

“For citizens of Turkiye living in the valleys and forests, life is becoming more difficult every year as climate change brings more wildfires. And this year, wildfires came earlier than expected to Turkiye,” said Koseoglu.

Turkiye sends help to Syria

In the meantime, in Hatay province, which borders Syria, emergency crews continued fighting a blaze that broke out Friday afternoon in the Dortyol district near a residential area and rapidly intensified due to strong winds, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Some 920 homes had been evacuated as a precaution against the advancing flames, Governor Mustafa Musatli said late Friday.

Turkiye also sent two firefighting aircraft on Saturday to help neighbouring Syria battle wildfires in its northwest Latakia region.

Eleven fire trucks and water support vehicles were also dispatched, according to Raed al-Saleh, the Syrian Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management.

Turkiye’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 44 suspects have been detained in relation to 65 fires that broke out across the country, which led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and damaged some 200 homes.

According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 96 wildfires in Turkiye this year that have ravaged more than 49,652 hectares (122,700 acres) of land.

The UK’s Gaza double standard

At Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival, two artists called out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and accused the British government of complicity. On-stage remarks by one of them – Bob Vylan – plunged the country’s public broadcaster, the BBC, which livestreamed the performance, into yet another Gaza-shaped row.

Contributors:
Des Freedman – Author, The Media Manifesto
Peter Oborne – Journalist and broadcaster
Karishma Patel – Former newsreader, BBC
Justin Schlosberg – Professor of Media and Communications, University Of Westminster

On our radar:

In the United States, Zohran Mamdani has secured the Democratic nomination for New York mayor, despite relentless media attacks that focus less on his policies and more on his outspoken stance against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Tariq Nafi reports.

Palestinians are seen as some sort of existential threat, just for being there

While debates rage in international media over phrases like “from the river to the sea” and “death to the IDF,” far less scrutiny falls on the anti-Palestinian abuse that has become normal inside Israel – from pop songs to viral chants.

Palestinian analyst Abdaljawad Omar joins us from Ramallah to unpack this everyday Israeli racism.