Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has voted to accept the Gaza ceasefire deal, despite threats from right-wing coalition partners to bring down his government. Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, said it made Netanyahu more popular but accepted it could lead to him losing power.
A small tent held up by flimsy tarpaulin stands alone, surrounded by bloodied and tattered blue helmets and vests with the word “PRESS” marked across them. Smashed cellphones, laptops and camcorders, and debris lie scattered around it in what could be a scene from a warzone.
But this is not a warzone. It is an installation setting the scene for a two-day conference organised by Al Jazeera, which began on Wednesday to highlight the terrible dangers faced by journalists working in armed conflicts.
The installation has been positioned in front of the angular conference hall of the Sheraton Grand hotel, a brutalist building that stands in Doha’s upscale West Bay neighbourhood.
Inside, an LCD screen is playing footage of Al Jazeera’s journalists wearing those blue vests and jackets, reporting in Gaza. It then cuts to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu patting an Israeli military soldier on the back before footage of protesters carrying Palestine flags and posters calling Netanyahu a war criminal.
To the side of the hall, a panel listing the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been injured or killed while reporting on Israel’s war in Gaza, over which Hamas and Israel have now agreed to the first stage of a peace process, appears. The panel is horrifyingly long, spanning the entire length of the hall.
Most recently, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was deliberately killed by an Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City on August 10. That assault also killed an Al Jazeera correspondent, two Al Jazeera camera operators, a freelance cameraman and a freelance journalist.
Opposite, on the other side of the hall, another panel displays the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been killed while reporting on conflict all over the world, including Rasheed Wali, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 while covering clashes in the city of Karbala; and Mohammad al-Masalmeh, killed in Deraa, Syria in 2013 while covering the civil war.
It is a painful reminder that the war on Gaza, in which nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed, according to the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory – including 10 from Al Jazeera – is no isolated case of journalists losing their lives while reporting in conflict zones.
Gaza has marked a turning point for journalists, however, Louise Alluin Bichet, director of projects and emergency response at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told the conference on Wednesday.
While reporters once relied on the sorts of bulletproof vests seen strewn at the entrance to the conference to shield them from accidental injury, as they performed their jobs amidst and on the sidelines of conflict, she said, they are now being deliberately targeted.
“It does not matter what kind of body armour you’re wearing.”
As Maryam bint Abdullah Al-Attiyah, chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), highlighted, international law has been flouted in the Gaza war and “journalists have been targeted and killed.”
Al Jazeera Arabic anchor M’hamed Krichen opened the conference on Wednesday with a video of smoke billowing in Gaza as journalists come under attack.
“The journalists became news themselves,” Krichen said as an image of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, writhing in pain after an attack played out on the screen. Dahdouh has lost many family members in Gaza, including his wife and several of his children.
The video then cut to footage of Samer Abudaqa, an Al Jazeera cameraman killed in an Israeli attack in December 2023 in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. Krichen told the audience that Abu Daqqa had bled for six hours while Israeli forces prevented an ambulance from reaching him.
“Al Jazeera has said goodbye to many of its sons,” Krichen said.
As journalists come increasingly under fire, the newly appointed director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani, told the conference their safety must be the overriding priority for all news organisations.
“Otherwise, war crimes will remain unwritten,” he said. “Protecting journalists is protection of the truth itself.”
Wael Dahdouh was one of Al Jazeera’s most prominent correspondents during the earlier stages of the war. He has been seriously injured and has lost close relatives during the course of the war, and was evacuated to Qatar in December 2023 to receive treatment for an injury.
He describes what has been taking place in Gaza as a “total genocide”.
On October 25, 2023, an Israeli air strike targeted a house in the central Gaza Strip where Dahdouh’s family had taken shelter while he was reporting on the war. Several close family members, including his wife, son, daughter and grandson, were killed.
“Journalists are being killed and genocide is being committed against them,” Dahdouh told the conference, gesticulating heavily with his left hand, as his right hand is still recovering from a serious injury.
Dahdouh told the audience that reporting on a war which has had such devastating personal consequences has been a major challenge for all journalists in Gaza.
“When your family is dead, cut into pieces before you … there is a volcano inside of you. You want to fight, but you remain professional and you continue your work,” he said.
After he buried his wife and children, he told his son and daughter, who had been injured: “I am going back to Gaza (City) to continue my work. What do you want to do?”
“We will come with you. Either we die together or live together,” they said.
Then tragedy struck again. Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza Dahdouh, 27, also a journalist, was killed by an Israeli missile strike in western Khan Younis in January 2024.
Journalists in Lebanon, where Israel launched major attacks during the second half of 2024 – to target members of Hezbollah, it said – and killed at least 1,000 people, have also faced this dilemma.
Nakhle Odaime, news correspondent and presenter at MTV Lebanon, also chose to continue reporting despite coming under fire.
“I recorded a video because I thought it might be the last video I’ll record. The voice of the truth should reach the audiences,” he told the conference.
While journalists are treated the same as civilians under international law – they are never legitimate targets in a war – there is one main difference between the two.
“The civilian can go away from the combat field, but the journalist has to stay,” said Omar Mekky, the regional legal coordinator for the Near and Middle East region for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “To assimilate the war journalist with the civilian is not right.”
The protection of journalists in war zones must be specifically enshrined in international law, therefore, he and others – including Fadi El Abdallah, head of public affairs at the International Criminal Court (ICC) – told the conference.
It is also necessary to expand the definition of “journalist” in the era of social media, Mekky said. “Anyone who has access to these resources is a journalist,” he added, referring to those using phones and social media to broadcast news of the war.
Female journalists, who endure different forms of violence while reporting in conflict zones, must also be afforded special protections, said Renaud Gaudin de Villaine, a human rights officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Ultimately, however, none of this will be possible without the political will of states, said Bichet from RSF. “The backup needs to come from all the states that have the power to put pressure.”
Time is of the essence, said Doja Daoud, regional programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un vowed to turn the country into a ‘socialist paradise’ during a huge ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
India has announced that it is upgrading its technical mission in Kabul to a full-fledged embassy, cementing its first high-level diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban administration since the group seized power in 2021 after the United States withdrawal and fall of the previous government.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Friday revealed the decision following talks with his Afghan counterpart in New Delhi.
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“Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience,” Jaishanker noted, addressing Afghanistan’s Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi at a joint news briefing.
Jaishankar said India was “fully committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Afghanistan”. He thanked Muttaqi for his “invitation to Indian companies to explore mining opportunities in Afghanistan”.
The move reopens the embassy that was closed in 2021 following the withdrawal of US-led NATO forces. India had since maintained a limited mission to oversee trade, medical, and humanitarian efforts.
In his remarks, Muttaqi said Kabul “has always sought good relations with India”. He also referred to ongoing counterterrorism efforts and said the Taliban administration would not allow anyone to use Afghanistan’s territory for targeting other nations.
There was controversy, however, as female journalists were not allowed in for the news briefing, a move likely requested by the Taliban delegation, who have again cracked down on women’s and girls’ rights and their access to education and jobs in Afghanistan since they recaptured power, drawing international condemnation.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in July for two top Taliban leaders in Afghanistan on charges of abuses against women and girls.
ICC judges said there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani of committing gender-based persecution.
The Afghan foreign minister arrived in New Delhi on Thursday after the United Nations Security Council Committee granted him a temporary travel exemption.
Muttaqi is among multiple Afghan Taliban leaders under UN sanctions that include travel bans and asset freezes.
While some dozen countries, including China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkiye, have embassies operating in Kabul, only Moscow has formally recognised the Taliban government.
During the Taliban’s initial rule between 1996 and 2001, the Indian government refused to engage with the Afghan group and did not recognise their rule, which at the time was only recognised by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
India, which had supported the earlier Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah, shut down its embassy in Kabul once the Taliban came to power: It claimed the Taliban was a proxy of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which had supported the mujahideen against Moscow.
Instead, New Delhi supported the anti-Taliban opposition group, the Northern Alliance.
Following the United States-led removal of the Taliban in 2001, India reopened its Kabul embassy and became a significant development partner for Afghanistan, investing more than $3bn in infrastructure, health, education and water projects, according to its Ministry of External Affairs.
Afghanistan’s regional neighbours, including India, voiced a rare unified front by opposing foreign attempts to deploy “military infrastructure” in the country, as US President Donald Trump presses to regain control of the Bagram airbase.
China tightened export controls for critical rare-earth metals on Thursday.
The new restrictions were announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, and come ahead of an expected meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and United States President Donald Trump’s later this month.
The world’s two largest economies have been locked in trade negotiations aimed at calming tensions, after they raised tit-for-tat tariffs against each other earlier this year, before then agreeing to pull back on some of those levies.
Rare-earth metals are one of China’s major levers of influence with the US.
In “announcement number 61 of 2025”, China said it was increasing export controls for five rare-earth metals in addition to the seven it announced in April this year.
The five metals added to the list are holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium.
The seven minerals China placed export restrictions on earlier this year are samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium.
There are 17 rare-earth metals in total – the 15 lanthanides (metallic elements) on the periodic table; scandium; and yttrium. China now has export restrictions on 12 of them.
In addition, on Thursday, China also placed restrictions on the export of specialist technological equipment used to refine rare-earth metals. Most of these restrictions will go into effect from December 1.
The announcement means that foreign companies will need to obtain special approvals from Beijing if they wish to export rare-earth magnets and certain semiconductor materials that have at least 0.1 percent heavy rare-earth metals from China.
To obtain the licence, foreign companies must explain the intended use of the product they wish to use Chinese rare-earth metals to make.
China cited national security interests as the reason for these new restrictions.
“Rare-earth-related items have dual-use properties for both civilian and military applications. Implementing export controls on them is an international practice,” a Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson told reporters on Thursday.
The spokesperson added that “certain” foreign organisations and individuals have been directly transferring – or processing and then transferring – controlled rare-earth materials originating from China to “relevant organisations and individuals directly or indirectly for military and other sensitive applications”.
“This has caused significant damage or posed potential threats to China’s national security and interests, adversely affected international peace and stability, and hindered global non-proliferation efforts.”
Rare-earth metals are essential for the production of technological equipment such as electric cars, lithium ion batteries, LED televisions and camera lenses.
The metals are crucial for the US defence industry. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, rare earths are used to manufacture F-35 fighter jets, Virginia and Columbia-class submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles and the Joint Direct Attack Munition series of smart bombs.
Additionally, rare earths are used to create semiconductors, which are used in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
This is a strategic move on the part of China, analysts say.
China is the largest producer of these rare-earth metals. It mines at least 60 percent and processes about 90 percent of the world’s rare-earth metals, CSIS reported in 2024.
The new restrictions have been announced just three weeks before Trump’s visit to South Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in late October.
During his visit, Trump is expected to meet with Xi. The leaders last met in person in 2019.
Earlier this year, Trump imposed tariffs of 145 percent on Chinese imports to the US. China retaliated with 125 percent tariffs. After reducing their tariffs to 30 percent and 10 percent respectively in May, the two sides struck a truce in August – agreeing a 90-day pause to allow time for trade talks. That pause has since been renewed twice as talks continue – most recently between US and Chinese officials in Spain last month.
China’s new restrictions on rare-earth metals, which Trump is known to want badly, give it more leverage for these talks.
Gracelin Baskaran, director of the CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program, explained that Washington’s defence industry is facing significant challenges caused by its limited production ability to meet rising defence technology needs. By restricting exports, China may be able to accelerate the expansion of its military strength at a faster pace than the US.
“The new restrictions will only deepen these vulnerabilities, further widening the capability gap,” Baskaran said.
“The move both strengthens Beijing’s leverage in upcoming talks while also undercutting US efforts to bolster its industrial base at a time where Indo-Pacific tension is climbing,” she said.
“Most [restrictions] don’t go into effect until December 1, 2025, leaving close to 2.5 months for these negotiations.”
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson told reporters on Thursday: “China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation through bilateral and multilateral export control dialogue mechanisms, promote compliant trade, and ensure the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains.”
The US will be especially hit hard. In 2023, it was the largest importer of Chinese rare-earth minerals and products, importing $22.8m worth of rare earth products from China, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). In total, China exported $117m in rare-earth metals and products that year.
The US sourced 70 percent of its rare earth compounds and metals imports from China between 2020 and 2023, according to a US Geological Survey report.
Hong Kong ($12.1m), Russia ($12.2m) and Japan ($9.42m) also import significant amounts.
The US restricted China’s access to its semiconductors in 2022 under the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden. Some US lawmakers have pushed for even greater restrictions, warning that China could reverse-engineer or independently develop advanced semiconductor technologies, overtaking the US in the industry and securing a military advantage.
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Norwegian Football Federation President Lise Klaveness is looking forward to meeting her Israeli counterpart before a World Cup qualifier between the two on Saturday, following the announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
The Norwegian FA said in August that it would donate profits from ticket sales from Saturday’s Group I game against Israel to support the work of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, prompting immediate criticism from the Israelis.
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“I always meet other football presidents before we play games. I’m very much into dialogue, and the more difficult it gets, the more important is that we meet, even if it’s difficult,” Klaveness said on Friday.
Israel’s FA criticised the ticket money move at the time, saying: “It would be nice if some of the amount were directed to try to find a condemnation by the Norwegian FA of the October 7 massacre that claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli citizens and children.”
Israel’s government ratified the ceasefire with Hamas in the early hours of Friday morning, clearing the way to suspend hostilities in Gaza within 24 hours and free Israeli captives held there within 72 hours after that.
“We are, of course, extremely happy, on behalf of the involved parties in the whole world, that there is a ceasefire. Football is nothing compared to peace, and now the bombs can stop over Gaza, and that hostages can come home,” Klaveness said.
“That’s very important, and I think it’s very important now that all of us, football leaders and leaders in all big organisations, now give this peace plan energy and momentum. We all know it’s a long way to sustainable peace, but it’s everyone’s responsibility to give it energy and momentum.”
The Norwegian FA has worked closely with police in Oslo on security matters around the game, and Klaveness, a 44-year-old mother of three who played for her country at two Women’s World Cups, said she hoped Israeli fans would feel safe attending.
“They are warmly welcome, and nothing that we say or state should ever be interpreted as directed towards them or that we don’t feel sympathy for what they’ve gone through with this horrific trauma of October 7th 2033,” she said.
“When we say something about condemning the attack on Gaza, it does not mean that we condemn the attack on their people any less.”