Category World News

And so Israel has struck again.

On Tuesday, the Middle East’s favourite perennial aggressor launched missiles against the Qatari capital of Doha, targeting Hamas leaders involved in negotiations surrounding a proposal from the United States for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli genocide of Palestinians has officially killed more than 64,000 people in less than two years.

To be sure, Israel has never been a fan of ceasefires – even ones proposed by the reigning global hegemon and most devout backer of Israeli atrocities. After all, the state’s very existence is predicated on wiping out Palestinians and engaging in unceasing belligerence.

And while anyone harbouring an iota of common sense will have long regarded Israel as a rogue state, the unprecedented attack on Qatar appears to have opened some international eyes with regard to just how out of control the Israeli government actually is.

For instance, world powers like Britain, France, and India – which have to varying degrees enabled the genocide in Gaza, among other acts of terror by the Israeli military across the region – have managed to muster uncharacteristic condemnation following the Doha strike.

This is not to imply, of course, that targeting Hamas leaders in a country that happens to host the largest US military base in the Middle East is somehow more morally appalling than slaughtering tens of thousands of people in Gaza, most of them women and children.

It is simply to observe that even apologists for Israel’s genocidal recklessness seem to have drawn a new red line – which is that the Israelis can’t simply go around bombing people and places as they see fit.

Following the strike on Doha, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt announced that “unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals”.

Lest we rush to accord any sense of logic or reason to the current White House, Leavitt went on to add the disclaimer: “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

For his part, US President Donald Trump has now “assured” the Qataris that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil”, in Leavitt’s words.

And yet Qatar would be forgiven for feeling somewhat less than “assured”, given that it has already been made quite clear that Trump has forfeited control over what Israel does or does not do on other people’s soil.

As a testament to this reality, Israel’s aptly named Defence Minister Israel Katz took to social media on Wednesday to warn that “Israel’s long arm will act against its enemies anywhere. There is no place where they can hide.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has meanwhile explicitly threatened Qatar, suggesting that this may not be the last the emirate sees of Israeli missiles: “I say to Qatar and all nations who harbour terrorists, you either expel them or you bring them to justice – because if you don’t, we will.”

As usual, then, the country with the present monopoly on regional terrorism – not to mention nearly eight decades of Israeli ethnic cleansing, dispossession, and massacres of Palestinians – has taken the liberty of deciding whom to assign the role of “terrorists” and then attack.

Considering Israel’s utterly mendacious definition of “terrorism”, it’s not only Qatar that needs to worry. As Netanyahu himself said, “all nations who harbour terrorists” are eligible for Israel’s version of “justice”, which in the end generally amounts to war crimes and wanton violations of international law.

As Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday, Israel had conducted military attacks on no fewer than six countries in the past 72 hours alone. In addition to Palestine and Qatar, the “soil” of Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen had also been graced with Israel’s penchant for destruction.

Now, it’s anyone’s guess as to who might be safe from Israel’s “long arm” – but the possibilities are few and far between. Decades ago, the Israeli spy agency Mossad had already shown itself to be perfectly comfortable with assassinating Palestinians on European soil. And now that there’s a full-blown genocide on in Gaza, the more “terrorists” that can be detected abroad, the better for Israel in terms of distracting from and validating its blood-drenched operations.

Israel may currently pride itself on the total impunity it enjoys, and its ability to wreak devastating havoc at will. But while it remains to be seen what other diabolical manoeuvres the “long arm” has up its sleeve, Netanyahu’s effective declaration of war on the world should at least serve as a wake-up call to those still wooed by the lethal oxymoron of Israeli “justice.”

Belarus has released 52 prisoners following mediation by the United States, which has promised to grant Minsk sanctions relief.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Thursday that the prisoners, along with the US delegation, had crossed into Lithuania.

“No man left behind! 52 prisoners safely crossed the Lithuanian border from Belarus today, leaving behind barbed wire, barred windows and constant fear,” he wrote on X.

US President Donald Trump had called on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to release detainees whom the US leader has described as “hostages”. Belarus later confirmed their release.

In return for Lukashenko’s gesture, Washington will grant sanctions relief to Belarus’s national airline Belavia, allowing it to service and buy components for its fleet, which includes Boeing aircraft, the US embassy spokesperson in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius said.

Sanctions relief

It was the biggest batch of prisoners yet pardoned by Lukashenko, who is seeking to repair relations with the United States after years of isolation and sanctions on his former Soviet state.

But it was far short of the 1,300 or 1,400 prisoners whose release Trump had called for in a conversation with Lukashenko last month, as well as in subsequent social media posts.

Those released include Ihar Losik, 33, a journalist sentenced in 2021 to 15 years in a penal colony on charges of inciting hatred and organising riots, the Belarus affairs section of the US embassy in Vilnius said.

The embassy could not immediately confirm whether prominent critics of Lukashenko’s decades-old rule, such as human rights campaigner Ales Bialiatski, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, were among those released.

Belarusian veteran dissident Mikola Statkevich was among the 52 political prisoners, according to rights group Vyasna.

“Among those released today is Mikola Statkevich,” it said on Telegram, adding that the 2010 presidential candidate had been sentenced to 14 years following the protests after the contested presidential elections of 2020.

EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced that an EU staff member was among the released prisoners, thanking “US partners for their efforts”.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the exiled Belarus opposition whose husband, Siarhei, was released from jail in June, said Thursday’s release covered only 4 percent of those designated as political prisoners, and did not signal any real change of policy by Lukashenko.

“We welcome their release, but in essence, this is a trade in human lives – people who should never have been imprisoned in the first place,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a statement released to the Reuters news agency in which she urged the European Union to maintain sanctions on Belarus until democracy is established.

US envoy John Coale, who has been involved in the negotiations with Lukashenko, said he hoped for the release within a short time of all of the 1,400 Belarusian prisoners that Trump has described as “hostages”.

“Our mission is to get them all out now,” Coale told Reuters. “Eventually, hopefully within a short period of time everybody will be out,” he said.

‘A global deal’

Belarus’s state news agency BelTA said those released included 14 foreign nationals – from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

BelTA quoted Coale, the US deputy envoy for Ukraine, who headed the US delegation, as saying Trump had told Lukashenko that Washington wants to reopen its embassy in Minsk.

Coale had earlier passed a letter from Trump in English to Lukashenko, signed “Donald”, BelTA showed. The fact that Trump had signed the letter simply “Donald” was “a rare act of personal friendship”, it quoted Coale as saying.

“If Donald insists that he is ready to take in all these released prisoners, God bless you, let’s try to work out a global deal, as Mr Trump likes to say, a big deal,” said Lukashenko, who praised the US leader for seeking a peace deal in Ukraine.

“Our main task is to stand with Trump and help him in his mission to establish peace,” BelTA later quoted Lukashenko as saying, referencing Trump’s assertion that he has resolved six or seven world conflicts.

Lukashenko has led Belarus through more than three decades of authoritarian rule. He said as recently as August 22 that he was not prepared to release “bandits” who might “wage war” against the state.

Trump has said he plans to meet Lukashenko, long treated as a pariah by the West, and described him as a “very respected man, strong person, strong leader”.

The prisoners were released a day after Poland shot down what it said were Russian drones over its territory, and on the eve of joint military exercises involving Russia and Belarus.

A coalition of countries established to defend media freedom struggled to formulate a response to Israel’s killing of six Palestinian journalists in Gaza last month, emails reveal, with members of the group missing a deadline to join a statement condemning violence against media.

The Media Freedom Coalition did eventually issue a statement denouncing violence against journalists in Gaza on August 21, nearly two weeks after an Israeli drone strike killed four Al Jazeera journalists, including well-known correspondent Anas al-Sharif, and two other media workers.

The coalition, which includes 51 member countries, did not mention the journalists by name in its statement, but decried the “deliberate targeting” of media workers and called for the investigation and prosecution of those responsible.

Emails obtained from Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs provide a new insight into the challenges the coalition faced formulating a joint response to Israel’s targeted killing of media workers amid the competing views of its members.

Al Jazeera obtained the emails from the Swedish government, which is a member of the coalition, under a freedom of information request.

While the Media Freedom Coalition’s secretariat asked member countries to respond by midday on August 20 if they wished to be included in the joint statement, only 16 did so by the deadline, the emails show.

In emails to the secretariat hours before the cut-off time, Swedish foreign affairs official Christina Linnarud wrote in an email that it “might be difficult” to meet the deadline and requested more time to make a “final decision” on whether the Swedes would add their name to the statement.

Linnarud also requested information on which other countries had signed on to the statement.

Tally Kapadia, project coordinator at the coalition’s London-based secretariat, responded that it “should be no problem” if Sweden confirmed its participation after the deadline had expired later that day.

Kapadia noted that other countries were “in the same position of not being able to have met the deadline” and said she expected the list of participants to grow.

It is not clear which countries met the deadline and which requested more time as their names were redacted in the emails before their release.

Ultimately, 21 countries, including Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and France, joined the statement that was released to the public.

But more than half of the Media Freedom Coalition’s members, including the United States, South Korea, Argentina, and the Maldives, did not put their names to the statement.

While the specific issues that may have divided the coalition’s members are unclear, Kapadia noted in email correspondence that we “tried our best to accommodate all red lines”.

Kapadia also told members that while the statement did not “cover everything”, it should still be viewed as “an important step forward as a collective”.

The statement had stuck to “core issues” – rather than specific events – given the pace of developments in Gaza and the “likelihood of our statement not reaching consensus quickly enough to react to the news in a timely way”, Kapadia said.

Kapadia also noted that members had been given less time to sign up than usual because many countries were “extremely keen to get this out as soon as possible”.

In response to a request for comment about the deliberations described in the emails, the Media Freedom Coalition’s secretariat said that multilateral statements “require agreement among many governments, and expectedly, that process takes time”.

“The Media Freedom Coalition’s priority is to deliver strong, united positions that carry maximum impact in defending and advancing media freedom,” the secretariat said.

Established in 2019 at the initiative of the UK and Canada, the Media Freedom Coalition has issued statements expressing concern about media freedom in numerous countries and jurisdictions, including Russia, Turkiye, Hong Kong and Venezuela.

Last year, the coalition expressed concerns about Israel’s shutting down of Al Jazeera’s operations in the occupied West Bank.

But the coalition’s statement on the killing of journalists in Gaza last month was its first concerning the enclave since the start of Israel’s war in October 2023.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says almost 200 media workers have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza during that time.

Israel’s August 10 slaying of the six journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Mohammed Qreiqeh and al-Sharif, as well as camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, prompted an outpouring of condemnation from governments and media freedom groups, including Reporters Without Borders and the CPJ.

Demonstrators jeered and shouted at Israeli President Isaac Herzog as he left an event in London, where he defended Israel’s attack on Qatar and its war on Gaza.