US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his first official visit to Israel made no mention of Palestinians in a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spending most of his time criticising Iran’s influence in the Middle East. During Rubio’s visit, less than two weeks since Netanyahu met Trump at the White House, Israel killed two people in southern Gaza.
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US President Donald Trump has announced that he intends to talk “peace in Ukraine” with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at a possible meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The two leaders’ encounter may yield some results – or prove an utter flop, as did their summit in Helsinki in 2018.
But what matters is that Trump’s bombshell of an announcement supercharged a conversation in Europe about what to do with an increasingly untrustworthy ally. The fact that an American president could contemplate, let alone affect, a grand geopolitical bargain in Europe over the heads of the Europeans has sent shivers down the spines of many, as has the prospect of being left alone to handle a hostile and aggressive Russia.
Discussions on how to respond to this predicament seem to have split into two lines of thinking.
One posits that the only realistic option is to hug the United States ever tighter in the hope that strategic withdrawal never takes place. That implies ignoring Trump’s rhetorical antics and, if need be, pandering to his Siberia-sized ego and meeting some of the demands he makes.
To please the US president, some have suggested slashing tariffs on US-made cars or purchasing larger volumes of liquefied natural gas from across the Atlantic. Everyone agrees that European states should spend more on defence, especially on US-made weapons. There is eagerness to do so, especially on the European Union’s eastern flank; Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania have already joined the queue to acquire the F-35, a state-of-the-art fighter jet from US defence manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Ukraine is a proud member of this group, too. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy started courting Trump well before he won the US election in November. It seems his pitch to grant the US access to Ukraine’s critical minerals has appealed to the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) contingent and the US president himself.
Sure enough, Zelenskyy was not given a heads-up about the US president’s call with Putin. The sense of betrayal is real. At the Munich Security Conference earlier this week, the Ukrainian president called for European unity in a clear rebuke of the divisive speech delivered by Trump’s vice president, JD Vance.
However, Zelenskyy will continue to lobby the notoriously mercurial Trump as well as old-school Republicans in the US administration, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, in order to shape the US position. In Munich, the Ukrainian president met with a group of Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham, who called for extending US support for the Ukrainian army.
The Kremlin and MAGA crowd seem to believe that Ukrainians have little to no agency. But three years of war shows otherwise. For a ceasefire to work, Ukraine would need to buy in and be present at the table – a point Zelenskyy made quite clear in Munich.
That said, it is rather unlikely that Trump would accommodate Kyiv. Scaling down support is a policy direction he embraces and his electorate is going along with it.
That is why there is a second line of thinking in Europe that calls for ending European dependence on the US. A longstanding proponent of this position is French President Emmanuel Macron. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Macron renewed calls for strategic autonomy in critical domains, such as defence and technology. The AI summit in Paris earlier this month, along with the EU’s resolve to put up stiff resistance in a future tariff war with the US, indicate there is momentum in this direction.
Macron has also been the first European leader to float the idea of sending European troops to Ukraine. Though he does not believe EU members and the United Kingdom would be capable of despatching up to 200,000, a number mentioned by Zelenskyy, the option, as far as France is concerned, is very much on the table.
Macron sees Trump’s initiative as an opportunity for Europeans to “muscle up” and become a security guarantor. Ukraine can thus become Europe’s path to global relevance.
To be sure, this vision has plenty of potential weaknesses. Macron is vulnerable domestically and who will succeed him at the Elysee Palace is a pending question. Germany, likely to be governed by the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) after the February 23 elections, is not nearly as hawkish. The populist challenge to Superpower Europe can also throw sand in the wheels.
European militaries have no capacity and are overreliant on the US. Budgets are strained, too, raising the classic guns-vs-butter dilemma. Germany’s debt brake, which the CDU is apparently reluctant to revisit, does not make matters any better. Also adding to the mix are longer-term concerns that have to do with productivity growth, innovation, and technological development which were highlighted in a September report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. All that should sober expectations that Europe could play in the same league as the US and China.
While the EU would struggle to emerge as a superpower on the world stage, its dependence on the US is unsustainable. Trump’s “America First” policy will inevitably continue to nudge Europeans more and more in Macron’s preferred direction. The takeaway from the US outreach to Putin is that the old rules and conventions governing transatlantic relations do not hold.
Even for the diehard believers in a bond with the US, hedging – a humbler version of strategic autonomy, essentially – has become the only viable option in the long run.
Rather than full divorce and dissolution of NATO, hedging implies pushing back against and conditioning US behaviour as much as possible. Or simply pursuing an independent policy without regard to what Washington might think on issues such as China, trade or regulations of the tech industry.
We are likely to see more and more of that going forward, even beyond Trump’s term.
M23 rebel fighters have advanced into the centre of Bukavu, South Kivu’s capital, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, sparking mixed scenes of panic and celebration. It comes just weeks after the Rwanda-backed armed group seized Goma, in an unprecedented expansion of DRC territory under their control.
“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could – remember us.”
These were the words Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila wrote on October 20, 2023, at al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp. He scribbled them in blue ink on a whiteboard used for surgery schedules. They were a testament to resilience, a final message of defiance.
A month later, Nujaila redefined the moral dimensions of the medical oath not with words, but with his own blood. An Israeli air strike on the hospital killed him and two of his colleagues, Dr Ahmad Al Sahar and Dr Ziad Al-Tatari.
Nujaila’s words stayed with me for 15 months, as I watched in horror how the medical system in Gaza I had hoped to work in was bombed to rubble, the doctors I had hoped to learn from – killed, tortured, forcibly disappeared.
Every aspect of life was stained by death. Every warm memory was invaded by horror. Every certainty was replaced by an abyss of the unknown.
Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where I had volunteered in the emergency department just a month before the genocide started, was raided, ransacked and burned. It was Gaza’s biggest hospital, which provided critical care that could not be received elsewhere and which had assembled a staff of highly skilled doctors.
It was not only a place of healing but also a shelter for the displaced. Ultimately, it was turned into a graveyard.
The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, where I had joined a university project on breast cancer awareness, was bombed, then besieged and shut down, its patients left to die slowly, helplessly. The fate of the only cancer hospital in Gaza was sealed by its location – lying within the “axis of death” – what the Israeli military calls the Netzarim Corridor, which it had established and occupied to divide Gaza into north and south.
Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, where my grandmother had a critical surgery performed by Dr Mohammed Al-Ron, a dedicated and skilled surgeon, was attacked and shelled. Then it was besieged, cut off from the world – its medical staff, patients and displaced civilians trapped inside without food or water. Eventually, everyone was forcibly expelled, and the hospital was rendered out of service.
I later learned that Al-Ron was forcibly disappeared from another hospital in northern Gaza and tortured in Israeli dungeons. When he emerged two months later, he had lost 30kg (65lb). He was still one of the fortunate ones.
Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, a leading surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, was tortured to death.
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, remains in Israeli captivity, where he has been tortured and abused.
More than 1,000 medical workers have been killed in Gaza. More than 300 have been forcibly disappeared.
It is blatantly apparent that healthcare workers are targets in Gaza. Practising medicine has become a deadly profession.
Yet I do not feel scared or discouraged. The doctors who have stood up for their patients and risked their lives during the genocide have become an inspiration: Abu Safia, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya and so many others.
My own sister Dr Mariam Salama Abu Helow has been a bright example for me. She works as a paediatrician at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the only remaining functional hospital in the south, overwhelmed and stretched beyond its limits. She fights alongside her colleagues, bearing witness to the horror – children wounded, orphaned, burned, malnourished, frozen to death.
Despite witnessing the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and the mass murder of Palestinian health workers, my determination to become a doctor has only grown stronger in the past 15 months. Gaza needs its sons and daughters more than ever. So, it’s my moral, patriotic and human obligation to study hard and become the best doctor I can be.
In January 2024, I had the opportunity to leave Gaza, but I refused. How could I abandon my home when it needed me most?
Displaced from Nuseirat refugee camp, I carried my medical books in my backpack and clung to the dim hope that e-learning provided after all six of Gaza’s universities were badly damaged or destroyed.
I was going through research papers minutes before my second evacuation order arrived. I didn’t know where I would go. I didn’t know if there would be an internet connection. I didn’t even know if I would survive. But in that moment, I couldn’t leave my work unfinished.
I begged my father to wait. Just let me finish this one task.
I endangered my life. I endangered my family. And yet, I stayed two hours longer – under bombardment, going through research papers.
I am one of hundreds of medical students in Gaza who, despite everything, want to stay. We are all in various stages of training, eager to start our professional careers amid the shattered remains of Gaza’s hospitals, guided by the survivors of this onslaught.
There are medical students and workers desperately waiting to return home and serve. One of them is my sister Dr Intimaa Salama Abo Helow, who earned a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery in Gaza and then pursued her master’s and doctorate in public health and social justice abroad.
In December, against all odds, 80 medical students at Al-Azhar University graduated and became doctors ready to save lives.
I myself am scheduled to graduate in 2028. I am determined to become a neurosurgeon. For Gaza. For my grandmother, martyred last year. For my parents, who sacrificed everything to help me pursue this dream. For every stolen future. For every destroyed hospital. For every doctor lost.
I made it through, Dr Abu Nujaila. And I will carry your story and those of other brave Palestinian doctors with me.
We will not be defeated.
Russian drone strikes have damaged a thermal power plant in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine overnight, leaving 46,000 consumers without heating as temperatures plunge below freezing, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
“This was done deliberately to leave people without heat in sub-zero temperatures and create a humanitarian catastrophe,” Shmyhal said on the Telegram messenger app.
Russia attacked Ukraine with 143 drones overnight, but the Ukrainian military said it shot down 95 of them, while 46 did not reach their targets, likely thanks to the use of electromagnetic countermeasures that disrupt drone attacks.
At least one person was injured in the overnight attacks which also damaged houses in the Kyiv region, Ukrainian officials said. The temperature in Mykolaiv is expected to fall to minus 7 degrees Celsius (19.4 Fahrenheit) on Sunday night.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Kyiv, said the Ukrainian army announced it has seen an “uptick in attacks by Russian forces” over the past 24 hours.
“In general … we’ve seen no really big gains made by Russian forces for months now – but no indication that the fighting is going down,” he said.
On the sidelines of the three-day Munich Security Conference, which concludes on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Western allies to boost Ukraine’s air defence.
Zelenskyy said Russia now holds 20 percent of Ukraine and is slowly advancing in the east as Moscow’s full-scale invasion nears its third anniversary.
He cited data showing that over the past week, Russia had unleashed about 1,220 aerial bombs, over 850 drones, and more than 40 missiles into government-controlled areas of Ukraine.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
“Europe and the world must be better protected from such evil and prepared to confront it,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.
“This requires a strong, united foreign policy and pressure on Putin, who started this war and is now expanding it globally,” he said.
“Together with Europe, the US, and all our partners, we can end this war with a just and lasting peace.”
United States President Donald Trump shocked European allies and Ukraine this week by calling his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, without consulting them or Kyiv beforehand and declaring an immediate start to peace talks.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, General Keith Kellogg, said on Saturday that Europe will not have a seat at the table for Ukraine peace talks after Washington sent a questionnaire to European capitals to ask what they could contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv.
Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from Munich, said an emergency meeting of foreign ministers of the European Union “hastily convened” over concerns that they – as well as Ukraine – might be sidelined in the US-led peace talks with Russia that are expected to take place in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.
However, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio on Sunday that President Emmanuel Macron would host the meeting as planned.
Five European diplomats said the meeting would include France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and Denmark, which would represent Baltic and Scandinavian countries.
“There cannot be anything [done] without Ukraine and also anything without Europe,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna.
He also confirmed that leaders would meet on Monday.
“Things are moving quickly,” he told Al Jazeera. “We must be sure and clear about what we are going to do.”
He said European countries can still deliver “support” and “funds” that they have promised.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy called for the creation of a European army, arguing the continent could no longer be sure of US protection and would only get respect from Washington with a strong military.
In response, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview that European countries will not create one unified army in response to threats from Russia.
Asked about the possibility of the creation of a European army, Sikorski told state broadcaster TVP World, “We should be careful with this term because people understand different things.”