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London, United Kingdom – Khaled Abdalla remembers sitting on his father’s shoulders as a three-year-old, peering over a sea of heads and waving flags as chants of “free Palestine” rose around him.

It was the early 1980s, a time when hearing “Palestine” was rare in the United Kingdom.

The details of those moments in Glasgow are faint, but he remembers how important the protest felt to his father and the crowds around them.

“I’ve had a relationship with protest for Palestinian liberation since then,” Abdalla told Al Jazeera.

Decades later, the Egyptian British actor – most known for his roles in The Kite Runner and The Crown – is still marching. But now he carries the weight of his public platform.

“After October 7, my first act was at The Crown premiere in LA, with ‘Ceasefire Now’ written on my hand,” he said.

“I didn’t know if that would immediately terminate my career. But it opened up a space far more positive than I expected. In standing up, I found my people, and my people found me.”

Since then, Abdalla has used every stage he can. At the Emmys, he wrote “Never Again” on his palm before stepping onto the red carpet.

“Each time I’ve done something like that, there has been fear,” he said, adding that while being cancelled does not worry him, he sometimes feels uncertain about how his protests might be received.

“My first protest was on my father’s shoulders when I was three. I don’t want that to be the fate of my grandchildren.”

Sharing opinions about the onslaught in Gaza, particularly as a public figure, is fraught with tension in the UK, as criticising Israel’s military actions can lead to accusations of anti-Semitism.

Israel launched its latest war on Gaza after Hamas, the group that governs the enclave, led an incursion into Israel during which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken captive. Since then, Israeli bombardment of Gaza has killed almost 60,000 people and destroyed the majority of civilian sites.

For 72-year-old Alexei Sayle, a veteran British Jewish comedian who has long been an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights, silence is not an option.

In December 2023, his “alternative Christmas message” posted to his social media channels went viral, as his words about politicians’ alleged lies and complicity in Israel’s assault resonated with thousands.

“It was clear from very early on that Gaza was going to be different,” Sayle told Al Jazeera. “The Israelis were going to do what they are doing, really. And nobody seemed likely to stop them. This was going to be another step forward in the Zionist project – the expulsion or murder, the ethnic cleansing or elimination of the Palestinian people, with the complicity of the West.

“If you remain silent during this holocaust, then you would have remained silent during that holocaust. I think the comparison is justified.”

He said he has no fears when rallying for Palestine.

“It’s the younger artists who risk cancellation by speaking out,” he said. “As an elderly Jew in show business, I’m in a position like Miriam Margolyes or Michael Rosen – a sort of protected status,” he added, referring to the British actor and children’s author, respectively, both of whom are Jewish and have condemned Israel’s war.

Comedians and artists are used to holding a mirror up, he said.

“Throughout history, comedians have been the ones to point out the excesses of government. That is our role. Politicians have sacrificed whatever moral compassion or humanity they had. There is clearly a moral void at the heart of this government.

“They are frightened cowards. They care about their job more than they care about children being murdered.”

Even so, he knows activism has limits.

“Positive change does not come just from demonstrations,” he said. “There needs to be a relentless focus on political gain and political power as well, and that is the only way that life will get better, both for the people of Britain and for those abroad, whose lives we are complicit in destroying.”

Abdalla shared this view.

“Is it stopping the genocide? No, not yet,” he said. “But is it making a difference? Absolutely.

“There’s been a shift in global consciousness, but there hasn’t yet been an avalanche… It’s our job to make that avalanche happen.”

Sayle and Abdalla are preparing for another weekend of protest mixed with art. They will be among 20 artists, comedians, musicians and humanitarians at Voices of Solidarity, a one-night-only fundraiser for Palestine, on July 19 in London.

The singer Paloma Faith, doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah, actor Juliet Stevenson and comedians Sami Abu Wardeh and Tadhg Hickey are also on the lineup.

As Gaza continues to be bombed, more Britons are critical of Israeli policies.

Last month, a survey carried out by YouGov and commissioned by the Action for Humanity charity and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) advocacy group found that 55 percent of Britons are against Israel’s aggression. A significant number of those opponents – 82 percent – said Israel’s actions amount to genocide.

“Yes, there is a move away [from politicians], particularly because of frustration with the lack of action,” said Dina Matar, head of the Centre for Global Media and Communications at SOAS.

She said the turn towards artists for moral clarity reflects public disillusionment with formal politics.

“The implications might not be seen immediately, but will be reflected in public rejection of official party politics … We need to continue efforts by all – and here thanks to all these artists – to educate people about the aims of these policies and to make clear the association between capitalism and the settler-colonial state.”

Jacob Mukherjee, a professor of political communication at Goldsmiths University in London, said artists and cultural figures are stepping into a political vacuum, a role shaped by history.

Since the counterculture movements of the 1960s, musicians and artists have often voiced popular discontent, he said. This is partly due to what sociologists describe as the inherently oppositional and radical culture of artistic spaces, and partly because art is capable of expressing the public mood.

“In the UK, like much of Western Europe and North America, governments have largely remained loyal to what they perceive to be the wishes and interests of the USA,” he said.

But while artists can voice discontent and spread awareness, “there are limits to what artists and cultural movements can do.

“Without effective new parties, the disconnect between public opinion and political elites will only grow,” he said. “History shows us political reform needs political movements, too.”

This summer in Western Europe, there is constant talk of “unprecedented heatwaves”. According to the media, authorities are working hard to help people cope with and protect themselves from the adverse effects of sweltering temperatures.

As someone in Gaza, it is hard not to be grimly amused by this panic.

After all, as temperatures began to rise, my homeland – at least what remains of it – has been transformed into an open-air furnace.

Now, in the middle of another hot, humid Mediterranean summer, we don’t even have the bare minimum to shield ourselves from the heat. I read report after report advising Europeans to stay indoors, stay hydrated, use sun cream and avoid strenuous outdoor activity. Meanwhile, we in Gaza have no homes, no water, no shade and no escape.

We cannot “limit outdoor activity” because everything we need to survive is outside: water trucks that may come twice a week if we’re lucky, food distributions, firewood to scavenge. We cannot “stay hydrated” because water is scarce, rationed and often polluted. And sunscreen? We would sooner find medicine on Mars.

Summer in Gaza used to be a season of joy with beach days, courtyard gardens, a breeze under the trees. But the ongoing Israeli onslaught has turned it into a season of torment. The beaches are blockaded. The courtyards are rubble. The trees are ash. Israel has flattened most of Gaza, turning soil into dust, parks into deserts and cities into graveyards. Gaza is now a shadeless city.

The heat itself has become a silent killer. But Gaza’s deadly summer is not natural. It is not just another consequence of climate change either. It is Israel’s making. The endless bombing has created greenhouse gas emissions and thick layers of dust and pollutants. Fires burn unchecked. Garbage piles rot in the sun. Farmland is razed. What was once a climate crisis is now climate cruelty, engineered by military force.

The irony is bitter: Europe blames its heatwaves on a meteorological “heat dome”, a bubble of trapped hot air. But Israel has trapped us in another kind of dome: overcrowded nylon tents that act like ovens in the sun. These camps are not shelters – they are slow-cooking chambers. They trap heat, stink, fear and grief. And we, the displaced, have nowhere else to go.

Summer is no longer a season I look forward to. It is a dilemma I endure. The sun hangs overhead like a sentence. It scorches the ground beneath my feet so that even my slippers burn. I cannot stay inside the tent during the day. It is too hot to breathe. But I cannot be outside for long either. I must go. I must wait in long lines for water, then again for food – under a sun so punishing I fear sunstroke as much as starvation.

We are told to queue with discipline, but how can you queue when your body is faint and your child is hungry? I push forward through crowds, not out of greed, but desperation. I scavenge for fuel – wood, plastic, anything to burn. I return to my tent only to collapse into more heat.

The nights offer no mercy. With most of Gaza’s population now crammed near the coastline, the tents radiate heat back at each other. Unlike the earth, they do not cool after sunset. They store the suffering. I feel my neighbours’ breath, their sweat, their sorrow as if the heat itself is contagious. Insects swarm us in waves, drawn to the warmth. My mother and sister swat them away as if they were the bombs we can still hear in the distance.

Living in a tent for a second summer should make it easier. It doesn’t. It makes it worse.

Last summer, after being displaced from our home in eastern Khan Younis, we at least had some food variety. There were still deliveries of aid. We could still cook. But since March 2 when Israel blocked humanitarian aid again, we have descended into engineered starvation.

The United States and Israel now stage a grotesque theatre called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to distribute flour. They place sacks of flour inside metal cages as if we are livestock. People are forced to queue for hours under an open sky, stripped of shade and dignity. Soldiers scream at them to take off their hats, lie face down on blazing asphalt, crawl for food. After all that, you might still leave empty-handed – if you’re not shot first.

They have lowered the bar of our existence. We no longer ask for safety or shelter. We ask only: Do we have enough food to last the day?

Israel has combined every tool of deprivation: heat without shade, thirst without water, hunger without hope. There is no electricity to run desalination or pumping stations. No fuel to chill the little water that comes. No flour, no fish, no markets. For many of us, this summer could be our last.

This is not a climate crisis. This is weather used as a weapon – a war waged not only with bombs and bullets but also with heat, thirst and slow death. Gaza is not just burning – it is being suffocated under a man-made sun. And the world watches, calls it a “conflict” and checks the forecast.

The United States and Germany have struck a deal to provide Ukraine with weaponry to protect cities from nightly Russian attacks.

Germany was prepared to pay for the systems as part of a broader US deal to sell Europe arms destined for Ukraine.

Details began to emerge on July 10 when Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would buy US-made air defence systems.

“We are also prepared to purchase additional Patriot systems from the US to make them available to Ukraine,” Merz was quoted as saying on the sidelines of a Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump told NBC News that the US would sell NATO US-made weapons, including the Patriots, that NATO would give to Ukraine.

Adding to the crescendo, US Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS on Sunday: “In the coming days, you will see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves.”

Meanwhile, Russia continued to capture Ukrainian villages.

On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed to have seized Zelyonaya Dolina in the eastern region of Donetsk and Sobolevka in Kharkiv in the northeast. Nikolayevka in Donetsk fell on Sunday, Malinovka in Zaporizhia on Monday and Novokhatskoye in Donetsk on Wednesday.

Yet even at this accelerated rate of 15sq km (6sq miles) a day, Russia would need 89 years to capture the rest of Ukraine, The Economist magazine estimated.

Russia continued to pound Ukraine’s cities with combinations of drones and missiles every night over the past week.

The biggest attack came early on Saturday. The Ukrainian air force said it downed or electronically suppressed 577 of 597 drones launched overnight and 25 of 26 Kh-101 cruise missiles.

June also saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said.

Trump: ‘We’re getting our money back in full’

Trump announced on Monday at the White House that he had approved $10bn in weapons sales to Ukraine, which were to be paid for by Ukraine’s European allies.

“We’ve made a deal today where we’re going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” he said.

He doubled down on that financial message, telling reporters on Tuesday that after spending billions to help Ukraine, “we’re getting our money back in full.”

Graham played on the same theme.

“Stay tuned for a plan where America will begin to sell to our European allies tremendous amounts of weapons that can benefit Ukraine,” he told CBS.

Trump said he would send 17 Patriot systems to Ukraine. It was not clear if this meant 17 batteries or 17 launchers. “It’s everything. It’s Patriots. It’s all of them. It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Trump said.

A Patriot battery usually contains six launchers, each typically carrying four missiles.

The particulars of the deal have remained murky and perhaps deliberately so.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who was in Washington, DC, on Monday, didn’t disclose details.

“But one thing is clear – and this is a message to all other European NATO members: Everyone must open their wallets. It’s about urgently raising the funds needed, especially for air defence, because Ukraine is under enormous pressure,” Pistorius said.

Russia has increased its attacks on Ukraine’s cities since the beginning of the year. In June alone, Moscow launched 330 missiles and 5,000 drones against Ukraine.

While Patriots are too expensive to use on drones, they are the only weapon in Ukraine that can shoot down ballistic missiles and are also effective against cruise missiles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in April that Ukraine needed 10 more Patriot systems to protect its cities – presumably referring to complete batteries.

Germany’s head of defence planning, Major General Christian Freuding, said on Saturday that Pistorius and his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, had discussed a German offer to buy two Patriot systems for Ukraine. It was not clear if Pistorius’s visit to Washington, DC, was related to that.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters the Patriot systems were “already being shipped, … coming in from Germany”.

Separately, Zelenskyy told Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, when they met in Kyiv on Monday that Ukraine was ready “to purchase American weapons, particularly air defence systems”.

Russia reacts with fury to US-German deal as Trump weighs sanctions

Moscow has balked at the Western deal for Ukraine.

“Mr Merz is a fierce proponent of confrontation on all fronts and of aggressively mobilising Europe,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Germany, France and the United Kingdom were “attempting to raise Europe for war, … a direct war against Russia”.

Trump also announced possible secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil.

“We are very, very unhappy with Russia – I am,” he said Monday in the White House while sitting next to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “I am disappointed in President [Vladimir] Putin because I thought we would have a deal two months ago.”

Trump said he was putting Putin on 50 days notice.

“We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. It’s very simple. And they’ll be at 100 percent.”

The tariffs would be levied on goods the US imports from countries that buy Russian oil, an idea Graham has aggressively pursued in recent weeks, naming China, India and Brazil as the worst offenders.

“We would like to understand what is behind this statement about 50 days,” Lavrov said. “Earlier, there were also the deadlines of 24 hours and of 100 days. We’ve seen it all and really would like to understand the motivation of the US president.”

Lavrov was referring to Trump’s campaign boast that he would end the war in Ukraine in a day and Kellogg’s self-imposed 100-day goal to bring about a ceasefire.

Some observers are sceptical about whether Trump will get tough on Putin, whom he has openly admired.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, shrugged off Trump’s remarks.

“Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care,” he wrote on social media.

But Peskov on Tuesday called Trump’s remarks “very serious”, adding: “Something in them concerns President Putin personally.”

On Wednesday, the normally restrained Peskov sounded even more alarmed that Europe was now willing to foot the bill for the war without US assistance.

“What we are observing so far is that the Europeans are displaying a completely aggressive militarist stance, declaring their intention to spend enormous funds to purchase weapons, to further provoke the continuation of war,” Peskov said.

“Of course, it is very hard to predict anything amid such an emotional state, bordering on irrationality, which reigns on the European continent,” he added.

The only thing that assuaged Russian concerns was indecision over sending Ukraine Germany’s Taurus missiles, which can strike deep inside Russia with large warheads.

That news suggested that Europeans “still have some sense of reason left”, Peskov said on Wednesday.

European defence and reconstruction without the US

Europe’s willingness to spend on defence may also have brought forth the dawn of more independence from the US.

Last week, the UK and France announced a scaling-up of their Combined Joint Force to a corps level, a reorientation of that force from overseas expeditions, “refocusing it on defending Europe” and upgrading it “to war-fighting readiness”.

They announced new procurement of Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles and joint research on a generation of missiles that would “harness the power of AI”.

They also issued the Northwood Declaration on closer nuclear coordination. “Any adversary threatening the vital interests of Britain or France could be confronted by the strength of the nuclear forces of both nations,” the UK Ministry of Defence said.

France and Britain are the only European states with a nuclear deterrent.

The US Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, approved $500m in security assistance for Ukraine as part of its draft language for the next fiscal year – the only military aid announced under the Trump administration.

Under former President Joe Biden, the US spent $64.6bn on military aid to Ukraine, according to a tracker run by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Biden also left $4bn unspent in the form of a presidential authority to draw down weapons from US stockpiles and send them to Ukraine. Trump has not exercised that authority, insisting that the US needs to be paid back.

As Trump touted $10bn in weapons sales, the European Commission announced 10 billion euros ($11.6bn) in investments in Ukraine, leveraged through 2.3 billion euros ($2.7bn) in loans and grants from European institutions.

The announcement came at the Ukraine Recovery Conference.

The money is for rebuilding critical infrastructure and networks and helping small businesses.

“We need a Marshall Plan-style approach,” Zelenskyy declared upon arrival in Rome, referring to the post-World War II system of grants from the US that rebuilt the European economy.

The Syrian government has announced that local leaders will take control of security in the southern city of Suwayda in an attempt to defuse violence that has killed hundreds of people and triggered Israeli military intervention.

Syrian forces had entered Suwayda, reportedly to oversee a ceasefire after deadly clashes between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes killed more than 350 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

Witnesses, however, reported that government forces had aligned with Bedouin groups in attacks against Druze fighters and civilians.

Israel carried out deadly strikes on Syria on Wednesday, including on its army headquarters in Damascus, saying they were aimed at defending Syria’s Druze minority. It threatened to intensify its attacks unless Syrian government forces withdrew from the south.

On Wednesday, Syria announced its army’s withdrawal from Suwayda while the United States – Israel’s close ally working to rebuild Syrian relations – confirmed an agreement to restore calm, urging all parties to honour their commitments.

Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced on Thursday in a televised address that security responsibility in Suwayda would transfer to religious elders and local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.

“We are eager to hold accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people because they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” he said.

Before government intervention, Druze fighters largely maintained control of their areas.

Al-Sharaa emphasised to the Druze community that it is “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation. … Protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities.”

Al-Sharaa blamed “outlaw groups” whose leaders “rejected dialogue for many months” of committing the recent “crimes against civilians”.

He claimed the deployment of forces from the Ministries of Defence and Interior had “succeeded in returning stability” despite Israel’s intervention, which included bombings in southern Syria and Damascus.

Israel, with its own Druze population, has positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian minority although analysts suggested this may justify its military objective of keeping Syrian forces away from their shared border.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed concern about the Israeli bombings on Wednesday, stating, “We want it to stop.”

Rubio later announced on X that all parties had “agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end”, adding that implementation was expected without detailing specifics.

Al-Sharaa praised US, Arab and Turkish mediation efforts for preventing further escalation.

“The Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities,” he said, adding that it would have triggered “large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.

He did not specify which Arab nations participated in the mediation.