Category World News

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has decried the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that the United Kingdom could take further action against Israel if a ceasefire deal to end the war in the Palestinian territory does not materialise.

Speaking to the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Lammy also criticised the new aid distribution mechanism in Gaza via a group backed by the United States and Israel, dubbed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

“We’ve been very clear that we don’t support the aid foundation that has been set up,” Lammy said. “We it’s not doing a good job. Too many people are close to starvation. Too many people have lost their lives. We have led globally on our condemnation the system that has been set up.”

Hundreds of Palestinians have been gunned down by Israeli fire while seeking GHF assistance over the past weeks.

Asked by a legislator whether the British government will take measures against Israel if the “intolerable” situation in Gaza continues, Lammy said: “Yes, we will.”

Last month, the UK joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in sanctioning Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.

Weeks earlier, the UK had also suspended talks for a free trade agreement with Israel over the blockade on Gaza, which has sparked a starvation crisis in the territory. And last year, London halted some arms exports to Israel.

While welcoming the moves, some Palestinian rights supporters have criticised them as symbolic and failing to impose serious consequences on Israel for its apparent abuses of international humanitarian law.

On Tuesday, Lammy condemned settler violence and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that they are “flouting international law”.

Pressed on whether the UK’s pressure on Israel has led the Israeli government to alter its behaviour, Lammy acknowledged that the change is “not sufficient”. Still, he defended London’s record, including recent moves against Israel and support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

“I am very, very comfortable that you would be hard pressed to find another G7 partner or another ally across Europe that’s doing more than this government has done,” he said.

Ultimately, Lammy played down the UK’s sway in the Middle East, saying that it is “but one actor”.

The UK is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is also a major trade partner of Israel. And according to numerous media reports, the British Royal Air Force has conducted hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza to help locate Israeli captives in the territory.

The UK has also cracked down on Palestinian rights activists at home, recently banning the advocacy group Palestine Action and arresting dozens of its supporters.

The Labour government in the UK has not recognised Palestine as a state – a move that several European countries have made over the past year.

Lammy said London wants its recognition of Palestine to be part of a concrete push towards the two-state solution, not just a symbolic gesture.

He added that the UK wants to recognise Palestine at a moment that helps shift “the dial against expansion, against violence, against the horrors that we’re seeing in Gaza, and towards the just cause that is the desire for Palestinian statehood”.

But Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Emily Thornberry warned Lammy that with settlement expansion and annexation threats, if the UK continues to delay the decision to recognise Palestine, “there won’t be anything left to recognise”.

Iran says it has not requested talks with the United States over its nuclear programme, as claimed by US President Donald Trump.

“No request for a meeting has been made on our side to the American side,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday in comments carried by the country’s Tasnim news agency.

The clarification came a day after Trump, during a dinner in the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Iran was actively seeking negotiations on a new nuclear deal following the 12-day war with Israel last month, which the US also joined.

“We have scheduled Iran talks. They want to talk,” Trump told reporters. “They want to work something out. They are very different now than they were two weeks ago.”

Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff – also present during the dinner – had even said the meeting could take place in the next week or so.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday that Tehran remains interested in diplomacy but “we have good reason to have doubts about further dialogue”.

Sanctions relief

On June 13, Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign on Iran that targeted military and nuclear sites as well as residential areas, killing senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. Iranian authorities say the Israeli strikes killed at least 1,060 people. Israel says retaliatory drone and missile fire by Iran killed at least 28 people.

The US joined the war, bombing Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, just days before a planned meeting between Tehran and Washington, DC on reviving the nuclear talks. Trump then went on to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

The negotiations, aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, would replace the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – a deal signed with the US, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union – which Trump ditched during his first term in office.

Floating the prospect of more talks on Monday, Trump also dangled the prospect of lifting punitive US sanctions on Iran, imposed after the US withdrawal from JCPOA, with further restrictions piled on this year.

This month, the US issued a new wave of sanctions against Iranian oil exports, the first penalties against Tehran’s energy sector since the US-backed ceasefire ended the war between Israel and Iran.

“I would love to be able to, at the right time, take those sanctions off,” said Trump.

Towards the end of last month, Trump said he was working on “the possible removal of sanctions”, but dropped his efforts after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed “victory” in the Iran-Israel war.

Tehran’s denial regarding talks with the US came after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told US journalist Tucker Carlson that Iran had “no problem” resuming talks so long as trust could be rebuilt between the two sides.

The interview, aired on Monday, provoked a backlash in Iran, with the critics accusing Pezeshkian of being “too soft” in the wake of last month’s attacks on the country.

“Have you forgotten that these same Americans, together with the Zionists, used the negotiations to buy time and prepare for the attack?” said an editorial in the hardline Kayhan newspaper.

The conservative Javan daily also took aim at Pezeshkian, saying his remarks appeared “a little too soft”.

Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have issued arrest warrants for two top Taliban leaders on charges of persecuting women and girls.

ICC judges on Tuesday said there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani of committing gender-based persecution.

“While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms”, the court said in a statement.

The Taliban had “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion, ICC judges said.

“In addition, other persons were targeted because certain expressions of sexuality and/or gender identity were regarded as inconsistent with the Taliban’s policy on gender”.

The court said the alleged crimes had been committed between August 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power, and continued until at least January 20, 2025.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought the warrants in January, saying that they recognised that “Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban”.

UK-based rights group Amnesty International welcomed the move by the ICC, saying it was an “important step towards justice”.

“The announcement is an important development that gives hope, inside and outside the country to Afghan women, girls, as well as those persecuted on the basis of gender identity or expression”, Amnesty International chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement.

“This is a crucial step to hold accountable all those allegedly responsible for the gender-based deprivation of fundamental rights to education, to free movement and free expression, to private and family life, to free assembly, and to physical integrity and autonomy”.

The US-based Human Rights Watch also welcomed the decision.

“Senior Taliban leaders are now wanted men for their alleged persecution of women, girls, and gender non-conforming people. The international community should fully back the ICC in its critical work in Afghanistan and globally, including through concerted efforts to enforce the court’s warrants”, Liz Evenson, the group’s international justice director, said in a statement.

The ICC, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has no police force of its own and relies on member states to carry out its arrest warrants – with mixed results.

In theory, this means anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.

Last year, the United Nations accused the Taliban government of barring at least 1.4 million girls of their right to an education during their time in power.

Taking into account the number of girls not going to school before the group came to power, the UN said 80 percent of Afghan school-age girls – a total of 2.5 million – were being denied their right to an education.

Authorities also imposed restrictions on women working for non-governmental groups and other employment, with thousands of women losing government jobs.

Beauty salons have been closed and women blocked from visiting public parks and gyms as well as travelling long distances without a male chaperone.

This is a story about two Europeans who devoted their lives to the Palestinian cause and paid the ultimate price.

Francoise Kesteman was a French nurse who worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 80s. She was a communist and saw the displacement of millions of Palestinians as a fundamental injustice that needed to be addressed. She joined armed Palestinian groups resisting the Israeli occupation.

Franco Fontana was an Italian photographer who cofounded a Marxist-Leninist political group in the 1970s and organised exhibitions to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause. As a photojournalist, he visited Palestine and Lebanon, where he also joined groups fighting to liberate Palestine.