Only way to peace is Palestinian state, says EU foreign policy chief
More now from the visit to Lebanon by Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, which comes amid wider diplomatic efforts to stop the conflict in Gaza spreading to elsewhere in the Middle East.
Speaking at a news conference held with the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, Borrell said he wanted to start a European-Arab initiative to revive a peace process, with the ultimate aim being a two-state solution.
“The only way is the creation of a Palestinian state,” he said, adding that the prospect of a state would offer a “horizon of hope” to the Palestinians.
He said he would also visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday to discuss steps to secure peace across the region.
Key events
Here are some images coming through the newswires of global pro-Palestine protests over the weekend in which thousands of demonstrators called for a ceasefire in Gaza where Israeli forces have killed over 22,700 Palestinians:
Israeli TV coverage omitting the suffering of Palestinians amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza is leaving the Israeli public dangerously disconnected from the rest of the world, according to critical journalists.
The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum report:
The TikTok videos feature Israeli soldiers, standing under the concrete blast barriers of a military base, in front of a rolling green landscape or beside armoured vehicles. Most are in full military gear, in settings that make clear these are men at war, with one message to their country’s journalists: “If you don’t have something unifying to say, just shut your mouth.”
To someone who made a cursory scan of the country’s TV channels and newspapers after 7 October, the reservists’ anger might be confusing – the Israeli media have rarely presented their audiences with such a uniformly patriotic vision of reality as they have over the past three months.
A “united we will win” slogan sits on the screen for most TV news and talk shows. Politicians face heavy criticism, but interrogations of the military, its strategies, its generals and ordinary troops are muted. The suffering of Gazan civilians barely features, veteran journalists say, three months into an Israeli offensive that has killed more than 22,000 people, displaced nearly 2 million, and left nearly half the population on the brink of famine and stalked by disease.
“In general, the Israeli media is drafted to the main goal of winning the war, or what looks like trying to win the war. If you want to try to find some similarities, it’s along the lines of the American media after 9/11,” said Raviv Drucker, one of Israel’s leading investigative journalists.
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The US secretary of state Antony Blinken has also spoken with his Algerian counterpart, Ahmed Attaf, as part of his week-long diplomacy tour in the Middle East.
In a tweet on Saturday, a US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said the two discussed “multilateral cooperation on threats to international security and increasing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza”.
US secretary of state: US working alongside allies to see what can be done to protect Gaza civilians
The US is working alongside its allies to see what can be done to protect civilians in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing war in the strip, Reuters reports the US secretary of state Antony Blinken as saying on Saturday.
Blinken’s comments come as Israeli forces have killed more than 22,700 Palestinians across the strip since 7 October.
He added that the US wants to make sure that countries in the region are using their ties and relationships to make sure that there is no further escalation in violence.
On Saturday, Blinken, who is on a weeklong diplomacy tour of the region, spoke with leaders of Greece and Turkey on regional security amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
Iran and its associates “must immediately stop their destabilizing actions”, France’s foreign minister Catherine Colonna said in a tweet on Saturday.
Following a call with her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Colonna wrote:
I called Iranian Minister A Abdollahian and gave him a very clear message: the risk of regional conflagration has never been so significant; #Iran and its associates must immediately stop their destabilizing actions. No one would gain from escalation.
In an earlier post, Colonna wrote that she had spoken with her Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, and said that “Egypt and France are on the front line for humanitarian aid access to Gaza and the evacuation of the most seriously injured”.
In a new post on Saturday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who is on a weeklong tour in the region, said that he met with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to discuss the war in Gaza.
Blinken is scheduled to host talks with leaders from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
UNRWA: Almost 90% of Gaza’s population “forcibly displaced and lack everything”
Almost 90% of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been “forcibly displaced and lack everything”, UNRWA said.
Amid Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza, which has reduced most of the strip to rubble while killing more than 22,700 Palestinians, survivors are grappling with severe shortages in food, water, medical supplies and fuel.
According to UNRWA, 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced across Gaza, with 1.88 million Palestinians sheltering in and in the vicinity of 155 UNRWA installations.
Meanwhile, 131 UNRWA installations have been damaged as a result of Israel’s deadly strikes across Gaza.
Hundreds of people in London have blocked off Westminster Bridge in calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli strikes have killed more than 22,700 Palestinians since 7 October.
The Guardian’s Mabel Banfield-Nwachi writes:
Hundreds of protesters in London have staged a sit-in on Westminster Bridge, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in the first big demonstration of the year.
Protesters blocked off the bridge and the surrounding roads after a march from St James’s Park in central London on Saturday.
The demonstration, organised by the Free Palestine Coalition, renewed calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It also called for the UK to stop arms sales to Israel and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The group announced a meeting location – a drinking fountain in St James’s Park – at 10am on Saturday and protesters began to gather around midday.
The Metropolitan police made several arrests at the park, before protesters marched through Westminster and were then stopped by officers in Parliament Square, next to Big Ben.
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European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on Saturday that it is “absolutely necessary” that Lebanon not be dragged into a regional conflict as a result of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Speaking at a press conference with Lebanon’s foreign minister, Borrell said: “It is imperative to avoid regional escalation in the Middle East. It is absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict,” Agence France-Presse reports.
“I am sending this message to Israel, too: nobody will win from a regional conflict,” he said, adding: “I think that the war can be prevented, has to be avoided and diplomacy can prevail.”
Since 7 October, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah has exchanged frequent cross-border fire with Israeli forces. On Tuesday, a strike in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut killed Hamas’s deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri.
Israel has not claimed responsibility while a US official told AFP that Israel was behind the strike.
Earlier on Saturday, Hezbollah said that it launched a barrage of rockets at northern Israel as a “preliminary response” to al-Arouri’s killing.
Summary
If you’re just joining us, here’s a quick rundown of all the latest from the crisis in the Middle East.
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Northern Israel was hit by a barrage of rockets fired from southern Lebanon on early Saturday. Hezbollah later said it had launched the attack as a “preliminary response” to the killing of Hamas’s deputy chief in a Beirut suburb last week.
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Israel later carried out a series of retaliatory strikes on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said its fighter jets had attacked targets in the towns of Aita al-Sha’ab, Yaron, and Ramya, hitting a launch site and military buildings.
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The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said during a visit to Lebanon that a Palestinian state was the “only way” to achieve peace in the region. He also warned against an escalation of the conflict in Gaza, saying that “nobody will win” if other countries in the region are dragged in.
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The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has begun a week-long tour of talks with regional leaders. Visits to Turkey and Greece on Saturday will be followed by stops in Israel and the West Bank as well as Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
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The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, called on Blinken to use the tour to end what he called Israel’s “aggression”. He said US support for Israel’s operation in Gaza had “caused unprecedented massacres and war crimes against our people” and that he hoped Blinken had “learned the lessons of the last three months”.
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Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health said at least 122 Palestinians have been killed and 256 injured over the past 24 hours. The latest figures brought the overall toll since the start of Israel’s operation in Gaza to 22,722 killed and 58,166 injured.
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Hundreds have attended a pro-Palestinian protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London. Pictures from the event showed rows of police standing in front of crowds, with many protesters waving Palestinian flags.
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The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea could impact the British economy. Asked by the BBC whether the attacks could push inflation back towards the high levels seen in recent years, he said: “We obviously have to monitor what’s happening in the Red Sea. It may have an impact and we’ll watch it very, very carefully.”
Coalition forces are assisting a merchant vessel in the Red Sea after six small craft were seen approaching it, according to UK Marine Trade Operations.
A statement from the body, which reports security information on behalf of the Royal Navy, said the craft had come within one nautical mile (1.15 miles) of the vessel as it sailed around 50 nautical miles off the coast of Yemen.
It added that no weapons had been sighted but that authorities were investigating.
Since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which is a major route for global maritime trade.
Assassination is a two-edged sword. Last week’s targeted killing in Beirut of Hamas’s deputy leader is but the latest of many covert attacks on individuals in Iran and the Arab sphere attributed to agents of Israel.
Do prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials in Jerusalem ever consider the possibility they may be paid back in kind?
Hamas may not have the expertise and reach, although a booby-trap bomb requires no particular skill. But Iran does and maybe Hezbollah, too.
Israel’s assassination in December of a top Iranian general in Syria, plus last week’s atrocity in southern Iran – claimed by Islamic State terrorists but officially blamed on Israel – could goad Tehran’s more rabid hardliners into seeking an eye for an eye.
Like Netanyahu, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is not averse to disposing of foes with chilling finality. The trail of bodies since he became president in 2000 is a long one, stretching from the gates of the Kremlin to Salisbury and back again to Siberia.
Putin tried to kill Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, when he invaded in 2022. He may yet try again.
Read Simon Tisdall’s full piece on how brute force threatens to triumph in 2024 here:
Only way to peace is Palestinian state, says EU foreign policy chief
More now from the visit to Lebanon by Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, which comes amid wider diplomatic efforts to stop the conflict in Gaza spreading to elsewhere in the Middle East.
Speaking at a news conference held with the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, Borrell said he wanted to start a European-Arab initiative to revive a peace process, with the ultimate aim being a two-state solution.
“The only way is the creation of a Palestinian state,” he said, adding that the prospect of a state would offer a “horizon of hope” to the Palestinians.
He said he would also visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday to discuss steps to secure peace across the region.
Hundreds attend pro-Palestine demonstration outside parliament in London
Hundreds of people have gathered outside the Houses of Parliament in London calling for an end to the conflict in Gaza.
Pictures from the event showed rows of police standing in front of crowds, with many protesters waving Palestinian flags.
People could also be seen holding placards reading “Stop arming Israel” and “Ceasefire now”.
Footage on social media showed dozens of other people lying down in front of Westminster Bridge as part of an apparent die-in demonstration, in which participants simulate being dead.