Israel / Palestine

Two weeks after the European Commission laid out a plan to impose first-of-their-kind penalties on Israel, the proposal remains stalled due to disagreements among the bloc's members.

Spain signalled support on Wednesday for French President Emmanuel Macron's proposal of an international coalition under a United Nations mandate to stabilise Gaza, calling it "one of the tools" that could bring peace to the region.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the Israeli government’s announcement of its intention to expand its military ground offensive in Gaza, calling for a permanent ceasefire and a UN-backed international coalition to help stabilize the region and support Palestinian governance.

The Council of Europe urged its member states on Tuesday to halt deliveries of weapons to Israel if they could be used for human rights violations.

The United Nations continues to draw attention to the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, where starvation and malnutrition are at the highest levels since hostilities began nearly three years ago. … OCHA also updated on the situation in the occupied West Bank, where another Palestinian Bedouin community was displaced on Monday due to violence by Israeli forces and settlers. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said early Friday that his security cabinet approved a plan to take over Gaza City in a further escalation of its 22-month war with Hamas.

To avert further deaths and inhuman suffering by starvation, Israel must immediately restore unimpeded access to Gaza by impartial humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN experts* said today. 

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has announced his country plans to formally recognise Palestine during the UN general assembly in September, after France and 14 other countries co-signed a declaration that pointed towards a wave of future recognitions of an independent Palestinian state.

With Gaza in ruins and the two-State solution in jeopardy, ministers convened at the United Nations this week to jumpstart political momentum toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a crisis Secretary-General António Guterres warned is “at a breaking point.”

“The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza,” UN-backed food security experts said on Tuesday, in a call to action amid unrelenting conflict, mass displacement and the near-total collapse of essential services in the war-battered enclave.