Category: 2. World

One of the major reasons why Britain’s prime minister Sir Keir Starmer – following France and then in turn followed by Canada – has a plan to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September is to turn the two-state solution into a real diplomatic plan again, instead of the empty slogan it has become since the Oslo peace process collapsed into bloodshed 25 years ago.

A day driving around the West Bank is a salutary reminder of how facts created by Israel to stop that happening have been concreted into the rocky hills and valleys the Palestinians want for a state.

The success of the huge national project that Israel started days after it captured the territory in the 1967 Middle East war can be seen in Jewish settlements that now are home to more than 700,000 Israelis.

Getting them there is a project that has taken almost 60 years, billions of dollars, and drawn condemnation from friends as well as enemies. It is a violation of international law for an occupier to settle its citizens on the land it has taken.

Last year, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory that said the entire occupation was illegal.

But the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is hungry for more settlements.

At the end of May, the defence minister Israel Katz and the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that 22 new settlements would be built in the West Bank.

Katz said the massive expansion, the biggest in decades, was making a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel and serves as a buffer against our enemies” .

“This is a Zionist, security, and national response – and a clear decision on the future of the country,” he added.

Next to Katz was the ultra-nationalist leader Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a settlement in the West Bank and believes that the land was given to the Jews by God. He is finance minister but also is effectively the governor of the West Bank with sweeping powers over planning.

Smotrich called the settlement expansion a “once-in-a-generation decision” and declared: “Next step sovereignty!”

Everyone in Israel, and the Palestinians in the territories, know that when Smotrich and his allies say “sovereignty” they mean annexation.

Smotrich wants all the land for Jews and has openly discussed finding ways of removing Palestinians.

On hilltop after hilltop in the West Bank are settlements at different stages of their development, from well-established small towns with mature gardens and schools, to outposts with handful of caravans and a militant population of young settlers who often mix religion with extreme Jewish nationalism, firearms and sometimes deadly aggression towards their Palestinian neighbours.

Statistics collected by the UN and peace campaigners show that violent settlers have increased attacks on their Palestinian neighbours since the 7 October attacks.

I went to see how that has affected Taybeh, an entirely Christian village of around 1,500 people.

It is a quiet place that seems to have many more houses than residents. After nearly six hard decades of Israeli occupation, more Taybeh people have been forced to emigrate than now live in the village.

Two nights before the visit, settlers entered the village when most people were in bed. They burned Kamal Tayea’s car and tried unsuccessfully to get into his new house, part of a pleasant development overlooking acres of olive groves.  They daubed the walls with graffiti in Hebrew sprayed with red paint.

Kamal, a middle-aged man reassessing whether his decision to move his family to the edge of the village was wise, is installing a network of security cameras.

“We were very, very scared,” Kamal said. “I have children and an old mum. Our lives were threatened, and it was terrifying.”

I asked him whether Britain’s plan to recognise Palestine would make his life any easier.

“I don’t think so. It’s a big step to have a superpower like Britain support us, but on the ground, it does not change much. Israel is not compliant with any international resolutions or laws.

“It does not listen to any other country in the whole world.”

During the next night, Jewish settlers raided neighbouring Palestinian communities, burning cars and spraying graffiti. It is more than just vandalism.

The settlers want the Palestinians out and, in some places in the occupied territories, have succeeded, forcing Palestinians in remote villages out of their farms and stealing their livestock.

The Greek Orthodox priest, 74-year-old David Khoury was born in Taybeh. In his church he told me that settlers who have threatened him and other residents are often armed.

“Yes, they have guns… they’ll use them if we argue with them. They want us out, they want us to leave.”

The old priest was defiant.

“We are here, since Jesus Christ, 2,000 years. Our roots are here. We can’t move. We will not move, even if we die here, we will not move from here… Palestine is inside our blood, how we can live without our blood?”

It was not many miles to Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital of the West Bank, but I wasn’t able to get there in person. Israel’s checkpoints can make driving back to Jerusalem slow and difficult, so I reached Husam Zomlot via Zoom. He is the head of the Palestinian delegation to the United Kingdom, effectively their ambassador in London. He is back home for the summer and was delighted by Britain’s plan to recognise Palestine.

“It is a sign that the UK and with it, the rest of the international community are really serious about the two-state solution. We are no longer in the business of the lip service that has lost us three decades. Actually, if you really seek two states, recognise the two states.”

“We see the recognition as the starting gun to a sprint towards implementing and establishing the state of Palestine and fulfilling the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Zomlot was jubilant. It was, he said, a first step, and Britain’s decision would make a real difference.

History is one of the powerful drivers of this conflict. Britain, he added, was atoning at last for the wrongs it had done Palestinians when it was the imperial power here between 1917 and 1948.

He was referring to the promises made in a short, typewritten letter, dated 2 November 1917, signed by the foreign secretary Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of Britain’s Jewish community. It was, the letter said, “a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”.

Britain would “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

It was followed by another promise: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

He meant the majority, Palestinian Arabs, though he didn’t name them, a point that, 108 years later, still rankles Zomlot

At the UN in New York this week, Britain’s foreign secretary David Lammy said the UK could be proud to have helped lay Israel’s foundations after 1917. But breaking the promise to Palestinians in the Balfour Declaration had, he said, caused “a historical injustice which continues to unfold”.

At the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, Simcha Rothman, an ultra-nationalist MP from the National Religious party also had Britain’s imperial past in the Middle East on his mind. The British and French had tried to fix borders before, he said, when they took the Middle East from the dying Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Britain couldn’t play the imperial power anymore.

Just like Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich, his party leader, Rothman said the plan to recognise Palestine rewarded Hamas terrorism. He rejected Starmer’s offer to postpone recognition if Israel, among other conditions, agreed to a full ceasefire in Gaza and a revival of the two-state solution.

“He is threatening the state of Israel with punishment and thinks that’s the way to bring peace to the Middle East. He is not in a position to punish us, and it definitely will not bring peace.”

“And it’s against justice, history, religion, culture… he’s giving a huge reward for Yahya Sinwar [the Hamas leader who led the 7 October attacks and was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last year].

“Wherever he is in hell today, he sees what Keir Starmer says – and says, ‘good partner’.”

Back in Taybeh, I had asked a group of leading local citizens who were drinking coffee with the mayor in his office what they thought of the UK’s recognition plan.

One of them, a local businessman, said: “Thank you Britain. But it’s too late.”

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US President Donald Trump says he has ordered two nuclear submarines to “be positioned in the appropriate regions” in response to “highly provocative” comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Trump said he acted “just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances”.

He did not say where the two submarines were being deployed, in keeping with US military protocol.

Medvedev has recently threatened the US in response to Trump’s ultimatums to Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, or face tough sanctions.

Russia and the US possess the most nuclear arms in the world, and both countries have a fleet of nuclear submarines.

In Friday’s post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Based on the highly provocative statements of the former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions”.

The US president did not say whether he was referring to nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines in his post on Truth Social.

Trump and Medvedev have recently been involved in a series of personal attacks against each other on social media.

It comes after Trump set a new deadline for Putin to bring the war to an end by 8 August – which Putin has shown no signs of doing.

Before that on Monday, Trump had set a “10 or 12” day deadline. Earlier in July he threatened Russia with severe tariffs targeting its oil and other exports if Putin did not end the war in 50 days.

Medvedev – who was Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 – accused Trump of playing “the ultimatum game with Russia” earlier this week.

In a post on X, Medvedev said “each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war”.

He also described Trump’s ultimatum as “theatrical” earlier in July, saying that “Russia didn’t care”.

Writing on Telegram on Thursday, Medvedev warned of a “dead hand” threat – which some military analysts understood as a reference to the codename of Russia’s retaliatory nuclear strikes control system.

Friday wasn’t the first time Trump responded to Medvedev’s comments. On Thursday, he described Medvedev as “the failed former president of Russia, who thinks he’s still president”.

Trump also warned Medvedev to “watch his words”, adding that “he’s entering very dangerous territory!”

Medvedev supports Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022, and is an outspoken critic of the West.

Business leaders around the globe have woken up to the reality of steeper duties on exports to the US market, following President Donald Trump’s new order on tariffs on Thursday night.

In an executive order, President Trump imposed new tariff rates on countries that failed to reach updated trade agreements with the US. Earlier in the week, he outlined a new framework for deals with nations that successfully negotiated revised terms.

Trump’s move has now reshaped America’s trading relationships worldwide with new tariffs on more than 90 countries.

Here’s what some of the business leaders have told the BBC about what this means for them.

While the White House raised tariffs on Canada from 25% to 35%, its other major North American trading partner, Mexico, got a 90-day reprieve, temporarily halting new duties.

Jaime Chamberlain, president of fruit and vegetable company Chamberlain Distributing in Nogales, Arizona, says his company imports millions of boxes of produce from Mexico each year.

“We are actually very fortunate that the Mexican negotiators along with the US negotiators are keeping calm and keeping cool heads,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Both countries really don’t want to get this wrong.

“And if it takes 90 more days to get it right I think it’s very worthwhile.”

But in the absence of a deal, there’s still huge uncertainty about what might happen once that 90-day extension is up.

“I think in the most extreme cases, many farmers would just stop farming for the export market,” Chamberlain said. “It would be very difficult for the importers of record like myself to continue to pay those duties for a long period of time.”

Thailand, which was initially staring at the possibility of a 36% levy, secured a deal to reduce the tariffs to 19%.

Richard Han, CEO of Hana Microelectronics – one of the country’s largest contract manufacturers – recalled his shock at Trump’s initial announcement in April.

“I remember waking up in the morning. It was quite early, and seeing him standing there on the White House lawn with his board. I thought: ‘Did I see that right? 36%? How could it be?’” he said.

But he thinks his business, which makes high-tech goods such as printed circuit boards, integrated circuits, RFID tags for pricing, can survive under the new lower-tariff deal.

“If all of us in this region end up with around 20% our buyers won’t seek alternative suppliers – it will just be a tax, like VAT [value-added tax], for US consumers,” Han said.

European leaders struck a deal, holding tariffs for most goods at 15% after Trump initially threatened a rate double that.

But that’s still a substantial hike from the former average rate of 4.8%.

According to the Italian Institute of International Political Studies, the agricultural, pharmaceutical and automotive sectors are likely to be hit hardest, with the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) projected to dip by 0.2%.

Cristiano Fini of the Italian Confederation of Farmers said the deal with the US felt more like “a surrender” than an agreement.

Several Italian trade associations are now already clamouring for compensation from the European Union to offset projected losses.

If the EU deal managed to blunt the worst effects of the tariffs, Brazil saw its fortunes reverse.

Trump initially announced a 10% rate, but on Wednesday he raised that figure to 50%, accusing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of unfairly attacking US tech companies and calling the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup a “witch hunt”.

However the higher tariff comes with some exemptions, for instance for orange juice and commercial aircraft.

But other products are expected to face sharp price increases.

Cecafé, Brazil’s coffee exporters’ council, said the impact on Brazilian roasters and exporters will be “significant”, and warned American coffee drinkers to brace for price hikes.

Brazilian producers and exporters are working on contingency plans.

But Cecafé said it won’t be easy to find other markets for the 8.1m tonnes of coffee currently exported to the US. New markets are opening in Asia and the Middle East – however according to Cecafé they won’t be able to absorb all of the potential US shortfall.

Switzerland, once optimistic about reaching a modest 10% rate, was instead hit with a 39% tariff – the highest in Europe.

Just weeks ago, Switzerland’s president Karin Keller-Sutter had hinted that an agreement on a 10% rate might be possible.

The sudden hike has now shocked the country, as tariffs could seriously affect companies that produce pharmaceuticals, jewellery, and machine tools.

‘With its unilateral tariff increases on Swiss industrial products, the US government is sending a clear protectionist signal,” machine tool industry organisation Swissmechanic said in a statement.

“The government must now act with clarity and confidence – and make determined use of the existing window of opportunity for negotiations with the US.”

India was slapped with a 25% tariff with one additional footnote – Trump has threatened to impose an unspecified penalty over India’s business dealings with Russia.

India is currently among the largest buyers of Russian oil, and Trump is using tariffs as leverage to pressure Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

Aurobindo Nayak, who runs CI Ltd, a large tea exporter in Kolkata, says US consumers will ultimately pay the price.

He told the BBC’s World Business Report: “We will definitely bear the brunt. But I think the people who are really going to be hit hard are the American consumers themselves.

“To choose to tax tea in the United States is only going to have an inflationary effect. Assam tea has a lot of character, it is liked by the American consumers. Darjeeling tea is a specialty tea, it’s not grown anywhere else. Consumption in the US is growing.”

One of the steepest tariff rates – 40% – has been imposed on Laos in south-east Asia.

“We are not very happy with the tariff… Laos is a very small country,” said Xaybandith Rasphone, co-founder of sports marketing agency MKGT, and vice-president of the Lao national chamber of commerce. “Laos exports to the US only agricultural products, garments, juice and so on.”

Rasphone told the BBC World Service programme Newsday that 60 companies operating in those sectors collectively employing nearly 60,000 people could be affected.

“Indirect jobs could be affected as well,” he said, noting that the overall effect on the country’s economy could be substantial.

As mentioned, tariffs on are now 35%, although most goods will avoid the increased costs because they are currently exempted under an existing North American trade treaty.

David Hope is the finance vice president at Hope Aero, a Canadian company that specialises in the maintenance of aircraft components.

He said he “rolled his eyes” when he learned of Trump’s latest tariffs.

Even though most of their clients are not in the US, Mr Hope explained how the integrated nature of the supply chain means their costs are still likely going up.

Many of the parts the company uses come from the US, and he said he expects the vendors to soon raise their prices.

“I’ve already got whispers regarding one of my major vendors that there’s going to be a blanket 10% increase coming down the pipe,” he said.

Aircraft parts are made mostly of steel and aluminium – two materials under 50% tariffs.

“Steel and aluminium are becoming more expensive in the US, so they’re going to pass [those costs] right along,” he said.

With reporting by Laura Gozzi in Rome, Jonathan Head in Bangkok, Ione Wells in São Paulo, Imogen Foulkes in Geneva and Ali Abbas Ahmadi in Toronto