Category: 2. World

Israel ramped up its offensive in Gaza on Monday, with new displacement orders sending tens of thousands of people fleeing the north of the devastated territory and waves of airstrikes killing about 60 Palestinians, according to local officials and medical staff.

The violence in Gaza came as a senior adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, was due to arrive in Washington for talks on a new ceasefire, a day after Donald Trump called in a social media post for a deal to end the 20-month war and free 50 hostages held by Hamas.

Ron Dermer, the strategic affairs minister and a close confidant of Netanyahu, is expected to meet senior US officials to discuss ongoing indirect negotiations with Hamas, the aftermath of Israel’s war against Iran and the possibility of regional diplomatic deals.

An Israeli government spokesperson told reporters on Monday that Netanyahu was working to end the war in Gaza “as soon as possible” through the release of the hostages, of whom more than half are thought to be dead, and the defeat of Hamas. A US official said Netanyahu would travel to the US on 7 July to meet Donald Trump.

The new “evacuation orders” warned of impending assaults around densely populated Gaza City and told Palestinians to head south to overcrowded coastal zones, where there are few facilities and limited water. About 80% of Gaza is now covered by such orders or controlled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The orders also said that the IDF planned to advance into the centre of Gaza City to fight Hamas militants based there.

On Monday, Israeli tanks and infantry pushed into the Zeitoun neighbourhood on the eastern edge of Gaza City and shelled several areas in the north, while aircraft bombed at least four schools after ordering hundreds of families sheltering inside to leave, residents said.

“Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” said Salah, 60, from Gaza City. “In the news we hear a ceasefire is near; on the ground we see death and we hear explosions.”

In the afternoon, an airstrike hit a crowded cafe on the shore in Gaza City, killing at least 22 people, including women, children and a local journalist.

The IDF said it struck militant targets in northern Gaza, including command and control centres, after taking steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.

Analysts have detected changes in the rhetoric of senior Israeli officials in recent days, which may suggest a new ceasefire is now being considered.

Throughout the conflict, Israeli attacks have intensified at significant moments in negotiations. Israeli officials have said one aim of Israel’s latest offensive, which was launched in May after the breakdown of a two-month ceasefire in March, was to seize territory that could later be given up during talks as a “bargaining chip”.

On Friday, Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, said the offensive was close to having achieved its goals. Netanyahu has also reinforced his political position within Israel and so is better placed to ignore threats by rightwing coalition allies to withdraw support in the event of a deal with Hamas.

A deal remains difficult though, officials close to the negotiations said, with both Israel and Hamas sticking to previous incompatible positions.

Hamas is demanding that Israel agrees to a definitive end to the war and is refusing to disarm. Israel refuses Hamas demands to withdraw entirely from Gaza and says it will end its campaign only when the militant organisation has given up its weapons and its leaders have agreed to leave the territory.

Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader, on Monday added his voice to those in Israel calling for an end to the war in Gaza.

“There is no longer any benefit for the state of Israel from continuing the war in Gaza. Only damage on the security, political and economic level,” Lapid told a meeting of parliamentarians. “The army has no more objectives in Gaza.”

A public opinion poll published the day after Tuesday’s ceasefire with Iran by public broadcaster Kan showed that nearly two-thirds of respondents wanted the Gaza war to end. The result was in line with dozens of similar polls in recent months. Israel’s military has suffered significant casualties this month, which has added to the public pressure for a deal.

Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said on Monday it had received the bodies of 11 people who were shot while returning from an aid site associated with the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund in southern Gaza, Ten others were killed at a United Nations aid warehouse in northern Gaza, according to the health ministry.

The Israeli military acknowledged on Monday that Palestinian civilians had been harmed as they sought food from distribution centres in Gaza and other locations, saying that instructions had been issued to forces after “lessons learned”.

Food, fuel and other basics are scarce in Gaza, with distributions by the GHF coming nowhere close to meeting the needs of 2.3 million people.

Israel says Hamas steals aid to finance military and other operations. The group denies that accusation and aid agencies say their monitoring systems are robust.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza.

Israel’s subsequent military assault has killed more than 56,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population and reduced much of the territory to rubble.

AFP and Reuters contributed reporting

Ninety-nine per cent of the returnees were undocumented, and 70 per cent were forcibly returned, with a steep rise in families being deported – a shift from earlier months, when most returnees were single young men, according to the UN agency.

The rise follows a March decision by the Iranian Government requiring all undocumented Afghans to leave the country.

Conditions deteriorated further after the recent 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel, which caused the daily refugees crossings to skyrocket from about 5,000 to nearly 30,000, according to Arafat Jamal, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) representative in Afghanistan.

“They are coming in buses and sometimes five buses arrive at one time with families and others and the people are let out of the bus and they are simply bewildered, disoriented, and tired and hungry as well,” he told UN News, describing the scene at a border crossing.

“This has been exacerbated by the war, but I must say it has been part of an underlying trend that we have seen of returns from Iran, some of which are voluntary, but a large portion were also deportations.” 

Strain on aid efforts

Afghanistan, already grappling with economic collapse and chronic humanitarian crisis, is unprepared to absorb such large-scale returns.

The 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan calls for $2.42 billion in funding, but only 22.2 per cent has been secured to date.

“The scale of returns is deeply alarming and demands a stronger and more immediate international response,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope, “Afghanistan cannot manage this alone.”

Meanwhile, UNHCR alongside partners is working to address the urgent needs of those arriving – food, water, shelter, protection. However its programmes are also under severe strain due to limited funding. 

The agency had to drastically reduce its cash assistance to returnee families at the border from $2,000 per family to just $156.

“We are not able to help enough women, and we are also hurting local communities,” added Mr. Jamal.

Some relief, but not enough

In response to growing crisis, the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated $1.7 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) to support drought-affected families in Faryab Province.

The funds will provide cash assistance to some 8,000 families in the region, where over a third of the rural population is already facing crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity.

“Acting ahead of predicted hazards to prevent or reduce humanitarian impacts on communities is more important than ever,” said Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, Head of OCHA Afghanistan, adding “when humanitarian action globally and in Afghanistan is underfunded…we must make the most of every dollar.” 

Firefighters battled wildfires in Turkiye and France on Monday, and more than 50,000 people were evacuated as an early summer heatwave hit Europe.

Health alerts were issued in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany. Even the Netherlands, used to a milder climate, issued a warning for high temperatures in the coming days, coupled with high humidity.

“Large parts of Western Europe are experiencing extreme heat and heatwave conditions that are normally observed in July or August, rather than June,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Temperatures were in some locations 5-10 degrees Celsius warmer than they otherwise should have been at this time of the year, she said.

In Turkiye, wildfires raged for a second day in the western province of Izmir, fanned by strong winds, Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said. More than 50,000 people have been evacuated from five regions, including more than 42,000 in Izmir, Turkiye’s AFAD emergency management authority said.

Turkiye’s coastal regions have in recent years been ravaged by wildfires as summers have become hotter and drier, which scientists say is a result of human-induced climate change.

In France, where temperatures are expected to peak on Tuesday and Wednesday, wildfires broke out on Sunday in the southwestern Aude department, where temperatures topped 40°C, burning 400 hectares and forcing the evacuation of a campsite and an abbey, authorities said.

The fires were under control but not yet extinguished, authorities said on Monday. Weather service Meteo France put a record 84 of the country’s 101 departments on an orange heatwave alert from Monday until midweek.

Western Europe bakes

From spectators queuing at the All England Club for the Wimbledon tennis tournament to tourists at the Colosseum in Rome and Seville in Spain, people sweltered in the heat.

“It’s about 20 degrees warmer than I’m used to and I’m sunburnt all over,” said tennis fan Scott Henderson, attending Wimbledon from Scotland.

Spain is on course for its hottest June on record, the national meteorological service AEMET said.

“Over the next few days, at least until Thursday, intense heat will continue in much of Spain,” said Ruben del Campo, a spokesperson for the weather agency.

In Seville, southern Spain, where global leaders gathered for a United Nations conference, temperatures hit 42°C.

“It’s awful,” municipal worker Bernabe Rufo said as he cleaned a fountain. “We need to be looking for shade constantly.” The top temperature in the country was registered at 43.7°C in El Granado.

In Italy, the Health Ministry issued heatwave red alerts for 16 cities, including Rome and Milan.

The Lombardy region, part of Italy’s northern industrial heartland, is planning to ban open-air work in the hottest part of the day, heeding a request from trade unions, its president said.

Consumers urged to limit water use

In Germany, too, heat warnings were in place across large parts of western and southwestern regions on Monday, where temperatures climbed to up to 34°C. Authorities appealed to consumers to limit their use of water.

The heatwave has lowered water levels on the Rhine River, hampering shipping and raising freight costs for cargo owners, commodity traders said. German and French baseload power prices for Tuesday surged as the heatwave led to increased demand for cooling.

Heat can affect health in various ways, and experts are most concerned about older people and babies, as well as outdoor labourers and people struggling economically.

Globally, extreme heat kills up to 480,000 people annually, surpassing the combined toll from floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, and poses growing risks to infrastructure, the economy and healthcare systems, Swiss Re said earlier this month.

Scientists say the main cause of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Last year was the planet’s hottest on record.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced his country might soon quit the Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel landmines amid his country’s war with Russia.

“Russia has never been a party to this convention and uses antipersonnel mines with extreme cynicism,” he said on Sunday.

This was not a mere rhetorical flourish. In August 2023, Russian soldiers booby-trapped the bodies of their fallen comrades with anti-personnel mines as they retreated to kill the Ukrainian sappers who discovered them.

Ukraine needs to even the battlefield, Zelenskyy said, because “antipersonnel mines … very often have no alternative as a tool for defence.”

What is the special role of antipersonnel landmines? Why are they banned in many countries? Why is Ukraine leaving the treaty now, and what will that allow it to do in its own defence?

What is the Ottawa Treaty?

The Ottawa Treaty of December 1997 bans the use of anti-personnel landmines, as well as the ability to “develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, anti-personnel mines”.

The treaty has been ratified by more than 160 countries and is part of the body of international law enshrined in the United Nations. As its name suggests, it aims to abolish landmines.

Major powers like China, Russia and the United States have never signed it although the US did agree to stop stockpiling antipersonnel landmines under President Barack Obama, a move reversed by his successor Donald Trump.

The rationale behind banning landmines is that they are indiscriminate killers.

“Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian – a woman, a child,” said Jody Williams, who coordinated the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which led to the Ottawa Treaty.

“While the use of the weapon might be militarily justifiable during the day of the battle, … once peace is declared, the landmine does not recognise that peace,” Williams said when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. “The war ends. The landmine goes on killing.”

They are not the first weapons to be banned. Chemical agents were banned after World War I in the Geneva Convention of 1925 because the use of chlorine gas by the Germans had led to devastatingly painful injuries.

Zelenskyy has accused Russia of violating the ban on chemical weapons use as well, a charge Moscow has rejected.

How will leaving the Ottawa Treaty help Ukraine defend itself?

The treaty prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. Ukraine, which ratified the treaty in 2005, has already returned to their use. In November, the US supplied Ukraine with landmines.

At the time, this was because of a drop in Russian use of mechanised armour and an increase in the use of foot soldiers.

“They don’t lead with their mechanised forces any more. They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close in and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanised forces,” then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, explaining the decision.

“So that’s what the Ukrainians are seeing right now. And they have a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians.”

Leaving the treaty will allow Ukraine to produce and stockpile landmines. The move points towards a scaled-up and more permanent use.

The effectiveness of landmines became apparent in June 2023 when Ukraine launched a counteroffensive intended to take back swaths of Russian-occupied territory.

The counteroffensive failed largely because Russian defenders had dug themselves into trenches but also because they had planted minefields that went on for several kilometres before their positions.

Russian Major General Ivan Popov, commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District, said Russian minefields played a “very important role” in defeating the initial Ukrainian advance.

NATO’s then-Military Committee chief, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, confirmed that mines had been a major obstacle.

By July, Ukraine had abandoned efforts to punch mechanised columns through Russian defences and focused on wearing Russian defenders down over time.

Why is Ukraine leaving the Ottawa Treaty now?

Ukraine’s move comes amid a spate of departures from the treaty. Poland and the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – announced in March that they would leave the treaty, saying the security situation in the region has “fundamentally deteriorated”.

Finland followed the following month to “prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way”.

All share a border with Russia or with Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.

“There is a bunch of countries that are already going out from the Ottawa agreement on using these kinds of landmines. It’s normal,” said Victoria Vdovychenko, a defence expert at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics.

“It means that these countries are prioritising their national security and they are prioritising that it can be used in the context of potential warfare,” she told Al Jazeera.

Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert at the think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera these countries being a party to the Ottawa Treaty was a way of proving their political credentials to join Western clubs, such as NATO and the European Union.

“They had to sign up to prove membership of the club,” he said, “and so were reluctant to do anything which didn’t have them as the most forward-leading, liberal, progressive members of that club.”

“Anybody that wanted to sign up to doing what seemed right in the eyes of the global liberal elite would have done things like this whether or not it made long-term strategic sense,” Giles said, “persuaded, of course, by NATO that they wanted to focus on expeditionary operations and Russia would never be a problem again.”

The timing of the Eastern European countries’ departure is related to threat assessments shared by NATO countries.

NATO’s Bauer said in January 2024 that NATO needed to prepare for war with Russia and NATO members were living in “an era in which anything can happen at any time, an era in which we need to expect the unexpected, an era in which we need to focus on effectiveness”.

At the same time, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said a Russian attack on Germany was no longer ruled out. “Our experts expect a period of five to eight years in which this could be possible,” he said.

Since then, other eastern NATO members have said Russia poses a threat to their security.

Another element to the timing is the intensified Russian use of combined drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, particularly Kharkiv, Kyiv and Odesa.

That implied that Russia may be preparing to drive the ground war towards parts of Ukraine that are currently far from the front lines, Vdovychenko said.

“We are not talking about the front lines. We are talking actually about [rear] areas and even the residential areas of Ukraine, so not so-called red line cities or communities but actually yellow cities and communities, which means slightly farther from the red line zones,” she told Al Jazeera.

In recent months, Ukraine has also faced several renewed Russian attempts to open new fronts in its northern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy.

Canada will rescind a tax on big US technology firms, just hours before first payments were due, to allow trade talks between the two countries to restart.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump called off negotiations over a trade deal, describing the tax as a “blatant attack”, and threatened higher tariffs on imports from Canada.

In response, Canada has said it will introduce legislation to remove the tax and would halt the collection of payments, which were due on Monday.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News on Monday that negotiations between the North American neighbours would “absolutely” restart as a result.

The digital services tax (DST) would have meant US tech giants including Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple faced a 3% charge on Canadian revenue above $20m.

Canada’s finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, issued a statement saying the tax would be rescinded.

“The DST was announced in 2020 to address the fact that many large technology companies operating in Canada may not otherwise pay tax on revenues generated from Canadians,” it said.

“Canada’s preference has always been a multilateral agreement related to digital services taxation,” the statement added.

Many countries, including the UK, are changing how they tax large multinational technology firms, which have millions of customers and advertisers around the world, but high corporation tax bills due to the way their businesses are structured.

It was estimated that Canada’s tax would cost the tech giants more than C$2bn ($1.5bn; £1.06bn) in its first year as the tax was being applied retroactively to January 2022.

Last year’s federal budget estimated the tax would bring in C$5.9bn in total over the next five years.

Trump, who has forged a close relationship with tech company owners in his second term in office, has pushed back against such taxes.

He described Canada’s policy as “egregious” adding “economically we have such power over Canada”.

In a social media post on Monday, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thanked Canada for removing the tax, saying it would have “been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America”.

Three quarters of Canada’s goods exports go to the US, worth more than $400bn a year, while Canada takes just 17% of US production.

In a statement, the American Chamber of Commerce hailed the move to rescind the tax.

“This is a constructive decision that allows both countries to focus on strengthening their economic partnership,” said chamber president Rick Tachuk.

Canada’s climbdown comes after a rollercoaster few months for US-Canada relations.

Shortly after taking office Trump threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs and even to annex the US’s northern neighbour.

The antagonism helped propel Canada’s Liberal Party, led by former central banker, Mark Carney, back into power.

Since then there appeared to be a rapprochement, with Canada and the US saying they aimed to agree new trade terms by 21 July.

Canada’s digital services tax has been a long-time irritant for the US dating back to the previous Biden administration.

Ottawa had received repeated warnings that it could undermine the trading relationship and lead to retaliation.

But earlier this month, Champagne said Canada would move ahead with collecting the scheduled payments from big tech companies regardless of ongoing talks with the US.

“It is hard to overstate how badly the government managed the DST issue over the past five years,” Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively on the policy, wrote on his blog on Monday.

He pointed to, among other factors, making the tax retroactive and downplaying bipartisan concerns from US lawmakers.

There has been Canadian opposition to the tax as well, with business groups warning costs will be passed along to consumers.

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