Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday that he treats leaders of other countries with respect after his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu attacked him over his decision to recognize a Palestinian state.
“I don’t take these things personally, I engage with people diplomatically. He has had similar things to say about other leaders,” Albanese said during a media briefing.
Netanyahu’s personal attack on Albanese has further strained relations between the two countries. Ties soured after Australia decided last week to conditionally recogniz a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
ISRAEL has begun its full invasion of Gaza City as it aims to completely wipe out Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Wednesday.
IDF troops now control the outskirts of the besieged city, one of the terror group’s last strongholds, Israeli military spokesperson Brig Gen Effie Defrin said.
Israeli troops repelled Hamas’s large-scale attack on a military position in southern Gaza, eliminating at least ten terrorist infiltrators. Around 20 terrorists emerged from nearby underground tunnels in a coordinated attempt to kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers, news reports say.
“Assessments indicate the terrorists emerged simultaneously from several adjacent shafts,” the Israel National News/Arutz Sheva reported. “According to the military, the attackers likely intended to abduct soldiers, as they were carrying stretchers during the assault. However, no kidnapping attempt was successful.”
Two IDF soldiers were reportedly killed in the sneak terror attack. “Three Kfir soldiers were wounded in the unusual incident — one seriously and two moderately,” the news website added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
“If we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon,” Netanyahu said, as quoted in Times of Israel.
The remark was part of a heated defense against claims that Israeli forces are deliberately starving the Gaza Strip into submission, an accusation Tel Aviv has dismissed as outright false.
BERLIN — The top diplomats of Britain, France, and Germany threatened to reimpose sanctions on Iran as an end-of-the-month deadline nears for the country to resume negotiations with the West over its nuclear program and cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
The three countries, known as the E3, wrote in a letter to the United Nations dated Friday that they were willing to trigger a process known as the “snapback” mechanism, which allows one of the Western parties to reimpose U.N. sanctions, if Tehran doesn’t comply with its requirements.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Nöel Barrot posted the letter Wednesday to X. He co-signed it along with top diplomats from Germany and the United Kingdom.
Four Al Jazeera journalists including prominent reporter Anas al-Sharif have been killed in a targeted Israeli strike near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
Sharif and another correspondent, Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal were in a tent for journalists at the hospital’s main gate when it was struck, the broadcaster said.
Two other freelance journalists were killed: Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed al-Khaldi.
The “targeted assassination” on Sunday was “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, the news outlet said. The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was appalled by the attack.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted Sharif, alleging he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.
The world was outraged at the sight of Israeli hostages, held in Gaza, showing evident signs of starvation. One American network, CBS, persisted in refusing to show these images to the American public when it had the opportunity to immediately do so.
One legacy network that did step up is ABC. Here’s the World News Tonight report in its entirety (click “expand” to view full transcript):
ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT
8/4/25
6:44 PM
DAVID MUIR: Overseas tonight, the haunting images of the hostages still being held by Hamas, appearing desperate and frail. The family of one hostage tonight describing him as a living skeleton. Tonight, what Israel is now threatening to do to get the hostages out. Here’s Ian Pannell.
IAN PANNELL: Tonight, the haunting images shocking Israel, prompting international outcry. Emaciated hostages in Gaza on the brink of starvation. The propaganda videos coming after weeks of terrible images of children in Gaza dying of malnutrition. Now, sources telling ABC News Prime Minister Netanyahu threatening to expand the military operation to occupy all of Gaza and get the hostages home. 24-year-old Evyatar David, seen in that disturbing video. His family saying he’s become a living skeleton, buried alive in a Hamas tunnel. We spoke with his brother, Ilay.
What impact has the release of the video had on the family?
New US plan for Gaza starting to emerge despite sanitised tour for Trump peace envoy | World News– news.sky.com Source Link Excerpt:
We’ve seen this many times before.
Highly anticipated talks and meetings with America, Israel’s closest ally and the one country with the power to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course, then nothing changes.
We need to give Steve Witkoff time to report his assessments back to the White House before we can give a complete verdict on this visit but what we’ve seen and heard so far has offered little hope.
The pressure on Donald Trump to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gazais mounting after a small but vocal contingent of his base expressed outrage.
Even one of his biggest supporters in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Green, has referred to it as a genocide.
Hamas said on Sunday (August 3) it was prepared to coordinate with the Red Cross to deliver aid to hostages it holds in Gaza, if Israel meets certain conditions, after a video it released showing an emaciated captive drew sharp criticism from Western powers. Hamas said it would allow the ICRC access to the hostages but only if “humanitarian corridors” for food and aid were opened “across all areas of the Gaza Strip”. FRANCE 24’s Douglas Herbert gives us his analysis about the situation.
Lebanese journalist Khoder Taleb, publisher of the Jareeda website, and former advisor to the Lebanese Prime Minister discussed talk of a peace agreement with Israel during a July 24, 2025 broadcast on Al-Manar TV (Hizbullah–Lebanon). He asked what kind of peace can be made with “criminals” and “child killers.” Taleb said that the current situation is worse than the Nazi Holocaust in Germany, adding: “I wish the Nazis would have burned all those Jews.” He cited a hadith describing Muslims fighting Jews on Judgment Day and said that Jerusalem and Palestine will be liberated. Also appearing on the broadcast was British-Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan.
Khoder Taleb: “What peace are we talking about? Peace with criminals? Peace with killers? With child killers? I say this for history’s sake, this is worse than the Nazi Holocaust in Germany. I say this on live TV: I wish the Nazis would have burned all those Jews.
[…]
“On [Judgement] Day, the trees and the rocks will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ This is what we believe in. This is our historical imperative, as Muslims at least. Jerusalem will be liberated. Palestine will be liberated. If not today, then tomorrow. That’s fine, but we must not surrender.”
Al-Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City has been left in ruins after a 45-day Israeli military operation that flattened entire residential blocks. Residents of the area in northern Gaza described it as the most destructive incursion yet. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reports amidst the wreckage.
Hamas has reaffirmed that it will not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established, as the group released its second video in two days of an Israeli hostage.
Responding to one of the key Israeli demands to end the war in Gaza, Hamas – which has dominated the territory since 2007 – said it could not yield its right to “armed resistance” unless an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” is established.
Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel aimed at securing a 60-day ceasefire in the Gaza war and deal for the release of hostages ended last week in deadlock.
On Saturday, Hamas released a second video of hostage Evyatar David. In it, David is skeletally thin and is shown digging a hole, which, he says in the video, is for his own grave.
Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza have led to severe shortages of food and other essentials, stoking international demands for a ceasefire. UN-backed food security experts said this week that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is now playing out in Gaza.
Yemen is witnessing a sharp escalation in political violence amid a significant drop in fuel imports to Houthi-controlled territories, raising concerns over humanitarian fallout and regional stability.
According to recent reports, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government has suspended approvals for fuel shipments destined for the port of Hudaydah, a key entry point for supplies into northern Yemen.
As of late June, over 20 fuel tankers carrying approximately 500,000 metric tons of fuel were stranded in the Coalition Holding Area in the Red Sea, awaiting clearance.
The move follows allegations that the Houthis misappropriated 45 billion Yemeni rials from a special account at the Central Bank’s Hudaydah branch, diverting funds to support their military operations.
Gilbert Achcar, author of “Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective”, speaks to FRANCE 24 about the slow shift of public opinion in the United States and Europe against Israel’s devastating military campaign in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Most mainstream media outlets have made it clear in recent years where their loyalties lie regarding the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
But while rational observers can disagree about how both sides have reacted in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, the use of misleading photos to manipulate the narrative should never be deemed acceptable.
That’s what the New York Times essentially admitted it did with a photo originally presented as a severely malnourished child in Gaza.
A little legwork by a watchdog group called Honest Reporting helped expose the misrepresentation, as Breitbart reported:
The New York Times admitted Tuesday that an emaciated Palestinian child it featured on the the front page suffered from “pre-existing health problems” that it had presented, inaccurately, as the result of starvation.
There is an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza — the result of poor food distribution, not low supply, as Hamas and armed gangs loot aid convoys. Hamas also refuses to release Israeli hostages and end the war.
As Breitbart News reported, the child, photographed by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini of the Turkish Anadolu agency, had a muscular disorder. Few outlets that ran the photo disclosed that fact to readers.
THIS shocking footage released by the Israeli military appears to show gun-toting Hamas militants looting an aid truck in Gaza.
The video clip shared on social media by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) depicts armed gunmen on top of an aid truck as civilians stand around waiting for food.
The Trump administration is set to boycott a high-level summit on Palestinian statehood, co-sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia, scheduled to take place at United Nations headquarters in New York City on Monday.
The event was originally planned for June with French President Emmanuel Macron in attendance but was postponed due to the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Representatives from more than 50 nations are expected to speak at the High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine, with dozens of additional countries listed as participants.
Reuters reported last month that a U.S. diplomatic cable had urged governments to skip the “counterproductive” U.N. event, which Washington described as an obstacle to efforts to end the war in Gaza.
“The fact that the French and the Saudis could not be dissuaded from manufacturing this latest stumbling block to peace is a finger in the eye to President Trump,” Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital.
France and Saudi Arabia will co-chair a UN conference in New York from July 28-30 to revive stalled two-state solution talks. Days ahead, French President Macron said Paris would formally recognise Palestine in September, boosting momentum for renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state — a notably gentler response than the sharp condemnation from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top Republicans, who blasted the move a day earlier.
“What he says doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”
Macron took to X on Thursday to announce his intention for France to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly next September.
Macron took to X on Thursday to announce France’s formal recognition of the Palestinian State at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that his government is considering “alternative options” to ceasefire talks with Hamas after Israel and the US recalled their negotiating teams from Qatar, throwing the future of the negotiations into further uncertainty.
Netanyahu’s statement came as a Hamas official said negotiations were expected to resume next week and portrayed the recall of the Israeli and American delegations as a pressure tactic.
The teams left Doha on Thursday as President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Hamas’ latest response to proposals for a deal showed a “lack of desire” to reach a truce.
Witkoff said the US would look at “alternative options,” without elaborating.
In a statement released by his office, Netanyahu echoed Witkoff, saying, “Hamas is the obstacle to a hostage release deal.”
“Together with our US allies, we are now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home, end Hamas’s terror rule, and secure lasting peace for Israel and our region,” he said.
France will officially recognise a Palestinian state in September, President Emmanuel Macron has said, which will make it the first G7 nation to do so.
In a post on X, Macron said the formal announcement would be made at a session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
“The urgent need today is for the war in Gaza to end and for the civilian population to be rescued. Peace is possible. We need an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” he wrote.
Palestinian officials welcomed Macron’s decision, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move “rewards terror” following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack in Israel.
The US “strongly rejects” Macron’s announcement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, calling the decision “reckless”.
The G7 is a group of major industrialised nations, which alongside France includes the US, the UK, Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan.
In his Thursday post on X, Macron wrote: “True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine.
The United States recalled its diplomatic team from Qatar on Thursday, ending two weeks of intense ceasefire negotiations with Hamas after the terror group rejected the Trump administration’s latest offer.
“We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza,” special envoy Steve Witkoff said in a statement. “While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith.”
The Trump administration is now considering “alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.” Witkoff accused Hamas of acting in a “selfish way” and stressed that he and his team remain “resolute in seeking an end to this conflict and a permanent peace in Gaza.”
The talks, which Egypt and Qatar have mediated, reportedly stretched into the early morning hours on Thursday but failed to adequately address “significant gaps,” according to Israeli officials. Hamas reportedly desires guarantees that Israel will not resume its war effort even without a final deal within a 60-day ceasefire period. The terror group also wants Israel to release 200 prisoners serving life sentences and around 2,000 others who were arrested since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, the Jerusalem Postreported.
“The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now,” Sir Keir Starmer said in a joint statement with German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French president Emmanuel Macron.
The three leaders held discussions on the crisis in Gaza amid growing fears of mass starvation in the area.
In their statement they said: “The most basic needs of the civilian population, including access to water and food, must be met without any further delay,”
“Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.
“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation. Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law.”
The leaders of Britain, France and Germany will hold an emergency call Friday about the growing hunger crisis in Gaza, after French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country will become the first major Western power to recognize a Palestinian state.
The surprise announcement exposes differences among the European allies, known as the E3, over how to ease the worsening humanitarian crisis and end the Israel-Hamas war.
All three support a Palestinian state in principle, but Germany said it has no immediate plans to follow France’s step, which Macron plans to formalize at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Britain has not followed suit either, though Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday came closer than ever before, saying “statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people.”
Starmer said he, Macron and Chancellor Friedrich Merz will speak Friday about “what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need while pulling together all the steps necessary to build a lasting peace.”
French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as a state at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
“Consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine,” he wrote in a statement on X.
“The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and to bring relief to the civilian population,” Macron continued. “Peace is possible. We need an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and massive humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. We must also ensure the demilitarization of Hamas, secure and rebuild Gaza. And finally, we must build the State of Palestine, guarantee its viability, and ensure that by accepting its demilitarization and fully recognizing Israel, it contributes to the security of all in the region.”
