France could recognise Palestinian state ‘in June’: Macron
France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, president Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he added.
He said:
I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn, which many of them do not do.”
Such recognition would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist – which is the case with Iran – and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the 7 October 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonising Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
More on that story in a moment, but first here are some other Middle East related developments:
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At least 23 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in northern Gaza, as reports emerged that the Israeli military is preparing to seize the entire city of Rafah as part of a newly announced security corridor. Medics at al-Ahli hospital said that the bombing on Wednesday of a four-storey building in the Gaza City suburb of Shijaiyah had killed at least eight women and children, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors into the evening. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a senior Hamas militant.
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The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has submitted a legal filing saying it should be removed from the UK government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups. Hamas is arguing that it is not a terrorist group but “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project”.
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Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a visit by US President Donald Trump, which would be the first foreign trip of his second term. Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the state department, and the two called on the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces to resume peace talks.
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Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Key events
The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has said Israel enjoys a divine right to the West Bank, as ambassador to Israel.
Huckabee will head to the US embassy in Jerusalem as Israel seizes large areas of Gaza, part of a renewed military campaign that has had president Donald Trump’s blessing, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Senate voted largely on party lines to confirm Trump’s nominee, with one Democrat, John Fetterman, supporting him.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar quickly spoke with Huckabee by telephone to congratulate him, calling him a “true friend of the Jewish state”, according to AFP
Far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is a West Bank settler, on X voiced hope for working with Huckabee on “advancing our shared values and common goals.”
Trump told reporters after the vote that Huckabee is “going to be a great ambassador to Israel”.
“He’s going to bring home the bacon,” Trump said, using a popular idiom for achieving success, before clarifying that bacon, which is not kosher in Judaism, “isn’t too big” in Israel.
Huckabee, a Baptist minister who served as governor of Arkansas and ran for president in 2008, has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel, backing calls to annex the West Bank. On a 2017 visit to a settlement in the West Bank, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 war, Huckabee said there was “no such thing as an occupation.”
He later said that Israel “has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” using a biblical term for the West Bank.
According to AFP, when he was asked about his remarks at his confirmation hearing by Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen, Huckabee denied that he was backing the expulsion of Palestinians. “I’ve never, never indicated that that was a part of that. I simply referenced the biblical mandate that goes all the way back to the time of Abraham, 3,500 years ago,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee in his hearing repeatedly said that he would defer to Trump and not set policy based on his personal beliefs.
Hezbollah ready for talks with Lebanese government on defence strategy, MP says
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said on Thursday the Iran-aligned group is ready to enter talks with the Lebanese government on a national defence strategy, with the focus on ensuring the removal of Israeli troops from Lebanon’s territory.
US-backed president Joseph Aoun, who pledged to establish a state monopoly on the control of arms when he took office in January, is to start talks with Hezbollah about its weapons arsenal, three Lebanese political sources told Reuters.
One of the world’s most heavily armed non-state groups, Hezbollah emerged severely weakened from the 2024 conflict with Israel, which was triggered by the Gaza war.
The group suffered heavy losses including the killing of its top leaders and thousands of its fighters. The blow was compounded, writes Reuters, when its ally Bashar al-Assad was toppled from power in Syria, cutting the group’s supply lines from Iran.
In a televised speech, Fadlallah said:
We have expressed our readiness for dialogue to find a defence strategy for Lebanon.”
He said any meaningful discussions should focus on confronting Israeli “aggressions” and removing Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
“We are in constant contact with president Aoun. When he calls for dialogue and sets national foundations for it, we are ready,” he added.
Israel, which sent ground troops into south Lebanon during the war, has largely withdrawn, although it decided in February not to leave five hilltop positions. It said it intended eventually to hand them over to Lebanese troops once it was sure the security situation allowed.
A senior Hezbollah official told Reuters on Wednesday that the group was prepared to engage in talks with Aoun about its weapons if Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and halted its military strikes.
Hezbollah’s arsenal, estimated before the latest conflict with Israel at more than 150,000 missiles and rockets according to the CIA World Factbook, has long been a contentious issue. The group argues that its weapons are necessary to deter Israeli threats.
Hezbollah has consistently rejected calls from its critics in Lebanon to disarm, describing its armament as essential for the defence of the country.
Fadlallah also denied reports suggesting that the group is using Beirut port, which witnessed one of the strongest non-nuclear explosions ever in 2020, to smuggle weapons.
Iran says external threats could lead to deterrent measures against IAEA
Iran may suspend cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog if external threats continue, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said on Thursday, after US president Donald Trump again warned of military force if Tehran does not agree to a nuclear deal.
Iranian and American diplomats will visit Oman on Saturday to start dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear programme, with Trump saying he would have the final word on whether talks are reaching a breakdown, which would put Iran in “great danger”, reports Reuters.
“Continued external threats and putting Iran under the conditions of a military attack could lead to deterrent measures like the expulsion of IAEA inspectors and ceasing cooperation with it,” Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published on X, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“Transferring enriched material to safe and undisclosed locations in Iran could also be on the agenda,” he wrote.
While the US insists that the talks with Tehran will be direct, Iran has stressed the negotiations will be indirect with intermediation from Oman’s foreign minister.
During his first 2017-2021 term, Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reimposed sweeping US sanctions.
Since then, Iran has far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment, according to the IAEA.
Western powers accuse Iran of having a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy programme. Tehran says its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes.
Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires today:
Turkish and Israeli officials began talks on Wednesday aimed at preventing unwanted incidents in Syria, where militaries of the two regional powers are active, Turkish ministry sources said on Thursday.
According to Reuters, the sources said the technical talks, in Azerbaijan, marked the beginning of efforts to set up a channel to avoid potential clashes or misunderstandings over military operations in the region.
“Efforts will continue to establish this mechanism,” one of the sources said, without providing further details on the scope or timeline of the talks.
The initiative comes a week after Israel stepped up airstrikes on Syria, which it described as a warning to the newly formed government in Damascus. It has also accused Turkey of attempting to turn Syria into a Turkish protectorate.
Reuters reported last week that Turkish military teams had inspected at least three airbases in Syria where they could deploy forces as part of a planned joint defence pact with Damascus – before Israel hit the sites with airstrikes.
Turkey and Israel – which have traded diplomatic barbs since Israel’s attacks began on Gaza in 2023 – each said last week they did not seek confrontation in Syria, which both border.
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan confirmed on Wednesday that technical talks were taking place, emphasising that such mechanisms were necessary to prevent misunderstandings between the two regional powers’ forces. The talks were similar to deconfliction mechanisms Turkey has with the US and Russia, he said on broadcaster CNN Turk.
Bethan McKernan
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu this week travelled to the US – Israel’s most important political and military ally – to meet Donald Trump, who has said he wants the war to end. He has suggested expelling Gaza’s population either voluntarily or by force.
While Israel has embraced Trump’s vision, the rest of the Middle East and the international community have refused to entertain the idea.
The Israeli air force (IAF) is to dismiss active reservists who signed a letter demanding prioritisation of hostages in Gaza over continuing the fight against Hamas, reports the Times of Israel.
According to the publication, the letter, with about 1,000 signatories, was signed by “air personnel in reserves and retirement”. It says, that according to the military, the vast majority of those who signed the letter are retirees and not active reservists.
The “dozens” of signatories who are active reservists will be dismissed from duty by IAF chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, reports the Times of Israel.
The publication reports the military as saying it cannot accept a situation in which reservists “use the Israeli air force brand” to protest political matters, and that “it is inconceivable for someone to do a shift at [the IAF] command centre and head out afterward and express mistrust in the task”.
Gaza City strike kills at least 23 as Israel reportedly plans to seize Rafah
Bethan McKernan
At least 23 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in northern Gaza, as reports emerged that the Israeli military is preparing to seize the entire city of Rafah as part of a newly announced security corridor.
Medics at al-Ahli hospital said that the bombing on Wednesday of a four-storey building in the Gaza City suburb of Shijaiyah had killed at least eight women and children, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors into the evening. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a senior Hamas militant.
According to the UN, nearly 400,000 people have been forced to leave their homes or shelters since Israel decided to abandon a two-month-old ceasefire with Hamas, cutting off aid, food and fuel on 2 March and resuming large-scale bombing two weeks later. A total of 1,500 people have been killed and 3,700 injured since then, according to the local health ministry.
Earlier this week, Hamas fired its strongest volley of rockets into Israel since the ceasefire collapsed, aiming 10 projectiles toward the southern city of Ashkelon that injured 12 people.
Israeli officials say the renewed military campaign is aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued sweeping evacuation orders amid a vow from the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to “divide up” and seize large swathes of the territory.
On Wednesday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the IDF was preparing to incorporate the entire city of Rafah and its surroundings – one-fifth of the entire Gaza Strip – into the new “Morag corridor” between Rafah and Khan Younis. Such a move would cut off Gaza from Egypt and turn the territory into an enclave completely surrounded by Israel.
Hamas calls on UK government to remove it from list of banned terrorist groups
Haroon Siddique
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has submitted a legal filing saying it should be removed from the UK government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups.
Hamas, which carried out the 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people, mainly civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken hostage, is arguing that it is not a terrorist group but “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project”.
The assertion is contained in a witness statement by Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of international relations for Hamas and the applicant for the claim to the UK home secretary, Yvette Cooper, published by Drop Site News.
His statement continued:
The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century.
Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people.”
The Home Office said it did not comment on proscription matters.
Hamas’s military wing, Hamas IDQ, was proscribed by the UK in 2001. In 2021, its political wing which runs Gaza, was also proscribed, with the UK government describing the distinction between the two wings as “artificial” and labelling Hamas “a complex but single terrorist organisation”.
If an organisation is proscribed as a terrorist organisation it is a criminal offence to, among other things, belong to it, show or express support for it, and wear clothing or carry or display articles in public which would arouse reasonable suspicion that the individual is a member or supporter of it.
Israeli minister says France plan to recognise Palestinian state is ‘prize for terror’
Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar denounced French president Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that Paris could recognise a Palestinian state by June (see 08.54am BST), saying it would be a “prize” for terrorism, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“A unilateral recognition of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a prize for terror and a boost for Hamas,” Saar said on X late on Wednesday.
He added:
These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer – but the opposite: they only push them further away.”
Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a visit by US president Donald Trump, which would be the first foreign trip of his second term.
Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the state department, and the two called on the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces to resume peace talks, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The diplomats “agreed that the Sudanese armed forces and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) must return to peace talks, protect civilians, open humanitarian corridors, and return to civilian governance,” the state department statement said after the meeting.
The call came after the Sudanese army said last week it had retaken full control of the capital Khartoum after weeks of attacks by the paramilitaries.
The RSF has been battling the army since April 2023, and the war has created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst hunger and displacement crises. More than 12 million people have been uprooted, tens of thousands killed, and a UN-backed assessment declared famine in parts of the country.
The US under Joe Biden and the Saudis have previously sponsored several unsuccessful rounds of negotiations to end the bloody conflict.
Suspected US strikes overnight in Yemen kill at least three people, Houthi rebels say
Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone, reports the Associated Press (AP).
The 13 killed in strikes on Tuesday night around Hodeida’s al-Hawak district made it one of the deadliest single incidents in the ongoing US campaign, the rebels said.
Another 15 people were injured. The Houthis described the majority of those killed as women and children, without providing a breakdown.
The area is home to the city’s airport, which the rebels have used in the past to target shipping in the Red Sea.
Since its start, the intense campaign of US airstrikes targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Middle Eastern waters – related to the Israel-Hamas war – has killed more than 100 people, according to casualty figures released on Wednesday by the Houthis.
Footage aired by the rebels’ al-Masirah satellite news channel showed chaotic scenes of people carrying injured people to waiting ambulances and rescuers searching by the light of their mobile phones. According to the AP, the target appeared in the footage to be a home in a residential neighbourhood, likely part of a wider campaign launched by the Trump administration to kill rebel leaders.
Early on Thursday morning, the Houthis said airstrikes targeting the al-Sabeen district in the south of the rebel-held capital, Sana’a, killed at least three people. The area is home to al-Sabeen Square and a major mosque that has been a gathering point for months for Houthi demonstrations against the war in the Gaza Strip. Other strikes hit the capital as well.
More airstrikes hit Kamaran Island in the Red Sea, the Houthis said.
The US military’s Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US military operations, did not acknowledge the strikes. That follows a pattern for the command, which now has authorisation from the White House to conduct strikes at will in the campaign that began 15 March.
The US military also has not been providing any information on targets hit. The White House has said more than 200 strikes have been conducted so far, reports the AP.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking in the Oval Office on Monday during a visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warned that the US was “not going to relent” in its campaign targeting the Houthis.
France’s recognition of Palestinian statehood “would be a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two state solution,” Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Nearly 150 countries recognise a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition, followed by Slovenia in June, in moves partly fuelled by condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza that followed the 7 October attacks.
But France would be the most significant European power to recognise a Palestinian state, a move the US has also long resisted, reports AFP.
On a visit to Egypt this week, French president Emmanuel Macron held summit talks with president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II and also made clear he was strongly opposed to any displacement or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
US president Donald Trump has suggested turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” with the Palestinians moving elsewhere – a suggestion that has sparked bitter condemnation.
Macron responded that the Gaza Strip was “not a real estate project”. He said:
Simplistic thinking sometimes doesn’t help.
Perhaps it would be wonderful if one day it developed in an extraordinary way, but our responsibility is to save lives, restore peace, and negotiate a political framework.
If all this doesn’t exist, no one will invest. Today, no one will invest a cent in Gaza.”
France could recognise Palestinian state ‘in June’: Macron
France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, president Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he added.
He said:
I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn, which many of them do not do.”
Such recognition would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist – which is the case with Iran – and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the 7 October 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonising Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
More on that story in a moment, but first here are some other Middle East related developments:
-
At least 23 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in northern Gaza, as reports emerged that the Israeli military is preparing to seize the entire city of Rafah as part of a newly announced security corridor. Medics at al-Ahli hospital said that the bombing on Wednesday of a four-storey building in the Gaza City suburb of Shijaiyah had killed at least eight women and children, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors into the evening. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a senior Hamas militant.
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The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has submitted a legal filing saying it should be removed from the UK government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups. Hamas is arguing that it is not a terrorist group but “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project”.
-
Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a visit by US President Donald Trump, which would be the first foreign trip of his second term. Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the state department, and the two called on the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces to resume peace talks.
-
Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
