Climate activists protesting against the new fields. Consultations on Jackdaw and Rosebank closed last month. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Ministers are poised to approve a controversial new gasfield in the North Sea later this month, according to government sources, and are also likely to approve a major oilfield later this year.
Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, will give her recommendation to approve the Jackdaw field off the coast of Aberdeen as soon as next week, according to people close to the decision, with the formal approval following as soon as a week after.
She is also likely to approve the Rosebank mega-oilfield in the coming months, though officials are looking for ways to make sure the proceeds from that project go towards clean energy projects, as happens in Norway.
Both projects have become emblematic of the government’s commitment to the North Sea, with green campaigners calling for them to be abandoned while the US president, Donald Trump, urges the prime minister to open them up.
A spokesperson for the energy department said: “The North Sea remains a vital national asset, supporting jobs, growth and the UK’s energy security. We are clear that oil and gas will continue to play an important role in our energy system for decades to come, alongside transitioning to clean power to protect jobs and tackle the climate crisis.”
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsNigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
dizzy: Nigel Farage and his Reform 2025 limited company pretending to be a political party are in the news today – their conference is on and there are concerns over dodgy donations yet again. Andy Burnham could take his place in this image … “We ignore the many examples of extreme weather made worse by climate change …”
Emma Kamio, the mother of Leona ‘Ellie’ Kamio, said the four convicted activists were trying to save Palestinian children’s lives. Photograph: Jeff Moore/PA
Barrister representing four who smashed drones at Israeli arms factory says ruling of ‘terrorist connection’ led to heftier sentences
Palestine Action activists who were the first defendants convicted of property damage whose offending was deemed to have a “terrorist connection” have launched an appeal of “fundamental constitutional importance” against the judge’s finding.
Charlotte Head, 30, Leona Kamio, 31, Fatema Rajwani, 22, and Samuel Corner, 24, received lengthy sentences in June for smashing up drones and other equipment at Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems’ factory in Filton, Bristol, in 2024.
Mr Justice Johnson’s decision to sentence them as terrorists after a jury found them guilty of non-terrorism offences – they were committed before Palestine Action was banned – has been criticised by civil liberties groups, including Liberty and Amnesty International.
Simon Natas, of ITN solicitors, who is representing the four prisoners, said serious property damage, which can constitute terrorism, was not clearly defined and could catch a wide range of offending, making the appeal of “fundamental constitutional importance”.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
At least ten military flights have left RAF bases for Israel since Andy Burnham became prime minister, despite Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and escalating attacks in the West Bank, flight data shows.
…
Eight flights by Stratotanker refuelling aircraft departed for Israel from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk between 24 July – four days after Burnham entered No 10 – and 26 August.
On 11 August, a Boeing C-17 transport plane operated by the US military left RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk for Israel.
Before becoming prime minister, he said he was “sorry” for the way Labour had handled Israel’s attacks on Gaza, but refused to acknowledge that it is a genocide. He has so far not departed from the party’s policy of allowing arms exports to and military support for the apartheid state.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
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The Israeli and German flags are shown in front of the German parliament building in Berlin. [Photo via Getty Images]
Germany approved nearly €800 million ($930 million) worth of military equipment exports to Israel in the first half of this year amid its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, local media reported Wednesday.
The Economy and Energy Ministry disclosed the figure in its response to a parliamentary inquiry by the opposition Left Party, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.
Export licenses issued between January and June exceeded four times the total value approved for Israel throughout 2025, the report said.
The surge came after Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government lifted partial restrictions on arms exports to Israel on Nov. 24, 2025.
Merz had suspended exports of weapons that could be used in Gaza on Aug. 8 after Israel decided to expand its military operations in the enclave. The restrictions remained in force for only about three and a half months.
Large-scale defense projects accounted for most of the sharp increase in approvals.
Of the €735.8 million in export permits approved during the second quarter, about 67% was linked to a naval project.
The report highlighted the INS Drakon, an air-independent propulsion submarine built by German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), which recently left a shipyard in Kiel for Israel.
A further 21% of the licenses covered joint projects involving German and Israeli companies that were deemed to serve the strategic interests of the German armed forces, or Bundeswehr.
The remaining approvals covered military equipment including small arms, ammunition, explosives and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed at least 73,470 Palestinians and injured 174,540 others since October 2023, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. Most of the victims have been women and children, while around 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been destroyed.
Lea Reisner, the Left Party’s spokesperson for international affairs, accused the German government of applying “unlimited double standards.”
She criticized Berlin for condemning statements targeting Gaza’s civilian population by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir while continuing to expand military support for the country.
The Left Party renewed its call for an immediate and comprehensive halt to German arms exports to Israel.
Germany approved €327 million in arms and military equipment exports to Israel in 2023, €161.1 million in 2024 and €260 million in 2025. Its arms sales to Israel had increased tenfold in 2023 from the previous year.
Berlin has long been one of Israel’s strongest supporters, with German leaders frequently defending that support as a historical responsibility arising from Germany’s Nazi past and the Holocaust.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says he wishes someone would lock him up, small Orca speaks bluntly.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at White House in Washington DC, United States on July 28, 2026. [Ma’ayan Toaf (GPO)/Handout – Anadolu Agency]
Israel is seeking backing from President Donald Trump to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, as Israeli ministers speak openly about expelling the indigenous, non-Jewish communities from the territories occupied by the apartheid state. Defence Minister Israel Katz said yesterday that the “migration” of more than two million Palestinians out of the territory remains Israel’s preferred outcome.
Katz made the comments at a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
At the conference, Katz insisted, “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” and said Israel was “organised and prepared to get them out – by sea, by air, by every way possible.” He argued that Washington’s backing was essential, since “every country willing to take them in wants American backing.”
According to Katz, Trump has “not cancelled” the proposal but has “frozen” it while his administration searches for countries willing to accept Palestinian refugees. Katz also claimed, without offering evidence, that 80 per cent of Gaza’s population wants to leave the territory and is being prevented from doing so by Hamas.
The ceasefire agreement he later sponsored, which took effect in October 2025, states explicitly that “no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so.” Egypt, which borders Gaza, has continued to reject any plan involving the removal of the territory’s population.
Katz’s remarks, made at a conference days before Israel’s general election, drew criticism in Washington. US Senator Chris Van Hollen said the admission confirmed what critics had long suspected: that Israel’s underlying objective in Gaza is the removal of its population rather than its security.
Forcibly transferring a civilian population out of occupied territory is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has already issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Katz’s predecessor, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have each concluded in recent years that Israel’s rule over Palestinians, from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, amounts to apartheid, a designation successive Israeli governments have rejected.
Many view Katz’s comments less as a new position than a public confirmation of Israel’s ultimate goal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a settler conference on 26 November 2024 that it was “possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years” through what he called encouraging “voluntary emigration”, and suggested the same approach could later be applied to the three million Palestinians of the occupied West Bank.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Palestinians to be “encouraged” to leave Gaza so that Israelis can resettle it, telling a Jerusalem conference on 28 January 2024, “We must encourage them to leave.”
The rhetoric coincides with Israeli public opinion on the question. A survey published by Haaretz found that 82 per cent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported expelling Gaza’s population. The poll surveyed Jewish Israelis specifically and did not include Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who make up around a fifth of the population.
Writing in her regular Haaretz column, “Otherwise Occupied”, veteran journalist Amira Hass argued this week that the renewed talk in Washington and Jerusalem of a “two-state solution” functions, in practice, as a smokescreen. While officials and commentators debate Palestinian statehood, she wrote, the Israeli state is doing the practical and political groundwork for expelling Palestinians rather than for negotiating with them. Katz’s comments, made in the days after her column was published, appeared to bear that argument out.
Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and B’Tselem, have for more than a year described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and have warned that any plan to depopulate the Strip would compound, rather than resolve, the suffering of its population. With Katz now confirming that removal remains official policy pending a green light from Washington, the question facing Palestinians in Gaza is no longer whether such a plan exists, but whether the US president will let it proceed.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says he wishes someone would lock him up, small Orca speaks bluntly.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
