Parched land at Cueva de Las Niñas reservoir in the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, in March 2025. Photograph: Borja Suárez/Reuters
Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications
Vast swathes of Europe’s water reserves are drying up, a new analysis using two decades of satellite data reveals, with freshwater storage shrinking across southern and central Europe, from Spain and Italy to Poland and parts of the UK.
Scientists at University College London (UCL), working with Watershed Investigations and the Guardian, analysed 2002–24 data from satellites, which track changes in Earth’s gravitational field.
Because water is heavy, shifts in groundwater, rivers, lakes, soil moisture and glaciers show up in the signal, allowing the satellites to effectively “weigh” how much water is stored.
The findings reveal a stark imbalance: the north and north-west of Europe – particularly Scandinavia, parts of the UK and Portugal – have been getting wetter, while large swathes of the south and south-east, including parts of the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Romania and Ukraine, have been drying out.
Climate breakdown can be seen in the data, the scientists say. “When we compare the total terrestrial water storage data with climate datasets, the trends broadly correlate,” said Mohammad Shamsudduha, professor of water crisis and risk reduction at UCL.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel 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.
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Israeli army deploy extensive reinforcements to the area and sent armored engineering vehicles to several locations as they launch a large-scale attack early in the morning on the city of Tubas in the northern West Bank and nearby towns on November 26, 2025. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
France, Germany, Italy, and the UK called on Israel on Thursday to comply with international law and take immediate steps to protect Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, as illegal Israeli settler attacks reached their peak in nearly two decades, Anadolu reports.
In a joint statement, the four countries, known collectively as the E4, “strongly condemn the massive increase of settler violence against Palestinian civilians and call for stability in the West Bank.”
The ministers said they are “deeply alarmed” by what they described as a surge in attacks by Israeli settlers, warning that the escalating violence is destabilizing the West Bank and increasing the risk of wider regional tension.
Citing UN figures, the statement noted that 264 settler attacks were recorded in October, the highest monthly number since systematic monitoring began in 2006.
The E4 called on the Israeli government to “abide by its obligations under international law and protect the Palestinian population of the occupied territories,” stressing that authorities must ensure accountability.
“We therefore urge the Government of Israel to hold those accountable who are responsible for those crimes and to prevent further violence by addressing the root causes of this behaviour,” the statement said.
Reiterating long-standing positions on the conflict, the four governments said they remain opposed to “any form of annexation – whether partial, total or de facto – and settlement policies violating international law.”
They also reaffirmed their support for a negotiated, peaceful settlement to the conflict, stating: “We reaffirm our commitment to a… two-state solution… living side by side in peace and security and mutual recognition.”
The ministers stressed that the ongoing attacks must come to an end.
“These attacks must stop,” they said. “They sow terror among civilians, undermine ongoing peace efforts and ultimately harm the lasting security of the State of Israel itself.”
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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.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
International Court of Justice holds hearing on Nicaragua vs. Germany. Photo: UN
The German Federal Republic may have made false statements at the very beginning of the trial before the UN’s highest court.
Since April 2024, Germany has been on trial before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Nicaragua had filed a case against the Federal Republic, accusing it of complicity in the genocide in Gaza. As has now become known, German representatives may have made false statements in their very first testimony before the ICJ in April 2024, concerning the arms exports delivered to Israel.
“Not disclosed”
As Drop Site News (DSN) and the liberal German magazine Stern reported in a joint article, there are now serious doubts about Germany’s statements. They cite comments from the German Defense Ministry, obtained through a press law procedure before a German administrative court. According to these documents, the ministry stated that its testimony before the ICJ in April 2024 had been made “in agreement with the affected state,” meaning Israel. The ministry also admitted that “the differentiated information on Bundeswehr exports,” was “not disclosed in the proceedings before the ICJ.” The Defense Ministry argued before the court that it could not release information about transfers to specific countries “for reasons of contractually agreed confidentiality”, since doing so could seriously damage the trust between Germany and Israel.
Following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation and the beginning of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, the value of German military exports to Israel increased tenfold overnight. The Federal Republic thus became, after the United States, the second most important supplier of weapons to the Zionist regime; at one point, a third of Israel’s weapons were said to have come from Germany. By mid-May 2025, successive German governments had approved arms deliveries worth 485 million euros. Added to this were donations from the Bundeswehr’s own stocks to the IDF.
It is these donations that DSN and Stern have raised doubts about. German representatives had claimed before the ICJ that in 2023 no weapons of war but only “medical supplies and helmets” had been delivered to Israel from Bundeswehr inventories. Lea Reisner, spokeswoman for the Left Party in the German parliament, commented to the German left-wing daily junge Welt: “For many months, the federal government has been deceiving the public about the extent of German arms deliveries to Israel – and now, apparently, also the International Court of Justice.”
Growing pressure
While the fact that Germany is standing trial in The Hague on charges of complicity in a new genocide has been largely ignored within the dominant discourse in Germany, Nicaragua’s case nonetheless appears to have exerted considerable pressure on the German government. Over the course of 2024, the number of weapons delivered by Germany to Israel fell sharply, without any official explanation. Even the state broadcaster Deutsche Welle (which reports far more critically in English than in German in order to project an image of Germany as a country with a critical media landscape, which is just not true) suggested that the decline may be linked to the ICJ case.
In August 2025, the current chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced that Germany would no longer supply weapons to Israel “that can be used in Gaza”. It quickly became clear, however, that this referred only to new export licenses, while previously approved arms shipments were unaffected. Moreover, Israel’s navy received new warships and submarines from Germany immediately after Merz’s announcement, even though it plays a central role in the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Nevertheless, this surprising step by the German government shows that even in Berlin there was a perceived need to take measures that at least appear to resemble sanctions.
And the possible fact that the Federal Republic may have made false statements at the very beginning of the trial before the UN’s highest court can also be seen as an indication that those in power in Berlin are fully aware that their policy of so-called “German Staatsräson” violates international law. This affair, however, is unlikely to do much for Germany’s credibility before the ICJ.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.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.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
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Donkeys carry families to their homes as thousands of displaced Palestinians go to check on their homes as the 4-day humanitarian pause begins for prisoner exchange and aid in Huzaa district of Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 24, 2023. [Ashraf Amra – Anadolu Agency]
The news reads like a dark joke—but it isn’t. “Rescued little Donkeys from Gaza Find a Home in Oppenheim,” reports Allgemeine Zeitung, a regional newspaper in western Germany. On Instagram, the comment section on the post was quickly disabled due to “numerous inappropriate and hateful comments”– likely criticism of Germany’s decision to take in four donkeys. But what’s the broader context?
Animals welcome – Gazawis not
For many, the story of four donkeys “rescued” from Gaza is further proof of the inhumane cynicism of Germany’s leaders. Since October 2023, hardly any humans from Gaza have been admitted to Germany. Berlin did not prioritize rescuing Palestinian citizens with German passports from the genocide in Gaza, despite the Foreign Ministry’s stated duty to evacuate its own nationals from war and crisis zones. Meanwhile, Germany has even granted citizenship to Israelis who were taken prisoner during Gaza operations after October 2023, loudly advocating for their release as “German hostages.”
While various Western countries in recent months – Spain, for example, as early as summer 2024 – took in contingents of injured or sick children from Gaza for medical treatment, Germany has done almost nothing. Only two children from Gaza are believed to have received treatment in Germany in more than two years. Several German cities had offered to take in larger numbers of minors from Gaza and claimed to be ready to do so – but the federal government blocked these plans, citing the “very unpredictable” situation in Gaza even after the official ceasefire. The Foreign Office and Interior Ministry also referred to “complex procedures” and the need to vet accompanying family members. NGOs helping patients from abroad are required to guarantee the return of patients and their guardians; if asylum is later sought, the NGOs must cover costs for the often multi-year legal process.
Even the Allgemeine Zeitung piece exemplifies the grotesque double standard in German discourse on Gaza. The article opens: “They have endured hunger and misery, beatings and toil.” Setting aside how this framing suggests that Gazans are not only potential “Hamas terrorists” and “Jew-haters” but also animal abusers, it ignores the systematic torture of Palestinians by the Israeli army, as documented in recent reports by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) – virtually absent from German media coverage. The empathy shown for donkeys in this piece far exceeds that extended to humans in Gaza over the past two years. Unsurprisingly, the article fails to mention who is responsible for the donkeys’ hunger – or the deprivation of nearly two million Palestinians.
The article celebrates that the donkeys, “despite all they have endured, are remarkably trusting” and “have even started to blossom a little.” Comparable attention to the psychological state of Gaza’s human population in German media is virtually nonexistent.
There is, however, another dimension beyond the obvious cynicism: the story of how these donkeys reached Germany. “These donkeys were abandoned, injured, mistreated, or destined to die,” says the zoo in Oppenheim. (No word on why they were abandoned, or what happened to their original owners.) The animals were “rescued” by Israeli animal welfare organizations – specifically, a group that reportedly has “rescued 50 donkeys from Gaza.” How an Israeli NGO operates in an active war zone is unclear, but it likely required coordination with the IDF.
In another report about four more donkeys brought to a ranch in northern Germany’s Lower Saxony, it is revealed that the organization ‘Starting Over Sanctuary’ is actually behind the transports to Germany. The article also claims: “The donkeys had to work hard, were very poorly treated, and had no rights. Their illnesses were not treated.“
Since the genocide in Gaza, donkeys have become a vital transport resource. With fuel shortages and damaged roads, they reliably carry the injured and sick to clinics, transport people and belongings during flight or return home, and deliver essential water, food, and supplies. Far from being senselessly abused or left to die, sick and injured animals in Gaza are treated and rescued. A Guardian report from April 2025 noted that one medical team alone rescued over 7,000 donkeys since October 2023. Meanwhile, journalist Tarek Baé pointed out on X that, according to the UN, as early as August 2024, 43 per cent of all livestock in Gaza had been killed as a result of Israel’s war of destruction.
Seen in this light, the “rescue” of donkeys by Israeli actors appears more as theft or abduction. It forms part of the IDF’s ongoing strategy: denying Palestinians the means of production – especially land, olive trees – and of transport is central to settler-colonial control and the systematic displacement of Palestinians. Ecological justifications have long been used to mask this agenda, critics also speak of “Environmental Warfare“: from tree planting by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to creating nature reserves that displace Palestinians and endanger lives, to the ostensible “rescue” of Gaza’s donkeys. Germany is now supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the genocide in Gaza not only politically, economically, through arms supplies to Israel, and by withholding aid from Gazans, but also by destroying the last means of survival in the Gaza Strip under the guise of ‘greenwashing.’
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Government Spokesperson Stefan Kornelius of Germany speaks to press during the press meeting of German government spokespersons in Berlin, Germany on October 06, 2025. [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]
Germany announced Monday it will lift restrictions on arms exports to Israel, citing a “stabilized ceasefire” in Gaza and recent diplomatic progress in the region, Anadolu reports.
The decision takes effect on Nov. 24 and returns the country to case-by-case review of arms export applications to Israel, government spokesman Stefan Kornelius told the German press agency DPA.
Kornelius said the government based its decision on the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that has held since Oct. 10 and has stabilized in recent weeks. He also pointed to efforts toward a sustainable peace and increased humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz ordered the restrictions on Aug. 8, halting approval of arms exports that could be used in the Gaza war. The decision came in response to Israel’s announcement of a full-scale ground offensive and the stopping of aid deliveries into Gaza.
Germany’s arms exports to Israel have long been contentious and the subject of legal challenges by rights groups and Gaza residents. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which supported plaintiffs in their legal action, has repeatedly said that Berlin’s authorization of weapons exports to Israel violated international agreements Germany signed, including the Geneva Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.
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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.Vote Labour for Genocide.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
