Lawyers try to force Keir Starmer to stop arming Israel and shocking facts Keir Starmer tried to hide in Israel arms case
Lawyers try to force Keir Starmer to stop arming Israel. This video has previously featured on this blog.
Shocking facts Keir Starmer tried to hide in Israel arms case.
UN refuses to join Israel’s Gaza aid mechanism that ‘breaches humanitarian principles’
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The acting UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Sigrid Kaag, has said that the United Nations will not take part in any mechanism for delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza if it violates core humanitarian principles, especially neutrality and independence.
In her briefing to the UN Security Council yesterday, Kaag warned that civilians in the enclave are facing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, stressing: “Israel must halt its devastating strikes on civilian life and infrastructure.”
She warned that the situation in Gaza requires urgent international action beyond statements and symbolic calls.
“Civilians in Gaza have lost hope. Instead of saying ‘goodbye’, Palestinians in Gaza now say, ‘see you in heaven’. Death is their companion. It’s not life, it’s not hope.” She added: “The people of Gaza deserve more than survival. They deserve a future full of dignity and hope.”
Kaag further cautioned that the current humanitarian aid is far from enough to meet the basic needs of over two million people who are on the brink of famine. She described this insufficient aid as a “lifeboat after the ship has sunk”.
She also expressed deep concern about rising tensions in the occupied West Bank, pointing to the accelerating pace of settlement expansion and land confiscation, as well as increasing settler violence. She warned that these developments are leading to “de facto annexation,” which “If not reversed, this will make the two-State solution physically impossible.”
READ: Israel announces new West Bank settlements
Israel confirms plans to create 22 new settlements in occupied West Bank
Defence minister says move ‘prevents establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel’
Israel has said it will establish 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation, after a security cabinet vote held in secret last week.
Israel occupied the West Bank, capturing it from Jordan, in the six-day war of 1967. Since then, successive governments have tried to permanently cement Israeli control over the land, in part by declaring swathes as “state lands”, which prevents private Palestinian ownership.
The motion was said to have been put forward by the far-right defence minister, Israel Katz, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, which is considered illegal under international law.
Katz said the settlement decision “strengthens our hold on Judea and Samaria”, using the biblical term for the West Bank, “anchors our historical right in the Land of Israel, and constitutes a crushing response to Palestinian terrorism”.
He added it was also “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.
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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/29/israel-new-settlements-occupied-west-bank-palestinian-state