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      Time is running out for Kamala Harris to break with Biden on the Gaza catastrophe | Moira Donegan

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      In an appearance this week on the daytime talkshow The View, Kamala Harris was asked how her presidency would differ from Joe Biden’s. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said. The comment was seized on by the Trump campaign, who have used it in an attempt to seize upon Biden’s unpopularity and blame Harris for the issues that seem to most enrage and terrify their supporters, among them high consumer prices and immigration. But the comment also rankled some members of Harris’s own base: namely, the young, progressive and non-white voters who have been distraught over the suffering inflicted by Israel in its US-backed war on Gaza.If Harris can’t think of any way she would differ from Biden, these voters may have some suggestions for her. The Biden approach to Israel, after all, has been disastrous on multiple fronts. It has been a moral catastrophe, with Israel’s wildly disproportionate campaign of indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza leading to famine, plague and tens of thousands of deaths. It has been an electoral liability, alienating Muslim and Arab American voters in the crucial swing state of Michigan and depressing turnout among the young voters whom Democrats have long relied on and which were a crucial part of Biden’s 2020 victory.And it has been a complete strategic failure, with Israel now expanding its war into Lebanon, the region on the brink of a large-scale conflict between American and Iranian proxies, and the whole world watching as American leaders fail to exert any meaningful pressure or discernible consequences on a small country that has used a great number of US weapons while completely ignoring US instruction.There was a moment, earlier in the war, when things could have gone differently. After the 7 October 2023 attacks killed hundreds of innocent Israelis, the Biden administration reportedly urged caution. But it was only in February, some four months into the war, when much of Gaza had already been leveled and its hundreds of thousands of people displaced into the south, that the Biden White House attempted to stop the Israelis from invading Rafah, the small southern border city where the refugees had fled, by delaying a shipment of 2,000lb bombs.The move had broad support: Nancy Pelosi, hardly a robust supporter of the Palestinian cause, was by then urging enforceable conditions on aid to Israel. The move would also have had the benefit of bringing the Biden administration’s actions more plausibly into line with American and international law, which compels that states not sell arms to armies, like Israel’s, that have likely committed war crimes.It was, to say the least, a mild gesture, and not one that had any impact at all on Israel’s military readiness: all told, America has sent more than 10,000 such bombs to Israel over the past year, many of which have been dropped on Gaza. By the time the Biden administration even so much as dawdled in sending military support to Israel, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians had already been massacred. But reportedly, the anger that this small act of non-compliance provoked among Israeli officials and the American pro-Israel lobby was so intense that the Biden administration got spooked.No meaningful conditions have been imposed on military aid since, and Israel has openly flouted American efforts to de-escalate, continuing its brutal assault on Gaza, launching an invasion into Lebanon that has displaced approximately 1 million people, and attempting to provoke Iran into an outright war – which, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government seems to believe, America will fight on Israel’s behalf. Meanwhile, the whole world watches on, with every foreign leader around the globe seeing anew each day the bleak reality of diminished American power: the United States, the Gaza war has proved, neither keeps its promises nor follows through on its threats.But for all that the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war has been devastating and embarrassing internationally, it has also been unpopular domestically, creating real electoral dangers for the Harris campaign. The protests that sprang up across American campuses last spring were not merely the venting of a fringe minority; they represented a large-scale mobilization of young people morally outraged by the images coming out of Gaza.These young voters view the Biden administration as complicit in a genocide; for Democrats to assume that this belief is insincere, or that those who hold them will overcome such a grave moral objection and turn out to vote for Harris anyway, seems both entitled and unwise.Early in her campaign, Harris seemed to understand this. She refused to attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress when he came to Washington this summer, and she had strong words for the Israeli prime minister when they spoke together at a news conference. Harris also made positive rhetorical gestures towards the plight of Palestinians, saying kind words in her convention speech about the injustice of their suffering and their right to self-determination. But for the most part, that’s all these moves were – words. Now, Harris has mostly stopped saying them.Voters have noticed. Specifically, Arab American voters in Michigan have. In February, when Michigan held its Democratic primary, more than 100,000 primary voters cast “uncommitted” ballots, as part of a protest movement aimed at pressuring Biden to change his stance on Gaza. The uncommitted votes were several times greater in number than Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in the state. That discontent has not gone away. A recent national poll of Arab American voters found Trump leading by more than four points among the group, which voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in the last cycle. This may have a particularly potent impact in Michigan, where a new Quinnipiac poll released last week found Harris trailing Trump by three points.Harris may not want to place much daylight between herself and the incumbent she has served as vice-president. But she has an opportunity to break with Biden on Gaza in these last months of the campaign – to show strength and resolve internationally, to show deference to the interests of a key voter group, and to do the right thing. For all the tendency to cast Israel as a global exception, the truth is that Netanyahu’s style of governance – his bigotry, his corruption, his advancement of a violent and exclusionary nationalism – is part of a broader trend of far-right authoritarianism.It is the same trend that Harris aims to defeat in her campaign against Donald Trump. She has presented herself as a candidate on a mission to revive the liberal order, to protect democracy, to remake America into a country worthy of its global power, and to embody the principles of courage, justice and equality that make leaders worthy of following. She has a chance to show that she means it.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Hurricanes, the Middle East, and Covid-19 tests to Putin – podcast

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      It’s less than a month before the US presidential election. Donald Trump is pushing conspiracy theories over the federal response to hurricanes battering several states, and denying he gave Covid-19 test machines to Vladimir Putin during the pandemic. Joe Biden is in talks with Benjamin Netanyahu over growing tension in the Middle East. Kamala Harris rattled through a media blitz, with some criticising her campaign strategy. And Melania Trump has written about being pro-abortion and pro-immigration in her new memoir.
      Jonathan Freedland and the veteran political strategist David Axelrod discuss what all of this means for the election

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Wednesday briefing: What Iran’s attack on Israel means for the Middle East

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      Good morning.Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening in retaliation for a series of attacks against its proxies. Officials in Tehran cited the assassinations of top Hezbollah and Hamas commanders – including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed on Friday – and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.It is Iran’s second attack on Israel this year, although this one is widely considered to have been more aggressive and is likely to be more consequential.Guardian reporters in Jerusalem witnessed dozens of missiles darting through the sky towards the country’s coastal cities. Most of the missiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defences, supported by western allies, but there have been multiple images of craters in central and southern Israel.Two people have reportedly been wounded in Tel Aviv. Elsewhere, the only reported fatality was Sameh al-Asali, a 37-year-old Palestinian from Gaza living in the occupied West Bank, who was killed by falling shrapnel.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Iran has “made a big mistake tonight, and will pay for it”, although US officials have said that Israel has not made a decision yet on the scope or timeframe of this reprisal.Meanwhile, overnight, the Israeli military continued to pound Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, with at least five strikes hitting the city’s southern suburbs.Today’s newsletter takes you through the last 24 hours in the Middle East, as the crisis intensifies. That’s right after the headlines.Five big stories

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      UK news | A 14-year-old girl was left with potentially life-changing injuries while a 16-year-old boy was in hospital after a substance – believed to be acidic – was thrown at them by a male who approached them on the street outside their London school, police have said.

      Lucy Letby | A senior doctor said he was “ashamed” he failed to stop the nurse Lucy Letby from harming babies and that police should have been contacted a year earlier. John Gibbs told a public inquiry that doctors received “very firm pushback” from senior nurses when they raised growing suspicions about Letby in early 2016.

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      In depth: Israel readies for reprisal as ‘forces of restraint’ weakenView image in fullscreenIran’s surprise attack lasted for just under an hour and came after its supreme national security council (SNSC) chair, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, declared that Iran was at war. Around 180 ballistic missiles were launched, just hours after the US warned that Iran was preparing an imminent attack.To bolster Israel’s defence, US forces shot down Iranian missiles. President Joe Biden later said that the attack appears to have been “defeated and ineffective”, and Israel said that most of the missiles were intercepted.Iranian officials, however, announced that 90% of its missiles successfully hit their targets. The extent of the damage caused by the missiles remains unclear.The order to launch the strike was made by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with the backing of the SNSC and the Iranian defence ministry. Iran has said the attack was a “legal, rational and legitimate response to the terrorist attacks of the Zionist regime”.This attack is far more aggressive than Iran’s one in April, which was largely considered a symbolic strike. Iran gave several days’ notice then and the main target was a military base in the underpopulated Negev desert. This time, the missiles themselves seem to be much faster and the targets appear to have included dense cities.The Guardian’s defence and security editor Dan Sabbagh has useful insight into Iran’s military strategy now: “Firing so many ballistic missiles in a few minutes also represents a serious effort to overwhelm or exhaust Israel’s air defences. Because they are sophisticated, the interceptor missiles are expensive – and their stocks uncertain,” he writes.Why did Iran do this?In late September, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, insisted that the country does not “wish to be the cause of instability in the region.” It seems the impending threat of war has lost its deterrent power, with the spokesperson of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission saying that Iran is “not afraid of going to war. We are not warmongers, but we are ready for any war.”Iran’s risky and unprecedented retaliation “reflects a growing consensus inside the Iranian elite that its decision not to mount a military reprisal after the assassination of [Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh] in Tehran in July was a strategic mistake”, Patrick Wintour writes.The perceived inaction has led to a growing frustration among some hardliners in Iran that Tehran has become “passive” in the face of Israeli aggression. Instead of placating Israel, they say, it has emboldened Netanyahu to mount further attacks and has weakened its image as the leader of the “axis of resistance”.Iran held off from ordering a reprisal for the assassination of Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran in July, because of US assurances that a ceasefire deal in Gaza was imminent and restraint from Iran would be key in making sure it happens. (Israel has not claimed responsibility for Haniyeh’s death). No such deal materialised. Early last month, Pezeshkian accused the US of lying, adding that Israel’s actions would not go “unanswered”.Iranian officials were also alarmed by Netanyahu’s announcement last weekend that Israel’s latest actions are steps towards changing “the balance of power in the region for years to come”. To show restraint after the series of escalations would, they believed, put them in an even weaker strategic position.What’s next?Leaders across Europe condemned Iran’s attack and the UK prime minister Keir Starmer said that Britain stands with Israel and recognises “her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression”.The UN secretary general, António Guterres, condemned “escalation after escalation” in the region. “This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he said.Israel has already launched attacks in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria this week, indicating its willingness to keep fighting on all fronts. Analysts have noted that Israel has a much freer hand to respond more comprehensively and aggressively. What little “forces of restraint” there were in the Middle East are “weakening with every passing day,” Julian Borger writes in his analysis. “Politically speaking, the Biden administration cannot be seen as tying Israel’s hands in the face of an Iranian attack on Israeli cities.”The looming fear of this deepening conflict has been a direct confrontation between Tehran and Washington, which gets closer with each attack.As Israel readies for a reprisal and Iran’s leadership vows that any retaliation would be met with a “more crushing and ruinous” response, the cries for peace continue to go unheeded.For the latest news on the region, follow the Guardian’s liveblog.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Barbara Walker has created beautiful, ceiling-to-floor sized charcoal portraits of victims of the Windrush scandal, which will go on show this week at the Whitworth in Manchester. Amelia Gentleman spoke to her about the physical and emotional toll of making – and then destroying – her political, personal art. Jason Okundaye, assistant editor, newsletters

      The Guardian’s foremost expert on gambling (and author of the excellent book Jackpot), Rob Davies, has profiled Denise Coates. The Bet365 mastermind is Britain’s richest woman but, asks Rob, what’s the human cost of her mammoth fortune? Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters

      Some men went to a (cancelled) Last Dinner Party show in Lincoln and felt they were profiled by security and treated like “perverts”. Laura Snapes is brilliant and balanced on the state of high alert that women and minority fans are often put in when attending gigs. Jason

      George Monbiot is on top form as he questions why Just Stop Oil protesters were handed such long sentences for throwing soup at a Van Gogh (or rather, at the protective glass in front of it). Hannah

      Collagen peptides, dandelion root, vitamin C, creatine, magnesium – will the cult of self-optimisation through supplements ever end? Joel Snape takes on the latest craze, electrolytes, and what they mean for your kidneys – and your bank account. Jason
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | First-half goals from Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka gave Arsenal a 2-0 win over PSG in the Champions League group stage. Manchester City claimed a regulation 4-0 win against Slovan Bratislava with James McAtee scoring his first goal for the club.Formula One | Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has indicated Liam Lawson has an opportunity to make his case to replace Sergio Pérez and line up alongside Max Verstappen for the team, potentially as early as next season.Tennis| Third-ranked Carlos Alcaraz’s athleticism was again on show as he advanced to the men’s final of the China Open, with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over Daniil Medvedev on Tuesday.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Israel vows to retaliate after Iran launches missile attack” says the Guardian’s splash headline this morning. “Middle East erupts” – that’s the Times while the Daily Express has “US threatens ‘severe’ response as Iran attacks Israel”. “Revenge from above” says the Mirror describing it further as Iran’s retaliation for Israel’s incursion into Lebanon. A dramatic front page of the Daily Mail says “The Iron Dome holds firm against Iran’s 200-missile blitz … now Israel vows vengeance”. The Telegraph says simply “Iran attacks Israel” while the i leads with “Iran missile attack on Israel sparks fears of new war”. Business coverage is displaced on the Financial Times’ front in favour of “Iran fires missile barrage against Israel”. The Metro calls it “Iran’s new blitz at Israel”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenWho were England’s 2024 rioters?Racist chants rang out, and homes, businesses and hotels housing asylum seekers were attacked – for a week this summer English towns and cities seemed on the brink of chaos. Josh Halliday reports on what we know so far about the people at the centre of the violenceCartoon of the day | Martin RowsonView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenCommunal eating is on the menu in the culinary hotspot of Copenhagen, where pulling up a chair alongside strangers is now all the rage, as Shanna McGoldrick writes. At Absalon, a church turned community centre, McGoldrick sampled tomato and lentil soup and fried potatoes in a creamy fennel and chive sauce, as well as breaking bread – quite literally – with a group of Danish nurses, all for the affordable price of 60DKK (about £6.75). “All around us, people are chatting in English and Danish, and though everyone looks very at ease, I’m fairly sure we’re not the only tourists here,” writes McGoldrick of the fællesspisning dinner. “It’s a pragmatic kind of welcome, with all diners expected to get stuck in: at the end of the meal, we all stack our plates neatly and file happily back over to the kitchen.” Adds Ivonne Christensen, one of the nurses: “It’s a wonderful idea … you don’t have to cook, you can come here when you’re tired; it’s easy.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      US looks unable to talk Netanyahu out of planned invasion of Lebanon

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      The Biden administration is losing influence over whether Benjamin Netanyahu launches a ground invasion into southern Lebanon or not.For more than a year, Joe Biden and his senior advisers have managed to forestall an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon in fear of a larger war that could envelop the entire Middle East.In the days after the 7 October attack, Biden phoned Netanyahu to talk him out of a massive retaliation against Hezbollah, which had begun firing guided rockets against Israeli positions following the Hamas raid.In April this year, Biden also told Netanyahu that the US would not support Israel in an offensive war against Iran after Tehran launched dozens of loitering munitions, cruise missiles and drones toward Israel.But on Monday, US outlets reported that Netanyahu’s administration had told White House officials they were planning a limited ground incursion into Lebanon, essentially escalating a conflict with Hezbollah and its backer Iran to a level that Biden and his team have tried desperately to avoid.The Washington Post reported that Israel was planning a limited campaign – smaller than its 2006 war against Hezbollah – that nonetheless would mark a drastic escalation with Hezbollah and Iran. The New York Times suggested US officials believed they had talked Israel out of a full invasion of Lebanon, but that smaller incursions into southern Lebanon would continue.But Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, has briefed a meeting of local council heads in northern Israel on Monday, according to the Times of Israel. “The next stage in the war against Hezbollah will begin soon … We will do this. And as I said here a month ago [that] we will shift the center of gravity [to the north], this is what I say now: we will change the situation and return the residents home.”Earlier that day, he had told Israel Defense Forces soldiers that to return some 60,000 Israelis to their homes in the country’s north, we “will use all the means that may be required – your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land”.The plan to attack comes at a unique moment – with war hawks dominating domestic Israeli politics at the same time as a lame duck Biden administration appears increasingly unable or unwilling to intervene in the conflict. And, according to analysts, Netanyahu believes he has a limited window around the US elections to attack Iranian proxies across the region.With just a month left until the US presidential elections, the Biden administration has launched a tepid effort at a ceasefire that Netanyahu appears to have chosen to ignore – or simply to wait out until US elections that could bring in a Trump administration that would do even less to restrain him than the current one has.“Netanyahu made a calculation, and the calculation was that there was no way that the Democrats between now and November 5th [election day] could do anything that would criticise, let alone restrain him from that,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who focuses on US foreign policy and the Middle East.“You saw [vice-president Kamala] Harris’s statement, you saw the White House statement, you saw the Democrat and Republican consensus on the killing of Nasrallah and what the Israelis have done there,” he said. “And since Iran is involved in this, unlike in Gaza, the toxicity of animus against Iran in this town is so intense that the Republican party, which is now the ‘Israel can do no wrong’ party, is just winging for the administration.”Until recently, prominent US officials have thought they still had a chance to conclude a ceasefire and prevent the war from escalating further. Last week, US and French officials along with dozens of other countries called for a ceasefire in Lebanon. US officials briefed on the matter said they believed the “time was right” and that Israel would sign up.A western official last week told the Guardian that the Israeli threat to invade northern Lebanon was probably “psyops” largely designed to force Hezbollah and Iran to the negotiating table.But, at the same time, the official said, the situation in the region was extremely volatile, and could be upset by as little as a single drone strike against a sensitive target.One day later, a massive airstrike launched by the Israeli air force killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, upending security calculations in the region and potentially emboldening Israeli officials to believe they could fundamentally change the security dynamics in the region.“I understand, and happen to be very understanding of the administration position, because I spent almost 30 years inside knowing full the constraints of how to get anything done in this region, which is very hard,” Miller said. “But the notion that a US-French proposal for a three-week ceasefire in the middle of all this could work, I mean, it was, it was simply not well thought out.” More

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      Calls grow for US investigation into Israeli killing of Turkish American activist

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      The family of a Turkish American woman shot by the Israeli military while attending a protest in the West Bank have been joined by a growing chorus of US lawmakers demanding that their government launch its own investigation into the killing.Autopsies conducted in the West Bank town of Nablus and Turkey found that Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head. Shortly after the incident, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it was “highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her”.The White House has called for Israel to investigate Eygi’s death but friends and family has expressed skepticism that such an inquiry will lead to any accountability.“We are not putting our faith or trust in a military that deliberately shot and killed an individual to investigate themselves of their own crime,” said Juliette Majid, who graduated alongside Eygi from the university of Washington in Seattle.“What I want is justice and accountability, which to me looks like a US-led criminal investigation … I want the US to hold [the Israeli military] accountable. At the end of the day, we shouldn’t be in this situation, Ayşenur should be coming home alive,” she said.Eygi’s family’s call for a US-led inquiry has been echoed by senator Patty Murray and congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington state who wrote to Joe Biden and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, demanding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launch an investigation.“We fear that if this pattern of impunity does not end with Ms Eygi, it will only continue to escalate,” they said, pointing to the killing of activist Rachel Corrie – also from Washington state – in 2003 at a protest in Gaza, and calling on the US government to better protect American citizens overseas.Murray and Jayapal demanded a written response from the Biden administration by 24 September addressing their calls for an independent investigation, what the US government knew about her killing and how it would protect US citizens overseas.With no apparent response from the administration, more than 100 members of congress – including leading Democratic party officials Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Eric Swalwell as well as senator Bernie Sanders – have sent a second letter to Biden, Blinken, and the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding a US-led investigation .“Given the evidence, we believe the United States must independently investigate whether this was a homicide. To walk away without asking further questions gives Israeli forces unacceptable license to act with impunity,” they wrote. “There must be accountability for Ms Eygi’s death.”The lawmakers demanded a written report to Eygi’s family, delivered by 4 October, including details of whether the US government will investigate her killing and a timeline for the inquiry, as well as how the US government would respond should the Israeli government refuses to cooperate with their investigation.“I hope the US government is listening not just to their own officials who represent their constituents, but also the general public who want to see justice for a US citizen murdered abroad,” said Majid.She added that promises by Turkey to launch an investigation through the public prosecution in Ankara provided “a little bit of hope”, but that she and Eygi’s family want to see the US government wield its influence.“I want to see my own government step up,” she said.Eygi was born in Turkey but she and her parents moved to Washington state when she was a child. The 26-year-old was buried in her family’s hometown on the Turkish coast earlier this month.The US president, meanwhile, has yet to contact Eygi’s family. “I think it’s incredibly shameful that president Biden in particular hasn’t reached out to the family to offer his condolences at the very least, and at most promise justice and accountability for an American citizen,” said Majid. “He was supposed to be providing protection.” More

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      Israel has ‘legitimate problem’ with Hezbollah on border, says Blinken

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      Israel has a legitimate interest in seeking to remove Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, from the borders of northern Israel, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said as he rebuffed calls to take a tougher line over the Israeli bombardment.Speaking before an emergency meeting of the security council in New York, Blinken emphasised that he would prefer a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but his tone is unlikely to be seen as a warning to Israel to stop, or to reconsider its plan for a ground offensive.“Israel’s got a legitimate problem here. Starting on 8 October, Hezbollah in the north, from southern Lebanon, started lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel,” he said. “People living in northern Israel had to flee their homes – about 70,000 – and Israel understandably, legitimately, wants a secure environment so people can return home.”He added: “The best way to get that is through diplomacy, an agreement to pull back forces, allow people to return home in northern Israel – also many Lebanese in southern Lebanon forced from their homes. We want to get people back home. The best way to do that is not war; it’s diplomacy.”Blinken also reverted to his claim that it was Hamas, and not Israel, that was holding up a ceasefire agreement in Gaza – the precondition set by Hezbollah to stop the fighting with Israel.Insisting 15 of the 18 paragraphs in the ceasefire agreement had been signed off, he said: “The problem we have right now is that Hamas hasn’t been engaging on it for the last couple of weeks, and its leader has been talking about an endless war of attrition. Now, if he really cares about the Palestinian people, he’d bring this agreement over the finish line.”Blinken added: “Hard decisions remain to be made by Israel. But the problem right now in terms of bringing this across the finish line is Hamas, its refusal to engage in a meaningful way.”The Lebanese foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, has described the US approach as “not promising”, adding: “It will not solve the Lebanese problem. The US is the only country that can really make a difference in the Middle East with regard to Lebanon.”View image in fullscreenThe Israeli ambassador to the UN, Daniel Meron, said: “We have been restrained now for 12 months, but … life in the north of Israel has to go back to what it was.”He reiterated Israel’s claim that it was “doing everything it can” to avoid hitting civilian targets, saying: “Hezbollah is using civilians in Lebanon as human shields.”“They would like us to shoot back and hit civilians so that we can be blamed for killing civilians,” he said.The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, meanwhile, said in a joint statement that “Israel is pushing the region towards total war”, condemning what it called Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Qatar said at a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council that the crisis was becoming more and more worrying.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIran so far shows no signs of sending direct help to Hezbollah, which it supports, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, admitted that the group his country had helped to create had suffered damage. But he added: “Until today, the victory has been on the side of the Palestinian resistance and Hezbollah. The final victory in this battle will belong to the resistance front and Hezbollah.”A White House official said that the US would come to Israel’s aid if Iran came to the aid of Hezbollah.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, met the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in New York urging him to use his influence to persuade Hezbollah to accept a ceasefire. Pezeshkian is under conflicting pressures: unwilling to abandon the group his country helped create, or the Palestinian cause, but reluctant to go into a direct war with Israel that will undermine his goal of improving relations with the west.In his speech to the UN, in the face of criticism at home, he declared: “I intend to establish solid foundations for my country to enter the new era and play a constructive and effective role. To establish a foundation in the emerging global system, to remove the obstacles and challenges and to organise the relations of my country based on the requirements and realities of today’s world.”In Iran, Hassan Khomenei, one of the grandsons of the leader of the 1979 revolution, Ruhollah Khomenei, sent a letter to the Hezbollah leadership offering to volunteer in support of the resistance. More

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      Is this week Netanyahu goes from pariah to fugitive? | Andrew Roth

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      One year ago, Benjamin Netanyahu came to the UN with a vision of a “new Middle East” anchored by Israel’s growing ties with its Arab partners in the region. Now he is on the brink of launching a major escalation against Hezbollah, ignoring calls for restraint from his allies over the Gaza war and defying criticism that he is prevaricating in negotiations over a temporary ceasefire.The Israeli PM remains scheduled to speak on Friday at the UN general assembly in an appearance that is sure to lead to walkouts and protests on the streets of midtown Manhattan.He has delayed his arrival in the US by at least a day as tensions rise with Lebanon, after an elaborate operation to detonate thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah that may signal the beginning of a broader war in the region.The trip to New York may offer him a chance to evaluate support for an escalation in Lebanon, or to let Joe Biden and other allies know that he had made his decision and would not be talked down from a broader war.Netanyahu’s trip to the UN comes after a year of bloodshed in Gaza that has left more than 41,000 people dead and led the international criminal court (ICC) to consider issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. The ICC judges are regularly rumoured to be close to approving a warrant that could accuse Netanyahu of war crimes.Among those killed during the Gaza conflict have been 200 UN humanitarian aid workers. Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces have made claims that staff from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had taken part in the 7 October Hamas-led attacks, and nine members of the organisation had their contracts terminated after an internal UN review.António Guterres, the UN secretary general, has said that he and Netanyahu have not spoken since the beginning of the war, but that he was ready to meet him on the sidelines of the summit if the Israeli PM asked.“I have not talked to him because he didn’t pick up my phone calls, but I have no reason not to speak with him,” Guterres said. He blasted the “lack of accountability” for the deaths of the humanitarian aid workers, most of whom have been killed in strikes that the UN has slammed as indiscriminate.Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu would meet Guterres, Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said that the Israeli PM’s schedule had not been finalised yet.Netanyahu’s most recent trip to the US came in July, when he addressed a raucous joint session Congress, promising “total victory” in his war against Hamas and mocking demonstrators against his appearance in the US Capitol as “idiots”. On the streets outside near Union Station, protesters clashed with police and defaced marble statues with paint.It remains to be seen whether Netanyahu is ready to take a step further towards the abyss. Following an airstrike in Beirut on Friday that killed a senior Hezbollah commander and at least 13 others in Beirut’s Dahiyeh area, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said that “even in Dahiyeh in Beirut – we will continue to pursue our enemy in order to protect our citizens”.The new “series of operations in the new phase of the war will continue until we achieve our goal: ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes,” he said.Guterres had said that he viewed the booby-trapped pager attack against Hezbollah as a potential prelude to a military escalation by Israel in Lebanon and warned that the region was on the “brink of catastrophe”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhether Netanyahu is ready to escalate, including by launching a ground operation, remains unclear, and both Hezbollah and its benefactor Iran have promised retribution for recent strikes. But Netanyahu’s office on Friday announced that he would delay his arrival by a day due to the situation, and Danon later told reporters that Netanyahu’s arrival date would depend on events in Israel.Netanyahu addressed the UN last year riding high on the recently concluded Abraham accords. The landmark agreement normalised relations between Israel and two Arab states, Bahrain and UAE, with expectations that Saudi Arabia may soon sign the accords as well.“When the Palestinians see that most of the Arab world has reconciled itself to the Jewish state, they too will be more likely to abandon the fantasy of destroying Israel and finally embrace a path of genuine peace with it,” Netanyahu said, holding a crude map with the words “The New Middle East”.But the bloodletting in Gaza following the attacks by Hamas have sent tensions soaring, and most recently Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said his country would not recognise Israel without a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.And, if the ICC panel of judges makes a surprise decision this week to accuse Netanyahu of war crimes in Gaza, it will mark a further embarrassment as he goes from pariah to international fugitive. More

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      The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable | Editorial

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      In the second world war, guerrilla forces scattered large quantities of booby-trapped objects likely to be attractive to civilians. The idea was to cause widescale and indiscriminate death. The Japanese manufactured a tobacco pipe with a charge detonated by a spring-loaded striker. The Italians produced a headset that blew up when it was plugged in. More than half a century later, a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people – including two children and four hospital workers – and wounding thousands more. This situation is directly analogous to the historical practices that current global arms treaties explicitly prohibit. US media say Israel was behind the attack, and the country has the motive and the means to target its Iran-backed enemies. Israel’s leaders have a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from cyber-attacks, suicide drone attacks and remote-controlled weapons to assassinate Iranian scientists. On Wednesday it was reported that Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds.This week’s attacks were not, as Israel’s defenders claimed, “surgical” or a “precisely targeted anti-terrorist operation”. Israel and Hezbollah are sworn enemies. The current round of fighting has seen tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the Israel-Lebanon border because of the Shia militant group’s rocket and artillery attacks.However, the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities. The plan appeared to produce what lawyers might call “excessive incidental civilian harm”. Both these arguments have been levelled at Russia to claim Moscow was committing war crimes in Ukraine. It’s hard to say why the same reasoning is not applied to Israel – apart from that it is a western ally.Such disproportionate attacks, which seem illegal, are not only unprecedented but may also become normalised. If that is the case, the door is opened for other states to lethally test the laws of war. The US should step in and restrain its friend, but Joe Biden shows no sign of intervening to stop the bloodshed. The road to peace runs through Gaza, but Mr Biden’s ceasefire plan – and the release of hostages – has not found favour with either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas.The worry is that Israel’s actions lead to a disastrous all-out conflict that would pull the US into a regional fight. The world stands on the edge of chaos because Mr Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges depend largely on his nation being at war. None of this is possible without US complicity and assistance. Perhaps it is only after its presidential election that the US will be able to say that the price of saving Mr Netanyahu’s skin should not be paid in the streets of Lebanon or by Palestinians in the occupied territories. Until then, the rules-based international order will continue to be undermined by the very countries that created the system. More