Lebanon warns against any Israeli ‘aggression’ in disputed waters

Energean’s drill ship at the Karish natural gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, May 9, 2022. (Reuters)
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Updated 05 June 2022
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Lebanon warns against any Israeli ‘aggression’ in disputed waters

  • President Michel Aoun said any activity in the disputed area would amount to an act of aggression
  • Israel says the field in question is within its exclusive economic zone, not in disputed waters

BEIRUT: Lebanon warned Israel on Sunday against any “aggressive action” in disputed waters where both states hope to develop offshore energy, after a ship arrived off the coast to produce gas for Israel.
President Michel Aoun said any activity in the disputed area would amount to an act of aggression and a provocation, after the arrival of the natural gas storage and production ship operated by London-based Energean.
Israel says the field in question is within its exclusive economic zone, not in disputed waters.
But in a statement, the Lebanese presidency said Aoun discussed with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati the vessel’s entry “into the disputed maritime area with Israel, and asked the Army Command to provide him with accurate and official data to build upon the matter.”
Aoun said negotiations to delineate the southern maritime border continued and “any action or activity in the disputed area represents a provocation and an aggressive action.”
There was no immediate response from the Israeli government to Aoun’s statement. Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar welcomed the vessel’s arrival and said she hoped it would be brought online quickly.
“We will continue to work to diversify the energy market and maintain stability and reliability,” she said.
Energean said its floating production storage and offloading vessel arrived on Sunday at the Karish field, about 80 km (50 miles) west of the city of Haifa, in Israel’s exclusive economic zone. The company said it planned to bring it online in the third quarter.
Mikati said Israel was “encroaching on Lebanon’s maritime wealth, and imposing a fait accompli in a disputed area,” calling this “extremely dangerous.”
The United States began mediating indirect talks between the sides in 2000 to settle a long-running dispute between old foes that has obstructed energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. Lebanon is home to the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which has fought numerous wars with Israel.
Hezbollah has previously warned Israel against drilling for oil and gas in the disputed area until the issue is resolved, and said the group would take action if it did so.
Both Israel and Lebanon have made claims at the United Nations regarding about their maritime border. Lebanon says its border cuts into the sea at an angle farther south and Israel’s claim runs farther north, creating a triangle of disputed waters.


Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

Updated 29 June 2025
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Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

  • ‘MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!’ Trump wrote on his social media platform
  • The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza

TEL AVIV: US President Donald Trump on Sunday pleaded for progress in ceasefire talks in the war in Gaza, calling for a deal that would halt the fighting in the 20-monthlong conflict as the sides appeared to be inching closer to an agreement.

An Israeli official said plans were being made for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks, a sign there may be movement on a new deal. The official declined to discuss the focus of the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not yet been finalized.

“MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social early Sunday between posts about a Senate vote on his tax and spending cuts bill.

Trump raised expectations Friday for a deal, saying there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters, he said, “We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.”

Trump has repeatedly called for Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza. Despite an eight-week ceasefire reached just as Trump was taking office earlier this year, attempts since then to bring the sides toward a new agreement have failed.

A top adviser to Netanyahu, Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, was set to travel to Washington this week for talks on a ceasefire.

Trump post slams Netanyahu corruption trial

The Gaza message wasn’t the only Middle East-related post by Trump. On Saturday evening, he doubled down on his criticism of the legal proceedings against Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, calling it “a POLITICAL WITCH HUNT, very similar to the Witch Hunt that I was forced to endure.”

In the post on Truth Social, he said the trial interfered with talks on a Gaza ceasefire.

“(Netanyahu) is right now in the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back. How is it possible that the Prime Minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a Courtroom all day long, over NOTHING,” Trump wrote.

The post echoed similar remarks Trump made last week when he called for the trial to be canceled. It was a dramatic interference by an international ally in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. And it unnerved many in Israel, despite Trump’s popularity in the country.

Israeli military orders new evacuations in northern Gaza

The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza, an early target of the war that has been severely damaged by multiple rounds of fighting.

Col. Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, posted the order on social media. It includes multiple neighborhoods in eastern and northern Gaza City, as well as Jabaliya refugee camp.

The military will expand its escalating attacks to the city’s northern section, calling for people to move southward to the Muwasi area in southern Gaza, Adraee said.

After being all but emptied earlier in the war, hundreds of thousands of people are in northern Gaza following their return during a ceasefire earlier this year.

An Israeli military offensive currently underway aims to move Palestinians to southern Gaza so forces can more freely operate to combat militants. Rights groups say their movement would amount to forcible transfer.

A sticking point over how the war ends

The war in Gaza began with Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in which militants killed 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages, about 50 of whom remain captive with less than half believed to be alive.

Israel’s retaliatory response has killed more than 56,000 people, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between militants and civilians in their count but say more than half of the dead are women and children.

The war has set off a humanitarian catastrophe, displaced most of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, and obliterated much of the territory’s urban landscape.

Talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly faltered over one major sticking point, whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire agreement.

Hamas says it is willing to free all the hostages in exchange for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the war. Israel rejects that offer, saying it will agree to end the war if Hamas disarms and goes into exile, something the group refuses.


Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

Updated 29 June 2025
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Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

  • Former PM Naftali Bennett: Netanyahu ‘has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy’

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must leave office, his predecessor Naftali Bennett has told a televised interview, refusing to say whether he intends to challenge the country’s longest-serving leader in an election.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 that aired on Saturday, former prime minister Bennett said Netanyahu “has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy.”

“He bears... heavy responsibility for the divisions in Israeli society,” Bennett said of growing rifts within Israel under Netanyahu, who has a strong support base but also staunch opponents who have demanded his departure including over his handling of the Gaza war since October 2023.

Netanyahu “must go,” said the former prime minister, a right-wing leader who in 2021 joined forces with Netanyahu critics to form a coalition that ousted him from the premiership after 12 consecutive years at the helm.

But the fragile coalition government Bennett had led along with current opposition chief Yair Lapid collapsed after about a year. Snap elections ensued, and Netanyahu again assumed the premiership with backing from far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.

Bennett, who has taken time off from politics, has been rumored to be planning a comeback, with public opinion polls suggesting he may have enough support to oust Netanyahu again.

No vote is currently planned before late 2026, however, although early elections are common in Israel.

In his Saturday interview, Bennett claimed credit for laying the groundwork for Israel’s bombardment campaign earlier this month against Iranian nuclear and military sites.

The decision to launch attacks against the Islamic republic “was very good” and “needed,” said Bennett, claiming that the offensive would not have been possible without the work of his short-lived government.

In Gaza, where Israel has waged war since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Bennett said the military has displayed “exceptional” performance but “the political management of the country” was “a catastrophe, a disaster.”

Criticizing the Netanyahu government’s “inability to decide,” the former prime minister called for an immediate “comprehensive” agreement that would see all remaining hostages freed from Gaza.

“Leave the task of eliminating Hamas to a future government,” said Bennett, who also evaded several questions about whether he intends to run for office.


Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help

Updated 29 June 2025
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Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help

  • 235,000 Sudanese in a border town
  • Sudanese try to fill aid gaps

ADRE, Chad: Fatima Omas Abdullah wakes up every morning with aches and pains from sleeping on bare ground for almost two years. She did not expect Sudan’s civil war to displace her for so long into neighboring Chad.
“There is nothing here,” she said, crying and shaking the straw door of her makeshift home. Since April 2023, she has been in the Adre transit camp a few hundred meters from the Sudanese border, along with almost a quarter-million others fleeing the fighting.
Now the US- backed aid system that kept hundreds of thousands like Abdullah alive on the edge of one of the world’s most devastating wars is fraying. Under the Trump administration, key foreign aid has been slashed and funding withdrawn from United Nations programs that feed, treat and shelter refugees.
In 2024, the US contributed $39.3 million to the emergency response in Chad. So far this year, it has contributed about $6.8 million, the UN says. Overall, only 13 percent of the requested money to support refugees in Chad this year has come in from all donors, according to UN data.
In Adre, humanitarian services were already limited as refugees are meant to move to more established camps deeper inside Chad.
Many Sudanese, however, choose to stay. Some are heartened by the military’s recent successes against rival paramilitary forces in the capital, Khartoum. They have swelled the population of this remote, arid community that was never meant to hold so many. Prices have shot up. Competition over water is growing.
Adre isn’t alone. As the fighting inside Sudan’s remote Darfur region shifts, the stream of refugees has created a new, more isolated transit camp called Tine. Since late April, 46,000 people have arrived.
With the aid cuts, there is even less to offer them there.

235,000 Sudanese in a border town
Adre has become a fragile frontline for an estimated 235,000 Sudanese. They are among the 1.2 million who have fled into eastern Chad.
Before the civil war, Adre was a town of about 40,000. As Sudanese began to arrive, sympathetic residents with longtime cross-border ties offered them land.
Now there is a sea of markets and shelters, along with signs of Sudanese intending to stay. Some refugees are constructing multi-story buildings.
Sudanese-run businesses form one of Adre’s largest markets. Locals and refugees barter in Sudanese pounds for everything from produce to watches.
“There is respect between the communities,” said resident Asadiq Hamid Abdullah, who runs a donkey cart. “But everyone is complaining that the food is more expensive.”
Chad is one of the world’s poorest countries, with almost 50 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Locals say the price of water has quadrupled since the start of Sudan’s civil war as demand rises. Sudanese women told The Associated Press that fights had broken out at the few water pumps for them, installed by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.
Even food aid could run out shortly. The UN World Food Program says funding to support Sudanese refugees in Adre is guaranteed only until July, as the US aid cuts force a 30 percent reduction in staff worldwide. The UN refugee agency has seen 30 percent of its funding cut for this area, eastern Chad.
Samia Ahmed, who cradled her 3-year-old and was pregnant with her second child, said she has found work cleaning and doing laundry because the WFP rations don’t last the month.
“I see a gloomy future,” she said.

Sudanese try to fill aid gaps
Sudanese are trying to fill gaps in aid, running private schools and their own humanitarian area with a health clinic and women’s center.
Local and UN authorities, however, are increasing the pressure on them to leave Adre. There are too many people here, they say.
“A vast city,” said Hamit Hadjer Abdullai with Chad’s National Commission for the Reception and Reintegration of Refugees.
He said crime was increasing. Police warn of the Colombians, a Sudanese gang. Locals said it operates with impunity, though Abdullai claimed that seven leaders have been jailed.
“People must move,” said Benoit Kayembe Mukendi, the UN refugee agency’s local representative. “For security reasons and for their protection.”
As the Chadian population begins to demand their land back, Mukendi warned of a bigger security issue ahead.
But most Sudanese won’t go. The AP spoke to dozens who said they had been relocated to camps and returned to Adre to be closer to their homeland and the transit camp’s economic opportunities.
There are risks. Zohal Abdullah Hamad was relocated but returned to run a coffee stand. One day, a nearby argument escalated and gunfire broke out. Hamad was shot in the gut.
“I became cold. I was immobile,” she said, crying as she recalled the pain. She said she has closed her business.
The latest Sudanese arrivals to Adre have no chance to establish themselves. On the order of local authorities, they are moved immediately to other camps. The UN said it is transporting 2,000 of them a day.

In Tine, arriving Sudanese find nothing
The new and rapidly growing camp of Tine, around 180 kilometers (111 miles) north of Adre, has seen 46,000 refugees arrive since late April from Northern Darfur.
Their sheer numbers caused a UN refugee representative to gasp.
Thousands jostle for meager portions of food distributed by community kitchens. They sleep on the ground in the open desert, shaded by branches and strips of fabric. They bring witness accounts of attacks in Zamzam and El-Fasher: rape, robbery, relatives shot before their eyes.
With the US aid cuts, the UN and partners cannot respond as before, when people began to pour into Adre after the start of the war, UN representative Jean Paul Habamungu Samvura said.
“If we have another Adre here … it will be a nightmare.”


France offers to help make Gaza food distribution safer

Updated 29 June 2025
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France offers to help make Gaza food distribution safer

  • Barrot expressed anger over "the 500 people who have lost their life in food distribution" in Gaza in recent weeks

PARIS: France “stands ready, Europe as well, to contribute to the safety of food distribution” in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Saturday.
His comments came as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the territory.
Such an initiative, he added, would also deal with Israeli concerns that armed groups such as Hamas were getting hold of the aid.
Barrot expressed anger over “the 500 people who have lost their life in food distribution” in Gaza in recent weeks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu on Friday denounced as a “blood libel” a report in left-leaning daily Haaretz alleging that military commanders had ordered soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza
Aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday denounced the Israel- and US-backed food distribution effort in Gaza as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”
And UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that hungry people in Gaza seeking food must not face a “death sentence.”
The health ministry in Gaza, a territory controlled by Hamas, says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies.
 

 


Iran could again enrich uranium ‘in matter of months’: IAEA chief

Updated 29 June 2025
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Iran could again enrich uranium ‘in matter of months’: IAEA chief

  • “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi said Friday, according to a transcript of the interview released Saturday

WASHINGTON: UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi says Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months,” despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks, CBS News said Saturday.
Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites on June 13, saying it was aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition the Islamic republic has consistently denied.
The United States subsequently bombed three key facilities used for Tehran’s atomic program.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the extent of the damage to the nuclear sites is “serious,” but the details are unknown. US President Donald Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “decades.”
But Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said “some is still standing.”
“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi said Friday, according to a transcript of the interview released Saturday.
Another key question is whether Iran was able to relocate some or all of its estimated 408.6-kilo (900-pound) stockpile of highly enriched uranium before the attacks.
The uranium in question is enriched to 60 percent — above levels for civilian usage but still below weapons grade. That material, if further refined, would theoretically be sufficient to produce more than nine nuclear bombs.
Grossi admitted to CBS: “We don’t know where this material could be.”
“So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved. So there has to be at some point a clarification,” he said in the interview.
For now, Iranian lawmakers voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and Tehran rejected Grossi’s request for a visit to the damaged sites, especially Fordo, the main uranium enrichment facility.
“We need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened,” Grossi said.
In a separate interview with Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program, Trump said he did not think the stockpile had been moved.
“It’s a very hard thing to do plus we didn’t give much notice,” he said, according to excerpts of the interview. “They didn’t move anything.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday underscored Washington’s support for “the IAEA’s critical verification and monitoring efforts in Iran,” commending Grossi and his agency for their “dedication and professionalism.”
The full Grossi interview will air on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday.