UNITED NATIONS: Members of the United Nations Security Council called on Monday for a surge in assistance to reach people in need in Israeli-basieged Gaza, warning that the situation in the Palestinian enclave was getting worse.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said there needs to be a “huge, huge rise in aid” to Gaza, where most of the population of 2.3 million people has been displaced and health officials in the coastal enclave say that more than 43,922 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s 13-month-old offensive against Hamas.
“The situation is devastating, and frankly, beyond comprehension, and it’s getting worse, not better,” Lammy said. “Winter’s here. Famine is imminent, and 400 days into this war, it is totally unacceptable that it’s harder than ever to get aid into Gaza.”
The war erupted after Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that Washington was closely watching Israel’s actions to improve the situation for Palestinians and engaging with the Israeli government every day.
“Israel must also urgently take additional steps to alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza,” she said.
President Joe Biden’s administration concluded this month that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore not violating US law, even as Washington acknowledged the humanitarian situation remained dire in the Palestinian enclave.
The assessment came after the US in an Oct. 13 letter gave Israel a list of steps to take within 30 days to address the deteriorating situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so might have possible consequences on US military aid to Israel.
Thomas-Greenfield said Israel was working to implement 12 of the 15 steps.
“We need to see all steps fully implemented and sustained, and we need to see concrete improvement in the humanitarian situation on the ground,” she said, including Israel allowing commercial trucks to move into Gaza alongside humanitarian assistance, addressing persistent lawlessness and implementing pauses in fighting in large areas of Gaza to allow assistance to reach those in need.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, said Israel had facilitated the entrance of hundreds of aid trucks a week but there had been a failure of aid agencies to collect that aid and Hamas had looted trucks. Hamas has denied the accusation.
“Not only must the UN step up its aid distribution obligations, but the focus must also shift to Hamas’ constant hijacking of humanitarian aid to feed the machine of terror and misery,” Danon said.
Two UN aid agencies told Reuters on Monday that nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst losses of aid during the war.
Tor Wennesland, the UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said humanitarian agencies face a challenging and dangerous operational environment in Gaza and access restrictions that hinder their work.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza, as winter begins, is catastrophic, particularly developments in the north of Gaza with a large-scale and near-total displacement of the population and widespread destruction and clearing of land, amidst what looks like a disturbing disregard for international humanitarian law,” Wennesland said.
“The current conditions are among the worst we’ve seen during the entire war and are not set to improve.”
Members of UN Security Council call for surge in assistance to Gaza
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Members of UN Security Council call for surge in assistance to Gaza
- British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said there needs to be a “huge, huge rise in aid” to Gaza
- “Israel must also urgently take additional steps to alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza,” US Ambassador to the UN said
‘No safe place’: Writer’s group PEN International calls for arms embargo on Israel
- NGO says Palestinian writers have built growing body of evidence demonstrating systematic Israeli efforts to erase the Palestinian people and their cultural heritage
- Open letter details ‘irreversible loss of much of Gaza’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage’
LONDON: Writer’s group PEN International on Monday urged the international community to impose an arms embargo on all parties involved in the war in Gaza, calling specifically for a ban on weapons used by Israel in attacks that have targeted Palestinian civilians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
In an open letter, the London-based association expressed outrage at what it described as the global community’s failure to hold Israel accountable for the “ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
The letter condemned the daily killing of civilians and the prolonged blockade, calling for immediate action to halt the assault.
“PEN International has documented harrowing testimonies of Palestinian writers across the OPT, all of whom have reported and corroborated the growing body of evidence demonstrating concerted and systematic efforts by Israel to erase the Palestinian people and their cultural heritage, particularly in Gaza,” the open letter said.
The group said it shared the view of other international organizations that “genocide is being perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza through various means,” and reported that at least 23 writers — excluding artists and other cultural workers — have been killed in Israeli bombardments since Oct. 7, 2023.
Describing the current period as “the deadliest for writers since the Second World War,” PEN International said the assault on Palestinian culture — through the destruction of heritage sites, cultural spaces, and the targeting of writers and journalists — was “a deliberate strategy to silence and erase the Palestinian people.”
The NGO joins a growing number of organizations, experts and legal scholars that have concluded Israel’s conduct in Gaza meets the threshold of genocide.
The International Court of Justice ruled last year that Palestinians face a “plausible risk of genocide,” and UN experts, aid agencies, and hundreds of legal specialists and genocide scholars have echoed that assessment.
Even former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, writing in Haaretz, recently described the offensive as a “war of extermination,” though he stopped short of using the term “genocide.”
PEN International’s letter also detailed the “irreversible loss of much of Gaza’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage,” including independent cultural institutions, personal libraries and literary work, many of which were created under extreme restrictions and later destroyed in the war.
As of the end of May, UNESCO confirmed damage to 110 cultural sites in Gaza since the war began, including religious landmarks, historic buildings, museums and archaeological sites.
Testimonies gathered by PEN International also described the conditions faced by Palestinian writers amid the persistent threat to their lives.
“The relentless Israeli military operations, the indiscriminate bombardment of so-called ‘safe zones’ with high explosives, unexploded ordnance, sniper attacks targeting civilians, and the ongoing arbitrary restrictions and ban on humanitarian aid — are a grim, daily reality,” the letter read.
“All writers who spoke to PEN International have consistently stressed that: ‘There is no place safe in Gaza’.”
Founded in London in 1921, PEN International has grown into a global cultural institution. It has not remained untouched by the rippling political effects of the Gaza war.
In September 2024, the group passed a resolution condemning the rise in targeted killings, arbitrary detentions, and restrictions on access to information in both Palestine and Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks. The resolution placed primary responsibility for these violations on Israeli authorities.
In April 2025, PEN America, the group’s US branch, was forced to cancel its annual literary awards after several authors boycotted the event over what they viewed as the organization’s failure to take a clear stance against Israel’s war on Gaza.
The decision followed an open letter signed by dozens of authors and translators who withdrew their work from the awards in protest.
Erdogan proposes new Putin-Zelensky-Trump meeting in Turkiye
- Ukraine and Russia agreed on Monday to exchange severely injured prisoners of war as well as those under 25
ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday reiterated his willingness to host a meeting between the American, Russian and Ukrainian leaders in an effort to end the war in Ukraine.
“My greatest wish for both sides is to bring both (Russia’s) Vladimir Putin and (Ukraine’s Volodymyr) Zelensky together in Istanbul or Ankara, and even to bring (US President) Mr. (Donald) Trump to their side, if they accept,” he said.
Turkiye, he said, would “take steps” to facilitate such a meeting, following direct talks between the two sides in Istanbul on Monday.
Erdogan said it was a big achievement that Monday’s talks even took place.
Ukraine carried out one of its most brazen and successful attacks ever on Russian soil on the weekend, its drones ambushing dozens of strategic bombers at bases deep inside Russia.
“It is a success in itself that the meeting happened despite what happened yesterday,” he said, hailing the talks as “magnificent.”
At Monday’s meeting, which lasted just over an hour, Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange severely injured prisoners of war as well as those under 25, alongside the remains of 6,000 troops killed in combat, Kyiv said.
“These figures given by both Russia and Ukraine... (are) very, very important in terms of showing how important these Istanbul meetings are. And we are proud of this,” Erdogan added.
‘Without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes’ in Gaza: Biden official
- Matthew Miller: Biden administration debated whether to cut off arms supply
- Denies genocide taking place, but Israeli military not being held ‘accountable’
LONDON: A senior official in the administration of former US President Joe Biden told Sky News on Monday that he believes Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he does not believe genocide is taking place, but it is “without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” and Israeli forces are not being held “accountable” for their actions.
“There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes,” he told the “Trump 100” podcast. “One is, if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes?
“That, I think, is an open question. I think what’s almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes — where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”
Miller said there had been internal clashes between senior White House staff about the US stance on the war almost from the beginning of the conflict.
“There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he added.
“The administration did debate, at times, whether and when to cut off weapons to Israel. You saw us in the spring of 2024 stop the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because we didn’t believe they’d use those in a way that was appropriate in Gaza.”
He hinted that in particular, there had been tension between Biden and Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, but said: “I’ll probably wait and let the secretary speak for himself … but I will say, speaking generally … it’s true about every senior official in government that they don’t win every policy fight that they enter into. And what you do is you make your best case to the president.”
Miller added that Biden’s staunch military support of Israel was also a source of contention, but that public dissent against it may have also encouraged Hamas.
“There were debates about whether to suspend other arms deliveries, and you saw at times us hold back certain arms while we negotiated the use of those arms … But we found ourselves in this really tough position, especially in that time period when it really came to a head … We were at a place where — I’m thinking of the way I can appropriately say this — the decisions and the thinking of (the) Hamas leadership weren’t always secret to the US and to our partners.”
He added: “It was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the US, and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine — appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions, protests are appropriate — but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer and they could get what they always wanted.
“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I’ll always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January (2025), when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could’ve done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was.”
Biden’s popularity waned as the 2024 presidential election approached, with the war in Gaza weighing heavily on his polling.
Miller called US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, “an extremely capable individual,” adding: “I know the people in the Biden administration who worked with him during the first negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire thought that he was capable.”
Miller continued: “I do think it’s extremely important that when people sit down with an envoy of the United States, they know that that envoy speaks for the president of the United States, and it’s very clear that Witkoff has that, and that’s an extremely valuable asset to bring to the table.”
Poland’s new president poses challenge for EU, Ukraine ties
- Karol Nawrocki opposes Ukraine’s NATO accession, criticized by Kyiv ambassador
- His euroskeptic stance echoes central European conservatives
WARSAW: The victory of nationalist Karol Nawrocki in Poland’s presidential election looks set to strain relations with Ukraine and embolden Donald Trump-inspired conservatives in central Europe, analysts and diplomats said on Monday.
Nawrocki won a knife-edge vote that pitted him against Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who was supported by the ruling centrists Civic Coalition (KO), dealing a major blow to the pro-European government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
While remaining committed to helping Ukraine’s effort to fend off Russian’s invasion, Nawrocki opposes Kyiv joining Western alliances such as NATO.
Nawrocki rejects suggestions that his stance is pro-Russian. But his campaign, backed by the nationalist opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), tapped into a mix of weariness with Ukrainian refugees and worries Poland could be drawn into the war over the border that many Polish voters feel.
All parties in Poland have ruled out sending troops to Ukraine.
Although real executive power lies with the government, the Polish president has veto powers, meaning he can stymie the government’s agenda. The head of state can also propose laws.
Nawrocki signed a declaration saying he would not ratify Ukraine’s accession to NATO, as it could result in the alliance being drawn into a conflict with Russia, a move that was sharply criticized by Kyiv’s ambassador to Warsaw and which marked a departure from previous Polish policy under both PiS and KO.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Nawrocki on Monday and said he looked forward to future “fruitful cooperation” with Poland.
But elsewhere in Ukraine, the mood was less positive.
“The choice of the Poles will most likely complicate the dialogue within the EU and our European integration,” Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine.
A European diplomat based in Warsaw said that while policy on Ukraine’s future in the EU and NATO would continue to be set by Tusk’s government, Nawrocki could create “a shift in tone that’s not going to be helpful.”
In his role as head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki has been a harsh critic of what he said was Ukraine’s reluctance to exhume the remains of Polish victims killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two.
Euroskeptic politicians
Nawrocki’s campaign echoed the language of other euroskeptic politicians in central Europe, lambasting a perceived over-reach of Brussels into areas that they consider should be the domain of individual countries.
“Yes, we want a common market, we want development, we want to be a strong voice in the European Union, but we do not want our freedom in the entire scope of social life to be decided by the Brussels elites,” Nawrocki told a campaign rally in March.
The election of Tusk, a former European Council president, as prime minister in 2023 catapulted Poland back to the heart of European decision-making.
He succeeded in unblocking billions in EU funds that had been held back over rule-of-law concerns, even as critics said Warsaw had not actually implemented the necessary court reforms as a result of PiS-ally President Andrzej Duda’s veto.
“Of course it (the election result) will mean a lot to the prime minister of Poland, who now instead of being a very strong force in the EU will be more marginalized,” said a second European diplomat.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, himself facing a tough election battle in 2026, hailed Nawrocki’s “fantastic victory” on Monday.
“This is definitely emboldening for... all pro-Trumpist or pro-MAGA euroskeptics,” said Botond Feledy, a geopolitical analyst at Red Snow Consulting, adding that in Hungary it could add strength to Orban’s argument that protecting national identity is more important than EU money.
With the ‘co-habitation’ of a government and president from different political camps looking likely to continue at least until parliamentary elections in 2027, a third diplomat said that they hoped “they will not be spending more energy on fighting each other than they will... (on) Poland’s leadership in Europe.”
Stanley Bill, Professor of Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge said that Tusk’s pro-European government would set foreign policy, but that if Nawrocki uses “an even more aggressive rhetoric against the European Union than Duda has... that’s clearly going to create a greater impression of chaos.”
Bangladeshi citizens commend Saudi Arabia’s meticulous services for Hajj pilgrims
- About 87,000 Bangladeshis are expected to perform Hajj this year
MAKKAH: Bangladeshi pilgrims performing Hajj have expressed satisfaction with the services Saudi Arabia provides to ensure visitors’ comfort during the Muslim pilgrimage.
Pilgrims praised the organization and high-quality services they enjoyed by participating in the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Guests Program.
They commended the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Dawah, and Guidance for managing the program, which they said demonstrates Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the Islamic nation and the two holy mosques.
The visitors from Bangladesh represented the University of Dhaka, Jamia Darul Arqam Al-Islamia, and the ministry of ports, shipping and waterways, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
About 87,000 Bangladeshis are expected to perform Hajj this year, having started to arrive in Saudi Arabia in late April, the Dhaka Tribune reported.
Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage every Muslim is obliged to undertake at least once in their life if they are physically and financially able to do so, starts in Makkah on June 4 and will end on June 9.
