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Ukraine war briefing: Macron focuses on delivery of missile interceptors as Russian attacks intensify

French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to strengthen support for Ukraine with the delivery of interceptor missiles after a call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which they discussed Kyiv’s shortage of air defences. The move comes amid a surge in Russian strikes that have pushed civilian deaths in the war to their highest since the first months of Moscow’s invasion. Macron said they would continue to work with the Anti-Missile Coalition launched at a meeting in Paris on July. The coalition consists of 10 European countries that are developing an anti-ballistic missile system as a cheaper alternative ⁠to the US Patriots. At that time, Macron said France would advance the deployment of the new SAMP/T system to Ukraine and license Kyiv to manufacture the interceptor missiles, as well as the SCALP long-range cruise missile and other munitions. Speaking on the Telegram app, Zelenskyy said: “We agreed to accelerate the delivery of the latest French equipment and missiles,” without providing further details. “Thank you for confirming the readiness to provide licences for missile production.” President Macron wrote on X: “It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression.” The Patriot air defence system is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of downing high-speed ballistic missiles used by Russia in its war in Ukraine. Russia has pounded Ukraine – the capital Kyiv especially – with ballistic missile attacks in recent months. The hard-to-intercept super-fast weapons reach their target within minutes, making it virtually impossible for people to reach underground shelters in time. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Ukraine’s strikes, which Kyiv says seek to choke off financing for Moscow’s war effort, had opened a “Pandora’s box” ‌of Russian retaliation. But Ukraine’s allies in the Coalition of the Willing – an initiative led by France and Britain – will meet on Monday to look at how to ramp up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion. Diplomacy has stalled with the US, which had brokered several rounds of direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow, but is now focused on its war with Iran. Macron expressed his “horror and emotion” to Zelenskyy over the attack on a shopping centre in the city of Kryvyi Rih, that killed 16 people as rescuers sifted through the rubble of the site in the president’s home town. Russia fired a ballistic missile towards Kyiv in the middle of the day – while the German foreign minister Johann Wadephul was visiting on Saturday for talks with Zelenskyy. Two were killed and several wounded in the Boryspil district, on the eastern outskirts of the city. Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck at trucks outfitted for transporting long-range drones near Kyiv, as well as targets linked to the Ukrainian army in the Odesa region on the Black Sea. The Odesa region’s governor Oleg Kiper said three people had been wounded, including a 16-year-old girl, in a “prolonged and combined strike” that hit a house and grain silos. At least four were killed in a series of strikes on the frontline region of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said. Ukrainian drones killed at least 10 people in attacks against targets across Russia and Russian-occupied ⁠areas of Ukraine, including ⁠a warehouse owned by online retailer Ozon and an industrial facility, Russian officials said on Saturday. Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, said in a statement on Telegram that the attack had caused injuries. The attack is the first on Ozon after weeks of drone strikes on its larger rival Wildberries, which Ukraine has cast as part of a wider campaign against economic infrastructure underpinning the Russian war in Ukraine. On the Crimean peninsula, at least two people were killed and 10 injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a city bus, said the Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol, ‌Mikhail Razvozhayev. The peninsula was seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014. In Luhansk region, an eastern Ukrainian province almost all of which is controlled by Russia, Moscow-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said that two civilians, including a 16-year-old boy, had been killed and nine more were wounded.

Fur seal’s death marks first Australian mainland mammal fatality from spreading H5 bird flu strain

A long-nosed fur seal has died from H5 bird flu in South Australia, marking the first confirmed case in a mammal on the Australian mainland. The seal was found dead at Beachport on Wednesday on the state’s Limestone Coast. It marks a fresh escalation in the spread of the virus days after the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, announced three mass mortality events on offshore islands involving more than 1,000 greater crested terns. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The federal agriculture minister, Julie Collins, said the seal death was “not unexpected” as the virus begins to spread through the country. Speaking in Hobart on Sunday, Collins said the “distressing” news of the first confirmed case of a mammal on the mainland was anticipated and that it was “not possible to avoid significant losses”. “An infection of this individual animal is likely to have occurred due to exposure to infected wild birds or the environment that they share,” she said. “We can’t stop it spreading in terms of, particularly, in wild birds, and where we see more dead wild birds, we do expect to see increased reports of marine mammals.” Collins said there had been 298 events across the country, with 183 in South Australia, 86 in Victoria, 11 in New South Wales, 10 in Western Australia, seven in Tasmania and one in Queensland. The risk of human transmission remains low, but people are being urged to avoid sick or dead birds and report them to birdflu.gov.au. The long-nosed fur seal was found dead with no signs of injury and reported to an official hotline by a member of the public on Wednesday Testing of samples from the seal later confirmed the H5 bird flu detection. The highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has killed millions of birds globally and crossed over into mammal species, including elephant seals. Long-nosed fur seals and the endangered Australian sea lion are among the mammal species the federal government has assessed as facing very high risk from the virus. Jack Gough, the chief executive of the Invasive Species Council, said the virus spreading to Australia’s sea lion population could be an “extinction level event”. “We are still just at the early stages of this devastating virus, and the bad news is going to keep coming for our wildlife as it spreads around the continent and between species,” he said. The SA government has also confirmed a little penguin found at Kangaroo Island this week tested positive for H5 bird flu. Elsewhere, the Tasmanian government said 51 little penguins found on the state’s King Island were “assumed to” have died from H5 bird flu, but the deaths would not be declared a mass mortality event. The state’s natural resources and environment department said a sample taken from one penguin found at the Port of Grassy tested positive for H5 bird flu, while a sample from a second penguin was inconclusive. Wes Ford, the state’s incident controller for its bird flu response, said both samples had been sent to the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness for further testing. “The little penguin mortality event is not considered a mass mortality event, and the condition of the remaining deceased birds meant they were unsuitable for testing,” he said. “As a result, the cause of death could not be confirmed, although it may be assumed to have been from bird flu. “Our teams continue to monitor reports of sick and dead birds closely, with results from surveillance informing our response.”

Seventeen-year-old girl killed in sword attack at school in Sweden

A 17-year-old girl has been killed after a teenager brandishing a sword attacked students at a school in Sweden, police have confirmed. Three other people were wounded in the incident during classes in the central town of Fagersta on Friday afternoon, including two boys aged 12 and 17 who sustained minor injuries. The third person, who was also under 18, was also left with minor injuries and has been discharged from hospital, Swedish news agency TT reported. The parents of the 17-year-old girl told local newspaper Fagersta-Posten their daughter was killed in the attack. An 18-year-old man has been arrested over the incident at Brinell high school. Swedish police are investigating whether the suspect was involved in online communities promoting school violence, a police source said. Detectives are investigating whether a TikTok account that posted a picture of a sword 20 minutes before the attack belonged to the person responsible, the source told Reuters. The image appeared to have been taken in a restroom at the school, according to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. Before the image was taken down on Friday, the month-old account contained videos that referred to two episodes of mass violence in Sweden and to the far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. One of the videos referenced a 2015 attack in which a masked swordsman killed a teaching assistant and two boys at a school in Trollhättan, western Sweden, before being shot dead by police. “The investigators are looking into various online communities that may have egged on the suspect to carry out the attack,” the police source said. Several party leaders cancelled planned speeches on Saturday, pausing campaigning ahead of Sweden’s 13 September general election. The prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, and opposition leader Magdalena Andersson travelled to Fagersta to offer condolences to the bereaved family and visit the injured. Kristersson told reporters: “What should never happen has happened again. Our thoughts go first and foremost to the families who have been incredibly hard hit by this.” Sweden’s worst mass shooting occurred in February 2025 at a school in the south-central city of Örebro, when a gunman killed 10 people before turning the weapon on himself. On Saturday, the police clarified that the suspect in the Fagersta attack had not been shot, contrary to what they had said on Friday. “Service weapons were used but the perpetrator has not been injured in connection with the arrest, and has not been in need of medical attention,” a police spokesperson told the Aftonbladet daily. Prosecutors ordered the man’s detention on suspicion of murder and several counts of attempted murder.

Canada vows ‘dollar for dollar’ response as US puts 50% tariffs on some goods

The US has imposed 50% tariffs on some goods from Canada, and Mark Carney, the country’s prime minister, has vowed to match them “dollar for dollar” after the collapse of trade talks. The tariffs came into force on roughly $20bn (£14.6bn) of goods – ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors – at 04.00GMT. Trade experts said the tariffs could result in some job losses, but the largest impact is expected to be political, driving a further wedge between the traditional allies. The trade row is the biggest rupture in recent relations between Washington and one of its closest allies and trading partners as Donald Trump’s bellicose foreign policy angered officials in Ottawa. The two sides appeared close to a deal on Friday to lower tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars, but the deal was scuttled at the last minute. The two sides blamed each other for the collapse. Canadian officials had worked hard in good faith but “last-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal”, Carney said in a statement. Carney recalled his negotiators as Canada vowed to match Washington’s tough approach. No further talks are planned. US officials accused Canada of collapsing the deal by seeking additional concessions at the last minute. The US tariffs will affect about $20bn worth of Canadian products, and the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said the breakdown represented a “missed opportunity for Canada”. Recriminations continued on Saturday with Carney accusing the Trump administration of using “economic integration as a weapon” – and saying that his country had been “attacked” by the new US tariffs. Carney accused the Trump administration of adding last-minute terms that would have reduced tariff relief for Canadian-made vehicles, restricted Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries and weakened protections for language, culture and sovereignty. He called the demands “unacceptable”. Carney said the Trump administration’s final demands went too far: “They asked too much and offered too little.” Greer said the US was compelled to act after a year of retaliatory measures by Canada. “We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures,” he told Fox & Friends Weekend. “Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains.” Greer said the US was offering to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, “things that are sensitive for them”. “And they’ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn’t want that,” Greer said. Therefore, he said, “We’re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.” “Tonight, Canada declined to finalise the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week,” he said in the statement shortly before midnight on Friday. “Despite the US offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days.” Greer said the US offer was forward-looking and included “a historic economic and national security partnership”. The retaliation escalates the two countries’ trade conflict and calls into question the future of a North American trade pact between the US, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries. Trade experts have said the tariffs could subject some already-vulnerable sectors to economic strain, potentially leading to job losses and stores closing. Trump’s import taxes will apply to about 5% of what Canada ships to the US every year. The inventory is broken down into categories and, in its minutiae, provides a fascinating insight into cross-border commerce and market demands contained within an international trade dispute. Under dairy, it includes milk and cream, whey and milk protein concentrates, bones and horn-cones, lactose, glucose, fructose and blended syrups, sugars, cane molasses, non-alcoholic beer and essential oils of peppermint. The alcohol order includes beer, wine, liquor, cider and other fermented beverages. Other products include essential oils of grapefruit, densified wood blocks, plates, strips, skewers and ice cream sticks, as well as bamboo products, basketwork, grease-proof paper and ice hockey and field hockey equipment. Another category includes natural honey, down feathers, tortoise shell, whalebone, horns, antlers as well as tulips and other dormant flower buds, live orchids, mushroom spawn, tubers, mosses and lichen and vegetable, tree and shrub seeds. The list goes on to include cements, candles, plastic furniture fittings, dog leashes and saddles, T-shirts, sweaters, trousers, dresses, wigs, false beards, eyebrows of synthetic material, floating docks, vessels and rafts, chandeliers, Christmas and other festival decorations, ice skates, swimming and wading pools, and fishing rods. Canada sought concessions on steel, aluminium, vehicles and lumber that the US was unwilling to provide, a senior Trump administration official told reporters. The political impact of the breakdown is likely to be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $880bn worth of goods and services last year, and many Canadians and Americans work in the other country. Carney, whose willingness to stand up to Trump has made him popular in Canada, has said that “America has changed,” and that the two countries would not return to their old relationship. The Canadian public has also been incensed by US policy towards their country, particularly Trump’s comments about turning Canada into the 51st US state. A petition to expel the US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, has collected about 248,000 signatures, accusing him of normalising the notion of the US annexing Canada. The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12.01am on Wednesday but Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue. Carney said his government would announce additional support for Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days, and that Canada’s goal throughout the negotiations had been to secure the best possible agreement, “never a deal at any price or on any deadline”. The move was supported by Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, who said on X: “Team Canada needs to stand together more united than ever before. The prime minister has my full support for a strong response – tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar. As we fight to protect Canadian sovereignty and economic security, everything needs to be on the table. Ontario is ready to do its part.” The head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Candace Laing, called the tariffs “a body blow to North American competitiveness”. She said they would raise costs for Americans while threatening Canadian customers, investment and small businesses. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

Man leaves young son on Mount Fuji before ascending Japan’s highest peak

A man who abandoned his seven-year-old son on Mount Fuji in Japan after the boy complained of feeling tired while on a family hike has been reprimanded by local police. A worker on Japan’s highest mountain discovered the child sitting alone on a bench near the sixth station of the Fujinomiya trail at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) on Thursday. After inviting the boy to take shelter at the station, the worker called the police, who took the child into protective custody. It emerged that he had told his father he was too tired to continue while they were hiking up the trail in the early hours of the morning. The man, who was from Japan’s fourth-largest city, Nagoya, gave his son some snacks and a soft drink. He then told him to wait for him before continuing his five-hour ascent to the summit with the child’s older brother, who had already gone on ahead. It would have taken him about eight hours to return, according to local reports. By the time police officers managed to contact the boy’s father, he had ascended to the eighth station, a three-hour hike from where he had left his son. They told him to turn back, and after reuniting him with his son reprimanded him for leaving the child alone on an active volcano. “Even if it means having to give up on climbing the mountain together, leaving a child behind is unacceptable,” officers said, according to Japan Today. Weather on the mountain, which has its own microclimate, is unpredictable and can change rapidly. Hypothermia poses a serious risk for hikers even in the summer. The father is said to have apologised to the police, saying: “I made a rash decision, and I deeply regret it.” Local police are urging hikers to consider the abilities and stamina of everyone in their group when planning an ascent on Mount Fuji, and to adjust their pace accordingly.

Former world boxing champion, 38, shot dead outside home in South Africa

The former boxing world champion Zolani “Last Born” Tete was shot dead outside his home in South Africa on Friday amid rampant violence in the country, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates. The 38-year-old athlete was arriving at his house in the Mdantsane township, Eastern Cape province, when two men in balaclavas got out of a car and shot him. He was declared dead at the scene. A 27-year-old woman with Tete was also shot multiple times and taken to hospital. Police said the motive remains unclear, but that they have started investigations, asking the public for assistance. The killing of the boxer brought renewed attention to South Africa’s widespread violent crime. The country has recently had a decline in homicides, but remains one of the world’s murder capitals. An average of 58 people per day were murdered in South Africa in the first four months of 2026, according to government data. The UK recorded an average of 1.5 murders per day in 2025. The boxer’s death led to an outpouring of grief and tributes. Tete fought in 34 matches over the course of his career. He was a two-time title winner, winning the IBF junior-bantamweight title in 2014, and the bantamweight title in 2017. He also held the Guinness world record for the fastest knockout in a title fight. Gayton McKenzie, the minister of sports, arts and culture in South Africa, said: “South Africa has lost one of the finest fighters it has ever produced … There are no words I can offer tonight that will be equal to what [the family] has lost.” Tete was training to return to the ring, according to McKenzie, who said the boxer believed “he still had something to give his country.” The world boxing council published a tribute of Tete, offering their “deepest condolences” to his family and praising his “remarkable career.”

Ebola frontline workers missing wages as outbreak spreads ‘exponentially’

Every day, Sophie Mwadawa Kabundo goes to her job as a nurse at an Ebola treatment centre in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, afraid she will contract the virus and pass it to her family and friends. “More and more confirmed cases are being admitted here … Some of our colleagues have died,” said Kabundo. “We fear that, despite our vigilance, workplace accidents may occur and put us in ever greater danger … We go to sleep already worrying about the days ahead, as patients continue to pour in.” Martin Bolombi, her colleague at the Elikya treatment centre in Bunia, the capital of the hardest-hit province, Ituri, holds similar fears. “Personally, this outbreak is causing me a lot of stress,” he said. “But I have no choice but to pluck up my courage and ensure that the situation is brought under control first, before it can stabilise.” That courage is all the more remarkable given that both workers on the frontline of the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record said they were not being paid. “I have been working since May and have only been paid for June,” said Bolombi, a hygiene worker who was among about 100 people who protested outside the Elikya treatment centre during a strike last month over unpaid bonuses. Kabundo said she was also missing wages. “We are not being paid and we want the government to provide solutions as soon as possible,” she said. “We are under immense pressure … We are exposed to the risk of infection, and our families and other loved ones may contract the disease because of us.” *** Unpaid wages are just one of the factors – alongside misinformation, community mistrust and infrastructure deficits – hampering efforts to tackle the outbreak in the DRC, one of the world’s poorest countries. More than 2,500 people have now died in the outbreak, which ⁠is spreading exponentially in an ⁠area larger than France, the senior UN Ebola coordinator, Julien Harneis, said on Friday. Speaking on a video call from Bunia, Harneis called ⁠for more aid, saying the existing pool of funds would run out within weeks. He said 160 healthcare ‌workers had fallen ill with Ebola, and 43 of them had died. “The outbreak is growing faster and wider than the Ebola response,” he added. “And all of this is happening in an area that has had three decades of conflict and is generating huge humanitarian needs.” The World Health Organization estimates that the outbreak is on course to exceed west Africa’s 2014-16 Ebola outbreak as the biggest ever globally. In the previous outbreak, more than 28,600 cases and 11,325 deaths were recorded across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to WHO data. The infections in DRC are of the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus. There are no approved treatments or vaccines for the strain, but trials for both are under way. Bolombi said he was working seven days a week, with barely any time to see his family, as the outbreak was getting worse. “Logistics have improved compared to the early days of the response, but this is still not enough, as needs are growing as the disease progresses,” he said. Despite the enormous challenges and lack of renumeration, Kabundo expressed pride that there had been “a large number of recoveries” at the Elikya treatment centre. “This progress must be highlighted, but it is no excuse to rest on our laurels,” she said. The Congolese health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ebola is transmitted to people from wild animals and then spreads between humans via direct contact with the organs, blood or other body fluids of infected people, including dead bodies. It can also be spread through contact with contaminated surfaces and materials, such as bedding or clothing. Initial symptoms can include fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. These progress to vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, rash and symptoms of impaired kidney and liver functions. Widespread mistrust and misinformation have resulted in people with the virus not attending health centres for treatment until it is too late, as well as attacks on health facilities and ambulances. Dr Eddy Kambale Kahandukya, a deputy medical coordinator for the charity Médicins Sans Frontières in the DRC, said: “The lack of community engagement remains a major challenge in breaking this chain of transmission … For example, patients who suspect they have symptoms and are awaiting laboratory results seek refuge within the community and end up creating new clusters that further fuel the spread of the epidemic.” Fear was a big driver of the lack of trust in the authorities’ response to Ebola, said Manon Dumortier, an emergency coordinator in Bunia for the aid group Mercy Corps. “It’s scary, right? … Suddenly there are so many people dying and you don’t know what it is about,” she said. “People are just disappearing, going to health centres and you cannot even see them before they are being buried. This is just raising a lot of speculation and rumours.” The WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern in May, but later said sequencing showed the outbreak had started months earlier in February. The virus has spread to six of the DRC’s 26 provinces, concentrated in the country’s north-east. More than 4,200 of the confirmed cases are in Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan. Uganda reported 20 cases and two deaths, all in the capital, Kampala. The government declared the country Ebola-free on 28 July after the last Ebola patient, a Congolese national, was discharged on 16 July.

Former British and French diplomats urge action over Israel’s ‘erasure’ of Palestine

More than 100 French and British former diplomats have said Palestine is being erased in front of the world’s eyes and called for urgent action including trade and arms sales bans to press Israel to accept a Palestinian state. An unprecedented joint letter dispenses with diplomatic language by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and warning that the world no longer sees Israel as a genuine democracy. Arguing that Britain and France played a key role in the formation of the modern-day Middle East and noting that both countries took the step of recognising Palestine as a state in 2025, the diplomats contend that their countries now have a responsibility “to make common cause on the region’s fundamental fault line – equal rights for Israeli and Palestinians”. The letter, addressed to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the British prime minister, Andy Burnham, has been signed by 52 French former diplomats and 50 British former ambassadors, many of whom served in the Middle East, in senior posts in Egypt, Iran, Bahrain, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The list of British diplomats include two former envoys to the UN, Jeremy Greenstock and Emyr Jones Parry, and a former Foreign Office director of the Middle East, Edward Chaplin. The French signatories include Patrice Paoli, a former Middle East director at the French foreign ministry, and Stanislas de Laboulaye, a former consul general in Jerusalem. The letter, given to the Guardian and Le Monde, is published two days after the UK and France along with nine other countries condemned the Israeli government’s publication of construction tenders for the E1 settlement project, saying the proposed housing “will take Israel further from peace and undermine its international standing”. That statement contained no clear threat of consequences apart from a warning to businesses in their jurisdictions not to become involved in bidding since there could be legal and reputational consequences arising from investing in the construction of an unlawful settlement. The UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, described the tenders for 1,200 homes bisecting the West Bank as a destructive threat to the viability of a two-state solution and summoned the most senior Israeli diplomat currently in the UK, the chargée d’affaires, Daniela Grudsky Ekstein. In response, Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, vowed Israel would not remain passive, saying the “Jewish people have a right to live throughout Israel just as British people have a right to live throughout the UK”. The diplomats hope their letter will put pressure on Macron and Burnham to impose specific penalties on Israel in an effort to keep the two-state solution alive. Diplomacy surrounding the terms for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza has largely been subcontracted to the negotiations between Israel and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, but Israel has rejected the latest 15-point US-led peace plan for Gaza, leading to criticism from eight Muslim countries including the United Arab Emirates, Israel’s closest Muslim ally. They said Israel’s actions “fundamentally undermine the collective efforts undertaken to achieve a just and lasting peace”. An internal debate has swirled among diplomats over whether the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, through military and political provocations, is seeking to goad countries into reprisals that will help his chances in elections, due on 27 October. The former diplomats argue the overdue step of recognising Palestine “needs to be made real by urgent action to safeguard the Palestinian right to self-determination, as the Israeli government seeks to destroy any prospect of an independent Palestinian state, showing contempt for the law, the rulings of the international court of justice and countless UN security council resolutions”. They write: “Our governments care about the security of the Israeli people, just as they are appalled by the suffering of the Palestinian people under occupation. Hamas committed heinous crimes on 7 October 2023, but nothing justifies Israel’s systematic policy of destruction of Gaza and its population. Mr Netanyahu’s assertion that Israel must live by the sword is morally wrong and counterproductive. It imperils Israel’s security and leaves no room for negotiation. As a result, the world no longer sees Israel as a genuine democracy – there is nothing democratic about depriving others of their rights and land. “In Gaza, 2 million Palestinians are kettled into 30% of their devastated land, hungry, lacking medicine and housing. Over 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the so-called ‘ceasefire’. In East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, Palestinian house demolitions and rampant settler violence – with the connivance of the Israeli army and police – amount to ethnic cleansing. Palestine is being erased before our eyes. This policy of occupation and destruction extends to Lebanon – where many villages have been razed – and Syria. It is a stain on the conscience of humanity, requiring the UK and France to act.” They urge the two states to take seven policy steps: Uphold the decisions of the international court of justice and the international criminal court. Suspend the EU-Israel association agreement and the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement for breach of human rights provisions. Suspend arms transfers to and from Israel and all bilateral military cooperation. Insist on unrestricted aid access to Gaza, led by the UN Relief and Works Agency, other UN agencies and international NGOs, with consequences for non-compliance, and access too for journalists, diplomats and parliamentarians. Ban all trade with settlements, including goods, investment, insurance and other financial services. Warn potential bidders for the “red line” E1 settlement or other settlement financing/construction that their interests in and with the UK and France will suffer. Make it an offence for British and French citizens to buy property on stolen Palestinian land and remove charitable status from “charities” funding settlements. The diplomats balance their criticism of Israel by saying Palestinians “have to ensure that the state recognised by over two-thirds of the world is democratic and law-abiding, despite the occupation. Gaza and the West Bank need to be reunited politically, administratively and economically. Palestine’s political leadership is unrepresentative and dysfunctional. The elections in November [in Palestine] must lead to democratic renewal.” But they argue: “While our two governments can do much to help Palestine to be a fully functioning democratic nation, the focus needs to be on Israel’s determination to prevent that outcome.” The Israeli embassy in London was contacted for comment.