Read the daily news to learn English

US-Iran peace deal remains elusive as Trump and Tehran trade conflicting claims

Prospects for an immediate end to the war between Iran and the US remained uncertain on Friday amid a chaotic series of conflicting claims and counter-claims by US and Iranian officials about ongoing negotiations Donald Trump seemed to distance himself from his earlier comments that suggested a preliminary agreement could be signed as soon as this weekend, with a series of angry social media posts describing the Iranians as “very dishonorable people to deal with”. “With them, there is no such thing as dealing in good faith …. They better get their act together, and FAST! ” the US president wrote on Friday. The outburst came after Iranian news agencies close to the regime denied that the terms of any deal had been fully agreed, and published a supposed draft of a finalised deal. Further adding to the confusion, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, on Friday claimed, in a post on social media, that a final agreed text of a peace deal between the United States and Iran had been reached, without providing any further information. Neither Tehran nor Washington have confirmed that a final version of the deal has been agreed upon, though one senior US official separately suggested an “80 to 85% ” likelihood of an agreement being signed within days. “Most of the people that we’ve been speaking to, and most of the people who have authority within their system, want to sign this deal, but not everybody,” the senior official said. “And those internal fractures are sort of working themselves out as they continue to try to get to a point where they can say yes to the deal.” The senior official added that Iran would “get rewarded economically for complying with their obligations under the deal”. “I think that both of us [the US and Iran] feel frankly pretty good about where there’s a meeting of the minds here, there’s going to be a significant relief of economic sanctions,” the official said. Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Friday that an “Islamabad memorandum of understanding” for addressing the US-Israeli war on Iran had “never been closer” but urged media outlets to refrain from speculating about its contents until it was finalised. Araghchi said Iran would share all details with the public in due course, in what he called Tehran’s responsible and transparent approach. IRNA, Iran’s state news agency, also confirmed that “the broad outlines” of a deal were being finalised, but sowed further confusion when it said that Iran would not give up its control of the strait of Hormuz, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied gas supplies and has been shut to most shipping by Tehran since shortly after the war began in February. The US has insisted that Tehran, which wants to levy lucrative tolls on passage through the straits, restore freedom of shipping in the crucial waterway. A US official on Friday said the strait of Hormuz would open and the US would lift its blockade on Iranian ports as a part of the terms that Washington and Tehran have agreed. Since a ceasefire came into effect in April, Trump has repeatedly claimed a deal was on the point of completion, only to then revert to threatening Iran with new attacks. Recent days have seen the most intense clashes between Iran, Israel and the United States since the ceasefire. Trump on Thursday threatened to seize Iran’s oil export terminal of Kharg Island and launch a new wave of attacks, then suddenly claimed a diplomatic breakthrough, saying that a draft deal had been “approved” by “the highest level of Iranian leadership”. Details of the supposed deal leaked or briefed by each side included a series of major concessions by the other, suggesting that big gaps remain. On Friday, Trump dismissed a report of the text of the draft deal published by Iran’s Mehr news agency, which quoted a source close to Iran’s negotiating team, as bearing “no relation to the truth”. The draft would end conflict on all fronts, including Lebanon, where Israel has launched an offensive against Hezbollah, and ensure the release of $24bn in Iran’s frozen assets, the semi-official agency claimed. It would also set a 60-day period for negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear programme, offer the suspension of sanctions on the sale of Iran’s oil and petrochemical products, bring generous reparations to be paid by the US, and lift the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, in place since 13 April. The claims contrasted dramatically with statements from Washington, where officials said the agreement stipulated that Iran’s nuclear material will be destroyed, and its nuclear programme dismantled, none of its frozen money will be released until it meets certain demands, and Iran will stop supporting allied militant movements around the Middle East. Underlining the ongoing tensions over the strait of Hormuz, US forces on Thursday shot down two Iranian one-way attack drones after Tehran attempted to strike commercial ships passing through the waterway, according to US officials. Iran’s military stopped a tanker from transiting the strait, Iranian state media said, reporting the sound of explosions early on Friday. Trump is under domestic political pressure to end the war, with polls showing his approval ratings sinking as fuel prices rise. Some Republicans have openly worried that the war’s unpopularity could cost them control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. But Iran’s regime also faces serious challenges, with its oil exports restricted and inflation soaring. “We are currently under sanctions, and our routes have been blocked. We face a difficult test,” Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, said in a live address on state television on Wednesday. “Governing the country is not an easy task under the current circumstances, given the shortages we face, the unrest we have experienced and the problems that remain.” US officials have suggested that regional allies have agreed to terms of a deal, but curbs on fighting in Lebanon could be difficult to accept for Israel, which started the war alongside the US in February but has not been included in peace negotiations. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said on Friday that he and Trump were in “full agreement” to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. On Thursday, Netanyahu said he had spoken to Trump and “expressed his appreciation” for the US president’s commitment that any final deal would also involve limits on Tehran’s missile production, and the cessation of Iran’s support for its “terrorist proxies” in the region, which include Hezbollah. Diplomats and analysts in the Middle East said that Iran’s still potent ballistic missile capabilities and its support for militant movements were not part of current negotiations. A leading Hezbollah politician expressed confidence on Friday that Iran will insist on Lebanon being included in a deal between Tehran and Washington. Hezbollah entered the regional conflict on 2 March, opening fire at Israel and leading to an Israeli offensive that has killed thousands of people in Lebanon. Israeli strikes on Beirut prompted Tehran to launch waves of ballistic missiles aimed at central Israel last week. “If the agreement happens, we have complete confidence in the Islamic Republic … [and] that it will insist on any agreement, including the file of Lebanon,” Hassan Fadlallah said in an excerpt of a speech broadcast by Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV. Israeli forces have occupied swathes of southern Lebanon, where Lebanon’s national news agency reported fresh Israeli airstrikes in several towns and villages on Friday. Last week, Mohsen Rezaee, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said Hezbollah had “made great sacrifices” in the war and that Lebanon “will be an inseparable part of any agreement and any ceasefire”, in comments reported by the Mehr news agency. The war in Lebanon has continued despite several ceasefires announced by the US, which has been mediating talks between the Lebanese and Israeli governments. Hezbollah is not a party to these talks and rejected a US-backed plan declared last week that called for the group to withdraw its fighters from southern Lebanon.

Middle East crisis live: final text of peace deal between US and Iran agreed, says Pakistan’s prime minister

We reported earlier that a number of US media outlets were citing sources who were saying that the peace deal signing ceremony may happen in Geneva, Switzerland ahead of (or during) the G7 summit that begins in France on Monday. AFP is now reporting that the Swiss foreign ministry is offering to host the signing. The ministry told AFP that it “has proposed Switzerland as the venue for a possible signing, should the parties agree to it”. “Switzerland is fully engaged. We are in close contact with the United States and Iran,” the ministry said, adding that it was playing an active role “to support efforts toward a memorandum of understanding intended to consolidate the truce and pave the way for de-escalation in the context of the conflict between Iran and the USA”. Meanwhile, Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, told Reuters that he cannot comment on a time or place for the signing of the memorandum of understanding before a decision is reached in Iran.

Canada police investigate whether Toronto police death linked to global terror attacks

Investigators in Canada are probing whether the death of a Toronto police officer, who was killed while executing search warrants related to a shooting at US consulate, is linked a broader series of global terror attacks. Constable Marc Pinizzotto, a 43-year-old member of the emergency task force, was killed on Thursday during a dawn search of an apartment building in the city’s west. Toronto police chief Myron Demkiw told reporters the search “concerned a number of shootings” including one targeting the US consulate in Toronto earlier this year. That attack took place in early March, when two gunmen opened fire at the US consulate in Toronto. No one was injured and the suspected shooters fled in a white vehicle. A police source said the investigation is looking at whether the shooters are part of a broader, city-wide network of “shooters-for-hire” that has targeted buildings owned by large waste management company and private homes. In recent years, Toronto and surrounding communities have been rocked by a series of escalating attacks on tow truck companies, including high profile murders and allegations of police corruption and investigators suspect the shooters could have ties to some of these attacks. The source said investigators were also looking the possibility that the case was linked to a global terror network that has threatened retribution for US attacks on Iran. In May, US authorities charged Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, an Iraqi national, with terrorism. He is alleged to be the architect of nearly 20 attacks in Europe. US court documents suggest he has also claimed responsibility for the Toronto consulate shooting. In a criminal complaint, the FBI alleged that in a recorded telephone call al-Saadi suggested that “our people” were behind the attack. The RCMP, Canada’s federal police force did not respond to questions about a possible connection. RCMP officers were present during the morning search of the Toronto apartment complex, according to local media. American prosecutors have said Al-Saadi is behind a previously unknown group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which is alleged to work with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to attack targets linked to the US and Israel. Police have charged 19-year-old Nicholas Bennett with the first-degree murder of Pinizzotto. Officers are still searching the city for 19-year-old Zara Jabbi, warning he is likely still armed. Police received approval from a judge to release a photo of Jabbi while he was a minor until 15 June. Ontario’s special investigations unit, which is called when civilians are seriously injured or killed by police, is investigating the shooting. Spokesperson Monica Hudon said four other people were in the apartment unit at the time when an “exchange of gunfire” broke out. Pinizzotto, a father of two and avid hockey player and youth coach. “He spent 18 years keeping people safe,” said the Oakville mayor Rob Burton. “He spent a lifetime giving back.” Politicians, including the Toronto mayor, Olivia Chow, and prime minister Mark Carney, also paid tribute to Pinizzotto. Ontario premier Doug called the shooting- and the killing of another officer earlier in the week “a sobering reminder of the sacrifices and risks faced by police officers”.

Chaotic talks on a US-Iran deal continue on the Trump rollercoaster

Great news! Donald Trump has said the US and Iran are on the verge of a peace agreement. Oil prices are down, and the stock market is up. This comes only hours after Trump warned Iran was about to be struck “VERY HARD”, a threat that had sent oil prices up and stocks down. It has been another ride on the Trump rollercoaster, keeping traders on edge, most of the world poorer, and people of the Middle East constantly whiplashing between fear and hope. But whether the ride veers up or down, the management always makes money. This is the 39th time that the president has declared US-Iranian talks to be on the point of fruition (other counts have the figure higher – it depends on what you term a prediction or just a hint). On five of those occasions, the promise of peace has involved walking back the threat of mass devastation, including the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure, a near-certain war crime if carried out. As he was menacing Iran with “very hard” strikes on Thursday night, Trump also pledged the US would take over “total control” of the country’s oil and gas markets and seize the island of Kharg. He has threatened the capture of Kharg, a focal point of Iran’s hydrocarbon industry, several times before, although in this instance the threat was made while actually bombing Iran, in a tit-for-tat exchange with Tehran in which a critical reservoir and water tanks were badly damaged in the drought-stricken south, a war crime if intentional. By Thursday afternoon however, the prospect of mass destruction had evaporated as quickly as it had materialised. “I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform as if providing his full capitalised title added any weight to the statement. The air of optimism was reinforced on Friday afternoon by a White House briefing that a text was in place which both the US and Iran could live with. US officials echoed the president’s prediction that a signing ceremony could be held in a matter of days. Iran’s foreign ministry was less definite, saying that the proposed agreement was being studied by the country’s “decision-making bodies”, but the oil price fell below $90 (£67) a barrel nonetheless. No matter how many times Trump predicts conflagration or diplomatic breakthrough, the markets still obediently bob up and down like a trained seal. It is a guaranteed response that represents an opportunity to make big, easy money for anyone with advance knowledge of presidential announcements. A recent BBC investigation found that multimillion-dollar trades have been made in global markets just before Trump makes major administration announcements, particularly involving oil trades on the futures market. After so many false dawns and hoax Armageddons, why are traders still reacting to Trump’s rhetoric? One theory is that, while individual traders are no suckers, they suspect that some of their competitors might be, so react rapidly to presidential statements to get ahead of the curve. An alternative explanation, suggested by the Australian-American economist Justin Wolfers, is what he calls the “known liar problem”. The markets know Trump is an unreliable narrator and heavily discount everything the president says, but the economic implications of war or peace in the Gulf are so enormous that even a heavily discounted reaction still moves the dial. After all, one day there will be a deal. The president’s on-off signals are not being sent in a vacuum, but in the midst of talks between the two sides intended to turn the ceasefire, which has mostly held since April, into something more permanent. According to reports from the region, the gaps in those talks are indeed getting smaller in the past few days. The focus is on a limited memorandum of understanding (MoU), putting off nuclear negotiations for later and focusing on opening the strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global trade. The most immediate impasse has been about cash. Tehran has no confidence Trump would keep his word in any deal so wants to be paid up front from a $24bn tranche of an estimated $100bn of its assets frozen around the world, in return for lifting its blockade on the strait of Hormuz. The US wants rewards to follow tangible progress, but the administration has a fundamental problem with releasing Iranian assets. Trump and other top Republicans have spent years lambasting Barack Obama for providing unfrozen assets to Iran in the form of pallets of cash as part of a 2015 nuclear deal, which was successful in curbing Iran’s programme until Trump walked out of it in 2018. The workaround being discussed, according to a source briefed on the talks, involves a line of credit from a bank in a Gulf state issued against Iran’s $100bn of frozen assets as collateral. It will fool only those who want to be fooled, but that would include the administration’s defenders on the American political stage. The second major sticking point is how much detail about nuclear issues should be included in the MoU. The US wants concrete parameters including a moratorium on uranium enrichment of 15 years or so, and arrangements for the disposal of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. US officials focus on these two factors in briefings to the American press, but when the Iranians have briefed diplomats and experts lately, they have said such matters have hardly been mentioned and are pressing for only vague references to nuclear issues in the memorandum, leaving them to be negotiated in Geneva in the weeks after an MoU is agreed. Trump may have shown the way for a possible fudge by insisting that the deal will ensure “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”. That is something Tehran might agree to. Iran’s renunciation of atomic arms was once reinforced by religious edict, or fatwa, but the supreme leader who issued that fatwa, Ali Khamenei, was killed by an Israeli bomb in the first seconds of the US-Israeli war on Iran on 28 February. Any Iranian pledge now is likely to be secular, and contingent on the MoU being upheld. A compromise MoU along similar lines appeared close to agreement in late May, but Trump helped derail it by suddenly moving the goalposts, including the suggestion that the regional guarantors of the agreement normalise relations with Israel as a gesture of gratitude for the suspension of hostilities. The suggestion was greeted by a stunned silence across the Middle East. Throwing last-minute surprises into negotiations has long been a Trump tactic in business and US politics. It has not worked in the Iran talks. Instead, the president has sometimes behaved as a finicky eater faced with a stark menu of two unpalatable options: all-out war or messy compromise. He has noisily wavered between choosing one or the other in the hope of being presented with something more to his taste, but that has yet to happen. “You have an impasse. Trump doesn’t have any good options. He’s come close to accepting an MoU, but then he’s backed away because it’s difficult for him to politically sell it at home and claim victory,” said Vali Nasr, a former state department adviser, who is now professor at Johns Hopkins University’s school of advanced international studies. Some observers believe Trump could give concessions to agree an MoU and ensure a peaceful backdrop to the World Cup, leaving the big gaps between the two sides to be addressed in the nuclear talks to follow. The US administration’s explanation for the long delay in achieving an MoU is a divided camp in Tehran, in which Iran’s chief negotiator, the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, is constantly being second-guessed by Revolutionary Guards generals back home. That may be true. The internal dynamics of the Tehran regime were murky before the bombing started, but now they are virtually a black box. The one certainty is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the principal target of US-Israeli decapitation bombing, has emerged stronger in relation to the other power centre. It is unclear whether Khamenei’s successor, his badly injured son Mojtaba Khamenei, is any more than a figurehead. However it organises itself internally, the regime has shown itself to be remarkably resilient. Dead leaders have been replaced and domestic unrest has been suppressed. The war has arguably made that suppression easier. The brunt of the economic war being waged by the US is being borne by the Iranian people but that has yet to turn into decisive pressure on the leadership. Peace is likely to be more dangerous to the regime than war, as there will no longer be an external enemy to blame for runaway inflation and high employment. Nasr said that is why Tehran is so insistent on getting funds up front in any deal. Despite Iran’s dogged survival in the face of a US-Israeli onslaught, in which the US alone claims to have bombed 13,000 targets, the Israeli leadership and Washington hawks are continuing to try to convince Trump that one more big push will finally bring down the regime. Even if an MoU is agreed, the hawks are confident that the ensuing nuclear talks will break down over Iran’s insistence on its right to enrich uranium. “I think the president eventually is going to do a much bigger kinetic military strike,” Darin Selnick, a former Pentagon deputy chief of staff told BBC Radio 4. “[US forces] never finished the target list. So they have about 20% of the target list. They can start taking out what will really hurt, which is the various oil facilities … They can take out another level of military leadership. They could have taken out those who are at the negotiating table, but they wanted to have someone to negotiate with. They can take those guys out as well. “Then they can forcibly reopen the strait themselves. If this trade opens … Iran would really have no ability to do anything but surrender.” For all Trump’s past threats of civilisational erasure if Iran fails to acquiesce, he has so far shown himself reluctant to double down on a military bet that has already failed. Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump’s latest threat of devastating strikes was performative. “Trump is using the threat either to force the Iranians to make last minute concessions, or to justify a deal that he knows would be criticised by the hawks,” Vaez said. Richard Nephew, a former Iran affairs director at the US national security council and now a research scholar at Columbia University, said: “I think he is probably poised to try and cut some sort of deal. He’s going to want to describe some sort of Iranian concession as coming from how loudly he barked.

Latest US release of UFO files reveals strange lights but few hard facts

A possible UFO sighting over a busy southern African airport, and yet more mysterious glowing orbs in the sky above the US, feature in the latest batch of previously classified documents released by the Pentagon on Friday in its stated quest for “transparency” amid the irrepressible debate about the chances of extraterrestrial life. In keeping with the first two document drops of government papers last month, Friday’s tranche of more than 50 files contains no proof that the tantalizing videos and written accounts of possible alien encounters are anything other than perception, vivid imagination or conspiracy theories. Despite the assurance by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, that the release “demonstrates the Trump administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency”, the Pentagon repeats the disclaimer that everything contained in the hundreds of files released so far are “unresolved cases”. The government “is unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena”, it states. The releases feature “plenty of black-and-white murk but nothing that looks even a little like an alien spacecraft”, Adam Kirsch, a senior editor at the Atlantic, wrote drily last month in a column entitled The Truth Is Still Out There. Friday’s batch includes reports of strange glowing orbs hovering above an unidentified north-eastern US city in 2025 and 2026 that piqued the FBI’s interest enough to dispatch two agent investigators to interview witnesses who reported fast-moving red-and-white objects. One of the witnesses, according to the FBI report, stated he “had always been interested in the topic of UAP [unidentified aerial phenomena]” and in 1987 claimed to have seen flashing red lights in the sky “like the front end of Kit from the tv show nightrider”. Another document recalls a summer 2008 incident in Zimbabwe, when the CIA became concerned about a report of an “unidentified object hovering at high altitude over Harare international airport”. The disc-like object, which was reported as having “a series of rotating lights on the underside” and “beams” of light emanating from it, could have been “an advanced reconnaissance device belonging to a foreign government”, or “an unidentified flying object of extraterrestrial origin”, the report surmised. The FBI made no determination either way. A 2022 incident, meanwhile, saw several military personnel in Colorado Springs reporting the presence of an object resembling an “angular, non-symmetrical potato” in the sky. An early evaluation of the sighting concluded it was “sunlight reflecting from mountain snow cover [that] illuminated the underside of low-altitude clouds”, but the government’s all-domain anomaly resolution office (AARO) said it was a “low-confidence assessment” and declared the incident unresolved. The Pentagon has promised more releases of government documents related to UAPs on unspecified future dates, fueling speculation that Donald Trump’s February directive to government agencies to release files about the search for alien life was an attempted distraction tactic from whatever bad news his administration was facing at the time. After the first release on 8 May, the Republican former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, known as an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist and once an ally but now a fierce critic of the president, wrote on X that she was “so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda” from the administration “while they wage foreign wars, let rapist and pedophiles run free, and ruin the value of our dollar”. Other critics have attacked the inclusion in the files of ambiguous or unproven testimony from members of the military and even Nasa astronauts who reported seeing mysterious lights during several Apollo spaceflights in the 1960s and 1970s. At least some of those sightings were, experts say, easily explained as reflections of sunlight through the windows of their capsules. Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, said in a YouTube interview this month that such “credentialling” had given the issue undeserved credence. “That changed it from kind of the tinfoil hat-wearing weirdos to, you know, oh, it’s a navy pilot,” he said. Shermer also pointed to a video purportedly of an alien craft, but actually showing the deployment of a parachute. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former director of the AARO who earlier this year called the government’s analysis of UAPs “a self-licking ice cream cone”, told Scientific American that the files served no purpose. “There’s nothing unexpected in their release. And without any analysis or context, [it] will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and armchair pseudoscience,” he said. A CBS News/YouGov poll published this week, however, shows most Americans do not agree with him. Eight in 10 respondents said the government knew more than it was telling about the existence of extraterrestrial life, 63% believe there is life on other planets, and more than one in five is convinced aliens have already visited Earth.

Ugly scenes in Belfast expose a broken politics | Letters

I agree with John Harris’s analysis (Cars burn in Belfast, bricks fly in Southampton – and the ubiquitous cry of ‘civil war’ goes up again, 10 June). He misses one obvious point, though. Since the election of the first Thatcher government in 1979, there has been a continuous attack on the rights and living standards of working-class people, such that we are now seeing a decline in healthy life expectancy for the poorest in the UK. We might think of this as a civil war which only one side is waging. Because the language of class has been erased from our politics, the “white working class” only hear themselves being spoken about when Nigel Farage or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon tell them how the system has failed them. As was the case in Germany in 1933, a political class that has no answers to the problems its politics have created is considering turning to a demagogue stirring up civil war as the way out of its dead end. When people hear talk of “civil war” or the need to make “white lives matter”, it fits with their recognition that their own lives don’t matter, and in the absence of any analysis that puts class at the forefront, race becomes the vehicle through which their lives make a kind of sense. Until we construct an alternative politics which unites fragmented communities around more than liberal pieties, the tinderbox of inequality will remain for Farage to lob matches at. Nick Moss London • Should not some sharp interviewer ask Richard Tice whether he and Nigel Farage not merely condemn the burning of innocent migrants from their homes, but feel a “pure cold rage” about it? And if so, whether an appropriate response would be to deport the perpetrators of this modern Kristallnacht, the original of which was a night of indiscriminate retribution against a whole defenceless population stirred up by extreme-right politicians as a response to the murder in Paris of a Nazi officer by a Jewish teenager. I believe and hope that a majority of the voters of Makerfield will feel enough rage against Reform UK to return any candidate but theirs. Vincent McNeany Gateshead, Tyne and Wear • The scenes in Belfast are all too reminiscent of violent pogroms in the same areas not just a century ago but also in the 1960s and subsequently. Then the victims burned out of their houses were Catholic families; now they are people of colour; the rhetoric and the perpetrators are the same. Hatred of the “other” may be rooted in deprivation, but it is still whipped up by people whose loyalties, clouded in vaunted patriotism, are to anywhere other than these mean streets. The parties led and funded by millionaires delude street mobs who can be found on other days chanting for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The leaders smirk as the victims flee in terror and communities are further impoverished. Kevin Donovan Birkenhead, Merseyside • As a young imam living in Britain, I found the recent violence in Belfast deeply worrying. It is absolutely unjustifiable. There can be no excuse for violence of any kind. It comes at a time when immigration has become increasingly politicised, with negative rhetoric fuelling mistrust and a growing sense that entire communities are being blamed for the actions of a few individuals – a situation we cannot afford. Those who come seeking a better life deserve a chance to integrate and contribute. That is a moral obligation rooted in basic humanity. However, governments must also ensure immigration is managed with great care, so integration works and communities are not left feeling overlooked. As a Muslim, I am reminded of the Qur’anic principle: “Be always just; that is nearer to righteousness.” But when justice is not upheld, divisions grow within society, and I fear we risk moving further away from the kind of society many of us still hope to preserve in the United Kingdom. Usama Mubarik Farnborough, Hampshire • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Palestinian and Israeli civil society groups urge G7 to take action on Gaza

Palestinian and Israeli civil society groups meeting in Paris on Friday have urged G7 leaders to act at their summit in the French spa town of Évian-les-Bains next week to save the narrowing chances of a two-state solution. The groups called for specific action on enforcing a ceasefire, disarming Hamas and starting reconstruction in Gaza, and said the various peace processes including the Board of Peace initiative should be integrated into one programme. The Paris meeting drew up proposals from five working groups and assembled as many as 150 activists from across the Israeli-Palestinian divide. “Gaza is devastated, Israel remains under threat,” the groups said in a joint statement. “Settler violence, settlement expansion and de facto annexation and threats to the Palestinian Authority continue to undermine the viability of a future Palestinian state. Israelis and Palestinians alike remain trapped in fear, insecurity and trauma.” The groups said they feared talks over Gaza might be cast aside at the G7 summit and urged its leaders to instead “recognise the window for a solution remains open, but it is narrowing. The moment requires urgent diplomacy, grounded in partnership with civil society.” Progress on Palestinian self-rule and an Israeli exit from Gaza has been stalled for six months as each side blames the other for failing to take the steps required for peace laid down in Donald Trump’s 20-point plan. A meeting of Palestinian groups this week in Cairo made limited progress in persuading Hamas to lay down its remaining heavy weaponry to an unspecified Palestinian organisation. Hamas is demanding an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, but Israel wants Hamas to disarm first. The chance of a joint G7 statement on Gaza is described as vanishingly small. A key focus of the Paris gathering, attended by Arab and European foreign ministers including Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, was to try to integrate the diplomatic work on a two-state solution into the civil society movements that still work together in Israel and Palestine. John Lyndon, the executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, a coalition of more than 200 NGOs, said there was an openness in Israeli society to a two-state solution but this constituency was not well represented by the political parties. “Diplomacy for Israelis and Palestinians has been too elite-driven, too top-down, and increasingly removed and alien from the lived reality of Israelis and Palestinians,” he said. “There are many challenges, but one of the untapped resources is a rich, highly developed civil society that is really regionally best in class, and creative, determined and knows how to work together.” He said it was ironic that it was sometimes easier to bring such groups together in Paris under the umbrella of the French government than in Israel because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli government. The meeting in Paris came as the UK, Canada and Australia came together this week to set up a long-demanded funding stream to nurture peace groups in the region. There is deep concern that Israel, in the run-up to elections later this year, is permitting ever more settler violence on the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority, starved of finances and democratic legitimacy, is not challenging entrenched Hamas rule in Gaza. The call to action proposes a permanent monitored ceasefire, meaningful consequences for settler violence, guaranteed humanitarian access, and the funding of reconstruction – “currently hidden from view” – undertaken via a transparent multi-year mechanism with real Palestinian ownership including civil society involvement and a clear drive to link Gaza and the West Bank. The groups in Paris have also called for Palestinian elections this year. The Paris meeting called for diplomats to ensure the Palestinian Authority was properly funded, warning that without this, the instability in the West Bank would deepen Hamas’s entrenchment in Gaza, while Israel would be left with an expanding security crisis “with no political exits”. The groups said in their statement that regional integration could be a catalyst for ending the occupation, provided it was not seen as a substitute for Palestinian statehood.

All of us are migrants, says pope as he rounds off tour of Spain in Tenerife

Pope Leo has used the final day of his week-long tour of Spain to stress that “all of us are migrants” as he praised the power of integration, adding: “Yesterday’s foreigner may be today’s brother and neighbour.” The pontiff arrived on Friday in Tenerife, the largest and most populous of the Canary Islands. Soon after, he made his way to a reception centre housed in a former military barracks, which has accommodated as many as 4,000 people, to address the hundreds of migrants gathered there. Since his arrival on Thursday in the archipelago, one of Europe’s migration hotspots, the pontiff has delivered some of his most pointed remarks to date on migration. The Atlantic route to the Canary Islands ranks among the world’s deadliest, with an estimated 1,906 people – roughly five people a day – losing their lives last year in attempting to reach Europe. On Friday Leo cast their plight as one that affects everyone. “In a sense, all of us are migrants, for we are all pilgrims on our way to our heavenly homeland,” he said. “Let us help make this journey more humane for everyone by contributing in whatever way we can.” His remarks came on the same day that the EU’s landmark overhaul of migration was to take effect. Rights campaigners have widely criticised the hardline measures, with Human Rights Watch saying this week that the overhaul “takes a sledgehammer to the right of asylum”. On Friday Leo called on leaders to do more to welcome and integrate migrants, warning that many face a “silent shipwreck” after they arrive, finding themselves “left alone in a city, without a voice, without ties, work or a sense of security, and susceptible to those who take advantage of vulnerability”. His call to protect the rights of migrants has clashed with the rhetoric espoused by many politicians, particularly from far-right and conservative parties, who have taken a hard line on migrants even as they profess to hold Christian values. On his visit to Spain, the US-born pope has consistently highlighted this incongruence. “A human conscience, and even more so a Christian conscience, cannot remain indifferent in the face of these graveyards of the sea, to the victims of shipwrecks and the lack of aid,” Leo said. “Every life lost on these routes is a failure for the human family.” On Friday he also told people smugglers – who often charge thousands of euros a person to ferry people across borders, forcing people later into prostitution or other forms of black market labour by withholding their documents – that they would face God’s wrath for taking advantage of desperation. “I want to speak clearly to those who take advantage of desperation; to those who organise death routes, traffic in people, withhold documents, exploit workers, threaten women, deceive families, and turn the suffering of others into a business. Stop! Repent!” he said. “For every life lost, every family deceived, every body subjugated, every woman threatened, every worker exploited, you will have to appear before divine justice.” The remarks came a day after the pope warned: “We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead,” and called for a reckoning as to why we had built a world where so many “must risk death to seek life”. On Friday, the pontiff heard from Bousso Diouf, originally from Nigeria, who said she was speaking in the name of the many who had been forced to leave their homes in search of security, peace and dignity. “The road to get here was not an easy one,” she said. “The journey was full of fear, pain and uncertainty ... It meant facing hunger, cold, despair and often death.” She said she had a “simple but profoundly human request” for society. “We aren’t asking for privileges. We aren’t asking for compassion. We just want respect, humanity and the chance to live with dignity.” The pontiff listened intently as she spoke. “We ask that borders do not become walls of indifference,” she continued. “Let us not be seen only as immigrants, as numbers or documents, but as people with history, with dreams, with families and with hope.”