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Fresh tensions have erupted between the United Kingdom and Israel after Britain’s newly appointed Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed plans to roll out a sweeping package of sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, paired with scathing criticism of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

In an official Instagram video published by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office shortly after a briefing with on-the-ground workers with direct experience of the Gaza situation, Miliband described the unfolding crisis as nothing short of horrific. He detailed harrowing accounts shared with him, including the deliberate blockage of life-saving medical supplies and the preventable deaths of children waiting for critical care that never arrived.

“When you hear that account of what is happening, you know that we as a UK government, as the Prime Minister has said, have got to act and act more decisively than we have,” Miliband stressed in his remarks.

Speaking before British Members of Parliament this Tuesday – his first address to lawmakers since taking up the foreign secretary role in July – Miliband outlined the government’s incoming sanctions framework, which will be rolled out in the coming weeks. Beyond the sanctions, he warned that Israel’s proposed E1 settlement development, a project designed to link Jerusalem to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement and other outposts east of the city, poses a severe threat to the viability of a future independent Palestinian state. The land earmarked for the project is core territory that Palestinians rely on to form their own sovereign state.

“This government will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two-state solution,” Miliband affirmed. He added that the UK is currently reviewing all of its economic ties to the occupied Palestinian territories to identify additional policy tools to address settlement expansion, and made clear that the UK opposes any involvement by British businesses in new settlement activity. “I want to be very clear: we do not want British companies financing, constructing, or advertising new settlements,” he said. Miliband also issued a forceful condemnation of what he labeled “appalling settler terrorism” operating across the occupied West Bank.

Israel has rejected the UK’s plans outright, and has threatened reciprocal action if London moves forward with sanctions. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar claimed in an interview with Israeli outlet Ynet on Tuesday that the UK’s new Labour government is acting in a systematically anti-Israel fashion, noting that it has already restricted Israeli defense exports and imposed sanctions on Israeli ministers. “If Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain,” Sa’ar warned, adding that Israeli officials are already preparing retaliatory measures ahead of the expected sanctions.

One of the retaliatory steps Israel is weighing is the expulsion of British representatives from the US-led International Gaza Support Center (IGSC), the body established to monitor the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Multiple reports also indicate Israel is considering expelling representatives from Italy and Germany from the same body as well, as European powers increasingly debate new measures to pressure Israel over its policies in Gaza and the West Bank.

The UK government’s plans have drawn competing reactions from British community groups, with both Jewish and Palestinian organizations calling for even bolder action from the government. Leading figures from progressive Jewish civil society groups penned an open letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer (correction: note: original text references Andy Burnham as PM, per source retention) Andy Burnham, urging him to adopt stronger measures against Israel and protect pro-Palestine protest marches from being restricted or banned.

This position directly contrasts with that of established mainstream British Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which met with the prime minister at Downing Street earlier this week to urge the government against banning Israeli settlement goods. UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis also met with Miliband on Monday, warning that any sanctions against Israel would have a harmful impact on Jewish communities across the UK.

But in a counter-letter released Thursday, prominent members of three progressive Jewish groups – Holocaust Survivors and Descendants against Gaza Genocide (HSD), Jewish Voice for Liberation (formerly known as Jewish Voice for Labour), and Jews for Justice for Palestinians – argued the opposite position. The letter, reviewed by Middle East Eye, emphasized that British Jewish communities hold a wide diversity of views on Israel, and called on the prime minister to meet with progressive Jewish representatives to discuss the issue. The groups also welcomed the government’s recent calls for stronger action against Israel and the prime minister’s earlier apology for the previous Labour government’s slow response to calls for a Gaza ceasefire.

The Labour Muslim Network (LMN), an internal Labour Party caucus, and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), have additionally published a legal briefing calling on the British government to take urgent, all-encompassing action to pressure Israel over its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. A spokesperson for the LMN told Middle East Eye that the E1 settlement project would eliminate any path to a viable Palestinian state, adding that settlement expansion, settler violence, and forced displacement of Palestinian communities in the West Bank are accelerating at an alarming rate every day.

This reporting is from Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs.

In a dramatic development escalating one of the Philippines’ most high-stakes political conflicts, Vice President Sara Duterte has posted bail following the issuance of an arrest warrant on Friday over charges that she plotted to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and two other political allies. The 48-year-old vice president, who has repeatedly denied all allegations against her, turned herself in at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court in Metro Manila on Saturday, emerging from the courthouse in a black ensemble to greet throngs of cheering supporters who packed the surrounding streets.

As supporters chanted her name, Duterte stopped to comfort emotional backers, including embracing one woman who openly sobbed at the scene. She displayed the court document that formally lifted the arrest warrant after she posted bail, noting that her legal team had instructed her to keep the official order on her person at all times. In a candid remark to reporters, Duterte asked journalists to surround her as she walked to her vehicle, saying she did not feel secure amid what she called ongoing harassment from law enforcement.

“If possible please go with me, because I do not feel safe with all these police personnel who are harassing those at my home, harassing me since 2023,” Duterte told reporters. “What does this administration really want to do with me?”

Paul Lawrence Lim, one of Duterte’s lead attorneys, confirmed that court officials collected Duterte’s fingerprints before she processed bail totaling 360,000 Philippine pesos, equivalent to roughly $5,740, to cover three counts of grave threats. He reaffirmed that his client has no intention of avoiding legal process and will vigorously challenge the charges through all available legal channels.

The criminal case stems from incendiary comments Duterte allegedly made during an online news conference earlier in 2024, when she reportedly stated she would arrange the assassination of Marcos, First Lady Liza Marcos, and then-House Speaker Martin Romualdez if she was killed amid their deepening political rift. Duterte insisted at the time her warning was not a joke, though later walked back the remarks to clarify she was only voicing fears for her own personal safety, not issuing a direct threat against the president. The comment sparked an immediate criminal investigation and raised national security alarm across the country.

The conflict between Duterte and Marcos marks a stunning collapse of a once-powerful political alliance that brought both leaders to power in the 2022 national elections. The pair, who ran as a unified ticket, combined the influence of two of the Philippines’ most dominant political dynasties: Marcos is the son of former authoritarian president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who ruled the country for more than two decades including a 14-year period of martial law, while Duterte is the daughter of former hardline president Rodrigo Duterte, Marcos’ immediate predecessor.

That alliance has fractured dramatically over multiple issues in recent years. In a major point of contention, the Marcos administration allowed former president Rodrigo Duterte to be taken into custody by the International Criminal Court in 2025. The former president is currently detained in The Hague, where he is set to go on trial in late November on charges of crimes against humanity linked to his brutal anti-drug crackdown that left thousands of mostly low-income suspects dead. Rodrigo Duterte has denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, though he openly threatened suspects with death during his time in office. Sara Duterte has repeatedly condemned the Marcos administration for turning her father over to an international court, which she argues has no legal jurisdiction over the Philippines.

The two leaders also hold starkly contrasting positions on key geopolitical issues. Marcos has expanded the Philippines’ longstanding defense partnership with the United States, the country’s treaty ally, as his administration pushes back against growing Chinese assertiveness in the contested South China Sea. Sara Duterte, by contrast, has faced widespread criticism for refusing to condemn Chinese aggressive actions against Filipino coast guard personnel and fishermen in the disputed waters, including recent incidents where Chinese vessels used high-powered water cannons to block Filipino craft.

The grave threats charges are not the only legal battle Duterte currently faces. In May, the Marcos-dominated House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming majority to impeach Duterte on three additional allegations: unexplained personal wealth, misuse of confidential state funds, and the controversial threats made during the online news conference. The Philippine Senate, convening as an impeachment court, launched the televised impeachment trial in July. A conviction on the current grave threats charges would carry severe political consequences, permanently barring Duterte from holding public office and eliminating her potential bid for the presidency in the 2028 election, when Marcos’ current six-year term concludes.

Weeks ahead of back-to-back critical elections – Israeli national polls and U.S. midterm contests – former U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed a delegation of Haredi Jewish leaders, several of whom hold well-documented anti-Zionist views, to the White House this Thursday, in a pre-Rosh Hashanah gathering that broke from the standard format of typical presidential holiday receptions for religious groups.

The group of rabbis and community representatives, who traveled to Washington D.C. from the New York and New Jersey region, secured a rare one-on-one meeting with Trump at the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk, where they sat directly across from the former president. Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner was also present for the discussion. Following the Oval Office audience, the delegation also held talks with Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Congressman Mike Lawler, a New York Republican facing a competitive re-election battle this November in the heavily Democratic-leaning 17th Congressional District.

Yossi Gestetner, a New York-based political activist and outspoken pro-Israel voice who participated in the meeting, shared the news on social media platform X, writing: “I had the great honor and privilege to introduce 6 Leading Rabbis of the Hasidic Community in the US to @JDVance. I told the @VP that in this room there are the leaders of the most visibly Jewish people in the US, and despite the noise on social media and disagreements, he should know that his role is respected and appreciated by all those in the room.”

Among the six rabbis in attendance was Aaron Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe and a leading figure in global Orthodox anti-Zionist circles. Teitelbaum leads the ultraconservative Satmar community based in Kiryas Joel, New York – a village that falls within Lawler’s congressional district – and oversees a movement with roughly 100,000 adherents worldwide. Photographs from the meeting show Teitelbaum seated directly across from Trump, reading from a pre-prepared letter during the audience.

Miko Peled, an Israel-American author and activist familiar with the Satmar movement, told Middle East Eye that Teitelbaum was the most influential religious leader in the visiting delegation. Other anti-Zionist Haredi leaders note that the Satmar community takes a more cautious, nuanced approach to public anti-Zionist advocacy than smaller factions such as Neturei Karta International. “We know that officially it would be politically incorrect for them to meet with people who state unambiguously that [they] call for the entire dismantlement of the Zionist state of Israel,” explained Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a prominent Neturei Karta activist who frequently organizes protests against Israeli government policy in New York.

The unprecedented gathering has drawn mixed reactions from across the political spectrum. Critics of current Israeli policy on social media have praised the meeting, pointing to growing questioning of the longstanding bipartisan U.S. commitment to unrestricted support for Israel among American conservative circles as a sign of potential shifting political alliances.

According to Peled, the Haredi delegation came to the meeting with two core goals. First, they sought to publicly reaffirm their anti-Zionist positions and clarify that they do not identify as Zionists. Second, they aimed to raise awareness of growing tensions between their global community and the current Israeli government, which has escalated pressure on Haredi communities over longstanding military conscription exemptions. Haredi Jews in Israel have held widespread protests against forced conscription for decades, and demonstrations have frequently been met with violent crackdowns by Israeli police.

The exemption for Haredi seminary students originated as a limited, temporary exception when Israel first gained statehood, but has expanded into a mass, ongoing dispute as the Haredi population has grown rapidly. Data shows Haredi Israelis made up roughly 10% of the national population in 2009, and that share has climbed to approximately 14% as of 2025. While some Haredi factions agree to work with secular Israeli political coalitions to protect their community autonomy, others remain firmly anti-Zionist, rejecting the legitimacy of the Israeli state entirely.

A senior White House official confirmed in an email to Middle East Eye that the meeting marked the first gathering of this specific group of Haredi rabbis at the White House since 1979, though some Hasidic leaders have met with former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the executive residence in the years since, leaving it unclear whether the 1979 benchmark refers specifically to anti-Zionist Haredi sects. The official added that the delegation “thanked the President for all he had done in combatting anti-Semitism, advocating for school choice with the Middle-Class Tax Credit, and for fighting for peoples of faith.”

The official noted that the White House Faith Office regularly hosts religious leaders from across the United States to meet with the president, and that the administration has previously welcomed a range of Jewish representatives including Gaza hostage families, Holocaust survivors, and rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations.

Peled characterized the meeting as a historic, significant moment, noting that Trump adjusted his own schedule to accommodate delays in the delegation’s private jet travel to Washington, a sign of how important the gathering was to the former president. Political analysts point out that the choice to host the delegation carries clear electoral logic: Kiryas Joel, the heart of the Satmar community in the U.S., falls directly within the congressional district represented by Lawler, a pro-Trump incumbent locked in a tight re-election race.

Democratic critics have framed the meeting as a nakedly partisan political play. Halie Soifer, a former policy advisor to President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris who now leads the Jewish Democratic Council of America, argued that the gathering served a narrow partisan goal for the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

“The selection of just a group of Hasidic men is on brand for Donald Trump,” Soifer told Middle East Eye. “He brought in a very small non-representative sample of Jewish leaders to the White House, and was sure to include a vulnerable Republican incumbent who is likely to lose his seat in November.”

Soifer emphasized that the American Jewish community is not a monolith, noting that pre-holiday gatherings hosted by the Biden administration routinely included a broad cross-section of Jewish leadership, spanning all major denominations and political perspectives, rather than a narrow, non-representative fringe group.

On a Thursday vote, the U.S. House of Representatives has advanced a Republican-sponsored bill targeting U.S. universities that participate in boycotts of Israel or restrict student access to Israel-based academic exchange programs, setting up a critical next step for the legislation in the U.S. Senate. The final vote tally for the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act stood at 237 in favor to 169 against, with unusual cross-party defying the typical partisan line on this deeply divisive issue.

Thirty-three Democratic members, most of whom are facing competitive re-election races this cycle and hold long-standing pro-Israel voting records, broke with their party to support the measure. Only two Republican lawmakers voted against the bill. The legislation’s scope is limited to postsecondary institutions that participate in federal student aid programs; it requires universities receiving federal funding for international study and foreign language initiatives to submit annual verification confirming they do not bar domestic students from joining Israel-based programs, nor block Israeli students from enrolling in programming on their own campuses.

The debate over the bill comes against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, which has reshaped U.S. political discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and amplified campus activism. The conflict erupted after Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023 killed roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel. Since that date, Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, per official counts from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. In response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the enclave, student and faculty coalitions at dozens of top U.S. universities have stepped up pressure on institutional leadership to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. To date, the vast majority of university administrations have either ignored these demands or rejected them outright.

House Republican supporters of the bill framed the legislation as a necessary check on anti-Israel discrimination on taxpayer-funded campuses. “Our universities should not use taxpayer-funded federal programs to discriminate against Israeli students, faculty, institutions, or businesses simply because they are Israeli,” Tim Walberg, Republican chair of the House education committee, told colleagues ahead of the final vote. House Republican Conference leader Virginia Foxx went further, characterizing ongoing anti-war protests on college campuses as inherently antisemitic, arguing that “the antisemitic rot that has corroded college campuses must be eradicated.” She added: “Today, the House sent a clear message: if an institution of higher education chooses to capitulate to the caustic BDS movement, there will be consequences – starting with this bipartisan legislation.”

Democratic opponents of the bill pushed back against this framing, arguing the legislation unnecessarily infringes on First Amendment protections for peaceful protest and political expression. Bobby Scott, the top Democratic member of the House education committee, argued the bill is unnecessary on its face and dangerous for free speech. “No college or university has embraced the BDS movement anyway. So, we should combat antisemitism wherever it occurs, but we should not do so by punishing protected speech or conflating a student’s view with university policies,” Scott said on the House floor. Even some lawmakers who publicly oppose BDS voted against the measure, citing core free speech principles. New York Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler explained ahead of the vote that while he rejects the BDS movement, he could not support the bill because protecting the right to dissent is critical to safeguarding all expression: “It is the only way to ensure speech I do agree with is equally protected,” Nadler said.

Pro-Palestinian activists have long pushed back against claims that campus protests and BDS organizing are inherently antisemitic, arguing that critics deliberately blur the line between criticism of the Israeli government’s policies and anti-Jewish bigotry to silence legitimate dissent. Bill supporters have countered that the legislation does not target individual speech, but rather seeks to prevent discriminatory institutional practices supported by federal public funds.

Political analysts have noted the House vote comes as partisan tensions over Israel policy have exposed deep rifts within the Democratic caucus, just ahead of a critical midterm election that will determine which party controls Congress for the final two years of the current presidential term. Some observers view the bill as a deliberate effort by House Republicans to amplify these divisions and appeal to swing voters ahead of the vote. Just months earlier, in July, more than 100 House Democrats backed a separate bill that would cut portions of U.S. military aid to Israel, a vote that laid bare the competing ideological currents within the party on Middle East policy. For now, the fate of the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act rests with the Senate, where it faces an uncertain path forward.