标签： Asia

A tense demonstration outside a London venue hosting an Israeli real estate event tied to illegal settlements in occupied Palestine devolved into violence on Sunday, as pro-Israel counter-protesters assaulted anti-apartheid activists opposing the controversial gathering. The event, branded the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event”, was held at Edgware United Synagogue in north London, drawing immediate condemnation from human rights organizations and political figures who argue it normalizes the displacement of Palestinian people and the expansion of unlawful Israeli settlements.

Anti-apartheid and pro-Palestine demonstrators assembled outside the synagogue to highlight the event’s core purpose: marketing and selling property built on occupied Palestinian land that the international community universally recognizes as illegally occupied. Public records of participating companies, published by the event’s sponsor earlier in the week, confirmed that at least four participating entities either explicitly advertise real estate in illegal Israeli settlements or are directly involved in settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, a journalist and long-standing activist working to document Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, was on site during the confrontation. He told independent outlet Middle East Eye that the aggression from pro-Israel counter-protesters mirrored exactly the violence he had witnessed first-hand in occupied Palestinian territories. “We are surrounded by a bunch of Zionists who are counter-protesting and attacking people — a bunch of Palestinian activists were attacked by the Zionists and then got arrested,” Khrzhanovskiy explained. “This is very reminiscent of everything that I’ve seen in the West Bank… I feel like I’ve been here before.”

Disturbing footage of the confrontation, circulated widely across social media platforms, captured extreme rhetoric from pro-Israel counter-protesters. The crowd chanted “There is no Palestine, we flattened it”, while even children in the counter-protest were recorded shouting misogynistic slurs at pro-Palestine and anti-apartheid demonstrators. Online footage also shows anti-Zionist activists entering the event space to disrupt the proceedings and publicly denounce the trade of illegally seized Palestinian land.

Criticism of the event extended far beyond the protest line. More than 100 sitting British Members of Parliament have joined human rights groups in calling on the UK government to block the gathering over its explicit ties to illegal settlement expansion. For many Jewish activists opposing Israeli apartheid, the event held at a British synagogue represents a profound betrayal of Jewish values and history. Paul, one of the Jewish pro-Palestine activists speaking to Middle East Eye from the protest, emphasized that the occupation and displacement of Palestinians violates core tenets of his faith.

“I’m a true practising and very proud Jew who sees what’s going on between Israel and the Palestinians as an abomination of Judaism,” Paul said. “This event is land theft. They are trading land to explicitly only a Jewish population in order to organise settlers to move to their apartheid state. And in the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, we say this is a disgrace to Jewish history of resistance against fascism and racism. They are the fascists, they are the racists, and we will not stand for a moment while they trade in Palestinian land.”

Amnesty International UK has echoed these criticisms, framing events like this London gathering as “apartheid and annexation with a sales pitch”. Ahead of the event, legal advocacy group The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians delivered an official legal notice to Edgware United Synagogue, formally warning leadership of the “serious legal and reputational concerns regarding the event” hosted on their property.

Maya Saad, a Middle East Eye reporter covering the protest on the ground, confirmed that cross-party political opposition and widespread rights advocacy had failed to convince the UK government to intervene to cancel the event, leaving protesters to challenge the gathering directly outside the venue. The confrontation marks the latest high-profile flashpoint in growing global tensions over Israeli settlement expansion and apartheid policies toward Palestinians, as grassroots movements push for stronger governmental action to hold Israel accountable for violations of international law.

In a moment that marks a pivotal shift in regional geopolitics, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi — popularly known by his nickname Cirro and serving as the president of the self-declared independent state of Somaliland — arrived in Israel on Sunday, making history as the first Somaliland head of state to conduct an official state visit to the Jewish nation. The trip comes roughly six months after Israel made a groundbreaking move to recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, a step no other United Nations member state had previously taken.

Taking to the social platform X to share his first impressions after landing, Cirro expressed deep gratitude for the reception he received from Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He called the journey a once-in-a-generation milestone for the relationship between the breakaway East African territory and Tel Aviv. “For thirty-five years, the people of Somaliland have built a peaceful, democratic, and resilient nation. We asked the world: Do you see us? Israel answered first,” Cirro wrote in his public post, which was paired with an on-the-ground photo from his arrival. “Today, history is being written, and Somaliland stands ready to forge a shared future founded on friendship, cooperation, and mutual respect.”

According to reporting from Israeli daily newspaper Maariv, the two-day visit will see Cirro hold additional high-level meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, beyond his initial talks with Herzog. Israeli President Herzog struck a collaborative tone in his response to the visit, noting that both sides aim to expand joint work across multiple priority sectors. “We both seek security and stability in the region and in the Horn of Africa. We both see the importance of protecting maritime freedom,” Herzog stated.

To understand the full context of this historic encounter, it is necessary to outline Somaliland’s decades-long path to international recognition. The autonomous region in northern Somalia declared its separation from the rest of Somalia in 1991, following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime. To date, however, the United Nations, the African Union, and nearly every sovereign government across the globe still formally recognize the territory as an integral part of Somalia, leaving Somaliland’s independence bid isolated on the global stage.

That changed this past December, when Israel became the first UN member state to formally grant recognition to Somaliland as an independent country. Regional analysts have widely framed the move as a calculated step to advance Israeli geopolitical interests in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region. The territory sits just 30 kilometers south of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the critical narrow waterway that links the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea — one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes for global trade.

A permanent Israeli foothold in Somaliland would place Israeli military and intelligence assets within very close proximity to Yemen’s Houthi movement, which has launched repeated attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea since late 2023. The Houthis have stated their attacks are a retaliation for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza against Hamas. For Israel, establishing a presence in Somaliland also advances a broader goal of countering the expanding influence of Iran and its regional allied network across the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, analysts add.

Israel’s alignment with Somaliland also deepens its existing close security and political partnership with the United Arab Emirates, which has long backed Somaliland’s bid for international standing. Back in 2017, the Somaliland government approved a UAE bid to construct a military base at the strategic Port of Berbera, a move Hargeisa hoped would bolster its case for global recognition. Since Israel granted recognition to Somaliland earlier this year, senior Somaliland officials have confirmed they have held discussions about hosting an Israeli military base on their territory — a reversal of earlier denials of any such plans from Hargeisa’s foreign ministry.

For Somaliland, the new partnership with Israel carries tangible potential benefits beyond the long-sought win of international recognition. In comments given to Reuters back in February, Cirro revealed that Somaliland expects to finalize a bilateral trade agreement with Israel in the near future, and has offered Israel exploration and extraction rights to its untapped mineral deposits as part of the broader deal. The breakaway region has also identified growing security cooperation with Israel as a key priority: after the United Nations partially lifted its long-standing arms embargo on Somalia in 2023, Somaliland has cited new growing security threats to its territory and has sought to strengthen its own military capabilities.

On a tense Sunday in the Middle East, an Israeli drone strike on an apartment building in Beirut’s southern Ghobeiry neighborhood of the Dahieh district killed at least three civilians and left 15 others injured, sending shockwaves through already fragile regional peace negotiations and drawing sharp condemnation alongside explicit threats of retaliation from top Iranian government and military officials.

Lebanese media confirmed the targeted structure was a municipally owned apartment building in the densely populated Dahieh area, a district that has long been a stronghold of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The attack marked the latest escalation in a cycle of cross-border violence that has gripped the Israel-Lebanon border for months, coming just hours after three unmanned aerial vehicles launched from Lebanese territory struck northern Israel earlier the same day. In response to that initial incursion, senior Israeli cabinet members immediately called for forceful, aggressive retaliation targeting Beirut directly.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement confirming the Sunday strike was a deliberate targeting of Hezbollah assets in Dahieh, carried out in direct response to the earlier drone fire on Israeli territory. This latest attack fits a consistent pattern of Israeli military activity that has persisted since a temporary ceasefire went into effect across the region on April 16: Israel has conducted daily bombardment operations across southern Lebanon, while its ground forces have progressively expanded their occupation of southern Lebanese villages and carried out widespread demolitions of local residential and civilian infrastructure.

Early Sunday, the Israeli military had already issued a broad evacuation order urging residents of at least 30 towns and villages across Lebanon’s Nabatieh and Sidon districts, located north of the Litani River, to leave their homes immediately ahead of planned military operations. The timing of the Beirut strike carries particularly high stakes, as it comes at a critical moment when Washington and Tehran appeared to be on the cusp of finalizing a landmark US-Iran agreement designed to de-escalate the broader regional war. As recently as this weekend, both US and Pakistani leaders publicly predicted the deal could be finalized and signed as early as Sunday.

Just last week, a separate Israeli strike on the Dahieh district already triggered a full exchange of cross-border fire between Israeli and Iranian forces, bringing regional tensions dangerously close to a full-scale conflict that would have collapsed the ongoing negotiation process entirely. Iran has long listed a full cessation of Israeli hostilities in Lebanon and a complete withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces from all southern Lebanese territory as non-negotiable conditions for any final wider agreement with the United States. On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reaffirmed that the imminent deal would explicitly include commitments to end all hostilities in Lebanon and enforce the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the south.

Sunday’s strike has thrown these plans into complete disarray. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief nuclear and negotiation negotiator, argued that the attack exposed a critical failure on the part of the United States: either Washington lacks the political will to uphold its own commitments to the emerging deal, or it does not have the capability to rein in its Israeli ally to meet the agreed terms. In a public post on the social platform X, Ghalibaf warned that the current path toward negotiation would become completely unworkable if the US cannot deliver on the obligations it has put forward.

Senior Iranian military leadership has further raised the threat of direct retaliation. Brigadier General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, deputy commander of Iran’s supreme military command, told Iranian state media that what he labeled Israeli “crimes” in Lebanon would not remain unanswered, signaling that Tehran is prepared to take direct military action in response to the strike.

Adding another layer of complication to the negotiation process, Israeli Defense Minister Katz has already explicitly rejected the core Iranian condition for the deal: he confirmed earlier this week that Israel has no intention of withdrawing its forces from the areas of southern Lebanon it currently occupies. This stance puts Washington in an impossible position, as it tries to reconcile its unwavering military and political support for Israel with its diplomatic goal of reaching a de-escalation agreement with Iran to prevent a wider regional war.

Two years into the ongoing Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, a grave new humanitarian crisis is emerging, with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issuing a stark warning that thousands of Palestinians buried under collapsed infrastructure may never receive formal identification, leaving grieving families without closure. The warning, first reported by The Guardian on Sunday, comes against a backdrop of cripplingly slow body recovery efforts and a catastrophic scale of destruction that has left the enclave unrecognizable.

Pat Griffiths, ICRC spokesperson based in Jerusalem, explained to the outlet that the mounting delay in retrieving human remains directly amplifies the risk of permanent identification failure. “The longer it takes for human remains to be recovered, the more difficult it can be to identify them,” Griffiths said. “The longer the deceased lie beneath the rubble, the more likely they will be in advanced stages of decomposition – even skeletonised – when eventually recovered. Forensic experts lose access to circumstantial evidence that can be used to corroborate their identity.”

The ICRC emphasized that critical identifying markers — including intact fingerprints, dental records, and personal belongings that can link remains to missing people — degrade rapidly as time passes. Gaza’s environmental conditions only worsen this challenge: high humidity in the coastal enclave and scavenging animal activity steadily erode what little forensic evidence remains, making the work of identification teams increasingly futile.

Official UN data underscores the unprecedented scale of destruction Gaza has suffered after two years of conflict. Some 61.5 million tonnes of debris now cover the territory, with 75% of all Gaza’s residential and public buildings reduced to rubble. The United Nations Environment Programme has confirmed that this volume of wreckage is 20 times greater than the total debris generated by all conflicts in Gaza combined between 2008 and the start of the current campaign.

Local Gaza residents add another layer of concern: they fear Israeli military bulldozers operating in areas under Israeli control are moving and disturbing remains still trapped under rubble, scattering evidence and making it even harder for families to locate their missing loved ones.

Official casualty figures put the total number of people killed in Israeli attacks across the besieged enclave at nearly 73,000, a toll that has continued to climb even after a nominal ceasefire took effect in December. Back in February, the Palestinian Civil Defence reported that roughly 8,000 bodies remained trapped under rubble across Gaza, even after months of exhaustive recovery work by local teams. An additional 3,000 people are still listed as missing, with no clarity on whether they are alive, dead, or being held in Israeli detention.

Since the ceasefire was implemented, recovery operations have been crippled by systemic shortages of essential heavy machinery. Rescue teams have been forced to rely on basic hand tools — shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows — and even bare hands to sift through millions of tonnes of wreckage, as repeated requests to Israel to allow excavators and other heavy recovery equipment into Gaza have been denied.

Griffiths stressed that unimpeded access and proper resources are non-negotiable for the recovery effort to succeed. “Search and recovery teams need access to all sites where human remains are thought to be located,” she said. “We know that much of this machinery and equipment remains almost impossible to bring into Gaza right now. And it remains our call, and part of our ongoing direct dialogue with the relevant authorities, to allow the entry of these items and equipment into Gaza.”

For thousands of grieving Palestinian families, the growing risk of permanent unidentified burials adds another layer of unending trauma, as they face the prospect of never being able to properly bury and mourn their loved ones lost to the conflict.

A deadly confrontation in the Gulf of Oman has escalated tensions around U.S. sanctions enforcement against Iran, after American military forces disabled a tanker linked to Tehran’s illicit oil trade, leaving three Indian crew members dead and triggering a formal diplomatic protest from New Delhi.

An anonymous U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the sensitive operation publicly, has provided new details about the hours-long standoff preceding the strike. According to the official, the Palau-flagged M/T Settebello — identified by Washington as part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of vessels used to evade international oil sanctions and break the U.S. blockade on Iranian crude exports — ignored nearly 60 distinct verbal warnings from U.S. forces over the course of the standoff. Even after eight separate shows of force, including low-altitude flybys by military aircraft and the deployment of warning flares, the vessel’s crew refused to alter course or comply with orders. Two final, explicit warnings were issued before U.S. forces opened fire on Wednesday.

Earlier official confirmations from the U.S. military note that a U.S. aircraft launched precision munitions directly into the tanker’s engine room to disable the vessel. Indian government officials have verified that three Indian nationals working aboard the Settebello were killed in the strike. The U.S. official added that American forces had maintained contact with the tanker repeatedly across the two weeks leading up to the incident, as the vessel made multiple attempts to breach the U.S. blockade.

In an official statement released after the operation, U.S. Central Command clarified that the tanker’s crew was given a full 15-minute window to evacuate the engine room before the strike was carried out. “After being in place for more than 60 days, it should be clear by now that U.S. forces will strictly enforce the blockade,” the statement added.

The incident has already sparked immediate diplomatic tension between Washington and New Delhi. India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed it has lodged a “strong protest” with U.S. authorities over the deaths of its citizens. On Saturday, the U.S. State Department released a readout of a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and India’s top foreign affairs official, in which Rubio emphasized that “all commercial vessels should immediately comply with orders from U.S. forces as they seek to uphold peace and security in the Strait.”