标签： Asia

A high-profile far-right Israeli cabinet minister has announced plans to roll out a sweeping proposal this Thursday that would push millions of Palestinian residents out of the Gaza Strip, framing the ethnic cleansing-style initiative as a policy of ‘voluntary emigration’ that will anchor his election campaign and serve as a non-negotiable condition for joining any future Israeli governing coalition.

Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the overtly Jewish supremacist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, has branded the mass displacement scheme ‘Disengagement 710’, a term that openly signals its goal of clearing Palestinian civilians from their ancestral land. According to reporting from multiple Israeli media outlets, Ben Gvir and his team have spent months refining the proposal, which targets an ambitious timeline for mass displacement: an initial 250,000 Palestinians would be forced out of Gaza within the first year of implementation, rising to 1.1 million by the end of the third year, and ultimately reaching roughly 1.8 million people displaced over seven years.

This planned mass transfer comes on the heels of months of systematic destruction across Gaza that has already created the conditions for large-scale population movement. Israeli military operations have damaged or destroyed more than 80% of all residential structures, commercial spaces, educational institutions (from primary schools to universities), and medical facilities across the enclave. Israel has also imposed crippling restrictions on the entry of food, clean water, and basic humanitarian aid, creating a catastrophic humanitarian crisis that pushes many residents to consider leaving their homes despite generational ties to the land. Even with a nominal ceasefire in place that was agreed to in October, Israeli forces continue to carry out daily attacks that kill Palestinian civilians across Gaza, further escalating pressure to flee.

Under the terms of Ben Gvir’s proposal, the Israeli government would actively coordinate to resettle displaced Palestinians in third countries, with initial targets including Turkey, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and multiple unnamed Arab states. The plan explicitly requires international cooperation, relying on partner nations to agree to accept the expelled Palestinian population. Ben Gvir is also set to publicly release the projected price tag for the initiative, which is expected to draw fierce backlash and widespread condemnation from the international community. The proposal carries an estimated cost of over $3 billion for the first year of implementation, with a total seven-year price tag approaching $20 billion.

For Ben Gvir, who currently holds a cabinet seat in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current right-wing coalition, the proposal will be a core demand to join any future governing coalition after upcoming elections. Beyond the displacement policy itself, he is also demanding that any future government create a dedicated cabinet position specifically tasked with overseeing the forcible transfer of Palestinians. This new minister would be supported by a director-general, a standalone national budget, sweeping executive powers, and a dedicated team to negotiate resettlement deals with foreign governments.

Ben Gvir’s planned announcement comes just one day after a similar public statement from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who echoed the far-right minister’s calls for mass displacement. Speaking at a policy conference hosted by Israeli outlet Ynet in partnership with the Israel Democracy Institute, Katz argued that ‘there is no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration.’ He added that the only factor delaying the implementation of such a plan is a lack of U.S. backing for receiving nations, noting that ‘every country that is willing wants American backing.’ Katz also claimed that former U.S. President Donald Trump had not rejected the plan, only frozen it, under pressure from Arab nations.

This push for mass displacement is not a new proposal from the Israeli government: back in late June, Israeli officials rebranded their existing forced transfer plan, dropping the explicit label of ‘voluntary migration’ in favor of the softer-sounding ‘Freedom of Movement Plan’. Critically, the rebranded framework includes no provisions or legal guarantees for Palestinian refugees to exercise their right of return to their homes in Gaza.

This reporting draws on independent coverage from Middle East Eye, a media organization specializing in unrivaled, independent reporting and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

Diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Israel are deteriorating at an accelerating pace, as the UK government prepares to unveil a package of harsh new measures targeting Israeli activity in the occupied West Bank. The centerpiece of the planned actions is a full ban on imports of goods produced in Israeli settlements that the UK and much of the international community deem illegal under international law.

The proposed sanctions have already triggered fierce pushback from Israeli leaders. “If Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar issued a direct warning this week. The rhetoric has grown increasingly vitriolic: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly labeled the UK the “Islamic Republic of Britain” in a deliberate insult. His son, Yair Netanyahu, who holds no official government position but remains a prominent public voice, has gone a step further, publicly claiming the Falkland Islands are rightfully Argentine territory, not British.

Yair Netanyahu’s unprompted remarks have rippled across the Atlantic, drawing an unexpected intervention from former U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump has signaled that Washington could revisit its longstanding commitment to British sovereignty over the South Atlantic archipelago, going as far as telling GB News that he would refuse to back the UK if Argentina launched a new invasion of the islands. Trump tied the shift to his own grievance over the UK’s refusal to back the U.S. and Israel’s February 2025 strike on Iran, saying “Your country was not there to help me.”

Argentine President Javier Milei, who has taken a hardline line on territorial claims since taking office, has pledged to release a formal statement on the sovereignty dispute this week. Earlier this month, he declared that Argentina’s national sovereignty had been “violated” and vowed his government would defend the country’s interests “tooth and nail, no matter who it bothers.”

Beneath the current round of public taunts and threats lies a decades-long hidden history of covert conflict between the two nations, which have long been framed as close historical allies. Few today remember that during the 1982 Falklands War, Israel secretly armed Argentina against the UK — a decision that cost dozens of British soldiers their lives.

The basics of the Falklands dispute remain unchanged: both Argentina and the UK claim full sovereignty over the remote South Atlantic archipelago, which is home to roughly 3,600 residents, the overwhelming majority of whom support continued British rule. On April 2, 1982, Argentine military forces invaded the islands, sparking a 74-day conflict that ended with a British victory. It was not until a decade after the war that declassified UK government files confirmed the long-rumored secret Israeli military support for Argentina during the conflict.

According to the declassified documents and a 2011 investigative book by Argentine journalist Hernan Dobry, Israel organized a secret network of cargo flights through Peru to deliver a vast arsenal to Argentina. The shipments included 20 reconditioned Nesher fighter jets, air-to-air missiles, anti-tank mines, mortars, machine guns, fuel tanks and Skyhawk attack jets. The total value of Israeli arms exports to Argentina during the war is estimated at roughly $1 billion in modern terms. The Israeli Skyhawk jets were used in bombing raids against British positions, killing 48 British soldiers and sailors and sinking four Royal Navy warships.

For years, the Israeli government repeatedly denied any arms sales to Argentina during the conflict. When British intelligence uncovered concrete evidence of the shipments — including documentation of an Argentine effort to open a $100 million letter of credit through a Panamanian intermediary at Credit Suisse in Zurich in favor of Israel Aircraft Industries — the British Foreign Office leaked the full details to the national press.

Diplomatic cables from the time lay bare British frustration with Israeli deception. “We are having the worst of both worlds, with the Israelis apparently shipping aircraft to Argentina and at the same time fobbing us off with repeated denials,” one senior British official wrote at the time. Patrick Moverly, then UK ambassador to Tel Aviv, noted that “The Israelis have always had a special way of looking at the rest of the world,” and added that the Israeli government was making “a gigantic effort… to pull the wool over our eyes.”

Why would Israel arm a belligerent against a close historical ally? Declassified records reveal two core motivations. First, as one Israeli diplomat openly acknowledged at the time, the war created “an extremely attractive opportunity to develop the arms market in Argentina and Latin America, with great potential long-term benefit to Israel.” Second, the UK and Israel were already locked in a bitter dispute over a British arms embargo imposed on Israel after its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Relations between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were strained long before the Falklands War. Begin, as a young guerrilla leader fighting British rule in Mandatory Palestine, commanded the Irgun Zvai Leumi, which carried out two devastating attacks on British targets: the 1946 bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, the British administrative headquarters, which killed 91 people including 28 Britons, and an earlier bombing of the British Officers Club in Haifa that left dozens dead and injured.

After Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Thatcher pushed back against unlimited U.S. support for Israel, telling President Ronald Reagan that “unlimited support for Israel can only lead to growing polarisation and despair in the Arab world.” Britain imposed a full arms embargo on Israel that remained in place until 1994, and Thatcher publicly denounced the Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by Lebanese Christian Phalangists with Israeli army complicity as “pure barbarism.”

For Begin’s government, arming Argentina during the Falklands War was a deliberate tactic to pressure the UK into lifting the arms embargo and ending British arms sales to Arab states hostile to Israel. The gambit failed. Thatcher’s government went on to sign the 1980 Venice Declaration, where nine European nations formally expressed their shared concern over Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, and oversaw the founding of the Conservative Middle East Council, a group focused on promoting a balanced policy in the region.

Decades later, the same fault lines that drove the 1980s rift have reopened, pushing UK-Israel relations to their lowest point in modern history. In 2024, the UK imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel over its conduct in the Gaza war, and is now preparing to expand that with new sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. On Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament that the government would roll out a “comprehensive” sanctions package in the coming weeks, warning that Israel’s planned expansion of settlements in the E1 area of the West Bank “risks making a Palestinian state unviable.”

Israeli leaders have already made clear they will not accept the new measures quietly. Sa’ar retorted that “Israel will not be a passive victim of this policy” and will defend “its rights, its interests and its people.” Israeli media reports indicate that the government is actively weighing multiple retaliatory options, while the U.S. has reportedly mounted intense private pressure on the UK to abandon the sanctions plan entirely. A leaked April Pentagon memo even suggested Washington could use the Falklands sovereignty dispute as leverage to force the UK to back down.

The decisions made by all three sides in the coming weeks are likely to shape the future of UK-Israel relations, and even UK-U.S. relations, for decades to come.

A high-stakes controversy has erupted over allegations tied to the Trump administration’s newly formed Gaza-focused Board of Peace, after a former senior British diplomat accused former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair of carrying an extraordinary demand to the Palestinian Authority: scrub all references to “Palestine” from official school curricula and replace the term with the Jewish historical name “Samaria”. The claim, first published as an exclusive report by independent outlet Middle East Eye, has been forcefully and repeatedly denied by Blair’s Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which calls the allegation a baseless fabrication.

On Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his first official visit to Egypt in a decade, holding high-level talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo that produced a wide-ranging package of signed agreements, memoranda of understanding, and a formal joint statement guiding future bilateral cooperation.

The landmark trip was deliberately scheduled to coincide with the 70th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between the two nations, and it ran parallel to the joint Egyptian-Chinese “Eagles of Civilisation” air force exercise, which launched on August 22 to deepen military cooperation and interoperability between the two countries’ air services. It also came on the heels of a public report revealing that Chinese tech giant Huawei had submitted a bid to deliver more than 2,000 artificial intelligence computing chips to Egypt for a national data center project.

Xi arrived in Cairo on Tuesday, greeted at the airport by Sisi alongside a ceremonial welcome that featured folk performances, and young Egyptian attendees waving both national flags and wearing shirts printed with Xi’s portrait. Cairo authorities temporarily shut down multiple major arterial roads to secure Xi’s itinerary, which included visits to Ittihadiya Palace and the Grand Egyptian Museum.

At the core of the new cooperation agreements is Sisi’s formal announcement of the third expansion phase of the Egyptian-Chinese Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone), a flagship joint infrastructure project that already hosts roughly 200 operating companies and holds a total of $4 billion in cumulative investment. Beyond trade and industrial development, the new accords expand bilateral collaboration in renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and Egypt’s ongoing digital transformation, while reaffirming the two countries’ commitment to aligning Egypt’s national Vision 2030 development plan with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Raphael Angieri, managing director and co-founder of the Sino-Arabica Project, explained the strategic logic of China’s investment in regional economic zones to Middle East Eye: “China is building these economic zones as a way of spreading the Chinese model of development.” Angieri added that the offshore zones simplify export logistics for Chinese firms, while also allowing China to bypass international sanctions and other trade barriers by expanding manufacturing capacity outside its own borders.

The expansion of the SCZone comes at a defining economic juncture for Egypt. In 2024, Suez Canal toll revenue plummeted to less than $4 billion, down from a record high of $10.3 billion in 2023, after repeated Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea forced global carriers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. More recently, rising tensions that have threatened Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz have pushed a growing number of oil tankers back to the Red Sea shipping lanes, setting the stage for a potential rebound in canal traffic.

For Egypt, these new Chinese-backed industrial clusters within the SCZone offer far greater operational efficiency that will help Cairo capitalize on projected growth in Suez Canal traffic, Angieri noted. Islam Alhalawany, principal at QFLA Advisory and a leading specialist in Asia-Middle East relations, added that Chinese investment in the SCZone integrates with existing regional trade corridors designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, most notably the Europe-Egypt-NEOM-GCC Corridor. This Saudi-backed mixed land-and-sea route connects European and Gulf markets without requiring transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

In the formal joint statement released after the talks, Egypt reaffirmed its longstanding commitment to the One China principle, explicitly describing Taiwan as an “integral part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China,” voicing full support for China’s 2027 BRICS presidency, and pledging not to interfere in any of China’s internal affairs. In return, China addressed Egypt’s core priority of Nile River water rights, a sticking point in Cairo’s years-long dispute with Addis Ababa over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt argues will drastically reduce critical downstream water flows. China affirmed its “awareness of the vital importance of the Nile River for Egypt as the main lifeline” of the country.

Alhalawany emphasized that with both Egypt and Ethiopia now holding BRICS membership, “China has a great opportunity to mediate and guarantee agreement over the Nile water.” He added that China’s potential mediation role could also extend to other long-running conflicts across the Horn of Africa region.

On the technology front, Huawei’s public tender offer for 2,008 Ascend-series AI chips – 1,408 of which are the company’s top-tier Ascend 950-series processors – has emerged as a new test of Egypt’s delicate balancing act between Washington and Beijing. According to reporting from Bloomberg, U.S. officials are currently pressuring American tech giants including Microsoft, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices Inc to submit a competing counteroffer to secure the Egyptian contract. However, despite discussions of AI cooperation featuring prominently in Wednesday’s bilateral talks, Huawei’s specific bid was never mentioned by name in any of the official government documents released after the visit.

Bloomberg also reported that Huawei’s bid includes a partnership with Chinese tech firm iFlytek Co, a company that has appeared on the U.S. trade blacklist since 2019 over alleged involvement in the surveillance of Muslim minority groups in China’s Xinjiang region. It remains unclear what specific use cases Egyptian authorities would have for iFlytek’s technology under the proposed deal. While technical reports note that the computing performance of Huawei’s AI chips lags behind that of top products from Nvidia and other U.S. manufacturers, the acceptance of Huawei’s bid would still mark a major strategic shift in the global contest for control of AI infrastructure worldwide.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told Bloomberg that Egypt is “one of dozens of countries” with whom Washington is currently discussing AI cooperation. But Alhalawany argued that Egypt is unlikely to secure a viable, affordable offer from U.S. firms. “Financially stressed Egypt will likely afford the Chinese option in light of the intensifying AI catch-up race, especially that Beijing bundles digital infrastructure projects with lucrative financing packages,” he told Middle East Eye. He added that the premium pricing of U.S. AI solutions makes wealthy Gulf economies far more attractive customers for American vendors than cash-strapped Egypt.

Even so, Bloomberg reports that U.S. officials view Egypt’s consideration of Huawei’s bid as a significant strategic development, given Egypt’s status as Africa’s second-largest economy. The omission of Huawei’s bid from all official statements after Wednesday’s talks could signal two different outcomes, analysts note: it may reflect Cairo’s reluctance to publicly align with China on sensitive AI infrastructure issues, or it may indicate that Egyptian officials are still weighing multiple competing offers, including a potential proposal from a U.S. firm.

Angieri noted that Egypt has long prioritized maintaining its strategic flexibility, holding U.S. military support and security guarantees while also drawing significant investment and infrastructure financing from China. Alhalawany echoed this assessment, stating that “Cairo is emerging as one of a few points of convergence between Beijing and Washington.” He added that “talks are significant but in ways that do not conflict with Egypt-US relations.”

This balancing act is not new for Cairo. Since taking office in 2014, Sisi has traveled to Beijing eight times, with his most recent visit taking place in 2024. China has already served as the primary financier for some of Egypt’s most high-profile recent projects, including the new administrative capital’s central business district and the light rail line connecting the new capital to Greater Cairo. Bilateral trade between China and Egypt reached roughly $20.8 billion in 2025, compared to total annual U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt of roughly $1.4 billion and a 2025 bilateral U.S.-Egypt trade volume of just over $12 billion.

The joint statement also included a shared call for reform of “the international system and international financial institutions to make them fairer, more representative of developing countries.” As Alhalawany put it, “China favours change as an aspiring global power, and Egypt views that the current system is unfair to developing countries.”

Looking forward, how Egypt navigates the competing demands of Washington and Beijing remains an open question. Cairo has not yet announced a final decision on Huawei’s AI chip bid, and no U.S. company has formally confirmed a competing offer. For now, the most concrete outcome of Xi’s visit – the expansion of the Suez Canal Economic Zone – is set to take shape along the banks of one of the world’s most critical waterways, a visible marker of China’s deepening strategic footprint in the Middle East.

After 16 years of official denial and behind-the-scenes speculation, Israel has for the first time publicly confirmed its role in the 2008 targeted assassination of Muhammad Suleiman, a senior military and intelligence official who served as a top aide to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The long-awaited admission comes in a new memoir from Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister at the time of the killing, marking the first high-profile, on-the-record confirmation of an operation that had only been hinted at in anonymous leaks and diplomatic accusations for decades.

Suleiman was far more than a standard presidential aide: he held broad oversight over all of Assad’s most sensitive military and intelligence projects, and was explicitly tasked with leading construction and security efforts for a secret undeclared nuclear reactor being built by the former regime in Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria. The killing came roughly a year after Israeli warplanes destroyed the partially completed reactor in a September 2007 airstrike, an operation also carried out during Olmert’s premiership.

New details of the covert assassination are laid out in excerpts of Olmert’s book published by Israeli news outlet Ynet. Olmert recounts that on the night of the attack, Suleiman was relaxing with guests on an oceanfront balcony at his vacation property. Under cover of complete darkness, Israeli naval commandos moved into position, splitting into two teams that advanced to within 150 meters of the balcony on opposite sides. After positively identifying Suleiman, even with crowds of civilian beachgoers nearby who never detected the operatives, the commandos received the green light to strike. Olmert writes that three bullets were fired directly at Suleiman, all striking him in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The operatives then withdrew without incident to a waiting extraction boat off the coast, disappearing before any local security forces could respond.

While previous unofficial information had linked Israel to the attack — most notably a 2015 leak of classified documents from the U.S. National Security Agency that pointed to Israeli commando responsibility — Olmert’s book represents the first formal, public acknowledgement from a senior Israeli official. For its part, the now-defunct Assad regime consistently blamed Israel for Suleiman’s killing from the day of the attack, despite Israel’s years of official silence.

The timing of the admission, which coincides with the collapse of Assad’s government in December 2024, aligns with a newly released United Nations report that independently confirms what Israel and Western intelligence agencies have long alleged: the Assad regime was actively developing an illicit nuclear weapons program at the Deir Ezzor site. According to the UN report, nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency conducted verification work at multiple Syrian locations in August 2024, shortly before Assad’s ouster, and confirmed the site’s purpose as a secret nuclear reactor.

In his memoir, Olmert emphasized Suleiman’s central role in the covert nuclear project, noting that Suleiman “had a hand in everything” related to the Deir Ezzor facility. As a reward for his leadership on the project, Olmert added, Assad gifted Suleiman a brand-new Mercedes-Benz just one month before the assassination, a public gesture of gratitude for his work advancing the regime’s nuclear ambitions.

Olmert’s political legacy is complicated: he left office in 2009 and was ultimately convicted on bribery charges in 2014, serving a six-year prison sentence before his release in 2017. The publication of his memoir has brought new attention to the covert operations of his premiership, which reshaped Middle East security dynamics long before the collapse of the Assad regime in late 2024.