Two government officials said Britain was actively weighing the recognition of a Palestinian state, in a shift driven by public pressure over starvation in Gaza.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain at President Trump’s golf club in Turnberry, Scotland, on Monday. Mr. Starmer, the officials said, resisted Palestinian state recognition in the past because he viewed it as a largely “performative” gesture.
Israel ended a truce in Gaza in March, hoping to break Hamas. The move has heightened suffering for Palestinians but achieved few, if any, Israeli goals.
Israel says it is fighting against Hamas, not Palestinians as a group. But two of Israel’s best-known rights groups — long critical of Israeli policy — now say they disagree.
Protesters gathered in May at the Shaar Hanegev junction near the Gaza border, holding photos both of Israeli hostages and of children killed in strikes in the enclave.
Operations in parts of the enclave were put on hold to allow more aid. It was unclear if the move would relieve the hunger crisis, amid rising deaths from starvation.
After Israeli restrictions on aid, hunger has risen across Gaza. Doctors and nurses, struggling to find food themselves, lack the resources to stem the surge.
Hanin Barghouth with her 3-month-old daughter, Salam, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza this week. At birth, her doctor said, Salam weighed roughly 6.6 pounds, and three months later, she weighs only 8.8 pounds — at least three pounds underweight.
It was at least the third vessel blocked this year while challenging Israel’s naval blockade and seeking to deliver supplies by sea to a population facing rising starvation.
As starvation rises in Gaza, prompting global outrage, Israel’s military said it would restart airborne aid delivery there and make land deliveries less dangerous.
Israel has long restricted aid to Gaza on the argument that Hamas steals it to use as a weapon of control over the population. On Saturday, the Israeli military announced new airdrops of aid.
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates were expected to begin airdrops in the coming days, but experts warned that the bulk of necessary aid could come only by land.
Last year, the Jordanian Air Force dropped aid over northern Gaza. Israel said on Friday that it would soon allow countries to drop aid into the area, which is in a humanitarian crisis.
The French president, expressing a moral obligation to address suffering in Gaza, made clear he had lost patience with the United States and Israel. The question is what effect he will have.
President Emmanuel Macron departs the White House earlier this year. His recognition of Palestinian statehood reflects the swelling global outrage at the death and destruction in Gaza.
Some of Israel’s closest allies have stepped up criticism of its restrictions on aid to Gaza, where doctors and aid organizations say people are dying of starvation.
President Trump’s special envoy said that “we will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home,” though it was not clear that negotiations had halted.
The aftermath of an Israeli military operation in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Wednesday. Israel’s military campaign has continued and expanded even as negotiations were underway in recent weeks.
President Emmanuel Macron of France delivering remarks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City last year. Mr. Macron said that he would formally announce France’s recognition of Palestinian statehood at the Assembly in September in New York.
Two top Jewish Democrats, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, criticized Mr. Mamdani for not condemning those who use the slogan “globalize the intifada.”
Rahm Emanuel, left, and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Democratic leaders have yet to unite behind Zohran Mamdani’s bid to be mayor of New York City.
After 21 months of devastating conflict with Israel, Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick — are facing what aid groups say is impending famine.
Yousef, 6, who suffers from cerebral palsy and has severe malnutrition is held by his mother Samah Matar north of Gaza City on Thursday. He weighed 13kg before the war and now weighs 9kg.
More than 100 organizations, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, added to growing calls for aid restrictions to be eased and the war to end.
The aid agency says its buildings in the central part of the territory were attacked after the military targeted Deir al-Balah, which had largely been spared.
Over the weekend, Israeli soldiers shot Palestinians near an Israeli-backed aid site and a U.N. convoy. Both episodes pointed to Israel’s refusal to allow new governance structures to emerge.
In a screen grab taken from a handout video provided by the United Nations, Jonathan Whittall is shown standing near a destroyed hospital in Gaza in 2024.
The latest deaths add to U.N. figures showing that more than 670 Palestinians have been killed since May near sites built under a new Israel-backed aid system.
Mourners at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Saturday with the bodies of two people killed near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site.
Spread across Syria, Lebanon and Israel, the secretive religious minority has long balanced integration and independence. Now, members are at the heart of the region’s shifting power struggles.
Recent comments by the Israeli prime minister and a Fox News commentator about Cheltenham High School, their alma mater in suburban Philadelphia, have inflamed a debate.
A writer, editor and political adviser, he broke with the left over its criticism of Israel and what he saw as its anti-Americanism. But he also became a critic of Donald Trump.
The writer and editor Sol Stern at his Manhattan apartment in 2008. A liberal turned conservative, he was known for his largely nonideological judgment and his willingness to change his mind.
For weeks, Israel has engaged in back-channel talks over a diplomatic agreement with the Syrian government. Its strikes on Damascus this week highlight a lack of strategic clarity.
For weeks, Israel has engaged in back-channel talks over a diplomatic agreement with the Syrian government. Its strikes on Damascus this week highlight a lack of strategic clarity.
President Ahmed al-Shara said the airstrike on Damascus threatened to escalate sectarian violence, in his sharpest criticism of Israel since he came to power.
Israel threatened to escalate attacks on Syrian government forces unless they withdrew from Sweida, a southern province dominated by the country’s Druse minority.
There were conflicting accounts from Palestinian and aid officials over what happened at the food distribution hub run by the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, demanded “accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” referring to the killing last week of Sayfollah Musallet in the occupied territories.
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, urged Israel to “aggressively investigate” the death of a Palestinian-American in a clash in the West Bank.
Some of the prime minister’s political allies have quit over a proposal to make religious students serve in military, and more are threatening to do so.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Parliament on Monday. His government is fracturing because of the debate over whether ultra-Orthodox students must serve in the military.
Syrian government forces entered the predominantly Druse city of Sweida on Tuesday. Israel intervened after days of deadly sectarian clashes in the southern Sweida region.
Israel’s military said a “technical error” had caused munition to land dozens of meters from its target. The victims were gathered near a water distribution point, health workers said.
The 2020 agreements addressed diplomacy and commerce, not conflicts or the Palestinians. Predictions that the deals would produce regional peace were baseless, analysts say.
President Trump leading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and officials from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates outside the White House to sign the Abraham Accords in 2020.
Palestinian authorities and family members said Israeli settlers beat and killed a Palestinian-American man. Israel said the violence began when Palestinians threw stones at Israeli civilians.
Israeli soldiers holding back Palestinians trying to get to injured Palestinians after clashes with Israeli settlers in Sinjil in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, met several times with President Trump, amid rising hopes of a cease-fire in Gaza, but there are still obstacles to a truce with Hamas.
This image released by the Houthis’ Ansarullah Media Center on Wednesday shows what the group says is the Eternity C, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier, sinking after it was attacked by the Houthis.
The assessment came as experts are trying to determine how long it would take Iran to rebuild its nuclear program in the aftermath of U.S. and Israeli strikes.
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