Macron says Israeli ‘annexation’ cannot halt Palestinian state recognition

French President Emmanuel Macron has said Israel’s attempts to annex more of the occupied West Bank will not derail international momentum towards the recognition of a Palestinian state.

“No offensive, annexation attempt, or forced displacement of populations will derail the momentum” towards a two-state solution, Macron wrote on X after a call with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

France is among several countries preparing to formally recognise Palestine at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York. Belgium on Monday became the latest Western nation to announce it would do the same.

Macron also criticised Washington’s decision to deny visas to Palestinian Authority officials seeking to attend the meeting. He described the move as “unacceptable”, echoing criticism from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“We call for this measure to be reversed and for Palestinian representation to be ensured in accordance with the Host Country Agreement,” Macron said.

Main events on September 2nd

• Gaza’s Health Ministry said 13 people, including three children, died from starvation and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of hunger-related deaths to 361, among them 130 children.
• At least 105 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, including 53 in Gaza City, according to medical sources speaking to Al Jazeera.
• Gaza’s government reported that journalist Rasmi Salem was killed, bringing the total number of media workers killed since October 2023 to 248.
• Seven children were among 11 Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike on the al-Mawasi area as they waited in line to collect water, Gaza’s civil defence and Nasser Hospital said.
• Palestinians continue to flee advancing Israeli forces in Gaza City, where about one million people had been sheltering, though no safe areas remain.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said Israel’s annexation attempts in the occupied West Bank will not halt momentum towards recognising a Palestinian state, with Belgium the latest to announce recognition in New York.
• A group of 365 Israeli reservists declared they will refuse to report for duty if called up to fight in Israel’s ground operations in Gaza City.
• In the UK, police arrested five “key spokespeople” for Defend Our Juries, a group campaigning for the government to revoke its terror designation of Palestine Action.

Demand to sanction Netanyahu grows in UK parliament as MPs slam David Lammy

When the UK parliament resumed its session after the summer break on Monday (1 September), Foreign SecretaryDavid Lammy took the dispatch box to make a statement on the deteriorating situation in Gaza. But he didn’t have anything news to add except to sound like a broken record as he appeared to blame Hamas for the deaths of starving Palestinians seeking aid. A number of MPs cornered Lammy for his government’s failure to force Israel to stop its offensive in Gaza. Others demanded sanctioning of Benjamin Netanyahu.

GHF Contractor Tells All On Genocidal Israeli 'Aid' Plan (w/ Tony Aguilar)

Anthony Aguilar, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who served for 25 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Green Beret, recalls his experiences in Gaza serving as a subcontractor for UG Solutions, which provides security for The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Bisan Owda on Gaza: Journalism, Survival, and the Fight for Truth

n this interview, Palestinian journalist, activist, and filmmaker Bisan Owda shares an unfiltered account from Gaza. She discusses Israel’s killing of journalists, the destruction of Gaza City, and the enforced humanitarian crisis. Her testimony highlights Gaza’s struggle for survival — and the urgent need for the world to listen.

Israeli drones drop grenades near UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has said that Israeli drones dropped four grenades close to the peacekeepers working to clear roadblocks hindering access to a UN position on Tuesday morning.

“This is one of the most serious attacks on UNIFIL personnel and assets since the cessation of hostilities agreement of last November,” the UNIFIL said in a statement on Wednesday.

“One grenade impacted within 20 metres and three within approximately 100 metres of UN personnel and vehicles.”

Israel has been carrying out near-daily attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire reached with Hezbollah in November 2024.

UNIFIL statement on attack on peacekeepers clearing roadblocks:
 
Yesterday morning, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drones dropped four grenades close to UNIFIL peacekeepers working to clear roadblocks hindering access to a UN position close to the Blue Line.

— UNIFIL (@UNIFIL_) September 3, 2025

Israeli army was aware of UN presence in Lebanon before attack: UNIFIL

We now have more details from UNIFIL about Israel’s grenade attack near peacekeepers in Lebanon.

UNIFIL says the Israeli army was informed in advance of its road clearance work in the area, southeast of the village of Marwahin.

“Any actions endangering UN peacekeepers and assets, and interference with their mandated tasks are unacceptable and a serious violation of Resolution 1701 and international law,” UNIFIL said, referring to the resolution adopted at the end of the 2006 war to stop hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel creating ‘new reality’ in southern Lebanon

The Israeli army knew that UN peacekeepers would be carrying out work to remove the rubble, and that’s why they are calling this a deliberate targeting.

This is being seen as a message by the Israeli army that it is not going to allow anyone to reach areas close to the border. Since the ceasefire, Israel has established positions within Lebanese territory along that border, creating a de facto buffer zone.

Tens of thousands of people have also not been able to return to their destroyed villages, not even to rebuild or to clear the rubble. Israeli drones usually target those bulldozers.

Israel says that UNIFIL is useless and that it did not prevent Hezbollah from militarily building up along the border. This year, the Trump administration adopted the Israeli position, and there was only one last renewal for this force until the end of next year, and then the force needs to start drawing down its troops.

Lebanon wants the UN to stay because the Lebanese army does not have enough troops to deploy there. The Lebanese state is committing itself to fully disarming Hezbollah. To do that, it needs army troops deployed in the south, and that’s why it needs UNIFIL.

Israel doesn't want a stable Lebanon. Their tactic is to keep every surrounding nation weak and prone to civil war while slowly taking more territory for so called 'buffer' zones. Egypt and Jordan only get a pass so far for cooperating with the Israeli occupation. 

France urges protection of peacekeepers after Israeli attack near UN force in Lebanon

France has denounced an Israeli drone attack near UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, saying their role is “essential” and must be protected.

“The protection of the peacekeepers, as well as the security of United Nations personnel, equipment and premises must be ensured,” France’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Houthis claim missile attack on Israel, pledge more to come

Yemen’s Houthi group has claimed an earlier missile strike on Israel, which the army said was intercepted.

In a statement cited by Yemen’s Saba news, the Houthis said the attack was part of their “initial response” to “Israeli aggression against our country”, after an Israeli attack on Sanaa on Thursday killed numerous senior Houthi officials, including their government’s prime minister.

The Houthis claimed the attack, which Israeli media reported no casualties from, “successfully achieved its objectives”, including forcing Israelis to take shelter.

“Our operations will continue at an escalating pace during the coming period,” said the Houthi statement.

Israeli forces arrest eight people, demolish homes during West Bank incursions: Report

Israeli forces have carried out a series of violent overnight raids in the occupied West Bank. According to the Wafa news agency, they:

‘They attacked children, not fugitives’

In Gaza’s southern area of al-Mawasi, seven children were killed yesterday as they queued to collect water, in an area that Israel had marked as a “safe zone”.

Pools of blood mark where the children were standing when the Israeli drone hit. They had been fetching water at these communal taps. “These were children who were getting water… just kids. See what they attacked. They attacked children, not fugitives,” a resident told Al Jazeera.

“They are children, for God’s sake. Have some sympathy. It’s enough. We are exhausted. Stop the bloodshed.”

Six more people die of malnutrition

Gaza’s Health Ministry is reporting that six people, including a child, have died of “famine and malnutrition” in the past 24 hours.

This brings the total number of hunger-related, wartime deaths in Gaza, where Israel is still severely restricting aid access, to 367, including 131 children, according to the ministry.

Gaza City facing intense night-time bombardment

The situation is worsening by the day. Israel has been launching deadly chains of air strikes and heavy artillery bombardment on Gaza City, where the military offensive has started a new, intense phase.

The sky over Tuffah, Shujayea, Sheikh Radwan and Remal is filled with spectral echoes of air strikes and artillery drone fire. We saw distressing images of Israeli drones dropping munitions on ambulances at a clinic in Sheikh Radwan.

Israeli soldiers are also advancing into the urban quarters where hundreds of thousands of people are living. We’ve spoken to families who say the situation is getting worse, especially the intensity of bombardment during the night.

Three aid seekers killed by Israeli forces in Rafah

Palestinians struggling to afford their own displacement journey

Many Palestinians fleeing Gaza City due to the Israeli army offensive are facing the dual challenge of finding a safe place to go and affording the journey there.

Families must pay about $700 for transport to the south, roughly $1,000 for a tent if one is available, and about 30-40 percent commission to middlemen along the way, reports Al Jazeera’s Moath al-Kahlout.

“We’re going to Deir el-Balah but this trip costs money,” one Gaza City resident fleeing with their family told Al Jazeera.

“It costs us $700 to $800 for every trip. There are so many expenses, like tents, and we don’t even have food. Flour costs me more than $200. And we don’t have jobs, so we cannot buy food.

“We don’t know what to do with ourselves. We don’t know how to take care of ourselves. We only have Allah to take care of us. If we find a place to rent, we’ll rent it, or we’ll have to live outside. We’ll stay wherever we can.”

_{Displaced Palestinians make their way as they flee amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, on September 1}

Exhausted and with no safe place to go, many Gaza City residents stay put

Israel’s attempt to completely take over Gaza City – destroying “all modes of life” and forcibly removing hundreds of thousands of people in the process – demonstrates how brazen it has become nearly two years into the war, says Abdullah Al-Arian, associate professor at Georgetown University in Qatar.

“This is what it means to be committing genocide with total impunity,” Al-Arian told Al Jazeera, adding that fewer residents are following Israel’s forced evacuation threats than in the past due to extreme exhaustion from repeated displacements and a lack of safe places to go.

“There’s nowhere safe to go. There’s been a systematic targeting of all so-called safe zones. There has been a deliberate targeting of Palestinians in their movement from place to place.

“We’re also talking about people in many cases who’ve been forced to relocate many, many times. So there’s clearly a sense not just of exhaustion, but we have to also factor in the starvation levels.”

_{More Israeli army vehicles advance towards Gaza}

Tents ablaze after Israeli forces drop grenades on 3 schools-turned-shelters

Israeli forces have dropped grenades on three schools used to shelter the displaced in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, causing tents to catch fire, the Reuters news agency is reporting.

“Sheikh Radwan is being burnt upside-down,” 60-year-old resident Zakeya Sami said. “The occupation destroyed houses, burnt tents and drones played audio messages ordering people to leave the area.

“If the takeover of Gaza City isn’t stopped, we might die, and we are not going to forgive anyone who stands and watches without doing anything to prevent our death.”

More than 21,000 children in Gaza disabled during war: UN committee

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reports that about 40,500 children have suffered “new war-related injuries” during the war, leaving more than half of them disabled.

As we’ve reported, child malnutrition is also soaring in Gaza, where famine has been declared.

An estimated 132,000 children less than the age of five are projected to be at risk of death from acute malnutrition by June 2026, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system.

‘Destruction is everywhere, fear is constant’

It feels endless and it’s all consuming: it’s not just the sound of fighter jets and drones buzzing in the background – that we’ve heard 24/7 for almost 23 months now – it’s just the sense that an entire city is being destroyed block-by-block, street-by-street.

It’s not just that – it’s the memories that people lived with and the life they built for the past 50 years, or 50-plus years, it’s all gone. The destruction is everywhere.

For families, the fear is constant – that it’s going to continue and the relentless bombardment is going to erase much of their history and much of their memories.

If you combine all this, it feels like a living nightmare. For me and for other people around us here – for the crew members, for the people that we deal with on a daily basis – they can’t live an hour of their life without thinking of the risks.

At this point, it’s not about safety as much as it’s about survival. People are trying to survive.

Death toll rises: 44 Palestinians killed across Gaza today

At least 44 Palestinians have been killed across the coastal enclave since the early hours of this morning, medical sources at Gaza hospitals say.

Among those dead, 33 were killed in besieged Gaza City.

Israel has stepped up its destruction of Gaza City as it plans to seize Gaza’s largest urban centre and forcibly displace about one million Palestinians to concentration zones in the south.

Spain’s PM slams Europe response to Gaza as ‘failure’

Europe’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza has been a “failure” and risks undermining its global credibility, said Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

“It is a failure,” Sanchez said. “Absolutely. It is also the reality that, within the EU, there are countries that are divided when it comes to how to influence Israel.

“In my opinion, it’s not acceptable and we can’t last longer if we want to increase our credibility when it comes to other crises, such as the one we face in Ukraine.”

He also stated that the situation is “one of the darkest episodes of international relations in the 21st century”.

Sanchez has been vocal about Israeli atrocities in the besieged enclave over the last two years, and was also the first European leader to call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide.

What global credibility, Europe has none left.

Sports bans can’t stop Israel’s war on Gaza: Europe’s football chief

European football chief Aleksander Ceferin said civilian suffering in Gaza has affected him, but said Israeli teams and athletes should not be banned from sports competitions.

“First of all, what’s happening with civilians there is personally hurting, killing me,” Politico quoted Ceferin as saying.

“From the other point of view, I’m not a supporter of banning the athletes. Because what can an athlete do to their government to stop the war? It’s very, very hard. Now, the ban for Russian teams is, I think, three and a half years. Did the [Ukraine] war stop? It didn’t.”

UEFA banned Russian teams from its competitions in February 2022, four days after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Israel has continued to participate in UEFA events, despite growing calls globally calling for its ban as well.

So why are you still boycotting Russia then? UEFA is a racist organization. They only act on anti-semitism, death to Arabs (Macabi Tel Aviv) gets a pass.

Uefa sanctions seven nations for racist chants
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/cgerp2d5pn5o
The Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian, Austrian, Hungarian and Albanian Football Associations have all been sanctioned.

I survived the Gaza genocide only to witness firsthand Western complicity

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/9/2/i-survived-the-gaza-genocide-only-to-witness-firsthand-western-complicity

I write this from Paris, a city wrapped in blue and yellow. All around me, Ukrainian flags hang like moral badges pinned to French facades.

I arrived in this city just a few weeks ago as a survivor of the genocide in Gaza, leaving my country burning behind me. I had the privilege to be evacuated by the French government as a student admitted to a French university.

France mourns Ukraine loudly. Gaza, on the other hand, must be whispered. The Palestinian flag cannot be seen here. It is hidden, feared, criminalised. If you’re lucky, you find it painted in graffiti, a shy declaration of solidarity hastily sprayed like a secret.

Should I be surprised?

...

United Nations experts, all major international human rights organisations, thousands of legal and other scholars, and even former Israeli officials have said that this war has crossed every red line of international law.

And yet, here in France, we are told to lower our voices. We are told that shouting “Free Palestine” might be anti-Semitic. The people who wave Ukrainian flags with pride tell us our grief must be “balanced”. They rage against Russian imperialism but justify Israeli settler colonialism. This isn’t neutrality. This is white supremacy.

Gaza has become their moral exception. Their blind spot. Their expendable other. The news every newsroom twists itself to avoid.

But here is the truth: Palestine has no army, no jets, no ships, no nuclear weapons. What we have is resistance. Hamas is not a state military. It is the outcome of decades of siege, occupation, apartheid, and abandonment. And while European leaders rush to condemn Hamas at every opportunity they get, they refuse to condemn the occupation that birthed it. They erase our right to resist, while glorifying the Ukrainian resistance, heaping on it weapons and praise.

In Ukraine, Molotov cocktails are “heroism”. In Gaza, stones are “terrorism”. That’s hypocrisy. That’s the algorithm of white empathy.

...

Do not tell me this is just politics. It is racism. It is hypocrisy. The genocide of my people is being watched from balconies draped with Ukrainian flags.

I don’t want pity. I want accountability. I want justice. I want to see Palestinian flags hanging next to those of Ukraine, not as competition, but as truth. Because if solidarity depends on skin colour, borders, or geopolitical interest, it is not solidarity. It is supremacy.