Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the two-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas wardeteriorating trade relations between the United States and Canadaand calls for French President Emmanuel Macron to resign.
730 Days Later
Two years ago, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented, sweeping attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 others hostage. The assault was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust. Since then, Israeli forces have launched a massive multifront war against Hamas and its allies that has drawn international condemnation (including allegations of genocide) over its devastating humanitarian impact on Palestinians in Gaza.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the two-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas wardeteriorating trade relations between the United States and Canadaand calls for French President Emmanuel Macron to resign.
730 Days Later
Two years ago, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented, sweeping attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 others hostage. The assault was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust. Since then, Israeli forces have launched a massive multifront war against Hamas and its allies that has drawn international condemnation (including allegations of genocide) over its devastating humanitarian impact on Palestinians in Gaza.
Today, the Israel-Hamas war is at a new climax. Israeli and Hamas delegations convened in Egypt on Tuesday for a second day of indirect peace talks based on U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed framework. The two sides are expected to mark the war’s two-year anniversary by debating the details of an international governing force in Gaza, the release of Hamas-held hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of life-saving aid into the territory.
“We are now at a decisive stage, and we must seize this opportunity to push for an end to the war, prevent expulsion, and avoid annexation—steps that would establish a political horizon ensuring Palestinian legitimacy,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdilatty said.
Yet, both sides have failed to halt their attacks during cease-fire negotiations. Israel accused Hamas on Tuesday of firing rockets into Israel, while Palestinians reported new Israeli bombardments by tanks, planes, and ships into Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in 2023, Israeli forces have destroyed nearly 80 percent of the Gaza Strip. More than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 18,000 childrenand nearly all of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced. In August, the world’s leading hunger monitor found that famine was prevalent in Gaza City and its surrounding areas, with more than half a million Palestinians facing “catastrophic conditions.”
Pro-Palestinian rallies erupted across several cities around the world on Tuesday to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. They also condemned increasing Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and threats of further annexation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners.
However, the protests’ timing has drawn criticism from foreign leaders, who have condemned the rise of antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack; reports of Islamophobia have also dramatically increased since the conflict began. Several nations that experienced pro-Palestinian demonstrations on Tuesday, including France and the United Kingdom, were among those that recently recognized an independent Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly.
After years of being considered an unrealistic possibility, the potential for a two-state solution is once again in the limelight, with the U.N. and many Arab countries arguing that it is the best way to achieve lasting peace in the wider Middle East. (Over the past two years, Israel has also launched strikes on Hezbollah members in Lebanon, Houthi militants in Yemen, Hamas leaders in Qatar, government forces in Syria, and nuclear facilities in Iran.)
But until then, civilians on both sides are hoping that ongoing peace talks will establish a cease-fire in Gaza.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Deteriorating trade relations. Trump hosted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House on Tuesday, during which the two leaders discussed deteriorating trade relations ahead of a looming deadline to review the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Trump has previously suggested that the White House could negotiate separate trade deals with Mexico City and Ottawa instead of renewing the 2020 framework.
“I want to make whatever the best deal is for this country, and also very much with Canada in mind,” Trump said on Tuesday. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement was negotiated during Trump’s first term.
At the same time, the U.S. president appeared pessimistic on Tuesday that bilateral relations with Washington’s closest ally could recover. When asked if the alleged fentanyl crisis at the Canadian border would ever improve, Trump said, “No, I think it’s never going to be over, frankly,” though he praised Canada for doing “a much better job than in the past.” Trump has cited drug trafficking as one of the primary reasons for increased border security and high tariffs on Canada, even though U.S. government reports have previously found that Canada is not a significant source of fentanyl in the United States.
This is Carney’s second White House summit with Trump. Among Carney’s biggest concerns on Tuesday were how Trump’s trade war has hurt the Canadian economy, which has recorded higher costs of living due to the impact of U.S. tariffs on key goods, as well as Trump’s repeated threats to turn Canada into the 51st U.S. state.
Calls to resign. French President Emmanuel Macron faced growing pressure on Tuesday to either step down or call snap parliamentary elections, a day after the surprise resignation of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, France’s fifth premier in less than two years. Although calls for Macron to leave office before his five-year term expires in 2027 have long been a demand among the far left and far right, similar appeals have now entered the mainstream—throwing Paris into political turmoil.
“Like many French people, I no longer understand the president’s decisions,” former Prime Minister (and longtime Macron loyalist) Gabriel Attal said on Monday. Meanwhile, Macron’s first prime minister, Édouard Philippesaid on Tuesday that Macron should be “leaving in an orderly manner” to break the country’s political gridlock, adding that “another 18 months would be far too long and would harm France.”
Macron has repeatedly refused to resign before his term concludes. He has asked Lecornu to stay on in a caretaker capacity for 48 hours and hold talks with other political parties to try “to define a platform for action and stability for the country.” Lecornu accepted. However, with French markets falling on Monday over Lecornu’s resignation and the popular far-right National Rally party boycotting a planned coalition-building meeting on Wednesday, Macron may be facing greater pressure than ever to make a drastic change.
Landmark conviction. The International Criminal Court on Monday convicted its first Janjaweed militia leader on trial for committing atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb) was found guilty on all 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including executions, rape, and torture. The landmark conviction is the first and only trial looking at crimes in Darfur since the U.N. Security Council referred the case to the ICC in 2005.
Monday’s conviction marks “an important acknowledgment of the enormous suffering endured by the victims of his heinous crimes as well as a first measure of long overdue redress for them and their loved ones,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said. Abd-Al-Rahman’s sentencing will come at a later date, even as his defense team maintains that he is not Ali Kushayb and that this is a case of mistaken identity.
Conflict in Darfur first erupted in 2003, when non-Arab rebels clashed with the Sudanese government, prompting state forces to mobilize Arab militias (known as the janjaweed) to crush the revolt. Rights groups and foreign governments have equated the subsequent violence to a genocide. Sudan’s current civil war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has sparked mass displacement that the U.N. has characterized as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Odds and Ends
It’s day two of the Nobel Prize announcements, and physics is front and center. The winners: three U.S.-based scientists whose work on quantum tunneling has advanced the technologies that people use every day, from cellphones to MRIs. “It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises,” Nobel Committee for Physics chair Olle Eriksson said on Tuesday.
Next on the docket is another science-nerd specialty: chemistry!
