Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz raised eyebrows on Friday when he said Israel would expect international partners such as the United Kingdom and France to join Israel in responding to a potential strike from Iran, “not only in defense, but also in attacking significant targets in Iran.”

Katz made the claim during a meeting to discuss “preventing regional escalation and promoting a hostage deal,” with his British and Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, according to a readout from the Israeli foreign office.

Both France and the UK, however, have downplayed such a prospect, with the UK emphasizing the need to break the “current destructive cycle of retaliatory violence” in the Middle East.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné told a press conference in Jerusalem that it would be “inappropriate” to speak of “a retaliation or preparation for an Israeli retaliation” whilst diplomatic talks are underway.

Katz’s declaration comes amid heightened fears of a reprisal attack from Iran, following the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran has blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death but Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied responsibility.

When asked about Katz’s statement, a UK foreign office spokesperson stressed that the UK is “working in lockstep with our allies to deescalate tensions,” adding that they “urge all parties to refrain from perpetuating the current destructive cycle of retaliatory violence.”

“We call on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks that would further escalate regional tensions and jeopardise the opportunity to agree a ceasefire and the release of hostages. No country or nation stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, a senior United States administration official struck a harsher tone, warning on Friday there could be “cataclysmic” consequences and “particularly for Iran” if Tehran decides to strike Israel and escalate the conflict in the Middle East.

The official added that the US has encouraged Iran, through intermediaries, to not attack as there is a “path” to achieve a ceasefire and hostage deal on the table. The de-escalation and potential for a ceasefire deal are “separate,” the official said, but they are happening in “parallel.”

“We have deployed the military resources to the region that are needed for every possible contingency, and we’re working in very close coordination with partners and allies,” the official added.

“We are ready for any possible contingency, and we’re going to help defend Israel, and not going to get ahead of anything else that. I just say this, this attack from Iran has been predicted now, I think every day over the last two and a half weeks. So you know, let’s see. I’ll just say we are prepared,” they added.

Tears streamed down Bisan Abuaita’s face as she reunited with her teammates at Jordan’s Queen Alia Airport in May.

It was the first time members of the Palestinian women’s soccer team had met since the start of the war in Gaza, an ongoing trauma for Palestinians inside and outside the enclave.

The team was en route to Dublin, Ireland – the first time a senior Palestinian women’s team had ever played in Europe.

This season’s Palestinian-based women’s league was slated to start on October 9, 2023, two days after Hamas’ devastating assault on Israel, that prompted a military campaign that has so far killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than a million more.

After months of fearing for their relatives and friends inside Gaza, the team finally got their 90 minutes of solace, kicking off against local Irish club Bohemians FC in May.

Adding extra significance to the match, it was played on the 76th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe, during which approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were expelled by Jewish militia groups, in violence that accompanied the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

Thousands of Palestinian flag-waving fans filled Dalymount Park, with the proceeds going to charitable organizations to help refugees back home. Irish President Michael Higgins was among those in attendance.

Just two weeks after the match was played, Ireland would go on to recognize Palestinian statehood, in a coordinated move with two other European nations, Spain and Norway, a decision that was condemned by Israel.

Ireland is considered one of the most pro-Palestinian nations in Europe, and earlier this year filed an intervention in the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

The Palestinian side won the match 2-1, but the result was less important than the game itself.

“Leading the team out was unforgettable,” said 25-year-old captain Mira Natour, a doctor who will soon return to her native Bethlehem in the West Bank, where she works in a government hospital.

“It was a moment that filled me with enormous pride and a heavy sense of achievement. Not just for me, but the entire team and our nation. It was a symbol of our resilience; representing Palestine on the international stage despite all the challenges we face.”

Teammate Abuaita, who travels between Bethlehem and France to help displaced Palestinian women and children, described the “surreal” moment of being able to return to competitive soccer.

She had barely kicked a ball since her local club won the Palestinian Cup the previous year.

“It felt amazing,” she said. “Wearing the kit gives me goosebumps. With what’s happening lately, it’s like double the goosebumps.

“Everyone was crying when we heard the national anthem (pre-match) because you remember everything and everyone that you’re playing for. Each one of us knows people who are suffering, who (have been) martyred.”

‘Sisters’ assemble

The Palestinian players traveled to Ireland from far and wide – some from their homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and others from the global diaspora living thousands of miles from the site of the conflict.

Five players from the West Bank, including Abuaita, had to drive to Jordan and fly from Amman. There are no airports in the Palestinian territories and the women would have needed a permit to fly from Israel’s Tel Aviv airport. Even though the distance to Jordan’s Queen Alia Airport is relatively short, three separate security checkpoints along the way meant the trip took around 10 hours, Abuaita said.

But at least they could travel. Since the team’s establishment in 2013, there has yet to be a Palestine women’s team member from Gaza, due to Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have players from Gaza on our team. One of the main reasons why is the blockade that was forced upon Gazans since 2007,” said team manager Deema Yousef.

“This means citizens cannot leave the strip without a permit granted by the Israeli government, which is extremely hard to obtain,” said Yousef, a representative of the Palestinian Football Association.

Other players came from the Palestinian diaspora in Germany, Sweden, Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Eighteen-year-old goalkeeper Charlotte Phillips was born in Canada to a Bahamian father and Palestinian mother.

Phillips’ grandparents, George and Odette, are Nakba survivors whose family members were killed in front of them, she said.

They left Jerusalem in the mid-70s and moved to Canada and went on to open a successful Palestinian restaurant in Toronto, said Phillips, now a university student in Toronto.

“I can’t always fully relate to the struggles,” Phillips said. “I know what it means to be Palestinian in Canada, but I don’t know what it means to be Palestinian living in occupied Palestine. So, playing in a game like that in front of my teta (grandmother) and sidi (grandfather) was so significant to our family history.”

Nonetheless each meetup of the team, like the match in Ireland, is charged.

“It was so incredibly emotional,” Phillips recalled.

‘We are still fighting’

Both Natour and Abuaita described the team’s bittersweet feeling of clocking valuable minutes on the field, while remembering those struggling in war-torn Gaza.

Abuaita said her team plays as a mark of respect for those killed in the conflict, and as a reminder to the world that Palestinians are still fighting.

“We play for all those people who were killed, for those footballers and athletes who were murdered. And for those athletes who are still unable to play, because in Gaza now there’s zero stadiums – they were all destroyed. Being able to show people we’re here and that we’re still fighting in Palestine is an honor,” she said.

Since the game in Dublin, both the Palestinian men’s and women’s teams have played a handful of international friendly matches, with the former still in contention for a place at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada after an impressive outing in the Asian group stages this summer.

“Football is a source of hope and unity for our people. It allows us to tell our story – we are more than just a conflict,” captain Natour said.

“Most importantly, it inspires the younger generation to dream and strive for a better future, no matter what. When I look at my teammates with diverse backgrounds and unique talents, (I realize) we’re not just athletes but role models and advocates for our country, both on and off the field.”

Doctors in war-torn Gaza have detected a case of polio for the first time in 25 years, health officials said, as international aid bodies call for a pause in the conflict for make way for a vaccination drive.

Traces of poliovirus were found in a 10-month-old child in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, the health ministry said in a statement late Friday, adding that the baby had not received any polio jabs.

Previously, UNICEF said poliovirus was detected in environmental samples from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in July, with stool samples of three children being sent to a lab in Jordan for testing.

Polio is a highly contagious disease that mainly affects children under the age of 5. It targets the nervous system and can cause paralysis and death in extreme cases.

The resurgence of the virus – eliminated in most of the developed world – highlights the struggles facing Gaza’s two million residents, who have lived under Israeli bombardment since October last year. Many people in the enclave are deprived of food, medical supplies and clean water, with up to 90% of the population internally displaced.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack, according to officials. The Hamas attack killed more than 1,200 Israelis, with 250 taken hostage, according to the Israeli government.

The health ministry said it will work with UNICEF to vaccinate children under 10 years old in Gaza, adding that more than a million doses are available.

Two rounds of vaccination are expected to be launched this month and next across Gaza, UNICEF said in a news release Friday, adding that it will target more than 640,000 children.

But a pause in hostilities is needed to make way for an effective polio vaccination campaign, it said, alongside the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and the World Health Organization, all calling for a halt to the fighting.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called the proposal “a must,” noting the “ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

International mediators are making an urgent push for Israel and Hamas to reach a broader ceasefire and hostage deal next week, after high-stakes negotiations in Qatar saw them put a fresh proposal to the warring parties.

Gaza has been polio-free for the last 25 years, UNICEF said.

“Its reemergence, which the humanitarian community has warned about for the last ten months, represents yet another threat to the children in the Gaza Strip and neighboring countries,” the UN body added, stressing the importance of a ceasefire.

Hamas welcomed the call from the UN agencies on Friday for a seven-day “polio pause.”

But the health ministry in Gaza warned in a statement on Friday that a vaccination campaign “will not be enough without a radical solution to the problems of sanitation and accumulation of waste among the tents for the displaced.”

Last week, Palestinian Minister of Health Dr. Majed Abu Ramadan warned that Israel’s bombardment had destroyed 80% of the healthcare infrastructure in Gaza.

Most hospitals are out of service and those that have remained operational are working only partially “due to direct damage and the loss of qualified medical staff” due to displacement, according to the minister.

“We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe by all indications and evidence,” he said.

Eyad Kourdi, Hira Humayun, Sarah Dean and Ibrahim Dahman contributed to this report.

Russia is “rapidly approaching” a key military hub in eastern Ukraine, a local official has said, as Moscow continues its advances despite Kyiv’s surprise gains in its enemy’s Kursk region.

While Pokrovsk is not a major city – about 60,000 people lived there before the war and many have left since the start of the full-scale invasion – it serves as a key hub for the Ukrainian military thanks to its easy access to Kostiantynivka, another military center.

Ukrainian troops use the road connecting the two to resupply the front lines and evacuate casualties toward Dnipro.

Serhii Dobriak, head of the Pokrovsk city military administration, urged the community there to evacuate without delay.

“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said in a Telegram post on Thursday.

His warning is proof that Moscow has not relented in its attack on other parts of Ukraine, despite Kyiv’s successful incursion across the border over the past week, a major development after two-and-a-half years of open conflict.

Ukraine said it has captured more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory since the start of its surprise assault, forcing tens of thousands of Russians from their homes.

On Friday, Ukraine officials said its military, already some 35 kilometers into Russian territory, is still advancing “in some areas from 1 to 3 kilometers.”

Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from frontline fighting in occupied Ukraine in order to address the territorial loss in the Kursk region.

But according to Dobriak, the enemy is “almost right up close” to Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s key logistics and military hub that has become the focus of the Russian offensive in the Donetsk region.

“They are a bit more than 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles) from the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said, adding that the situation “is only getting worse.”

For months, Russia has been stretching Ukrainian defenses across the entire front line, trying to capture as much territory as possible before new Ukrainian recruits and fresh batches of Western weapons start arriving on the battlefield.

The gains made by Russia have been largely incremental – the front line has barely moved in the past few months – but the recent advance toward Pokrovsk has Ukraine and its allies worried.

The city’s capture would bring Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of seizing all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Kostiantynivka is the southernmost part of a belt of four Ukrainian cities – with Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – that form the backbone of Ukraine’s defenses of the region, so any progress of Russian troops toward the city is significant.

Officer of Ukraine’s 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade Serhii Tsehotskyi told Ukrainian national broadcaster Suspilne on Friday that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia had not led to a decrease in Moscow’s attacks in the Donetsk region.

He said Russian attempts to advance do not stop “for a minute,” and “the battles continue around the clock.”

“Taking into consideration the events in the Kursk region, they (the Russian forces) are trying to do everything in order to be successful at least somewhere,” he said.

Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi acknowledged Friday that “intense fighting” is taking place in the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said Thursday that Russian forces are “maintaining their relatively high offensive tempo” in Donetsk, “demonstrating that the Russian military command continues to prioritize advances in eastern Ukraine even as Ukraine is pressuring Russian forces within” the Kursk region.

When Moawya Ali saw a wave of Israeli settlers storm towards his house in the West Bank town of Jit, he grabbed his five children and rushed to his car, where he dropped them off at a nearby house for safety.

When he returned to the house, Ali said, he saw some 30 settlers – armed, masked and dressed in black – jumping over the fence, breaking windows and throwing Molotov cocktails inside the house.

“We are (Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir) Ben Gvir’s gang, we are here to kill you, here to kill Arabs,” the settlers shouted in both Arabic and Hebrew, according to Ali.

Ali’s home is one of several houses and cars damaged by what residents of Jit say was an assault by dozens of settlers on Thursday night, which drew scathing condemnation from top Israeli officials.

“They were prepared with weapons,” Arman said, adding that they had silencer firearms with live ammunition, knives and M16 rifles. “They came to commit a crime in the town,” he said.

The attack has been condemned by top officials across Israel’s government, with a statement issued hours later by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office warning that “those responsible for any offense will be apprehended and tried.”

‘Netanyahu is but a toy’

One resident, Rashid Sedda, was killed in Thursday’s attack. According to the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of health, the 23-year-old died after an “injury to the chest by settlers’ bullets.”

Hundreds gathered for his burial on Friday, where residents marched down the narrow streets of the town carrying Sedda’s body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag.

Mourners blamed far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Ben Gvir for the attack, saying they have been instigating settler violence, and especially after October 7.

“Netanyahu is but a toy in their hands,” said the preacher speaking at Sedda’s burial.

In May, Smotrich said that Israel should approve 10,000 settlements in the West Bank, establish a new settlement for every country that recognizes a state of Palestine, and cancel travel permits for Palestinian Authority officials. In June, the minister said the way to prevent a Palestinian state that would endanger the state of Israel is to develop Jewish settlements.

Netanyahu has long struggled to appease the far-right side of his coalition, and is currently under pressure to delay a ceasefire deal and press on with the war in Gaza, which today shows few signs of ending.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has recorded at least 1,143 settler attacks against Palestinians from October 7 to August 5 alone. Of those, at least 114 attacks “led to Palestinian fatalities and injuries,” according to OCHA.

After Thursday’s attack, some settler leaders were keen to distance themselves from the attackers. Smotrich, who lives in the Kedumim settlement just 10 minutes away, called attackers “criminals” who “are in no way related to the settlements and the settlers.”

In a statement, Ben Gvir suggested that the riot would not have happened if the Israeli military were allowed to shoot stone-throwers in the West Bank. Ben Gvir said he “told the [IDF] Chief of the General Staff this evening that the fact that we don’t let soldiers shoot any terrorist who throws stones is leading to events of the type that occurred tonight.”

“At the same time, it is unequivocally forbidden to take the law into one’s own hands,” he added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have also condemned the attack, saying in a statement that Israeli security forces were dispatched to Jit “minutes after receiving the report of this incident” and “used riot dispersal means, fired shots into the air, and removed the Israeli civilians from the town.”

An Israeli civilian involved in the riot has been apprehended for questioning, and a joint investigation by Israeli security forces is looking into the death of the Palestinian resident, it also said.

The world ‘does nothing’

Statements by Israeli officials did little to cool residents’ anger, however.

Murad Eshtewi, spokesman for Fatah in the Qalqilya Province, where the town of Jit is located, said that attacks by settlers are always given a greenlight by settler leaders. Fatah is the leading party in the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank.

While the prime minister is enjoying the support of his far-right ministers, Eshtewi said, blood is being spilled in Gaza and the West Bank.

Residents of Jit said that attacks by settlers have been rampant since Netanyahu’s new government and more so after October 7, but that Thursday’s attack was unprecedented.

They fear it may not be the last.

Yamin said that it is up to the international community to stop the violence, as the Palestinian people have no means of confronting these attacks.

“The world sees and hears what happens, and does nothing,” he said.