Israel’s Netanyahu to Address Joint Session of U.S. Congress Amid Ongoing War |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lay out his vision in Israel’s war against Hamas and response to regional threats while reaffirming the country’s partnership with the United States, an unnamed official from his office told The Times of Israel. Nentanyahu’s visit to Washington this week comes as the war triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack continues in its tenth month, with mounting Israeli domestic pressure to secure a hostage release deal and global concern about the conflict’s humanitarian toll in Gaza and potential escalation to other parts of the Middle East. Netanyahu is also scheduled to later meet with senior U.S. political officials including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump.
Divided U.S. opinion on Israel’s war tactics extends to Congress, where some Democratic lawmakers said they will boycott the speech. Both Harris and Republican vice presidential candidate and Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) said they will not attend due to scheduling conflicts. Netanyahu’s visit also comes amid upheaval in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Biden due to address the country this evening on his decision to not run for reelection. Netanyahu said ahead of his trip that he “will seek to anchor the bipartisan support that is so important for Israel.” (Times of Israel, NYT, Politico, WSJ)
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“Netanyahu will endeavor to shift the conversation away from the conflict in Gaza toward the threat that Iran and its proxies pose not just to Israel, but also to the United States,” CFR Senior Fellow Steven A. Cook writes in this Expert Brief. “Netanyahu clearly wants to elicit both military and diplomatic U.S. support should the Israelis decide to escalate their ongoing border conflict with the militant group.”
“Negotiated settlements borne of third-party pressure are much more liable to collapse than those sought by the belligerents themselves,” the University of California, Los Angeles’s Eric Min writes for Foreign Affairs. “Washington has several alternatives to its current strategy of pushing for talks that could more meaningfully affect the course of the conflict.”
Read the full suite of Foreign Affairs and CFR.org resources on Israel and the current conflict.
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Visits China |
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is the most senior Ukrainian official to travel to China following Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Beijing has positioned itself as a peace broker, though it has a close relationship with Moscow. After more than three hours of talks with his Chinese counterpart, Kuleba said that Ukraine would be open to negotiating with Russia if Moscow was ready to do so “in good faith,” but that Kyiv does not currently see evidence of that. (Reuters)
This backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland and CFR’s Clara Fong explores the relationship between China and Russia.
Belarus/North Korea: The countries pledged to comprehensively expand bilateral relations, North Korean state media reported today during a visit by Belarus’s top diplomat to Pyongyang. Details of the talks were not made public, but analysts suspected they might include deepening ties with Russia. (Yonhap)
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India Unveils Funding for Job Creation in New Budget |
The government proposed a budget that includes some $24 billion to boost jobs and education over the next five years. Unemployment and the high cost of living were major voter concerns in the recent general election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party lost its majority. The budget would slightly lower the country’s fiscal deficit to 4.9 percent of gross domestic product this financial year. (AP, Bloomberg)
For the Asia Unbound blog, CFR expert Manjari Chatterjee Miller discusses Modi’s economic challenge following the election.
Bangladesh: Government and private offices will resume operations for four hours today and tomorrow following closures spurred by demonstrations against a public sector jobs hiring policy. (Dhaka Tribune)
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Middle East and North Africa |
UN Envoy to Yemen: Houthi Threat to Shipping Is Increasing |
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels’ threat to international shipping “is increasing in scope and precision” with “no signs of de-escalation, let alone a solution,” UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council yesterday. The United States and United Kingdom (UK) have carried out a strategy against the Houthis that includes air strikes on military targets in Houthi-controlled areas. (Reuters)
On this episode of The President’s Inbox, Katherine Zimmerman discusses the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping. |
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South Africa Signs Climate Targets Into Law |
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signing of the law yesterday allows the country to set carbon budgets at the national, industry, and company level in order to meet its emissions reduction goals by 2030, as part of the Paris Agreement. (Bloomberg)
Ethiopia: Heavy rain and mudslides in a remote part of Ethiopia killed at least 229 people, authorities said yesterday. It was the deadliest such mudslide incident in the country on record. As climate change progresses, Ethiopia and other parts of East Africa have experienced changing onsets and lengths of wet and dry seasons. (The Guardian)
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WTO Talks on Fishing Subsidies Fail in Geneva |
A draft World Trade Organization (WTO) deal to cut fishing subsidies failed to pass yesterday after opposition from India, kicking the topic back to an earlier stage of discussion. Countries had sought to reach a deal to reduce fishing subsidies in order to protect overfished areas. India called for larger carve-outs for developing countries. (Reuters)
France: President Emmanuel Macron rejected an attempt by a left-wing alliance to put forward a candidate for prime minister, saying that a caretaker government will remain in place until after the Summer Olympic Games. The games begin Friday and run through mid-August. (BBC)
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Brazil Expands Area for Selective Logging |
Over the next two years, Brazil will expand where logging is allowed in the Amazon Rainforest to an area the size of Costa Rica, maintaining strict rules, the director of forest concessions for the Brazilian Forest Service said yesterday. The arrangement is part of a UK-supported forest management plan that aims to acknowledge the economic needs of logging groups while protecting the rain forest. (AP)
Mexico: Some two thousand migrants from dozens of countries departed on foot from southern Mexico yesterday in hopes of reaching the southern U.S. border. Recent similar attempts have failed, with groups of migrants disbanding in recent weeks. (AP)
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Secret Service Director Resigns After Attack on Trump |
Kimberly Cheatle resigned yesterday amid several investigations into security lapses surrounding the assassination attempt on former President Trump earlier this month. Cheatle testified to Congress this week amid bipartisan pressure to resign. She said the agency “fell short” of its mission on the day of the attack at a Pennsylvania rally. The Secret Service has advised Trump’s campaign to stop scheduling large outdoor events, unnamed sources told the Washington Post. (WSJ, CNN, WaPo)
This Expert Brief by CFR Research Fellow Jacob Ware looks at what the assassination attempt means for U.S. democracy.
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