Middle East Crisis

Gaza war
Israel criticizes Sweden's proposal to stop trade

Sweden and eight other EU members are urging the Commission to come up with proposals on how the Union can stop trade with Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, Reuters reports. In addition to Sweden, Finland, Poland and Belgium are among those behind the letter sent to Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas.

The countries point out that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal.

The proposal is strongly criticized by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. In a statement on X, he writes that "there are those who cannot resist their anti-Israel obsession".

"Shameful!", he writes.

Reactions to Israel-Iran
Analysis: If there's one thing Trump likes, it's a two-week deadline

Sky News correspondent David Blevins singles out four words as particularly important after listening to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who stated, among other things, that Donald Trump will make a decision on the US's attack plans against Iran within two weeks.

The words he is referring to are "significant chance for negotiations". Blevins notes that the US and Iran still appear to be in contact with each other and that Donald Trump prefers diplomacy to military action after all.

Anthony Zurcher at the BBC writes that Donald Trump seems particularly fond of letting important political issues marinate for 14 days.

"If there's one thing this president likes, it's two-week deadlines," he writes in an analysis.

He mentions several cases where Trump set a deadline of two weeks but that it was exceeded. Among other things, the president said three and a half weeks ago that Russia has two weeks to prove it wants to end the war in Ukraine.

“History shows that a two-week deadline from Trump is not written in stone,” he writes.