Trump to meet with world leaders at UN general assembly as summit focuses on two-state solution – Middle East crisis live

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A group of Palestinian scholars who have been awaiting evacuation from Gaza to take up their places at universities across the UK finally arrived on Monday after “a surreal journey from devastation to opportunity”.

The 34 students, who all have fully funded scholarships, arrived in London and Manchester onboard three flights from Queen Alia international airport in Jordan. A number took onward flights to Northern Ireland and Scotland where they will purse their studies.

Their arrival followed months of campaigning by politicians, academics and others on behalf of more than 100 Palestinian students holding offers from UK universities this year. Supporters are hoping others will follow and a permanent pathway will be established to ensure more Palestinian scholars benefit.

My colleague Sally Weale has the story:

Italy hosted one of Europe’s largest nationwide protests against Israel’s offensive in Gaza on Monday as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets.

The protests came as France and several other countries prepared to recognise Palestinian statehood at the UN general assembly on Monday after the UK, Australia, Portugal and Canada did so on Sunday.

Grassroots unions across Italy called for a 24-hour general strike in solidarity with the people of Gaza on Monday, citing reasons that included the “inertia of the Italian and EU governments” to address the humanitarian crisis in the territory.

Donald Trump is set to hold a series of high-stakes meetings at the United Nations this week, beginning with bilateral talks with UN secretary-general António Guterres and leaders from Ukraine, Argentina, and the European Union, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has said.

In a separate multilateral summit, Trump will convene with leaders from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, the UAE, and Jordan, Leavitt said.

More than three-quarters of the 193-member United Nations now recognize Palestine. Those who don’t include the United States, Germany, Italy and, of course, Israel.

Donald Trump to address UN general assembly on Tuesday

US president Donald Trump will speak at the UN general assembly tomorrow. The US, Israel’s strongest ally, remains vehemently opposed to the recognition of Palestinian statehood.

After four western countries including the UK formally recognized Palestine on Sunday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed: “There will be no Palestinian state”. He has said he will make his response known after he returns from the US at the end of this week.

World leaders gather in New York for UN summit on two-state solution as France prepares to recognize Palestine

France – which has spearheaded western efforts to revive a two-state solution – is set to announce formal recognition of Palestine, along with Belgium, Luxembourg, Andorra, San Marino and Malta. They will join the UK, Canada, Australia and Portugal who did so on Sunday.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is expected to address the meeting by video after he and dozens of other senior Palestinian officials were denied US visas to attend the conference.

Israeli military forces are likely to mount new attacks into parts of Gaza now crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people once they have concluded their current offensive into Gaza City, a former Israeli national security advisor and general has said.

Yaakov Amidror, who served as national security adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu from 2011 to 2013 after decades in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), said that the “hard core” of Hamas was in Gaza City but that “another chapter” could follow after the offensive there: an attack into the “central camps” area further south.

“The campaign in Gaza City will be three months of intensive [fighting] then six months to clear it [of Hamas fighters] so there is no threat from there and then we decide about the central camps,” Amidror said.

The “central camps” refers to the heavily built-up Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza. Both are packed with displaced Palestinians from elsewhere in Gaza, and have been repeatedly subjected to airstrikes.

Aid officials working in Gaza told the Guardian that they had been “warned off” investing substantial resources in new facilities in the central camps area during recent discussions with Israeli military officials.

“Our clear understanding from those conversations was that the IDF would be going in there, though it wasn’t clear if that meant now or after they’re done in Gaza City,” one said.

Thousands of protesters and strikers calling for solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza took to the streets in Italy on Monday, with some storming Milan’s central train station and clashing violently with police.

Italy’s grassroots unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of people ranging from schoolteachers to metalworkers, called for a 24-hour general strike in both public and private sectors, including public transportation, trains, schools and ports.

The strike caused disruptions across the country, with long delays for national trains and limited public transport in major cities, including Rome, AP reported.

In Milan, tensions escalated when dozens of protesters dressed in black and armed with batons tried to smash the main entrance of the city’s central train station, throwing smoke bombs, bottles and stones at police, who responded with pepper spray. In Bologna, police used water cannons to disperse a crowd of demonstrators who blocked a highway.

The transit of goods was slowed or partially blocked by workers’ sit-ins and rallies in Italy’s main ports of Genoa and Livorno. More than 20,000 people gathered in front of Rome’s central station to protest the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Hamas-led authorities in Gaza have executed three men accused of collaborating with Israel, a Palestinian official said, as the group seeks to crush rising challenges from Palestinian militias it says are working against it with Israeli support.

Two years into the Gaza war and with Hamas under relentless Israeli military pressure, small bands of armed Palestinians opposed to the group have surfaced in several parts of Gaza where they have been operating against it, according to residents and sources close to Hamas and to the groups.

In a video circulated on social media showing the executions, a masked man is seen issuing a warning to “all collaborators” before the three men, kneeling and blindfolded, are kicked onto their fronts and shot in front of a crowd, Reuters reported.

Reuters confirmed the location as Gaza City by the buildings, a gas station, road layout, and signs seen in the video which matched file and satellite imagery of the area.

The Palestinian security official from the Hamas-run Gaza government said the executions were carried out on Sunday by the “Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian resistance”.

The videos showed “revolutionary rulings” being implemented against people for security collaboration with Israel, it said.

Israel’s military said on Monday it will demolish the homes of two Palestinian gunmen who shot and killed six people at a bus stop in Jerusalem earlier this month in one of the deadliest attacks in the city in the past few years.

The shooting took place against the backdrop of nearly two years of war in Gaza that has devastated the enclave, and amid a surge in attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Jerusalem attackers were shot dead at the scene. Israel says demolishing the homes of relatives of attackers and their fellow villagers is a deterrent to future attacks, Reuters reported.

Palestinians and human rights groups say it is a form of collective punishment prohibited by international law.

Earlier this month, Israel ordered the demolition of all homes built without permits in Qatanna and Qubeiba - the hometowns of the attackers, and said 750 people from the town would have their work permits revoked.

Jason Burke, our international security correspondent, has explored how the wave of international recognitions of a Palestinian state has been received by politicians across the political divide in Israel and how Israel’s increasing isolation on the international stage may affect the government’s standing. Here is an extract of his story:

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, leads the most far-right government in Israel’s history and his coalition is in part dependent on the continuing support of extremist religious Zionist factions, which have a messianic vision of Israel’s destiny, and ultra-Orthodox religious parties.

Neither are likely to be influenced by international outrage at the conduct of the war in Gaza, where an Israeli offensive has killed more than 65,000 and devastated the territory, or the continued expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Nor are supporters of the more mainstream, rightwing Likud, which Netanyahu leads.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said recognising Palestinian statehood is a reward for Hamas’ terrorism. Photograph: Debbie Hill/EPA

Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that in the short term at least Netanyahu and his allies would be strengthened by the “diplomatic tsunami”, as it has been called by local media, that Israel was facing.

“There are many people in Israel who are worried about international isolation, but most are not Netanyahu supporters and especially not his base,” said Rahat.

This may change, however, as isolation deepens, and could become a factor with politically significant centrist voters at elections, which have to be held before November next year.

Dr Shira Efron, distinguished Israel policy chair and senior fellow at the Rand Corporation, said that recognition was viewed in Israel as a “zero-sum game”.

“The view is that if you are for the self-determination of the Palestinians, you are necessarily against Israel,” she said. “The fear is that if it can happen in the UK or in France, then it can happen anywhere.”

As we mentioned in an earlier post, Palestine’s ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, raised the Palestinian flag outside the Palestine mission building in London on Monday after the UK’s formal recognition of Palestine as a state, marking what he described as a “long overdue step”. Here is a video from a section of his speech:

Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 65,344 says health ministry

At least 65,344 Palestinian people have been killed and 166,795 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Over 61 Palestinian people were killed and 220 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry, whose figures are generally seen as reliable by the UN, said.

It added in its post on Telegram:

A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, as ambulances and civil defence crews are unable to reach them at the moment.

Two hospitals in Gaza City shut down after intense Israeli bombardment

In an update posted to Telegram, Gaza’s health ministry said the al-Rantisi children’s hospital and the eye hospital in Gaza City are “out of service” due to the Israeli bombing of their surrounding areas.

The ministry said the al-Rantisi hospital was severely damaged after it was directly bombed a few days ago.

Air conditioning units, water tanks and solar panels are reported to have been severely damaged by Israeli attacks on the facility, which Medical Aid for Palestinians has said is the only specialist facility for children with cancer and kidney failure.

In its statement published on Telegram, Gaza’s health ministry said:

The occupation is deliberately and systematically targeting the health services system in the Gaza Strip as part of the genocide policy it is waging against the Strip.

All facilities and hospitals lack safe roads that enable patients and the wounded to reach them.

Patients and the wounded face extreme difficulty in reaching the Jordanian field hospital and al-Quds hospital as a result of the continuous bombing.

The ministry of health renews its call to all concerned parties to provide protection for health facilities and medical staff.

The attacks come amid the large-scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza City which is accompanying the IDF’s ground offensive launched last week in defiance of international opposition.

The city, already suffering from a catastrophic famine caused by Israel’s restrictions on aid, was under attack weeks before the offensive was officially declared.

If Israeli troops take over Gaza City, the entire 2.1 million population of the devastated territory will be confined to a small enclave in the south.

Arab and Muslim leaders are to meet Donald Trump in New York to discuss their plan for a UN-mandated international stabilisation force in Gaza after France joined the UK, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestine as a state.

Israel has warned that it might respond to the recognition of Palestine by annexing the West Bank, citing claims from Hamas that recognition by allies of Israel was a victory for the terror group.

France has said the plan for a stabilisation force would marginalise Hamas by disarming the group and excluding it from power.

The proposal, which is due to be endorsed on Monday at a UN conference on Palestinian statehood, includes a UN-mandated force to provide security in Gaza as well as oversee the disarmament of Hamas and help train a Palestinian Authority (PA) police force.

The Arab League declared in July that Hamas must play no further role in governance, with power handed to a newly elected PA to govern Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Hamas would be required to hand over its weapons to the authority.

The Trump meeting, scheduled after his address to the UN’s general assembly, is the most direct engagement between the White House and Arab states on post-ceasefire plans for Gaza since he was elected president for a second time.

Some French mayors have defied government orders and flown Palestinian flags on town halls, with more expected to follow suit as France prepares to formally recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly.

It’s unclear how many cities will join the initiative on Monday after Socialist leader Olivier Faure’s call to fly the flags despite warnings from the Interior Ministry against such displays in a country with both Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations, AP reported.

But the call has been gaining momentum as Palestinian flags have been more and more visible in France over the nearly two-year war in Gaza.

The Palestinian flag flies next to the flag of the city of Nantes in front of the town hall in Nantes, France, the day the French President is due to officially announce France's recognition of the Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly, September 22, 2025. Photograph: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters

Palestinian banners were on display in demonstrations this week during a big day of protests across the country that criticised several polices by French president Emmanuel Macron and his government.

The Palestinian flag has been flying at the town hall of Malakoff, a suburb of Paris, since Friday. The city mayor, Jacqueline Belhomme, told the Associated Press on Sunday she was ordered to take it down but refused to comply.

“We stand with the Palestinian people; it is something symbolically important, just as we did some time ago with the Ukrainian flag when we stood with the Ukrainian people who were under attack by Russia.”