By Alexandra Sharp
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israel’s most intense West Bank assault in 20 years, France’s sixth day of mass protests, and oil production cuts by Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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Israeli military armored vehicles advance on a road during an operation in Jenin in the West Bank on July 3.Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli forces launched their fiercest operation in the West Bank in two decades early Monday. The “brigade-sized” assault on the Jenin refugee camp involved upwards of 2,000 Israeli troops as well as drone strikes. At least eight Palestinians were killed and 50 more wounded in the operation.
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the assault was a counterterrorism effort to destroy infrastructure and communications technology used by Palestinian militants—specifically the Jenin Brigades—based in the camp and to “break the safe haven mindset of the camp, which has become a hornet’s nest,” one Israeli spokesperson said. The roughly quarter-square-mile area is home to around 14,000 Palestinians, including members of terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israeli troops said they targeted a weapons production and explosives storage facility as well as a joint operations center used by militants for observation and reconnaissance missions to coordinate attacks. A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli operation as “a new war crime against our defenseless people.”
This was not the first major Israeli operation in Jenin in recent weeks. On June 19, Israeli forces conducted a raid to arrest two Palestinian militants, which quickly turned deadly amid escalating crossfire. Reports indicate a roadside bomb was set off by Palestinian forces to push back IDF troops. In turn, Israel deployed Apache combat helicopters to extricate its troops, killing at least six Palestinians. Two days later, Israel conducted its first drone strike in the West Bank since 2006, which led to Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages that resulted in numerous casualties on both sides.
Under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government has increased bureaucratic efforts to annex the West Bank, including Jenin. Despite evidence of Israel applying its sovereignty on the West Bank, though, “the world has not treated Israel’s actions as a violation of one of the core tenets of international law,” Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard argued in Foreign Policy in early June. “The United States and other Western countries’ apathy toward Israel’s changing legal regime in the West Bank poses grave real-life consequences for Palestinians under occupation.”
Tuesday, July 4: French President Emmanuel Macron holds meetings with more than 200 local mayors over mass police protests.
India hosts a virtual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.
Argentina hosts a leaders’ summit for the Mercosur trade bloc.
Wednesday, July 5: Trinidad and Tobago host Caribbean Community heads of state.
U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
Thursday, July 6: Turkey and Sweden hold high-level talks on NATO accession.
Thursday, July 6, to Sunday, July 9: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visits China.
Friday, July 7: Japan hosts the G-7 justice ministers’ meeting.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan appears in a court hearing on terrorism charges in Lahore, Pakistan.
Saturday, July 8: Edgars Rinkevics becomes president of Latvia.
Sunday, July 9: Uzbekistan holds early presidential elections.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations begins its foreign ministers’ summit in Indonesia.
France’s “George Floyd” moment. France saw its sixth consecutive day of protests on Monday following the death of 17-year-old Nahel M. by French police last Tuesday. Many of the demonstrations have transformed into riots; 99 town halls have been attacked, according to France’s Interior Ministry, as well as hundreds of vehicles and one mayor’s home. Around 45,000 police officers have been deployed since last week to defuse the situation, and more than 3,300 people have been arrested. However, local mayors announced on Monday that the violence appeared to be subsiding.
Many French locals are comparing Nahel’s death to the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by police in the U.S. state of Minnesota whose death sparked a widespread and ongoing reckoning with structural racism and police brutality in the United States and beyond. Activists and protesters in France similarly blame racist policing for the shooting death of Nahel, who was of Algerian descent. Paris has long paraded a national identity of colorblindness, journalist Karina Piser explained in Foreign Policy following Floyd’s death. Now, though, France’s younger generation, especially those with roots in France’s former African colonies, is contesting that narrative. “Universalism, many young people of color contend, is a national myth that glosses over the reality of police profiling and unequal opportunity,” Piser wrote.
Oil cuts on the horizon. Oil prices are on the rise after two OPEC+ giants announced joint efforts to boost the cost of crude. On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced that it planned to extend the production cut of 1 million barrels of oil a day into August rather than ending it in July. Russian officials also said on Monday that they would cut production by 500,000 barrels of oil a day next month. The voluntary moves come as the oil cartel has struggled to increase the price of crude oil following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia is working to transition its economy away from its long-standing reliance on oil exports by the end of the decade—a plan known as Saudi Vision 2030—but it needs high oil prices to help fund that transition. Meanwhile, Russia is battling Western sanctions that are limiting its oil and energy trade capabilities across Europe by creating a “sanctions-proof supply chain to export its oil, complete with Russian-owned ships and insurance services,” Agathe Demarais of the Economist Intelligence Unit wrote in Foreign Policy.
Democracy under threat. Pro-democracy activists are once again under fire in Hong Kong. Regional police issued eight arrest warrants on overseas rights advocates on Monday, arguing that the high-profile scholars, lawmakers, and lawyers have “encouraged sanctions” to destroy Hong Kong and violated the city’s national security law while in exile. The activists live in Britain, the United States, and Australia.
The announcement came just days after Hong Kong marked the three-year anniversary of its national security law. It was passed in 2020 following a series of anti-government protests, when Beijing accused the demonstrators of terrorism against the Chinese Communist Party. Since its establishment, the law has hindered business relationships with foreign corporations, strengthened the city’s secret police, and allowed authorities to crack down on speech and press freedoms.
Not everyone is stoked to see the upcoming Barbie movie. The Vietnamese government announced on Monday that it was banning the Warner Bros. film over a scene that features a map of the South China Sea. The map reportedly includes the controversial “nine-dash line” that China uses to define its territorial claims in that body of water and which Vietnam contests. Guess it’s not a Barbie world across the Pacific.
