• Human Rights

August 13, 2025, 4:58 PM View Comments ()

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israeli calls for Gaza’s population to move elsewhere, Europe’s strategy to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and missing details in the U.S. State Department’s human rights report.

‘Allowed to Exit’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would allow Gazans to voluntary leave the besieged territory as Israel prepares to expand its military operations in Gaza City.

Netanyahu told local media late Tuesday that Palestinians would not be “pushed out” but rather “allowed to exit” Gaza as Israel seeks to reassert its control over the territory and destroy Hamas.

“All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us,” the Israeli leader said.

Where these civilians might go, though, remains unclear. Sources familiar with ongoing negotiations told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Israel is in talks with South Sudan about potentially resettling Palestinians there. Similar proposals have been floated with other governments, including those of Indonesia, Libya, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, and Uganda.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a video to Truth Social supporting such a displacement scheme, which he framed as a real estate opportunity to transform Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Relocating Palestinians to South Sudan, though, would just move civilians from one war-ravaged place to another. Last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative considered to be the world’s leading authority on hunger, warned that the “worst-case scenario of Famine” is now occurring in Gaza. That same authority concluded in 2017 and 2020 that South Sudan was facing famine—two of the four instances of IPC-recognized famine this century. Notably, the other two countries on that list are also potential Gaza relocation sites: Somalia and Sudan.

However, foreign leaders and rights experts warn that a Gaza-wide displacement scheme could violate international law and have vast humanitarian consequences that Palestinians fear would be akin to a repeat of the Nakba (or “catastrophe”), when around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from the region in 1948 to make way for the creation of an Israeli state. Egypt, in particular, has stressed that any effort to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza could spark a surge of refugees fleeing into its own territory.

On Wednesday, Hamas negotiators met with Egyptian officials in Cairo to discuss how best to stop the war and deliver aid to Gaza. While there, they explored the possibility of a comprehensive cease-fire deal that would see Hamas relinquish governing power and concede its weapons—something that a United Nations conference on the two-state solution pushed for last month as conditions of a peace deal.

Hamas is open to all ideas if Israel ends its offensive and pulls out of Gaza, a Hamas official told Reuters. However, “laying down arms before the occupation is dismissed is impossible,” the official added.

Israeli authorities have suggested that Israel plans to begin taking total control of Gaza City in October, though expanded operations in the city have already begun. On Wednesday, Israeli bombardments in Gaza City killed at least 123 people in just 24 hours.

Today’s Most Read

• The Next Israel-Iran War Is Coming by Trita Parsi
• The Risks of the Trump-Putin Summit by John Haltiwanger
• America’s Military Runs on Chinese Rare Earths by Christina Lu

What We’re Following

Europe’s wartime strategy. European leaders expressed optimism after concluding an emergency virtual meeting on Wednesday that was aimed at coordinating a unified U.S. and European strategy for ending the Russia-Ukraine war. “There is hope for movement; there is hope for peace in Ukraine,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who called the meeting ahead of Trump’s upcoming summit in Alaska on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Merz said that Trump had agreed to five principles for his talks with Putin, including keeping Ukraine “at the table” for follow-up meetings and refusing to discuss peace terms, such as land swaps, before a cease-fire is in place. Europe had previously warned against keeping Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the negotiating table or attempting to force Kyiv to accept unfavorable peace terms.

“Territorial issues relating to Ukraine … will only be negotiated by the Ukrainian president,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday. He echoed European hopes that Trump will be able to secure a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky in a neutral country, preferably in Europe. And he encouraged Washington to continue applying leverage, such as sanctions, on Moscow to help end the war.

Yet even Trump appears uncertain about whether Friday’s meeting will deliver a concrete solution. On Wednesday, the U.S. president acknowledged that he is unable to stop Russia from targeting Ukrainian civilians, having failed to do so through previous conversations with Putin. However, he stressed that he would hold a second meeting if the first one “goes OK” and if he receives the answers he wants. Trump did not specify what those answers might be.

Missing rights warnings. The U.S. State Department released its annual report on Tuesday analyzing nearly 200 countries’ human rights records. But the biggest findings appear not to be what was included but, rather, what was left out. Key criticisms of rights abuses in El Salvador, Hungary, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates that were present in prior years’ reports were notably scaled back or absent from the months-delayed report. Many references to violations of LGBTQ and women’s rights in several countries were also missing.

The new report reflects Trump’s political agenda. El Salvador, for instance, has worked closely with the White House to accept and imprison hundreds of immigrants deported from the United States. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a close ally of Trump’s who has pursued illiberal policies that many Trump-allied U.S. conservatives aim to emulate. And Saudi Arabia and the UAE have bolstered their financial ties with the U.S. government—and with the Trump family.

Tuesday’s report also included new allegations of rights violations by countries that have raised Trump’s personal ire. The State Department accused Brazil of violating the free speech of conservative groups, particularly against far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of leading a coup attempt in 2022 after losing that year’s election. The report also expressed concern over South Africa’s land redistribution policy, which aims to address decades of apartheid, but which Trump has claimed discriminates against white Afrikaners. Both Brazil and South Africa are among the countries facing the highest U.S. tariffs.

The report comes months after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismantled the department’s main offices overseeing democracy, human rights, and labor issues.

U.S. naval involvement. The Pentagon deployed two U.S. warships to the disputed Scarborough Shoal on Wednesday, just days after a Chinese coast guard ship trailing a Philippine vessel collided with another Chinese warship crossing their path. Washington had denounced Beijing’s actions at the time as a threat to Indo-Pacific security.

Both China and the Philippines claim sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal and other areas of the South China Sea. Such confrontations are common, including the use of water cannons and rammings.

“With tensions always high in the South China Sea, there is a serious possibility for a deadly collision between the two sides that could spiral,” FP’s James Palmer writes in this week’s China Brief.

By deploying the USS Higgins, a guided missile destroyer, and USS Cincinnati, a littoral combat ship, to the region, Washington aims to counter what it perceives as Chinese aggression and cement its commitment to supporting Manila. The Philippines is the oldest Asian treaty ally of the United States.

Odds and Ends

It’s a ruff time to be a dog in New Delhi. On Monday, India’s Supreme Court ruled that current practices intended to care for the city’s stray pup population are inadequate and that within the next eight weeks, all strays must be permanently detained in shelters. Judges argued that the canines are dangerous, citing several mauling attacks in recent years. But dog lovers maintain that the court is barking up the wrong tree, saying such actions will only hurt the capital’s roughly 1 million furry friends.