Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Kenneth Paranada, Curator of Art and Climate Change, University of East Anglia

Water is at the heart of the disruption wrought by climate change. The seas, once seen as vast and stable, are now unpredictable and restless.

That tidy, looping diagram of the water cycle once pinned up in primary school classrooms – clouds, rivers, evaporation and rain – now reads more like a fragmented recollection than a dependable process. Human impact has cracked that once-stable loop wide open.

Sea levels inch upward year on year. Droughts grow more prolonged and severe. Rainfall becomes erratic and violent. What was once spoken of in future tense is now present and pressing.

In Norfolk, land and sea have long coexisted in an uneasy truce. Here, the threat of sea level rise is not a speculative concern, it is data-backed, visible and accelerating.

According to research from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, vast swathes of Norfolk risk being submerged by rising seas if global temperatures rise by even two degrees celsius. It is one of the most at-risk areas in the UK.

Against this backdrop comes the Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition, A World of Water (part of the Can the Seas Survive Us? season). In the show, water is explored as subject, medium and metaphor. It is both agent and witness, shaping civilisations, sustaining life, and now challenging our ability to coexist with it.

Curated through an interdisciplinary lens, the exhibition was shaped by deep collaboration with scientists, artists, ecologists, activists and coastal communities. Rooted in lived experience, from a two-day walk along the Wherry Man’s Way to a 36-hour sail aboard a 1921 fishing smack, the curatorial process traced fragile coastlines and the North Sea’s rapid transformation into an industrial nexus of energy infrastructures.

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The curatorial approach to the show embraces the multifaceted nature of water by weaving together maritime history, Indigenous knowledge and contemporary works rooted in the artists’ experiences.

Many of the participating artists hail from communities already wrestling with rising tides and the realities of climate disruption. Their contributions form three thematic currents: Mudplume, Water Water Everywhere and In a State of Flux.

These overlapping threads investigate how water connects, nourishes and imperils. Rather than positioning the sea as a line of division, the exhibition reframes it as a living, connective tissue linking culture, history and ecology.

A curatorial geomorphology of the sea

Guidance for the exhibition’s conceptual framework came, fittingly, from water itself. Its mutable nature – solid, liquid, vapour – shaped the rhythm of the curatorial process. Rather than impose a rigid thesis, the exhibition offers an ever-shifting constellation of perspectives.

The exhibition journey begins with sound. Visitors are welcomed by a low murmur, tides lapping, water dripping, echoing through the museum entrance. This leads to Spiral Fosset (2024), a sculptural work by the Dutch collective De Onkruidenier.

Mirroring the central staircase of the museum, the piece suggests the brackish confluence where fresh and saltwater mingle. From here, the viewer descends into the lower galleries, reimagined as an estuary.

Within the lower galleries, artworks unfold like coastal mudflats at low tide. Seventeenth-century Dutch seascapes hang alongside photographs, video works and sculptures made from plastic waste. Sands from the beaches of Cromer, Happisburgh and Cley are featured, anchoring the exhibition in local terrain.

East Anglia’s centuries-old ties with the Low Countries form a steady through line. Hendrick van Anthonissen’s View of Scheveningen Sands (1641) shares space with works by Norwich School masters such as John Sell Cotman, John Crome and Robert Ladbrooke.

This approach privileges resonance over chronology. The exhibition avoids a linear march through time in favour of prioritising association, connection and drift. For instance, Shore Compass by Olafur Eliasson (2019) sits in subtle dialogue with Jodocus Hondius’s 1589 Drake Map an early cartographic rendering of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world.

Created during the height of European maritime expansion and colonialism, the map illustrates the interplay between empire, navigation and power. Time, like tide, is allowed to meander.

The exhibition adopts what might be called a “curatorial geomorphology”: a way of curating that draws on the sculpting force of water. In the natural sciences, geomorphology examines how landscapes are formed and reshaped by flowing water, storms and tides, while hydrology traces water’s movement through the environment.

This curatorial approach translates those scientific ideas into a cultural and creative practice. Like a river, it flows through histories, stories and meanings. What unfolds is a tidal narrative, an estuary of thought where time loosens, the present deepens and new futures begin to surface.

Visitors to A World of Water can expect something different from a traditional gallery experience. It invites you to think with the seas, to tune into their rhythms, tensions and secret lives.

As you wander through the galleries, you enter a realm shaped by flux, expect to feel and reimagine a world where land, water and life move as one. And perhaps, by moving as water does, we may begin to sense an answer to the question: Can the Seas Survive Us? Not in certainty, but through our collective and individual actions toward a more regenerative and sustainable future.

A World of Water is at the Sainsbury Centre Norwich until August 3. It’s part of a six-month season of interlinked exhibitions and events that explore the question: “Can the seas survive us?”

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John Kenneth Paranada received funding from the John Ellerman Foundation; the Art Fund’s Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant; the Association of Art Museum Curators’ EPIC Curatorial Fellowship Award; the Mondriaan Fund’s International Art Presentation Grant; the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ Cultural Diplomacy Grant; and Arts Council England’s National Lottery Fund for the project A World of Water: Can the Seas Survive Us? at the Sainsbury Centre.

– ref. A World of Water exhibition asks: ‘Can the seas survive us?’ – https://theconversation.com/a-world-of-water-exhibition-asks-can-the-seas-survive-us-262057

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julia Beaumont, Researcher in Biological Anthropology, University of Bradford

Beneath churchyards in London and Lincolnshire lie the chemical echoes of famine, infection and survival preserved in the teeth of those who lived through some of the most catastrophic periods in English history.

In a new study, my colleagues and I examined over 270 medieval skeletons to investigate how early-life malnutrition affected long-term health and life expectancy.

We focused on people who lived through the devastating period surrounding the Black Death (1348-1350), which included years of famine during the little ice age and the great bovine pestilence (an epidemic that killed two-thirds of cattle in England and Wales). We found that the biological scars of childhood deprivation during this time left lasting marks on the body.

These findings suggest that early nutritional stress, whether in the 14th century or today, can have consequences that endure well beyond childhood.

Children’s teeth act like tiny time capsules. The hard layer inside each tooth, called dentine, sits beneath the enamel and forms while we’re growing up. Once formed, it stays unchanged for life, creating a permanent record of what we ate and experienced.

As our teeth develop, they absorb different chemical versions (isotopes) of carbon and nitrogen from our food, and these get locked into the tooth structure. This means scientists can read the story of someone’s childhood diet by analysing their teeth.

A method of measuring the chemical changes in sequential slices of the teeth is a recent advance used to identify dietary changes in past populations with greater accuracy.

When children are starving, their bodies break down their fat stores and muscle to continue growing. This gives a different signature in the newly formed dentine than the isotopes from food. These signatures make centuries-old famines visible today, showing exactly how childhood trauma affected health in medieval times.

We identified a distinctive pattern that had been seen before in victims of the great Irish famine. Normally, when people eat a typical diet, the levels of carbon and nitrogen in their teeth move in the same direction. For example, both might rise or fall together if someone eats more plants or animals. This is called “covariance” because the two markers vary together.

But during starvation, nitrogen levels in the teeth rise while carbon levels stay the same or drop. This opposite movement – called “opposing covariance” – is like a red flag in the teeth that shows when a child was starving. These patterns helped us pinpoint the ages at which people experienced malnutrition.

Lifelong legacy

Children who survived this period reached adulthood during the plague years, and the effect on their growth was recorded in the chemical signals in their teeth. People with famine markers in their dentine had different mortality rates than those who lacked these markers.

Children who are nutritionally deprived have poorer outcomes in later life: studies of modern children have suggested that children of low birth weight or who suffer stresses during the first 1,000 days of life have long-term effects on their health.

For example, babies born small, a possible sign of nutritional stress, seem to be more prone to illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes in adulthood than the population at large. These characteristics can also be passed to future offspring through changes in how genes are switched on or off, known as “epigenetic effects” – which can endure for three generations.

In medieval England, early nutritional deprivation may have been beneficial during catastrophic times by producing adults of short stature and the capacity to store fat, but these people were much more likely to die after the age of 30 than their peers with healthy childhood dentine patterns.

The patterns for childhood starvation increased in the decades leading up to the Black Death and declined after 1350. This suggests the pandemic may have indirectly improved living conditions by reducing population pressure and increasing access to food.

The medieval teeth tell us something urgent about today. Right now, millions of children worldwide are experiencing the same nutritional crises that scarred those long-dead English villagers – whether from wars in Gaza and Ukraine or poverty in countless countries.

Their bodies are writing the same chemical stories of survival into their growing bones and teeth, creating biological problems that will emerge decades later as heart disease, diabetes and early death.

Our latest findings aren’t just historical curiosities; they’re an urgent warning that the children we fail to nourish today will carry those failures in their bodies for life and pass them on to their own children. The message from the medieval graves couldn’t be clearer: feed the children now or pay the price for generations.

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Julia Beaumont receives funding from Arts and Humanities research council, British Academy/Leverhulme.

– ref. Medieval skeletons reveal the lasting damage of childhood malnutrition – new study – https://theconversation.com/medieval-skeletons-reveal-the-lasting-damage-of-childhood-malnutrition-new-study-262081

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ioanna Stamataki, Senior Lecturer in Hydraulics and Water Engineering, University of Greenwich

In recent years, I have all too often found myself passing over an active wildfire when flying from London to my family home in Greece during the summer months. The sky glows an eerie, apocalyptic red, and the scent of smoke fills the cabin. Silence falls as we become unwilling witnesses to a tragic spectacle.

Now wildfires are again raging across the Mediterranean. But the flames themselves are only part of the story. As wildfires become more intense and frequent, they’re setting off a dangerous chain reaction – one that also includes a rising risk of devastating floods.

In January 2024, Nasa reported that climate change is intensifying wildfire conditions, noting that the frequency of the most extreme wildfires had more than doubled over the past two decades. While some of this is driven by natural weather variability, human-induced warming is clearly playing a major role. Decades of rising temperatures combined with longer and more severe droughts have created ideal conditions for wildfires to ignite and spread.

This year, another brutal Mediterranean wildfire season is unfolding right before our eyes, with numerous active wildfire fronts across the region. As of July 22 2025, 237,153 hectares have burned in the EU – an increase of nearly 78% from the same period last year. The number of fires rose by about 45%, and CO₂ emissions increased by 23% compared to 2024. These are terrifying statistics.

Climate phenomena are closely interconnected

The fires themselves are bad enough. But they’re also closely connected to other climate-related extremes, including floods.

Natural hazards often trigger chain reactions, turning one disaster into many. In the case of floods, wildfires play a big role both through weather patterns and how the land responds to rain.

On the weather side, higher temperatures lead to more extreme rainfall, as warmer air can hold more moisture and fuels stronger storms. Intense wildfires can sometimes get so hot they generate their own weather systems, like pyrocumulus clouds – towering storm clouds formed by heat, smoke and water vapour. These clouds can spark sudden, localised storms during or shortly after the fire.

The damage doesn’t end when the flames die down. Satellite data shows that burned land can remain up to 10°C hotter for nearly a year, due to lost vegetation and damaged soil.

As the world warms, the atmosphere is able to hold about 7% more moisture for every extra degree. Recent temperatures of 40°C or more in Greece suggest a capacity for more downpours and more flooding.

Wildfires also make the land itself more vulnerable to flooding. Burnt areas respond much faster to rain, as there is less vegetation to slow down the water. Wildfires also change the soil structure, often making it water-repellent. This means more water runs off the surface, erosion increases, and it takes less rain to trigger a flood.

Under these conditions, a storm expected once every ten years can cause the sort of catastrophic flooding expected only every 100 to 200 years. Water moves much faster across scorched landscapes without plants to slow it down. Wildfires also leave behind a lot of debris, which can be swept up by fast-moving floodwaters.

While EU-wide data on post-wildfire flood risk is still limited, various case studies from southern Europe offer strong evidence of the connection. In Spain’s Ebro River Basin, for example, research found that if emissions remain high and climate policy is limited, wildfires will increase the probability of high flood risk by 10%.

Nature’s ability to regenerate is nothing short of magical, but recovering from a wildfire takes time. Burnt soil takes years to return to normal and, during that time, the risks of extreme rainfall are higher. Beyond the impact of wildfires on soil and water, it is important not to overlook the devastating loss of plant and animal species or even entire ecosystems, making the natural world less biodiverse and resilient.

To reduce the frequency and severity of extreme events, we must focus on repairing climate damage. This means moving beyond isolated perspectives and adopting a multi-hazard approach that recognises how disasters are connected.

Flooding after wildfires is just one example of how one crisis can trigger another. We need to recognise these cascading risks and focus on long-term resilience over short-term fixes.

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Ioanna Stamataki currently receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Royal Society for ongoing flood research. Previous research has been supported by the EPSRC and the Newton Fund (via the British Council) for career development and international collaboration.

– ref. Flames to floods: how Europe’s devastating wildfires are fuelling its next climate crisis – https://theconversation.com/flames-to-floods-how-europes-devastating-wildfires-are-fuelling-its-next-climate-crisis-262204

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Liz Breen, Professor of Health Service Operations, School of Pharmacy & Medical Sciences, University of Bradford

Over a fifth of people in the UK have tried to access a weight loss drug in the last year, according to a recent poll.

Weight loss jabs such as Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Wegovy (semaglutide) are very effective in managing obesity. Clinical trials have shown that some people lose up to 26% of their body weight while using these drugs.

With this impact, it’s no wonder a growing number of people are seeking out these products – often buying them in private clinics or online. But with plans to expand access to these drugs through NHS prescriptions, there are concerns that supply may not meet demand – especially for those people in most need.

In the UK, NHS prescriptions for weight loss jabs are only approved for people who meet strict eligibility requirements. For example, to qualify early for Mounjaro from your GP, you must have health problems due to your weight and a body mass index greater than 40 (adjusted for ethnicity). People assessed by the NHS and given prescriptions will also have access to additional support – such as advice about diet and physical activity.

Weight loss drugs can be prescribed by specialist clinics and, increasingly, local GPs. But a lack of time and resources means even those who are eligible are left waiting. Consequently, people who can afford to do so are approaching private providers for access to these medicines – despite the potential risks to their health.

There’s also evidence that people who aren’t clinically eligible for weight loss jabs prescribed by the NHS are purchasing them from online pharmacies.

Supply issues

Demand for weight loss jabs is about to grow, as the provision of Mounjaro via GPs is imminent, pending the creation of an infrastructure to support safe local prescribing.

The number of monthly GP prescriptions in England for Mounjaro has already risen from under 3,000 in March 2024 (on introduction) to over 200,000 in May 2025. Mounjaro (also marketed in the US as Zepbound) is widely considered to be the best weight loss jab currently available and a great commercial success.

GP prescriptions of all forms of semaglutide (the active ingredient in Wegovy) are more stable, at around 130,000 items per month (including generics and products to treat diabetes).

While a number of GLP-1 drugs faced shortages last year (including Wegovy and Mounjaro), these shortages have now been resolved. Shortages were spurred by a spike in global demand for these drugs alongside stockpiling by private clinics to feed requests.

Still, there were reports early this year that certain strengths of Mounjaro were difficult to access. The reasons for this are not clear, but may be due to the novelty of access to this new medication or a lack of access to alternatives.

Around 220,000 people in England are due to be offered Mounjaro via the NHS over the next three years. However, it’s estimated that 3.4 million people in England could actually be eligible for Mounjaro.

Wider NHS access to this drug is being phased to manage staff workload and ensure good support for patients. Phased rollout may also help to ensure there is enough supply for those who need to be prescribed one of these medications.

Future access

It’s likely that demand for these weight loss drugs will only continue to grow in the UK, so it’s important that supply is readily available.

Regulatory agencies have taken some steps to tighten controls of online prescribing of weight loss drugs and prevent misuse. Registered online pharmacies must seek independent verification of key clinical information (such as from a GP or through a person’s medical records) instead of relying on questionnaires or phone calls.

However, weight loss products remain easy to access for people with money and savvy search skills, but who may be clinically ineligible. The scale of demand from this group is difficult to quantify, but it’s clear more needs to be done to keep patients safe and manage demand.

Several new weight loss drugs are undergoing trials in the UK. These drugs will work similarly to those already available but may be administered differently (such as an oral tablet). The trials for these and subsequent approvals will not only increase market competition, but also improve patient access and choice.

Key patents for the manufacture of semaglutide are also due to expire in 2026 and 2031. Once a pharmaceutical product is outside of its patented time frame, other companies can be approved to manufacture it as a generic product.

A generic product is approved on the basis that it works in the same manner and has equal benefits to the original product. The generics market allows new entrants and new versions of these very popular products onto the market.

Generic products are usually less expensive and so are bought (where still clinically safe and effective) by the NHS. This change could provide greater access to weight loss medications and save the NHS and patients money in the long term.

Generic semaglutide products will probably be available in the UK from 2032 but will be initially authorised to treat diabetes rather than weight loss. Still, this should have a positive impact on the availability of prescription drugs used for both diabetes and weight management.

Generic liraglutide is already available on the NHS for the treatment of diabetes. The liraglutide brand Saxenda is also marketed for weight management. However, liraglutide is less effective than Wegovy or Mounjaro and requires daily injections.

The number of monthly NHS prescriptions for liraglutide has fallen from over 40,000 in July 2020 to 1,000 in May 2025. This fall was most likely influenced by the discontinuation of the Victoza brand for type 2 diabetes in late 2024. Shortages of all types of GLP-1 drugs, which lasted until the end of 2024, may also have impacted demand for liraglutide.

For now, NHS staff can report on known demand for these products to inform manufacturing quantities and procurement. What isn’t known is the future demand for online or private purchases of weight management drugs. It’s this “unknown” demand that may mean supply security is challenged and unsustainable.

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Weight loss drug demand continues to grow in the UK – here’s what’s being done to keep supplies readily available – https://theconversation.com/weight-loss-drug-demand-continues-to-grow-in-the-uk-heres-whats-being-done-to-keep-supplies-readily-available-262065

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

In yet another twist in his unpredictable decision making, US president Donald Trump has dramatically shortened his original 50-day ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to call a ceasefire in Ukraine to a mere ten days. It’s an unmistakable sign of Trump’s frustration with the Russian leader who he now appears to view as the main obstacle to ending the war.

Progress has been similarly limited on another of Trump’s flagship foreign policy projects: ending the war in Gaza. As a humanitarian catastrophe engulfs the territory, Trump and some of his Maga base are finally challenging Israel’s denials that, after almost two years of war, many Gazans now face a real risk of starvation.

In neither case have his efforts to mediate and bring an end to the violence borne any fruit. But not all of Trump’s efforts to stop violence in conflicts elsewhere in the world have been similarly futile. The administration brokered a ceasefire between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which the two countries’ foreign ministers signed in Washington on June 27.

The US president has also claimed to be behind the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May after the two sides had engaged in several days of fierce combat following a terror attack in Indian-administered Kashmir by a Pakistan-backed rebel group. And, drawing a clear parallel between this conflict and the border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand in July, Trump announced he had pushed both countries’ leaders to negotiate a ceasefire.

All of these ceasefires, so far, have held. By contrast, the ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, to which Trump contributed in January, even before he was inaugurated for his second term, broke down in March and fighting has escalated ever since. A short-lived ceasefire in Ukraine in April was barely worth its name given the countless violations.

Mixed record

Three factors can explain Trump’s mixed record of peacemaking to date. First, the US president is more likely to succeed in stopping the fighting where he has leverage and is willing to use it to force foreign leaders to bend to his will. For example, Trump was very clear that there would be no trade negotiations with Thailand or Cambodia “until such time as the fighting STOPS”.

The crucial difference, so far, with the situation in the war against Ukraine is that Trump has, and has used, similar leverage only with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. This led to a US-Ukraine agreement on a 30-day ceasefire proposal just two weeks after the now-notorious row between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office.

The mere threat of sanctions against Russia, by contrast, has done little to persuade Putin to accept whatever deal might Trump offer him. Trump’s threats – which he has never followed through on – did not work in January or May. The Kremlin’s initial reactions to the latest ultimatum from the White House do not indicate a change in Putin’s attitude.

A second factor that may explain why Trump has had peacemaking success in some cases but not others is the level of complexity of US interests involved. When it comes to US relations with Russia and Israel, there is a lot more at stake for Trump.

The US president still appears keen to strike a grand bargain with Russia and China under which Washington, Beijing and Moscow would agree to recognise, and not interfere in, their respective spheres of influence. This could explains his hesitation so far to follow through on his threats to Putin.

Similarly, US interests in the Middle East – whether it’s over Iran’s nuclear programme or relations with America’s Gulf allies – have put strains on the alliance with Israel. Trump also needs to weigh carefully the impact of any move against, or in support of, Israel on his domestic support base.

In the deal Trump brokered between Rwanda and the DRC, the issues at stake were much simpler: access for US investors to the mineral riches of the eastern DRC. Just days into his second term, Trump acknowledged that the conflict was a “very serious problem”. Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, responded by offering the US access to minerals in exchange for pushing Rwanda to a deal to end the invasion and stop supporting proxy forces in the DRC.

This leads to the third factor that has enabled Trump’s peace-making success so far: simpler solutions are easier to achieve. Thailand and Cambodia and India and Pakistan can go back to the situation before their recent fighting. That does not resolve any of the underlying issues in their conflicts, but returns their relations to some form of non-violent stability.

It is ultimately also in the interests of the conflict parties. They have had a chance to make their violent statements and reinforce what they will and won’t tolerate from the other side. The required investment by an external mediator to end battles that have achieved what the warring sides want anyway – to avoid further escalation – is consequently quite limited.

Complex conflicts

Getting to any kind of stability in Ukraine or the Middle East by contrast requires prolonged engagement and attention to detail. These conflicts are at a stage in which a return to how things were before is not in the interests of the parties or their external backers. Nudging warring parties along on the path to agreement under such conditions requires a well-designed process, which is absent in Ukraine and failing in Gaza.

Thanks to funding and personnel cuts, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is now required to perform multiple roles. Trump relies on personal envoys with at best limited foreign policy expertise, while insisting he makes all the decisions. This ultimately suggests that the White House simply may not have the bandwidth for the level of engagement that would be necessary to get to a deal in Ukraine and the Middle East.

This is a self-inflicted opportunity lost, not only for the United States but also for the long-suffering people of Ukraine and the Middle East.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

– ref. Why Donald Trump has stopped some conflicts but is failing with Ukraine and Gaza – https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trump-has-stopped-some-conflicts-but-is-failing-with-ukraine-and-gaza-262241

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin

A new vision for Middle East peace emerged this week which proposes the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, the disarming and disbanding of Hamas and the creation of a unified Palestinian state. The plan emerged from a “high-level conference” in New York on July 29, which assembled representatives of 17 states, the European Union and the Arab League.

The resulting proposal is “a comprehensive and actionable framework for the implementation of the two-state solution and the achievement of peace and security for all”.

Signatories include Turkey and the Middle Eastern states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan. Europe was represented by France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK. Indonesia was there for Asia, Senegal for Africa, and Brazil, Canada and Mexico for the Americas. Neither the US nor Israel were present.

Significantly, it is the first time the Arab states have called for Hamas to disarm and disband. But, while condemning Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7 2023 and recalling that the taking of hostages is a violation of international law, the document is unsparing in its connection between a state of Palestine and an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza’s civilians.

It says: “Absent decisive measures toward the two-state solution and robust international guarantees, the conflict will deepen and regional peace will remain elusive.”

A plan for the reconstruction of Gaza will be developed by the Arab states and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – a Jeddah-based group which aims to be the collective voice of the Muslim world – supported by an international fund. The details will be hammered out at a Gaza Reconstruction and Recovery Conference, to be held in Cairo.

It is a bold initiative. In theory, it could end the Israeli mass killing in Gaza, remove Hamas from power and begin the implementation of a process for a state of Palestine. The question is whether it has any chance of success.

First, there appears to be growing momentum to press ahead with recognition of the state of Palestine as part of a comprehensive peace plan leading to a two-state solution. France, the UK and, most recently, Canada have announced they would take that step at the UN general assembly in September. The UK stated that it would do so unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire and the commencement of a substantive peace process.

Read more:
UK and France pledges won’t stop Netanyahu bombing Gaza – but Donald Trump or Israel’s military could

These announcements follow those made in May 2024 by Spain, Ireland and Norway, three of the other European signatories. By the end of September at least 150 of the UN’s 193 members will recognise Palestinian statehood. Recognition is largely symbolic without a ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from both Gaza and the West Bank. But it is essential symbolism.

For years, many European countries, Canada, Australia and the US have said that recognition could not be declared if there was the prospect of Israel-Palestine negotiations. Now the sequence is reversed: recognition is necessary as pressure for a ceasefire and the necessary talks to ensure the security of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel accelerated that reversal at the start of March, when it rejected the scheduled move to phase two of the six-week ceasefire negotiated with the help of the US, and imposed a blockade on aid coming into the Strip.

The Netanyahu government continues to hold out against the ceasefire. But its loud blame of Hamas is becoming harder to accept. The images of the starvation in Gaza and warnings by doctors, humanitarian organisations and the UN of an effective famine with the deaths of thousands can no longer be denied.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, behind the scenes and through their embassies, have been encouraging European countries to make the jump to recognition. Their efforts at the UN conference in New York this week are another front of that campaign.

Israel and the Trump administration

But in the short term, there is little prospect of the Netanyahu government giving way with its mass killing, let alone entering talks for two states. Notably neither Israel nor the US took part in the conference.

Trump has criticised the scenes of starvation in Gaza. But his administration has joined Netanyahu in vitriolic denunciation of France and the UK over their intentions to recognise Palestine. And the US president has warned the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, that recognition of Palestinian statehood would threaten Canada’s trade deal with the US.

In response to Trump’s concern over the images of starving children and his exhortation “We’ve got to get the kids fed,” Israel has airdropped a few pallets of aid – less than a truck’s worth. Yet this appears more of a public relations exercise directed at Washington than a genuine attempt to ease the terrible condition on the Strip.

A small number of lorries with supplies from UN and humanitarian organisations have also crossed the border, but only after lengthy delays and with half still held up. There is no security for transport and delivery of the aid inside Gaza.

A sacrifice for a state?

So the conference declaration is not relief for Gaza. Instead, it is yet another marker of Israel’s increasing isolation.

After France’s announcement, the Netanyahu government thundered: “Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy … A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel.”

But while recognising Hamas’s mass killing of October 7 2023, most governments and their populations do not perceive Israel as attacking Hamas and its fighters. They see the Netanyahu government and Israeli military slaying and starving civilians.

Even in the US, where the Trump administration is trying to crush sympathy for Palestine and Gazans in universities, non-governmental organisations and the public sphere, opinion is shifting.

In a Gallup poll taken in the US and released on July 29, only 32% of respondents supported Israel’s actions in Gaza – an all-time low – and 60% opposed them. Netanyahu was viewed unfavourably by 52% and favourably by only 29%.

Israel has lost its moment of “normalisation” with Arab states. Its economic links are strained and its oft-repeated claim to being the “Middle East’s only democracy” is bloodstained beyond recognition.

This will be of no comfort to the people of Gaza facing death. But in the longer term, there is the prospect that this sacrifice will be the catalyst to recognise Palestine that disappeared in 1948.

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Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. New peace plan increases pressure on Israel and US as momentum grows for Palestinian statehood – https://theconversation.com/new-peace-plan-increases-pressure-on-israel-and-us-as-momentum-grows-for-palestinian-statehood-262259