Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he is interested in a "partial deal" with Hamas that will free "some of the hostages" held in Gaza and allow Israel to continue fighting in the enclave.

Why it matters: Netanyahu's remarks walk back an Israeli proposal for a three-phase deal that would lead to the release of all remaining 120 hostages and to "sustainable calm" in Gaza.

• More than 37,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health officials.
• Netanyahu's comments contradicted statements by Biden administration officials who in recent days said Netanyahu and his aides had reiterated their support for the proposal.
• In recent weeks, Netanyahu's radical right-wing coalition partners, ultranationalist ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, threatened to leave the coalition and topple the government if the proposal turns into an agreement.

Flashback: The proposal was approved by the Israeli war cabinet in late May and was presented publicly by President Biden in a speech on May 31.

• The Biden administration mobilized broad international support for the proposal and managed to get the UN Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing it.
• Hamas officially responded to the proposal nearly two weeks after Biden's speech. The group asked for changes in the proposal and raised new demands that went beyond its own previous positions, * U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on June 12.
• Blinken said at the time that while Israel accepted the proposal, Hamas didn't

Driving the news: Netanyahu remarks were part of an interview with Israel's Channel 14, a pro-Netanyahu television channel.

• When Netanyahu was asked if he agreed to end the war as part of a hostage deal he said he didn't. "I will not stop the war and leave Hamas standing in Gaza," he said.
• "I am ready to do a partial deal, it is no secret, that will bring back some of the people. But we are committed to continue the war after the pause in order to achieve the goal of destroying Hamas. I will not give up on this," he added.

Between the lines: Netanyahu claimed his position "was no secret" but it was the first time that he spoke publicly about a "partial deal" or suggested he hadn't intended to implement all three phases in the Israeli proposal.

What they're saying: The Hostages Families Forum Headquarters, an NGO that represents most of the hostages' families and is pushing for their release, attacked Netanyahu for his remarks.

• "We strongly condemn the Prime Minister's statement in which he walked back from the Israeli proposal. This means he is abandoning 120 hostages and harms the moral duty of the state of Israel to its citizens," they said.

The big picture: The Israeli Prime Minister's remarks are likely to increase tensions between the Israeli government and the White House, which have grown in recent days over Netanyahu's claims that the Biden administration is withholding weapons from Israel.

• Netanyahu said on Sunday at the start of a cabinet meeting that there was a dramatic decrease in the munitions coming to Israel from the U.S. beginning four months ago.
• "For long weeks, we turned to our American friends and requested that the shipments be expedited. We did this time and again. We did so at the highest levels, and at all levels, and we did so behind closed doors. We received all sorts of explanations, but the basic situation did not change. Certain items arrived sporadically but the munitions at large remained behind," he said.
• Netanyahu claimed that only after there was no change in the shipments, he decided to go public in order to "open the bottleneck".

THE ISRAELI MILITARY never contacted the Palestine Red Crescent Society about Israel’s killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl, her family members, and the paramedics sent to save her, a Red Crescent spokesperson told The Intercept, refuting the State Department’s first substantive remarks about the killing that took place 148 days ago.

“Since the attack at our ambulances that was dispatched to save Hind Rajab, there has been no investigations made by the Israelis or any contact from the Israelis to the Red Crescent,” said spokesperson Nebal Farsakh. “We as the Palestinian Red Crescent have not received any kind of communication from the Israeli military.”

On Monday, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said that, according to Israel, the Red Crescent and the United Nations had rebuffed Israeli efforts to investigate the incident that had made headlines around the world. On January 29, Hind and her 15-year-old cousin made a desperate call to the Red Crescent, asking for help while stuck in a car with family members they said were killed by Israeli fire. After hours of negotiations with the Israeli military to coordinate safe passage, the Red Crescent dispatched an ambulance to save Hind (her cousin was killed during their first call), only for the medics to be found dead near Hind days later.

• Ukraine destroyed columns of waiting Russian soldiers with HIMARS, a Ukrainian commander said.
• He said Ukraine targeted them as soon as it got permission to use allied weapons across the border.
• Military experts say Ukraine's ability to use Western-supplied weapons in Russia is aiding its fightback.

Reports surface days before UN summit on Afghanistan that will exclude Afghan women and debate on women’s rights

Teenage girls and young women arrested by the Taliban for wearing “bad hijab” say they have been subjected to sexual violence and assault in detention.

In more than one case the arrests and sexual abuse that young women faced while in custody earlier this year led to suicide and attempted suicide, reporters from the Afghan news service Zan Times were told.

In one case, a woman’s body was allegedly found in a canal a few weeks after she had been taken into custody by Taliban militants, with a source close to her family saying she had been sexually abused before her death.

The UN say that many women were detained by the Taliban for “bad hijab” in December 2023 and January 2024, following a Taliban decree that women must cover themselves from head to toe, revealing only their eyes.

At the time the UN called the arrests “concerning” and girls and women told the Guardian they had been subjected to beatings and intimidation while in detention.

The U.S. is expected to announce Tuesday it is sending an additional $150 million in critically needed munitions to Ukraine, as Russia accuses Ukraine of using U.S.-provided munitions to strike inside Russia or Russian-held territory, according to two U.S. officials. 

On Monday, Russia summoned the American ambassador to protest what it says was the use of U.S.-made advanced missiles in a Ukrainian attack on Crimea on Sunday that reportedly killed four people and wounded more than 150. 

Crimea, which Russian seized from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that most of the world rejected as unlawful, long had been declared a fair target for Ukraine by its Western allies.

However, the Pentagon said last week that Ukraine’s military is also now allowed to use longer-range missiles provided by the U.S. to strike targets inside Russia if it is acting in self-defense. Since the outset of the war, the U.S. had maintained a policy of not allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it provided to hit targets on Russian soil for fear of further escalating the conflict.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men for compulsory service, a landmark decision that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel continues to wage war in Gaza.

The historic ruling effectively puts an end to a decades-old system that granted ultra-Orthodox men broad exemptions from military service while maintaining mandatory enlistment for the country’s secular Jewish majority. The arrangement, deemed discriminatory by critics, has created a deep chasm in Israel’s Jewish majority over who should shoulder the burden of protecting the country.

The court struck down a law that codified exemptions in 2017, but repeated court extensions and government delaying tactics over a replacement dragged out a resolution for years. The court ruled that in the absence of a law, Israel’s compulsory military service applies to the ultra-Orthodox like any other citizen.

Under longstanding arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men have been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women.

Evan Gershkovich, a US reporter, is accused of being a CIA spy and has been detained in a Moscow jail for over a year. He could face up to 20 years in prison — unless he's saved by a last-minute prisoner swap.

Russia's war in Ukraine had been going on for about a year when Evan Gershkovich arrived in Yekaterinburg, in the foothills of the Ural Mountains, on March 29, 2023. He was there to research a story about the infamous Wagner Group and their recruitment methods — and potentially to find out what Russians think about the mercenary fighting unit. 

Yekaterinburg is also the headquarters of Uralvagonzavod, a large Russian defense company that, among other things, makes tanks for use in Ukraine. Could this have been the reason for Gershkovich being there, of all places, some 1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles) east of Moscow? The answer is unclear. What is clear, however, is that visiting the city will seal his fate.

The international criminal court issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for Russia’s former defence minister and its military chief of staff for attacking civilian targets in Ukraine.

The court is accusing former defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of staff Valery Gerasimov of war crimes and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts.

As Israel’s offensive in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, its military has repeatedly said it is not deliberately targeting the media.

“There is no policy of targeting media personnel,” a senior official said, attributing the record number of journalists killed to the scale and intensity of a bombardment in which so many of Gaza’s civilians have died.

However, an investigation by the Guardian suggests that amid a loosening of the Israel Defense Force’s interpretation of the laws of war after the deadly Hamas-led attacks on 7 October, some within the IDF appear to have viewed journalists working in Gaza for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Hamas to be legitimate military targets.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) records at least 103 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in the war in Gaza. Other lists suggest that number is higher.

Since foreign media are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza, the work of documenting the war on the ground has fallen to Palestinian journalists in the territory, many of whom have continued to work despite grave risks to their safety.

About £1.4bn worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) has been destroyed or written off in what is understood to be the most wasteful government deal of the pandemic.

Figures obtained by the BBC reveal that at least 1.57 billion items of PPE provided by Full Support Healthcare, an NHS supplier based in Northamptonshire, will never be used, despite being manufactured to the proper standard. 

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), which was responsible for purchasing and delivering Covid PPE, said it was unable to provide a statement due to the pre-election period.

The Labour Party described the contract as a "staggering waste" while the Liberal Democrats said it was a "colossal misuse of public funds".

A government agency combating discrimination in Germany logged a record number of complaints in 2023. Around 40% of them pertained to racism, while roughly a quarter targeted the disabled or chronically ill.

The German government agency combating discrimination (the ADS) logged 10,772 complaints from members of the public in 2023, its highest annual figure and an increase of 22% on the previous year's figures. 

"Our case numbers show an alarming trend," the commissioner heading the agency, Ferda Ataman, said in Berlin on Tuesday while presenting the report. "More people than ever before are getting first-hand experience of the increasing societal polarization and radicalization. The situation is serious." 

Ataman said that "the foreigners-out-mood and contempt for human beings have become normal nowadays — not just while partying on Sylt or at public festivals," referring to two prominent recent cases that courted national and sometimes international media attention.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Russia, the Kremlin announced Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs aide, Yuri Ushakov, said that Modi’s visit was being prepared but didn’t announce a date, saying that it will be done jointly later.

Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War, and New Delhi’s importance as a key trade partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China and India have become key buyers of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies that shut most Western markets for Russian exports.

Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s action in Ukraine while emphasizing the need for a peaceful settlement.