CNN —

Gaza’s population dropped by 6% – about 160,000 people – in 2024, according to a new report, as Israel’s war against Hamas took a heavy toll on the Palestinian enclave’s demographics.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said in a report released Tuesday that about 100,000 Palestinians had left Gaza since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, in addition to at least 45,553 who were killed in Israeli attacks in the strip, according to official figures by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the enclave.

The report also warned 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza were “endangered” due to the lack of adequate healthcare and 96% of the population were facing high levels of food insecurity.

Gaza’s population now stands at 2.1 million, including more than a million children under the age of 18, making up 47% of the population, PCBS’s report added.

Meanwhile, a separate report by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) found that Israel’s population was still growing – but more slowly than before – in a trend it attributed to Israelis leaving the country.

The Israeli report cautioned, however, that the full impact of Israel’s multi-front war on long-term migration pattern was yet to be seen.

In the report published Tuesday, the census office said that in 2024, Israel’s population grew by 1.1%, compared to 1.6% in 2023.

“The decrease is mainly due to the high number of Israelis emigrating from Israel in 2024,” it said, adding that last year, some 82,700 residents left Israel, compared to 55,000 the year before.

The Israeli city of Tel Aviv, on August 12, 2024, amid regional tensions during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images

By December 31, 2024, Israel’s population was estimated at 10.027 million, the report said, topping the 10-million mark for the first time. However, the report included foreign nationals in the country as part of its count.

Israel has also been rocked by political turmoil. In 2023, it was shaken by mass protests against controversial plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the country’s judicial system.

It then launched a war on Hamas in Gaza after the Palestinian militant group led brutal attacks that killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 on October 7, 2023. Israel’s attacks since then have killed more than 45,000 people and injured 108,000 in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the strip.

Israel is also fighting against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, which began firing at Israel on October 8, 2023, as well as conflicts with Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, and militants in Syria and Iraq who say they are attacking Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Hong Kong CNN —

Weeks after his country was battered by waves of Israeli strikes and the US bombed three of its prized nuclear facilities, Iran’s foreign minister came to a gathering of regional diplomats in China this week with a simple ask.

Their group, the Beijing and Moscow-backed Shanghai Cooperation Organization, should have a way to coordinate response to military aggression and play a “central role” in addressing such threats, Abbas Araghchi said, according to Iranian state media.

Along with Iran, fellow SCO members China and Russia are key members of what lawmakers in Washington have dubbed an “axis” of authoritarian nations or a growing anti-American alignment of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia.

But Iran’s proposal didn’t seem to get the direct endorsement of the group, a regional security body whose 10 members include close partners China and Russia, but also rivals India and Pakistan.

And contained in Araghchi’s message was a public hint of Iran’s disappointment: that in its time of need last month – when Israeli and US forces struck at will at top military and technological targets – its powerful friends in Beijing and Moscow appeared to sit on the sidelines.

Even still, in a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in China’s Tianjin on Wednesday, Araghchi “thanked China for its valuable support to Iran,” according to a Chinese readout.

Earlier this month at a summit of BRICS, another China- and Russia-backed grouping of major emerging economies, member state Iran got little more than a statement of “serious concern over deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities.”

The declaration “condemned” the strikes but did not name Israel or the US.

China’s public response – to explicitly condemn the attacks, but not take an evident direct role in peacemaking – however, was widely seen as a sign of the limits to its power in the Middle East, despite its bid in recent years to ramp up its economic and diplomat clout in the region.

Beijing has instead focused on using the conflict to play up another message: that China does not want to be a global leader that uses power in the same way as the US.

Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi mets Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting on July 15 in Tianjin, China. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affair/Anadolu/Getty Images

China’s security vision

The propaganda machine of China’s ruling Communist Party has long decried America’s “hegemony” and its “wanton use” of force as its rolls out examples of US’ involvement in multiple conflicts of recent decades.

Frictions with Washington over trade and tech make selling that messaging more important for Beijing, as it needs friends now more than ever. And it sees US President Donald Trump’s brash “America First” foreign policy as creating an opening there.

Over the past decade, Chinese aggression to enforce its disputed claims in the South China Sea, its military intimidation of Taiwan, and the growing reach of its expanded navy, whose aircraft carrier strike groups recently conducted drills further from home shores and in greater strength than ever before, have raised alarm among its neighbors – and fueled Washington’s urgent warnings to its allies against dealing too closely with China.

Beijing has cried “hypocrisy” and, in 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping unveiled his own vision for global security architecture – short on detail, but clear that it opposed the US-led alliance system and military intervention.

That vision has brought together Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose shared mistrust for NATO – and view that it’s a provocative actor – is a key point of alignment, and a subtext for why Beijing has never condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Experts say China’s apparent lack of a role even in mediating the conflict between Israel and Iran, a country with which Beijing has deep historic and economic ties, shows the limits of its influence in the region.

But they also say Beijing has little interest in wading into the region’s security as a power player.

“In terms of providing mediation, (China) has offered and is more than willing … but it has little capacity to project military power in the Middle East, and even less political will to be openly and directly involved,” said William Figueroa, an expert of China-Iran relations and an assistant professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Unlike the US, which maintains substantial military assets to back its allies and interests in the region, China’s on the ground military presence is limited to a naval base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. Indeed, Beijing’s only military alliance is a historic one with neighboring and fellow one-party communist state North Korea.

Beijing also shied away from joining international efforts last winter to protect key shipping lanes under attack from Houthi rebels in Yemen following Israel’s war on Gaza.

The attacks put China’s commercial interests at risk even though the Houthis said they won’t target Chinese or Russian vessels. And when it comes to efforts to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, China has again been on the sidelines, despite positioning itself as leading international voice calling for a ceasefire and criticizing Israel’s war.

Some experts have argued that if China had more global military might then it may throw around that weight more outside its own region.

But in the Israel-Iran conflict, Beijing’s focus was instead on “presenting its support for international law as a superior alternative to what it portrays as the West’s militaristic, unlawful interventions,” according to Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“While this narrative has limited traction among Middle Eastern states, it plays well in the Global South—where it serves to burnish China’s image and reinforce its strategic competition with Washington at the global level,” Zhao added.

Iran’s Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh (second from left) joins SCO counterparts in a meeting in China’s Qingdao a day after the Israel-Iran ceasefire last month. Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

Fair weather friends?

Even if Beijing’s reaction was not surprising to Tehran, going to China and “acting like everything’s great” may have a been “a bitter pill to swallow” for Araghchi and Iran’s Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh as both traveled to China in recent weeks, according to Jonathan Fulton, a senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Beijing and Tehran have no mutual defense treaty, and the relationship has largely been an economic one. China takes more than 90% of Iran’s oil trade, imported through intermediaries, which totaled some $40 billion in profits for Iran last year, according to Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at trade intelligence firm Kpler.

Even when it comes to China’s closest international partner, Russia, Beijing has tread carefully: stopping short of large-scale supply of military goods for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, instead buying up Russian fuel and supplying it with dual-use goods that can power its defense industrial base.

That support, and more direct military backing from Iran and North Korea for Russia’s war, has raised alarm in the West about emerging coordination among members into a so-called anti-American “axis.”

But the latest stress-test of the “axis” appeared to show its weaknesses: as Israeli and US bombs rained down on Iran, Russia and China looked more focused on their own interests and rhetoric, analysts say, rather than backing Iran materially or using their weight to push Israel or the US to stop the fighting. Xi and Putin did, however, use the conflict to stress their own united front.

That said, when it comes to ties with Iran, the real test is likely what’s next.

“This is a good example (that) there are limitations to what China’s going to do in terms of direct intervention in a military conflict,” Brian Hart, a fellow of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, said during a recent talk held by the Washington-based center. But “it’s too soon to count China’s support for Iran out.”

China’s model for Russia of “largely walking right up to that line of not providing overt military support,” could become a dynamic that develops here, Hart said, as Beijing looks to help the regime in Tehran say in power. Dual-use Chinese-made chemicals needed to produce missile fuel were delivered to Iran earlier this year, CNN reporting shows.

Even still, Beijing may be looking more skeptically at Iran as a powerful partner in the region in light of the country’s “inability to project power to defend its airspace” against Israel last month, according to Atlantic Council’s Fulton.

And when it comes to how the latest events may impact any coordination between the so-called “axis” countries, the fundamentals have not changed, he said.

Far from being an alliance or a bloc like those in the West, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea have an “alignment of grievances” against the West, but “very different ideas” of how to reshape global rules to address that, Fulton said.

And for Beijing, “what it needs in the Middle East is economically motivated – it needs a stable region, and Iran doesn’t really support that. Iran causes as many problems as it solves for Beijing.”

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First France, then the United Kingdom, and now Canada.

Three of the world’s most powerful Western nations have added their economic and geopolitical clout to calls for a Palestinian state, an idea already endorsed by more than 140 other countries.

The moves have many motives, from a sense of frustration with Israel, to domestic pressure, to outrage over the images of starving Palestinians. Whatever the reason, Palestinians have welcomed the announcements as a boost for their cause. The Israeli government has rejected the calls, describing them as tantamount to rewarding terrorism.

US President Donald Trump meanwhile seems increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly over the starvation in Gaza that the Israeli leader denies, but has disturbed Trump.

Trump wants regional peace, as well as the accolades – namely a Nobel Peace Prize – for making it happen. He wants Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, expanding the Abraham Accords he cemented between Israel and several other Arab states during his first term. But Riyadh has been firm that this cannot happen without an irreversible path to a Palestinian state.

But the latest moves by US allies France, Britain and Canada – while in many ways largely symbolic – have left Washington increasingly isolated over its backing for Israel.

Palestinian statehood could help bring an end to a war that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza since Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack killed around 1,200 people in Israel almost two years ago, as well as bring home the hostages still being held in Gaza.

But one of the toughest challenges is imagining what it looks like, because a modern Palestinian state has never existed before.

When Israel was founded in the aftermath of World War II it quickly gained international recognition. That same period, for Palestinians, is remembered as al-Naqba, or “the catastrophe” – the moment when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced from their homes.

Since then, Israel has expanded, most significantly during the “Six Day War” of 1967, when Israel turned the tables on a coalition of Arab states and gained East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian territory has meanwhile only shrunk and splintered.

The closest to what a future Palestinian state may look like was hashed out in a peace process in the 1990s which came to be known as the Oslo Accords.

Harrowing images of starving children have driven the moves by international powers, and alarmed the White House. UNRWA

Roughly speaking, the Palestinian state envisaged in Oslo, agreed to by both Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, would be based on Israel’s 1967 borders. The broad outline of Oslo was to have some land trades, a little bit given in one place for the removal of an Israeli settlement, in a negotiated process.

The historic handshake on the White House lawn by Israel’s then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hosted by then-US president Bill Clinton remains one of the triumphs of modern diplomacy. Rabin’s assassination by a far-right fanatic in 1995 robbed Israel of its peacemaker leader.

And while the framework of Oslo lived on in negotiations and academia, there is little initiative now. What was on offer back then is no longer realistic.

In recent years, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded massively, often with the encouragement of the Israeli government, threatening the chances of creating a contiguous Palestinian state in the region.

Then there is the question of who would govern a future Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, is distrusted by many Palestinians who view it as weak or corrupt.

Even without all these complications, Netanyahu won’t accept a Palestinian state, which he has recently claimed would be “a launch pad to annihilate Israel.”

Some members of his cabinet are far more hard-line, not only refusing to countenance an independent state but wanting to annex the territory.

These ministers propping up Netanyahu’s government have said they would starve Palestinians in Gaza rather than feed them, and would collapse the coalition if he so much as suggested giving in to the growing international pressure on Israel.

Netanyahu has shown no intention of backing down, and will wear whatever France, the UK, and any others force on him as a badge of honor.

Without a partner in the Israeli government, recognition of a Palestinian state will fall flat, and could even entrench Netanyahu further.

It would be a big price to pay if the outcome were Israel making the possibility of a Palestinian state all the more distant.

But at the same time, with a growing number of angry ex-partners in the international community who are likely to increase their pressure on Trump to shift his position, it is Israel that may find itself disadvantaged, however strongly it protests.

CNN —

People applying for naturalization in Germany will now be required to affirm Israel’s right to exist, under changes to the country’s citizenship law.

The legislation, which came into effect Thursday, is part of a larger citizenship overhaul from Berlin as the government grapples with rising antisemitism, a surge in popularity for the far right, and fierce debate over its response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

The country’s naturalization exam will now include a number of new questions, according to a statement from the interior ministry.

“In response to increasing antisemitism in Germany, the list of questions in the naturalization test has been expanded. New exam questions have been added on the topics of antisemitism, the right of the state of Israel to exist and Jewish life in Germany,” it said.

The war in Gaza, and Berlin’s strong support for Israel, has fueled much discussion in Germany. In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, German lawmakers, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reiterated that Israel’s security is Germany’s “reason of state,” or matter of national interest.

But other voices in the country have accused authorities of going too far, infringing on the rights of pro-Palestinians to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Adding to the complex picture, Germany has the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe, which is estimated at 300,000. German Green lawmaker Lamya Kaddor previously told CNN that Muslim communities in Germany have felt ostracized in light of events in the Middle East.

‘A crystal clear red line’

The legislation is being introduced nationwide after the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt also required citizenship applicants to recognize Israel’s right to exist in December.

The implementation of the law on a federal level was advocated by the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party last year. The idea was also well-received by other parties in the Bundestag.

Under the changes, the process for obtaining citizenship has also been sped up. Those who work in Germany and are considered “well integrated” can now obtain citizenship after just five years instead of eight.

Applicants no longer need to give up the citizenship of their previous country – something that used to be a requirement in Germany for first-generation migrants.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has welcomed Thursday’s changes as a “commitment to a modern Germany.”

“Whoever shares our values and makes an effort can now get a German passport more quickly and are not required to give up a part of their identity with the former citizenship,” she continued.

“We have also made it just as clear: Whoever doesn’t share our values, will not be able to get a German passport. Here we have drawn a crystal clear red line and made the law much stronger than before. Anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humanity rule out naturalization. There is no tolerance for that.”

The reform comes as a new report from RIAS, an organization monitoring antisemitism in Germany, found that antisemitic incidents in the country rose around 83% last year, significantly increasing after the attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s eight-month military offensive in Gaza. These incidents include everything from antisemitic graffiti, to threats, to violent attacks.

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Arab and Muslim states including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have for the first time issued a joint call for Hamas to disarm and relinquish power in the Gaza Strip as part of efforts to end the war in the territory.

The 22-member Arab League, the entire European Union and another 17 countries backed a declaration signed at a United Nations conference co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and France on Tuesday.

The meeting in New York aimed to address “the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and the implementation of the Two-State Solution,” and the declaration lays out what steps the signatories think should be taken next.

“Governance, law enforcement and security across all Palestinian territory must lie solely with the Palestinian Authority, with appropriate international support,” the joint document read, adding that “in the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.”

The text also condemned the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, and proposed the deployment of “a temporary international stabilization mission” upon invitation by the PA and “under the aegis of the United Nations.”

“We welcomed the readiness expressed by some Member States to contribute in troops,” it said.

France, who co-chaired the conference, called the declaration “unprecedented.”

Speaking at the UN Tuesday, Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, said that “on the part of Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Muslim countries who for the first time will condemn terrorism, the acts of terror on the 7th of October, a call for the disarmament of Hamas and expressed their hope to have a normalized relationship with Israel in due time.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum commended the declaration, saying: “We welcome this important progress and the Arab League’s recognition that Hamas must end its rule in Gaza. Kidnapping innocent men, women, and children is a blatant violation of international law and must be unequivocally condemned.”

Both mediators in ceasefire negotiations, Qatar and Egypt have maintained ties with Hamas and Israel throughout the war.

In March, a plan for Gaza formulated by Egypt excluded Hamas from governance of the enclave once the war ends, a draft of the plan obtained by CNN showed.

The plan was discussed by Arab leaders meeting in Cairo in an emergency summit, with Egypt’s president proposing a Palestinian committee to temporarily govern Gaza – taking over from Hamas and eventually handing power to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly pushed for a revival of the two-state solution.

France has said it will vote to recognize a Palestinian state in September, to Israel’s dismay. The United Kingdom also said it will recognize a Palestinian state in September unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. Both Israel and the United States condemned France and Britain’s statements.

Hamas has, however, shown no signs of relinquishing power in the enclave, yet officials within the militant group have in the past given contradictory statements about the movement’s role in a post-war Gaza.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vehemently opposes the two-state solution, arguing that it is incompatible with his country’s security.

This story has been updated with additional developments.