Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered authorities to “ramp up” security on both on Israeli carriers and non-Israeli carriers on Wednesday. The order was confirmed by a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office after the flydubai flight incident.
And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. Nato secretary general Mark Rutte has insisted “there is no imminent threat to Nato territory,” as he stressed the alliance is “ready to counter” any threat from Russia (15:47). “We will always be defensive, but if necessary, of course we will defend ourselves,” he said. But Rutte also confirmed that Russia sent Nato a “not helpful” letter on Kaliningrad (15:43), which media reports said included a warning Moscow would be ready to use nuclear weapons if the alliance attempted to cut off the exclave from the rest of Russia (11:46). Separately, Russia said it considered any European weapons factories producing arms for Ukraine as “legitimate military targets” (16:46). Dutch and Lithuanian chiefs of defence also expressed their concern over Russia’s escalating rhetoric and its decisions “moving closer to our red lines” (12:40, 12:48). Ukraine suffered another day of severe attacks from Russia, which killed at least five, and injured more than a dozen. In other news, French president Emmanuel Macron called Brexit “the biggest lie of the last 30 years,” as he welcomed Andy Burnham’s plans to reconsider the UK’s relationship with the EU (11:12, 15:39). Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez also said that Spain “would applaud” a reversal of Brexit, and “open its arms” to welcome the UK back. But the technical process of rejoining the EU, if ever attempted, would likely be very difficult and include complex trade-offs. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.
One of the pilots of a plane flying from the UAE to Israel stabbed his co-pilot and appeared to try to crash the plane, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said, as Israeli officials said they were investigating if the incident was an attempted terror attack on Israelis. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after the apparent attack, with the two pilots wounded but other passengers safe, according to a statement by Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz international airport, more commonly known as Tabuk airport. The pilot accused of carrying out the attack was currently being questioned by Saudi authorities, Netanyahu said. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, described the incident as an “attempted jihadist attack”. “The terrorist had a single objective: to crash the plane, killing everyone onboard,” Katz said, adding that the attack was stopped due to the “heroism of several passengers”. Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to reporters, said the attacker was an Omani national and that Israel’s current assessment of the incident was that it was a terror attack. There was no comment on the attack from either Oman or the United Arab Emirates. Two and a half hours after taking off from Dubai, the plane sent out an emergency signal – squawk code 7700, indicating a general emergency – before sending out another – code 7500, indicating a potential hijacking attempt. The plane also abruptly descended, falling about 17,000 ft in a two-minute span, before diverting from Jordanian airspace towards Tabuk airport, in north-western Saudi Arabia, where it landed safely. Israeli officials told Reuters that the cabin crew took control of the cockpit and helped land the plane after the attack. Videos of the incident showed passengers screaming as the plane descended, as well as a blood-covered man who appeared to be the pilot injured and on the floor. “The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon told reporters via her mother’s phone at Tel Aviv airport. “It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralised him,” she said, adding that a doctor on board treated the wounded pilot. Israeli officials’ initially scrambled fighter jets after the emergency signals were sent out, fearing an attack on Israel or that the plane would be diverted to a third country. A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office then said the incident was not a hijacking, as media reports circulated of a fight between the two pilots. As more information emerged about the violent nature of the attack, Israeli and international media began to report officials anonymously saying an investigation had been opened into whether this was an attack on Israelis. Israeli authorities have so far refrained from publicly calling the alleged attack a suspected terror incident, besides the far-right national security minister. Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir said on X that “terrorism is a devil with whom no agreement must be reached”, referring to the incident. The head of the Israeli military, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, postponed his planned visit to the US next week over the incident, where he was meant to have a meeting with US joint chiefs of staff and the head of US Central Command. The circumstances of the brawl between the pilots were unclear, with passengers recounting confusing moments and blood being spilt. Yasmin Abu Kaiss, whose daughter was on the flight, told Reuters her daughter said she had heard screaming and a man with a knife had put a pilot on the floor, and that there was blood everywhere. Pictures published by Israeli media showed a passenger wearing a blood-soaked shirt. The Guardian could not independently verify the image. The incident came just days after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned there were indications an attack would be carried out during Israel’s October elections. The Israeli military, quoted by Israeli media, said it had no intelligence that an attack was being planned on Israel. Yair Lapid, an opposition figure and former prime minister, cast doubt on the connection between the alleged attack and Netanyahu’s warning, saying that a security briefing on Tuesday night gave no information about a possible incident similar to what happened on Wednesday. Israel experienced a series of hijackings and attacks on planes by Palestinian militants in the 1960s and 1970s, but has not had anything similar in decades. The country maintains some of the strictest airport security procedures in the world, including security checks before passengers board Israel-bound flights. Flights between Dubai and Israel started after the countries normalised ties in 2020. Israel does not have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, but in 2025 landed a plane in Riyadh because of a medical emergency. Flydubai confirmed that flight FZ 1073 en route to Ben Gurion experienced an incident and landed safely in Tabuk on Wednesday. “Our teams are working closely with the relevant authorities,” the carrier said. “Further updates will be issued as additional confirmed details become available.” Israeli media reported that a later flydubai flight heading to Tel Aviv turned around in mid-air back towards Dubai after the incident.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has made everyday life for Palestinians “untenable”, as a mob attack on Palestinians trying to return home prompted one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rivals to warn of a campaign of settler terror. More than 100 militant settlers overwhelmed Israeli security forces early on Tuesday to attack a Palestinian family as they attempted to reclaim their homes which had been seized by settlers in the West Bank village of Jalud. Three Israeli security officials were injured and houses were set on fire. The impotence of the Israeli military, the scale of the assault and the injuries inflicted on Israeli security officers by settlers prompted unusually harsh condemnation from Israeli politicians and commenters. Israel is facing unprecedented international pressure over surging violence in the occupied West Bank, where settler militants backed by cabinet ministers have accelerated a campaign of ethnic cleansing ahead of Israel’s elections next month. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the attacks in Jalud as a “moral stain”. Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and Netanyahu’s leading challenger in the upcoming elections, called for action to halt a “campaign of terror and violence”. Deadlier attacks by Israeli settlers, including ones targeting Palestinian children, have drawn less attention inside Israel. “Palestinian rights or safety are not the concern, even for people who are in the opposition,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine with International Crisis Group. “The settler violence is an issue [for them] because it’s making Israel look bad, and also the idea that the military is losing control.” The ICRC said attacks, settlement expansion and severe restrictions on movement were making everyday life untenable for Palestinian civilians and violated Israel’s obligations under international law. “The frequent and severe violence must be brought to an end,” said Julien Lerisson, the head of the ICRC’s delegation for Israel and Palestine. “What international humanitarian law says on the protection of private and public property, and on the population’s access to essential services, must be respected.” A bar on imports of settlement goods came into force in the Netherlands last week, the UK has announced plans for even broader controls on trade and financing of settlements, and a similar bill will be introduced in the US legislature on Thursday. On Tuesday, a Senate bill demanding a human rights report on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was narrowly defeated after winning backing from all but one Democrat. “Tonight a disaster was averted, but the barrier has been broken,” the Israeli analyst Roy Sharon wrote on social media after the vote, warning that “anarchy in the West Bank” may cost Israel military aid from the US and its international legitimacy. A cartoon in Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, on Wednesday showed two soldiers watching an arson attack on a Palestinian home. “They’re going to ruin my trip to Amsterdam,” one says to the other. More than 60 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank have been wiped off the map since October 2023 and 18 others have been partly displaced, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Nearly 5,000 people have been forced from their homes, almost half of them children. The Tubasi family, whose homes were burned in Jalud, had been forced out this summer after a weeks-long siege by settler militants. Last week they secured a high court ruling ordering the Israeli state to evict settlers and secure their return. Late on Monday the Israeli military told the family that about 15 military police officers would escort them home immediately, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported. That was a small number given that Israel is celebrating the Sukkot holiday. The number of violent extremists in illegal settlements usually rises during festivals, and the force was outnumbered by a violent crowd within minutes of arriving. “To carry out an operation such as this, and during the holiday of Sukkot when the [settler] outposts are packed, is madness,” a security source said. The military had not informed national police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service of their plans, so they had no security backup. Settlers attacked a house when the Tubasi family arrived, forcing them to the roof, before the military decided to evacuate them in armoured military vehicles. The crowd then set the homes on fire, blocked roads and threw stones at Israeli security forces, injuring three personnel. The two houses “were damaged beyond description”, said Wael Tubasi. “They damaged everything – the doors, the tiles were removed, the stairs were removed. They smashed the bathrooms, doors and windows. They left nothing, everything was broken,” he told Reuters. Earlier this year the former prime minister Ehud Olmert called for the international criminal court to intervene to stop settler violence because the state had failed. Netanyahu condemned the “violent riots” and called for prosecution of the attackers, but defended the illegal settler movement. “The handful of rioters are not representative of the law-abiding settler public in Judea and Samaria,” the prime minister said, using an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank. A landmark 2024 ruling from the UN’s international court of justice found that the occupation violated international law, a position the British government has endorsed. An Israeli military spokesperson said two suspects had been detained, and called for action to tackle settler militants who targeted Israeli security forces. “The violence directed at soldiers while they were carrying out their duties crosses a clear red line and is unacceptable,” the spokesperson said. “There is no place for such incidents in the state of Israel, and they must not be allowed to become the norm. Such phenomena must be addressed at their root.” On Wednesday, some in Israel questioned whether the army and the state had the capacity to do that. “We have to look reality squarely in the eye: this was a terrorist attack and a failure by the Israeli defence establishment in its entirety,” Avi Ashkenazi wrote in the Maariv newspaper. “It is clear at this point that the real sovereign in Judea and Samaria are the extreme rightwing terrorist activists.”
It was billed as one of the largest real-estate events in Europe, attracting as many as 15,000 people ranging from investment firms to developers. But as the District trade show and summit got under way last week in Madrid, housing campaigners from 140 organisations across the globe turned up, intent on holding their own “counter-summit” to push back against the idea of housing as a financial asset. Many of the campaigners arrived in the Spanish capital as Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair, was being evicted from the apartment where she had lived for seven decades. As anger over the eviction gave way to days of protests and an encampment in the heart of Madrid, the presence of campaigners from Italy to Ireland was a poignant reminder of the global dimension of the crisis. The eviction underscored how brutal access to housing had become for so many around the world, said Teresa Mamede, a housing campaigner from Lisbon who travelled to Madrid for the counter-summit. “Nobody among us is safe from having this happen to them.” The Guardian has long reported on the depth of the housing crisis across Europe. Within the EU, prices soared by 53% between 2010 and 2024, according to Eurostat, while rents increased 25% over the same period. Not all countries have been hit equally; while Vienna remains a bright spot for its ample stock of public housing that has tempered rental costs, Estonia has seen rents surge 208% in the same time period, while Ireland and Hungary have seen increases of more than 100%. Some of the soaring costs can be chalked up to the “ever-intensifying social experiment” playing out in Europe, research fellow Tim White noted last year, as officials see whether the machinations of finance capitalism can deliver on the fundamental need for housing. “The evidence now seems overwhelming: no.” Instead, vulnerable people and minorities have been disproportionately affected by the market’s shortcomings, while others warn that the crisis could drive voters into the arms of the far right. “We cannot remain stuck in the rhetoric of defending democracy, inclusive societies and equal opportunities if people’s standard of living is getting worse,” Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, told me last year. Voters in Berlin, however, recently opted for another path. In a city where rents had climbed nearly 70% in the past decade, a quarter of voters backed the leftwing party Die Linke in this month’s state elections, making it Berlin’s strongest party. The strategy behind their success was far from rocket science, said Guardian Europe columnist Fatma Aydemir. “Because, more than any other party in this campaign, Die Linke made this issue [of housing] unmistakably its own: the question of who gets to live in Berlin, and at what price.” *** ‘This is just getting started’ Some have sought shared solutions to the shared crisis. At the Madrid counter-summit, campaigners launched a pan-European alliance to demand indefinite rental contracts and rent control across the continent. Earlier this month, dozens of organisations launched the European Citizens’ Initiative, calling on people to sign their petition for EU-level measures to protect tenants, curb speculation and convert empty buildings into homes. “In every European country, in every major survey, and across all age groups, housing emerges as the number one concern of citizens,” the initiative notes. “We see and feel it every day: workers who can no longer afford the city they build, young people who cannot leave their parents’ home, tenants pushed out of their neighbourhoods after renovation, empty buildings while people sleep on the street.” In Spain, where the days-long encampment in Madrid has led to similar camps in cities such as Barcelona, Seville and Palma de Mallorca, the protests have already begun to have an impact. Maricarmen, the evicted octogenarian, will be allowed to return to her apartment, it was confirmed on Tuesday. Her rent will remain around the €500 a month she had paid for years – significantly less than the €2,650 the investment firm that owns her apartment had initially demanded. This week the Spanish government also said it had approved two housing decrees that include reforms such as a ban on evictions until 2030, and the regulation of temporary lettings and lettings by room. But these measures will now have to win approval in the country’s fractured parliament. What exactly comes next for the housing movement that has gripped Spain in recent days is anyone’s guess. With the spectre of general elections looming and the Socialist-led coalition scrambling to shore up its base of progressive voters, campaigners have spotted a singular opportunity to tackle an issue that Spaniards have long ranked as one of the country’s biggest problems. “The coming days will be crucial,” the Madrid Tenants’ Union said on Tuesday as it called for further protests this weekend. “A historic window of opportunity has opened to reverse decades of the commodification of housing. That is why we need to step up the pressure.” Or, as the Málaga Tenants’ Union put it in an online post: “This is just getting started.” To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
South Africa’s president has called on men to take more responsibility for violence against women as he announced measures to tackle the problem, amid anger at authorities over a recent wave of murders. Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged that not enough had been done to protect women. He said police would be reviewing unsolved murders, attempted murders and serious sexual offences against women and children, as well as producing a funded plan to reduce the forensic backlog for such cases, both within 60 days. In a televised speech on Tuesday night, the president said local governments would have five months to address issues that compromised women’s safety, from broken streetlights to overgrown public spaces and abandoned buildings. He added that he had tasked five ministers to come up with a plan within 60 days to reduce alcohol-fuelled violence. “Alcohol does not cause gender-based violence and it can never excuse it. Responsibility always lies with the perpetrator,” Ramaphosa said. “But harmful alcohol use is a significant aggravating factor in interpersonal violence and it must be addressed as part of our wider prevention effort. “Women should not have to live in fear because government has failed to repair a light, clear a public space, process evidence or enforce a law.” South Africa has been gripped by grief and fury after the discovery of 11 women’s bodies dumped across Ekurhuleni, the municipality adjoining Johannesburg to the east, since 15 July. Eight of the women were found in the last three weeks, including Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, who was discovered on 12 September after she went missing when she went for a run after work. Ramaphosa said suspects had been arrested in connection with three of the killings and that the other cases would not be left to go cold. He added that police had not found evidence that a serial killer was responsible for all 11 killings, but that all possibilities were still being investigated. He directly addressed South African men, urging them to challenge relatives, friends and colleagues who harassed, humiliated or abused women. “It is time for good men to stop being silent men,” he said. “For too long, gender-based violence has been treated as a woman’s problem to solve. Women march, the women of our country organise, they speak out, they protest, they confront and they comfort survivors,” Ramaphosa said. “Women change their routes home. Avoid going out at night and warn one another about dangerous places and dangerous men. We have placed the burden of male violence on women. That must change.” Activists expressed their frustration that solid policy actions had not been taken years ago and scepticism that the measures Ramaphosa had announced would work. Shenilla Mohamed, the executive director of Amnesty International South Africa, said: “These are not new issues and as a country we have been talking about ways to tackle the high numbers of [gender-based violence and femicide], especially since 2019 when women took to the streets to protest, and yet here we are again in the face of continued attacks against women. “Amnesty International South Africa also notes the timelines put in place by the president, but this will only mean something if it results in action, and if there are consequences for inaction.” Mpiwa Mangwiro-Tsanga and Bafana Khumalo, of Sonke Gender Justice, an NGO, said: “Our concern … is that the response remains heavily weighted towards what happens after violence has already occurred.” They added: “Investigating unresolved cases, processing forensic evidence and repairing unsafe public spaces are necessary, but they do not constitute a comprehensive prevention strategy. It is concerning that the president is asking municipalities to do what is actually their mandate and yet they do not deliver on these.”
Four years ago, during Brazil’s last presidential election, the tyres were slashed on the pickup truck used for reporting by Tapajós de Fato, an independent journalism website in the Brazilian Amazon. Days later, a cat’s severed head was left next to the car park, alongside a note bearing the name of one of the site’s founders, Marcos Wesley Pedroso, and a warning that he would be next. Last July, security cameras outside Pedroso’s house showed cyclists circling the block, whistling and filming his car until, minutes later, another car crashed into it. “I believe they wanted me to come outside so they could ambush me,” said Pedroso. Police have not identified those responsible or established whether the cases are connected, but Pedroso sees them as part of a wider series of threats linked to Tapajós de Fato’s reporting on environmental and Indigenous rights violations, land disputes, and pesticide contamination in the Amazonian state of Pará. As a result, the site’s team decided not to cover this year’s elections – which will choose the next president, state governors, members of the lower house and part of the senate, with the first round on 4 October. “We’re afraid of dying and of putting our families’ safety at risk,” said Pedroso. He added that the site, whose name refers to the 1,238-mile-long (1,992km) Tapajós River, would remain online and continue covering environmental issues, but would avoid stories about the election. News of violence around election time is not uncommon: in 2022 a man was struck on the head with a piece of wood after saying he did not support the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election bid. Journalism and free-expression organisations in Brazil see Tapajós de Fato’s decision, first reported by a network of independent Amazonian media outlets, as a serious example of the consequences of attacks against journalists during the electoral period. “It reflects the different forms of attempted censorship and silencing that journalists have to face in Brazil,” said Letícia Kleim, legal coordinator at the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism. “Silencing the message by silencing the messenger affects not just their community, but democracy as a whole, which will no longer receive the valuable information they were providing by reporting on the Amazon from within the region.” Her association is part of a coalition that recorded 4,400 online attacks against journalists, media outlets and the press on X and Instagram between 30 August and 12 September alone, an increase of 67% compared with the previous two weeks. Because the election campaign was still under way, Kleim said it was not yet possible to know whether there had been more attacks than in the previous election, although she stressed that the context four years ago was particularly hostile because of the then president Bolsonaro, who routinely attacked the media and made threatening remarks to reporters such as: “I’d like to smash your mouth.” Kleim said: “His government made discrediting the press a priority at times; his family, supporters and politicians close to him embraced that agenda, and many continue with it.” Bolsonaro is now unable to run because he is under house arrest serving a sentence for attempting a coup after losing the 2022 election, but one of his sons, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is in a technical tie in the polls with the incumbent, the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “The possibility of Flávio being elected worries me enormously,” said Pedroso. He said reporting was even more dangerous four years ago, particularly in the Amazon – where Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous policies led to soaring deforestation, a gold rush into Indigenous lands and increased criminal activity. In 2022, the British journalist Dom Phillips, who reported for the Guardian from Brazil, and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were ambushed and killed in the Amazon by men accused of links to a transnational criminal network exploiting an Indigenous territory. The Amazon-based NGO Comitê Chico Mendes, named after the environmentalist murdered in 1988, issued a statement deploring the threats against Tapajós de Fato: “We cannot normalise an Amazon where fear determines what can and cannot be reported.” Pedroso said that Tapajós de Fato had decided to make the threats public after years of reporting them to the authorities without any investigation producing results. “Deciding not to cover the elections was not easy,” he said. “With a great deal of humility and responsibility, I know the role we play in educating and informing many people in the communities around us, but there was no other way. In the end, those are the people who lose out.”