World
Australia’s Vanuatu deal falters ahead of Pacific Islands Forum. By Jonathan Pearlman.
‘You have been warned,’ Israel PM tells Gaza City residents
Great power rivalry
Gaza: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, this week told residents of Gaza City to leave immediately ahead of a looming ground assault, as Donald Trump rebuked Israel for launching an air strike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar.
Israel has been escalating air attacks in Gaza City and on Tuesday began urging all residents – about one million people – to leave ahead of a plan to seize the city. Leaflets were dropped that showed maps of a proposed evacuation route and said residents should “evacuate immediately”.
Officials in Gaza said Israel’s attacks killed at least 40 Palestinians on Monday, mostly in and around Gaza City. Israel said four soldiers were killed near the city in an attack by Hamas.
Netanyahu said the latest aerial attacks were a precursor to the ground offensive. “I say to the residents of Gaza [City]: you have been warned – get out of there,” he said.
The orders caused panic in Gaza City, where residents said they feared evacuating to overcrowded camps in the south that lack food and supplies.
Um Samed, a 59-year-old mother of five who lives in Gaza City, told Reuters she was weighing up whether to “stay and die at home in Gaza City, or follow Israel’s orders and leave Gaza and die in the south”.
Aid groups say the evacuations will intensify Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Experts said in August that a famine is already under way in Gaza City.
Israel has called up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of the ground offensive, which is expected to start in late September or early October. An estimated 70,000 residents of Gaza City have already evacuated. Hamas has told residents not to leave.
On Tuesday, Israel struck a meeting of Hamas officials in Doha, the capital of Qatar, prompting international condemnation.
Israel has previously attacked senior Hamas and Hezbollah figures in Iran, Syria and Lebanon but not in a country that is an ally of the United States.
US President Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” about the attack and was alerted by the US military. He said he notified Qatar, but it was “too late to stop the attack”.
“I’m not thrilled about it,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “We want the hostages back, but we are not thrilled about the way that went down.”
Hamas said the attack killed five lower-ranking members and a Qatari security official but claimed its top leaders survived.
Qatar expressed outrage, saying Israel was sabotaging ceasefire negotiations by attacking the Hamas officials leading the talks.
“What happened today is state terrorism and an attempt to destabilise regional security and stability,” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in a televised address.
Netanyahu said the bombing targeted those responsible for the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.
“I promised that Israel would reach those who perpetrated that horror,” he said. “Today that was done.”
Hamas said the attack was “a heinous crime, a flagrant act of aggression, and a blatant violation of all international norms and laws”.
International leaders criticised the strike, including the governments of Britain, France and Australia.
“This is a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty,” Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told the ABC. “It imperils that work on the ceasefire and it risks escalation.”
The attack came days after Qatar urged Hamas to accept a new ceasefire deal presented by the US. The proposal reportedly requires Hamas to release the 48 remaining living and dead hostages and Israel to release Palestinian prisoners during the first two days of a 60-day ceasefire. In the following two weeks, negotiations would begin on disarming Hamas, Israeli troop withdrawals, and the future governance of the enclave.
Qatar said it would support further talks but was temporarily suspending them.
The neighbourhood
Vanuatu: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to Vanuatu on Tuesday to sign a $500 million security and economic pact but left without completing the deal after Vanuatu became concerned that Chinese funding flows could be affected.
In a setback to Canberra’s efforts to counter China’s influence in the Pacific, Vanuatu’s prime minister, Jotham Napat, told reporters he was not ready to sign the deal, as he wanted to ensure it would not limit foreign infrastructure funding.
“Some of my ministers and my MPs, they feel that it requires more discussions, particularly on some of the specific wordings in the agreement … when it comes to the critical infrastructure,” he said.
Australia has successfully secured a recent series of deals across the Pacific – including with Tuvalu, Nauru and Papua New Guinea – that have been designed to prevent China developing closer security ties with Pacific nations. The deals followed revelations in 2022 that Solomon Islands had signed a secret security accord with Beijing.
In August, Australia and Vanuatu announced a wide-ranging deal – the Nakamal agreement – that was apparently concluded during a visit to the island of Tanna by Australian ministers Penny Wong, Richard Marles and Pat Conroy. Wong told reporters the agreement “will transform our relationship”.
During his visit to Vanuatu this week, Albanese said he was confident the deal will still be “able to be signed soon”.
“We don’t want to either do or be seen for anything to occur that undermines the sovereignty of Vanuatu,” he said.
China has provided extensive funding to Vanuatu for high-profile projects, including a new presidential palace, a convention centre and repairs to parliament after an earthquake last December.
Albanese visited Vanuatu on his way to Solomon Islands to attend the annual leaders meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), an 18-member group that includes Australia and New Zealand. On Wednesday, he met with Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, and the pair agreed to work on a new security treaty. The move marked a diplomatic win for Canberra after the setback in Vanuatu.
Ahead of this week’s PIF summit, the prime minister of Solomon Islands, Jeremiah Manele, who has close ties to Beijing, barred all partners of the forum from attending the summit – a controversial move that excluded Taiwan as well as other partners such as China, the US, Japan and the European Union. Solomon Islands initially proposed barring Taiwan only, but several members of the forum then threatened to boycott the summit.
The forum was expected to affirm its support for Australia’s bid to host the COP31 climate summit in 2026 in partnership with Pacific nations. Australia is competing against Türkiye but is hoping to persuade the nation to abandon its bid, as the host must be decided by consensus rather than a vote.
The PIF meeting was also expected to consider a Fijian proposal for an “Ocean of Peace” declaration that will call for regional peace and solidarity in the face of rising geopolitical tensions and the threat from climate change.
In an opening address on Wednesday, Manele told the summit: “Competition among powerful interests is intensifying and the Pacific must never be seen as an arena for others.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 13, 2025 as "‘You have been warned,’ Israel PM tells Gaza City residents".
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