In the desolate ruins of the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, Umm Muhammad’s daughter Hala assembles scraps of wood and chunks of foam to build a fire.

Proper housing and basic infrastructure are nowhere to be found. Their family of 11 is living in a tent alongside heaps of concrete and mangled steel that now lie where their home once stood.

What they do have: flour, water and oil, which means Umm Muhammad can bake bread for her family.

But for how long?

“The food aid is what’s keeping us alive,” Umm Muhammad said. “We eat and drink for the whole month from aid. Without that, it will be very difficult… aid makes us live.”

That lifeline for Umm Muhammad and hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians is now under existential threat as Israel lays siege to Gaza once again.

The Israeli government announced Sunday that it was shutting down the supply of food and other humanitarian aid into Gaza in a bid to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages and impose new conditions on the extension of the ceasefire, a day after the conclusion of the first phase of the deal.

“As of this morning, the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza will be prevented,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday, accusing Hamas of controlling “all of the supplies of goods that are being sent to the Gaza Strip” and “turning the humanitarian aid into a budget for terrorism directed against us.”

Hamas rejected those claims as “baseless lies.” Multiple humanitarian aid groups operating inside Gaza have said they distribute the aid they receive directly to those in need.

The United Nations and other aid groups accuse Israel of violating international law by blocking the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and say Israel is once again using starvation as a weapon of war, a charge Israel has denied. These same organizations have accused Israel of restricting or creating hurdles to the entry of aid throughout the war.

Twenty-five thousand trucks carrying food, hygiene supplies, tents and other necessities entered Gaza during the first six weeks of the ceasefire, stemming massive food insecurity and somewhat alleviating dire humanitarian conditions that had gripped Gaza.

Amid the rubble, families celebrating Ramadan have been able to put food on the table for the break-fast meal of Iftar. Markets had recently begun to come back to life. And regular aid distribution provided a thin safety net.

Israel’s decision to block aid into Gaza is already reverberating throughout the strip.

Food prices are already sharply rising in Gaza’s markets. And aid organizations are scrambling to ration minimal stockpiles of aid.

The World Food Programme said that bakeries and soup kitchens in Gaza could be forced to shut down in less than two weeks if more aid does not reach the strip.

Israel has threatened to take additional steps if Hamas does not agree to its demands, including cutting off electricity and water supplies to Gaza.

US-based group Human Rights Watch warned Thursday that Israel’s blockade would shut down most of the Palestinian territory’s water infrastructure within a week by starving it of fuel.

The specter of a return to war also now looms large, especially after US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to give Israel the weapons it needs “to finish the job” in Gaza unless Hamas immediately releases all of the remaining hostages held there.

But for some in Gaza, Israel’s decision to block food aid into Gaza already amounts to a return to war.

“They are fighting us through our food,” Abu Muhammad said, standing atop a pile of rubble in Jabalya. “Netanyahu is now publicly saying ‘I will close the crossings and starve you.’ No one is standing against him.”

“Who is standing with us?” he asks. “We only have God – God is with us.”

“There are more than 190 countries in the world,” the Chinese diplomat said during a news conference in Beijing.

“Should everyone stress ‘my country first’ and obsess over a position of strength, the law of the jungle would reign again, smaller and weaker countries would bear the brunt first, and international norms and order would take a body blow,” he added.

Wang, China’s most seasoned diplomat and a trusted hand for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, made the remarks while hosting his 11th such news briefing on the sidelines of the yearly “two sessions” gathering of China’s rubber stamp legislature and its top political advisory body.

The highly choregraphed event is typically a chance for Beijing to broadcast its views on pressing global issues. But this year’s gathering, which comes as Beijing is wading into a new trade war with Washington and Trump upends US foreign policy, gave Wang a well-timed platform to present China as a reliable leader and stable partner.

When asked about Trump’s decision to double additional tariffs on Chinese imports to the US earlier this week, Wang struck a defiant tone: “No country should fantasize that it can suppress China on the one hand and develop good relations with China on the other.”

“This ‘two-faced’ approach is not only not conducive to the stability of bilateral relations, but also unable to establish mutual trust,” he added.

“A big country should honor its international obligations and fulfill its due responsibilities. It should not put selfish interests before principles, still less should it wield the power to bully the weak,” Wang said, adding that China “resolutely opposes power politics and hegemony.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has upended the US role on the global stage: pulling back from international pacts and bodies, cancelling much of America’s vast foreign aid and threatening to take control of other countries’ sovereign territory. His administration has also thrown into question longstanding alliances, alienating Europe as it pivots to Russia — and earlier this week suspending American military aid to Ukraine.

Frequent criticisms of China’s aggression in South China Sea and its intimidation of the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan notwithstanding, Chinese diplomats have used the American president’s shakeup to inject more oomph into efforts to showcase their country — and not America — as being on the right side of history.

Global conflicts

Few global issues have lent themselves as neatly to that rhetoric than the war in Ukraine.

Washington’s pivot toward Moscow has not only shocked European allies but left open an opportunity for Beijing to push back against longstanding criticism of its close ties with Moscow, which have only expanded since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to media Wednesday on the margins of a meeting of China’s advisory body the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Lu Shaye, China’s special envoy for the European Affairs, called on countries to “first criticize the US” and not China for Russia ties.

“Is it still necessary to question whether China is favoring Russia? If they still have doubts about this, they should first criticize the US. The US is not just leaning (towards Russia) — it’s supporting it,” said Lu, a former ambassador to France who’s known for his brash style.

“European friends should reflect on how the Trump administration’s policies contrast with those of the Chinese government,” he said, adding that with its “mutually beneficial” approach to foreign policy, China’s “circle of friends will only grow.”

The Chinese foreign minister also addressed the war in Ukraine and Russia-China relations during his roughly 90-minute press conference.

He hailed Moscow-Beijing ties as a “constant push in a turbulent world” at a time when Trump officials have suggested they hope to drive a wedge between the two close partners.

When asked how Beijing could factor into efforts toward peace in Ukraine, which so far have appeared to be largely driven by Washington and Moscow and bypassing Europe and Ukraine, Wang reiterated China’s claim that it holds an “objective and impartial” stance on the conflict and said it “welcomes and supports all efforts for peace.”

But he also used his answer to promote a shared view between Moscow and Beijing — who have long been united in their opposition to NATO, which they have falsely blamed for sparking Russia’s invasion. `

“All parties should learn something from the crisis,” Wang said, adding in a veiled reference to the US and its Europe alliance system: “No country should build its security on the insecurity of another.”

He also indirectly criticized Washington’s approach to the conflict in Gaza, when asked about Trump’s controversial proposal last month for the US to take ownership of the war-torn enclave and redevelop it into a “Middle Eastern Riviera.”

“If the major country truly cares about the people in Gaza, it should promote comprehensive and lasting ceasefire, ramp up humanitarian assistance, observe the principle of Palestinians governing Palestine and contribute to the reconstruction,” he said.

It’s a sign of these extraordinary times that even the Kremlin’s old propagandists are scrambling to change their tune.

Across state-controlled Russian media, disparaging references to “the collective West” and “Anglo-Saxons” – thinly-veiled diplomatic code for US-led states – have been quietly dropped. Instead, it’s just what the Kremlin calls “the old world” of Europe, without its US partner, being singled out for criticism.

On his top-rated news show, Dmitry Kisylov, a prominent state mouthpiece who once boasted how Russia could reduce the United States to a smouldering pile of radioactive ash, is now talking about a “great troika,” dominating the globe: China, Russia and the US.

“Now the European war party wants to further escalate the Ukrainian conflict,” Kisylov tells his millions of Russian viewers.

But “if we simplify it, everything now is decided by the great troika – Russia, China and US – that will form the new structure of the world. The European Union as a single political force no longer exists,” he adds.

It is a bleak vision already being played out on the battlefields of Ukraine, where the Trump-administration, determined to end the bloodshed, is piling pressure on an embattled Kyiv.

To the alarm of the Western allies, US President Donald Trump has made breathtaking concessions to the Kremlin, most recently suspending US military aid to Ukraine – to the glee of the Kremlin. Trump has also rejected the idea of future NATO membership for the country, which has been fighting a full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022, and have US security guarantees.

By unilaterally starting negotiations with Russia over the heads of Ukraine and Europe, Trump has begun a controversial process of bringing Moscow in from the diplomatic cold, sowing disunity among Washington’s traditional allies. Both are longtime Kremlin objectives.

Trump’s public humiliation of Ukrainian President Zelensky during a recent visit to the White House underlined for many Russians just how seismic the US shift has been.

At times, Kremlin-controlled media struggled to reconcile the shocking events.

“On the one hand, Trump speaks about peace, and politicians close to him say they’re interested in Ukraine’s success,” observed Igor Naymushin, a reporter for Russian state media.

“But on the other, from Washington it looks like he’s giving Russia all the cards and tools to successfully continue the special military operation and directly achieve success on the battlefield,” Naymushin added, using a common euphemism in Russia for its actions in Ukraine.

In Russia, the heavily-controlled media reflects the mood of the Kremlin, as do the words of Russian officials now driving home US-European divisions while flip-flopping on Washington’s historical record.

“I do not want to be anti-European,” claimed Sergey Lavrov, the veteran Russian foreign minister. “However…. all the tragedies of the world originated in Europe or happened thanks to European policy. Colonization, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon, World War One, Adolf Hitler. If we look at history in retrospect, the Americans did not play any instigating or even inflammatory role,” he insisted in an interview posted on the official foreign ministry website.

Beyond the flattery, however, it’s hard to see what the US has extracted from Russia in return for Washington’s geopolitical about-face.

Privately, one Russian official told me the US-Russian economic cooperation deals being discussed behind closed doors may have appealed. Such deals are Putin’s “Kryptonite” for a transactional Trump, as one Russian commentator put it.

“Trump is like Superman, and our President (Putin) has found his weakness,” said Nikita Danyuk, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation to Russian state media outlet Channel 1.

“As soon as Trump hears ‘rare earth metals’, it doesn’t matter if those metals are there or not. He forgets about anything and is ready to accept any terms. It’s truly a grandmasters game by our President,” Danyuk said.

Other pro-Kremlin figures, like Olga Skabaeva, a state TV presenter, highlight the free hand the Trump administration appears to have granted Moscow.

After a senior Ukrainian official, Andrey Yermak, posted a social media calling for Russia to “stop its daily shelling of Ukraine, and immediately, if it really wants to end the war,” Skabaeva responded: “This morning Yermak woke up and thought he was Trump…”

“But he forgot that Trump does not set any conditions for Russia and Putin. Only for Zelensky and Ukraine.”

Little wonder the Kremlin’s propagandists have been falling over themselves to praise the United States.

They have changed their tune. But America has too.

The Albanian Cabinet decided on Thursday to shut down TikTok for 12 months, blaming the popular video-sharing platform for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children.

Education Minister Ogerta Manastirliu said officials are in contact with TikTok on installing filters like parental control, age verification and the inclusion of the Albanian language in the application.

Authorities had conducted 1,300 meetings with some 65,000 parents who “recommended and were in favor of the shut down or limiting the TikTok platform,” the minister said.

The Cabinet initiated the move last year after a teen stabbed another teenager to death in November after a quarrel that started on TikTok.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the government’s decision.

When Prime Minister Edi Rama said in December they were aiming at closing the social media platform, TikTok asked for “urgent clarity from the Albanian government” on the case of the stabbed teenager.

On Thursday Rama said they were in a “positive dialogue with the company,” and that TikTok would visit the country soon to offer “a series of measures on increasing the security for children.”

The company said it had “found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok.”

Albanian children comprise the largest group of TikTok users in the country, according to researchers.

There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children being inspired by content on social media to take knives to school, or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.

Authorities have increased police presence at some schools and set up other measures including training programs for teachers, students and their parents.

The opposition has not agreed with TikTok’s closure and has set March 15 for a protest against the move. It said the ban was “an act of intolerance, fear and terror from free thinking and expression.”

TikTok, which is operated by Chinese technology firm ByteDance, has faced questions in many countries and was briefly offline in the United States recently to comply with a law that requires ByteDance to divest the app or be banned in the U.S.

The app suspended its services in the US for less than a day before restoring service following assurances from Trump that he would postpone banning it.

Earlier this week, the UK’s data protection watchdog said was investigating how the app uses the personal information of 13 to 17-year-olds to deliver content recommendations to them.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said that there are growing concerns around how social media platforms were using data generated by children’s online activity to power their recommendation algorithms, and the potential for young people to see inappropriate or harmful content as a result.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who lawmakers voted to impeach and was indicted on criminal charges for declaring martial law last December, was cleared to be released from detention on Friday.

In its ruling, the court said the crime of insurrection is not included within the investigative jurisdiction of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO) – the agency that had requested the arrest warrant against Yoon.

The court also said it was questionable whether the insurrection charges indictment was filed after the defendant’s detention period had expired. It therefore canceled Yoon’s arrest warrant to “ensure procedural clarity and eliminate doubts regarding the legality of the investigation process,” it said.

Any further unresolved “legal controversies” during the criminal trial could “serve as grounds for annulment in a higher court and may also provide grounds for a retrial even after a significant amount of time has passed,” it added.

The court will now send its ruling to the detention center – which said it expects to release Yoon by the end of Friday after receiving the documents.

Yoon’s lawyers praised the ruling, saying in a statement that the court had “set the definition straight, declaring what laws and principles are,” and that its decision showed “the rule of law is alive in this country.”

The ruling adds to the uncertainty swirling around Yoon’s various legal battles and the country’s political future. South Korea’s government has been in disarray for months, with parliament also voting to impeach its prime minister and the previous acting president.

Yoon’s criminal charges are separate from his impeachment trial. The country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to uphold his impeachment or reinstate Yoon to office.

Friday’s ruling means Yoon can now await the impeachment verdict from home instead of in detention.

His expected release will undoubtedly dismay the country’s opposition – but be celebrated by supporters, many of whom have regularly gathered outside his detention center since January.

Kwon Young-se, chairman of Yoon’s ruling People Power Party, welcomed the court’s decision on Friday, calling it “an important moment to confirm that the rule of law and justice of the Republic of Korea are alive.”

He added that he hoped the Constitutional Court “will make a fair and just ruling based solely on constitutional values” during the impeachment trial.

Pope Francis thanked his supporters for their prayers on Thursday in a breathless audio message that nonetheless lifted spirits among his faithful as concerns grow for the 88-year-old pontiff’s health.

The Pope’s pre-recorded remarks, broadcast on loudspeakers at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square ahead of the nightly recitation of the rosary prayer, marked the first time supporters heard the pontiff’s voice since his hospitalization around three weeks ago.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the Square, I accompany you from here. May God bless you and the Virgin protect you. Thank you,” Pope Francis said, speaking slowly in his native Spanish in a voice where he struggled to catch his breath.

The square erupted in applause upon hearing Francis’ words, heartened to hear his voice.

Although the Pope has issued written messages from the hospital and the Vatican has given twice-daily updates on his condition, he has not been seen on photo or video since February 14 when he was hospitalized after being plagued by a string of lung-related medical struggles, including bronchitis and double pneumonia.

This is the ailing pontiff’s fourth, and now longest, hospital stay since he became pope in 2013. Francis has lived with lung-related issues for much of his life. As a young man, he contracted severe pneumonia and had part of one lung removed.

Doctors said the Pope’s health prognosis remains “reserved” after he had several episodes of acute respiratory failure on Monday, although he has remained stable since, according to the Vatican.

He has not presented any further episodes of respiratory failure and does not have a fever, the Vatican added on Thursday.

The Pope is continuing with respiratory and motor physiotherapy, the Vatican said, adding that he had an active Thursday and engaged in several work activities throughout the day while receiving the Eucharist before lunch.

The Argentinian leader’s schedule has been cleared to accommodate his intensive medical treatment.

He did not lead the Ash Wednesday service, which marks the start of Lent, for only the second time in his 12-year papacy, according to the Vatican, and has not led the Angelus prayer for three Sundays in a row.

On Friday morning the Vatican said the Pope had spent a “peaceful night” and woke up shortly after 8 am.

Europe is staring down the barrel of a stark new reality where the United States being the backbone of NATO – the alliance that has guaranteed the continent’s security for almost 80 years – is no longer a given.

President Donald Trump’s public animosity towards Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, his willingness to embrace Russia’s Vladimir Putin and recent comments casting doubt over whether he would defend NATO allies “if they don’t pay” have all forced European leaders to start thinking the previously unthinkable – is the US a reliable security partner at a time when the continent is being rocked by its biggest war since the 1940s?

But NATO without the US is far from impotent, with more than a million troops and modern weaponry at its disposal from the 31 other countries in the alliance. It also has the wealth and technological knowhow to defend itself without the US, analysts say.

The US and Germany are the biggest contributors to NATO’s military budget, civil budget and security investment program, at almost 16% each, followed by the UK at 11% and France at 10%, a NATO fact sheet says. Analysts say it wouldn’t take much for Europe to make up for the loss of Washington’s contribution.

“Europe alone (still has) a capacity to muster the resources it would need to defend itself, it’s just a question of whether (it is) willing to,” Schreer said.

And that’s the key question. Over more than 75 years and the administrations of 14 different US presidents, including the first Trump administration, the US has been the sinew that has kept the alliance together.

During the Cold War, US troops on the continent were there as a deterrent to any Soviet ambitions to expand the Warsaw Pact alliance and eventually saw out its end when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. NATO campaigns in the Balkans in the 1990s were conducted with US troops and airpower. And, until the second Trump administration took office on January 20, Washington spearheaded aid for Ukraine.

Those decades of trans-Atlantic solidarity may have come to an end in recent days, analysts say.

Trump’s Oval Office blow-up with Zelensky – after which he halted US aid to Kyiv – “felt like a deeper rupture, not just with Ukraine, but with the US ‘free world’ strategy from Truman through Reagan,” Dan Fried, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, said on the council’s website.

John Lough, a former NATO official who is now an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, sees an even more profound split in the alliance.

It’s a fracture that Lough sees as unrepairable.

“Once you start to lose part of that commitment, you effectively lose it all,” Lough said.

Some people in European circles are starting to ask whether Washington should be described “in some ways as an enemy,” he said.

But some analysts say a NATO without the US is not a bad idea.

“As soon as US allies become convinced that they can no longer trust in US capabilities to defend them when push comes to shove, they will rush to pick up the slack and work towards growing their own capabilities,” Moritz Graefrath, a postdoctoral fellow in security and foreign policy at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute, wrote in War on the Rocks last year.

“It is in this sense that — perhaps counterintuitively — a withdrawal of US forces will create an even stronger, not weaker, Europe,” Graefrath wrote.

Prime Minister of NATO member Poland, Donald Tusk, thinks this process has started already.

“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia – we are simply stronger,” he said ahead of a European Union summit this week. “We just had to start believing in it. And today it seems to be happening.”

What does Europe have?

In concept, a European military could be formidable.

Turkey has NATO’s largest armed forces after the United States, with 355,200 active military personnel, according to the Military Balance 2025, compiled by the IISS. It’s followed by France (202,200), Germany (179,850), Poland (164,100), Italy (161,850), the United Kingdom (141,100), Greece (132,000) and Spain (122,200).

Turkey also has the most army personnel, which make up of the majority of frontline ground troops, with (260,200), France (113,800), Italy (94,000), Greece (93,000), Poland (90,600) the UK (78,800), Spain (70,200) and Germany (60,650), according to the IISS report.

In contrast, there were about 80,000 US troops assigned or deployed to bases in NATO countries as of June 2024, a July 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says.

Most of those US troops are in Germany (35,000), Italy (12,000) and the UK (10,000), the CRS says.

Some of the larger NATO nations also have weapons equal to or many times better than what Russia has.

Take aircraft carriers for instance. While Russia has a single, antiquated aircraft carrier, the UK alone has two modern carriers capable of launching F-35B stealth fighters. France, Italy and Spain field aircraft carriers or amphibious ships capable of launching fighter jets, according to the Military Balance.

Aside from the US, France and the UK maintain nuclear forces, with both deploying ballistic missile submarines.

The NATO allies besides the US have about 2,000 fighter and ground-attack jets among them, with dozens of new F-35 stealth jets included in that number.

Ground forces include modern tanks, including German Leopards and British Challengers, donated units of which are now serving in the Ukrainian military. European NATO countries can field powerful cruise missiles, like the joint Franco-British SCALP/Storm Shadow, which has also proven itself on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The Military Balance 2025 report notes that Europe is taking steps to improve its military forces without US help. In 2024, six European countries united in a project to develop ground-launched cruise missiles, made moves to increase munitions production capacity and to diversify their supplier base, looking to countries like Brazil, Israel and South Korea as new sources for military hardware.

Analysts say even if the US were to completely pull out of Europe, it would leave important infrastructure behind.

The US has 31 permanent bases in Europe, according to the Congressional Research Service – naval, air, ground and command-and-control facilities that would be available to the countries where they are located if the US were to leave.

And Graefrath notes, that infrastructure would not be lost to Washington if there is regret after a possible US withdrawal.

“It leaves much of the US military infrastructure intact for an extended period (ensuring) that the United States retains the ability to make a military return if Europe were to fail to respond as predicted,” he wrote.

What comes next?

Some hope that the talk of a US withdrawal from NATO is just Trump bluster aimed at pushing allies to cough up and spend more on defense.

They say the world, and another key US alliance, have been here before – during Trump’s first administration, when he reportedly asked the Pentagon to look at options for drawing down US troops stationed in South Korea as protection against nuclear-armed North Korea.

That came as Trump prepared for meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un at which he hoped to persuade Kim to commit to giving up his nuclear arsenal.

But Kim rejected all entreaties for him to give up his nuclear weapons program.

The Trump-Kim meeting “was sold as a big success despite that fact that it wasn’t,” said Schreer.

Afterward, the US returned to “business as usual” on the Korean Peninsula, Schreer said. The US – with tens of thousands of troops in South Korea – kept them there. Bilateral exercises with Seoul’s forces resumed, US warships visited South Korean ports and US Air Force bombers flew over the region.

The same could occur in Europe if Trump doesn’t get what he wants from Putin, analysts said. NATO could go on, with the recent threats to depart just a small bump in the road.

“If Putin tries to … screw Donald too much, even Donald Trump might recognize that,” Schreer said.