World roundup: July 2 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Sudan, Haiti, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

July 2, 1582: Two vassals of the deceased Japanese daimyō Oda Nobunaga, Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, meet at the Battle of Yamazaki, with Hideyoshi’s army emerging victorious. Hideyoshi thus exacted vengeance for Mitsuhide’s rebellion, during which Nobunaga had committed suicide on June 21. Effective political authority passed from the Oda clan to the Toyotomi clan, where it resided until Tokugawa Ieyasu took it from them in 1600.

Japanese artist Sadahide’s 1863 War Council Before the Battle of Yamazaki (Wikimedia Commons)

July 2, 1853: Citing the Ottomans’ supposed failure to protect Christian religious sites as a pretext, Russian Tsar Nicolas I sends an army across the Pruth River to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia, both nominally still Ottoman territories. Nicolas assumed that the European powers would not begrudge him a little annexation, as a treat. He was wrong, and the Crimean War ensued.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Hamas officials said on Wednesday that they are reviewing the latest Gaza ceasefire proposal and are discussing ways to “bridge gaps” with Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Late Tuesday in the US, Donald Trump declared that the Israeli government “has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE,” an impressive bit of word salad even by his prodigious standards. It may be worth noting that nobody in the Israeli government has really spoken about this alleged breakthrough except in cryptic terms, leaving open the possibility that this is all a diplomatic charade of some sort. In the meantime, the Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 78 people in Gaza on Wednesday. That number includes the director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, Marwan al-Sultan, killed along with his wife and children in an IDF airstrike on his home.

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