World roundup: July 7 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Africa, Ukraine, and elsewhere

PROGRAMMING NOTE: As I noted yesterday I will be taking several days off from the newsletter for our annual summer break starting Thursday, so Wednesday night’s roundup will be our last until Sunday, July 20.

TODAY IN HISTORY

July 7, 1798: The United States Congress annuls the 1778 Treaty of Alliance between the US and France. The annulment is considered the opening act of the 1798-1800 “Quasi-War” between the two countries. Congressional opinion (and public opinion, for that matter) in the US turned decisively against France following the “XYZ Affair,” in which a US diplomatic delegation to Paris (there to discuss the French Navy’s seizure of multiple US commercial ships over the previous two years) took offense at French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’s insistence that they pay for the privilege of speaking with him. The conflict that ensued was never formally declared a war but did involve several clashes between US and French naval vessels and/or privateers. It finally ended with the Convention of 1800 and a formal statement of US neutrality.

This 1981 painting by John William Schmidt depicts a February 9 1799 engagement between the USS Constellation and the French ship L’Insurgente in which the latter was captured (Wikimedia Commons)

July 7, 1892: Independence advocates in the Philippines found the Katipunan, which means “association” and is short for a Tagalog name that I won’t try to reproduce but means “Supreme and Honorable Association of the Children of the Nation” in English. Originally a secret society, the Katipunan splintered off of the reformist La Liga Filipina and included Liga members who supported armed revolution against the Spanish colonial authorities. Its discovery by those colonial authorities in 1896 was one of the immediate triggers for the Philippine Revolution.

July 7, 1937: The Marco Polo Bridge Incident, a clash between Chinese and Japanese troops near Wanping, ends with the Chinese force holding the bridge but still obliged to make concessions to the superior Japanese force in order to end the confrontation. This relatively minor incident sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War, which continued into and throughout World War II.

July 7, 1991: The Brioni Agreement ends the Slovenian War of Independence. The agreement required Slovenia and Croatia to delay their independence bids for three months in exchange for the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from both republics. In reality this marked the end of the Slovenian phase of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, while having no effect on the war in Croatia.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah jihadist group has reportedly claimed responsibility for setting a number of wildfires that are currently raging in parts of northwestern Syria’s Latakia province. Given that Latakia’s population is predominantly Alawite this would be entirely in keeping with the group’s penchant for attacking Syrian religious minorities. As for the group from which Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah split, the Trump administration announced on Monday that it is lifting the foreign terrorist organization designation from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. That designation was embarrassing now that HTS is more or less coterminous with the Syrian government.