G7 foreign ministers set for talks in Japan, Israel-Gaza war to top agenda

Al Jazeera :
Foreign ministers of seven global powers along with the European Union are gathering in Japan for two days of talks that will centre on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Top diplomats of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the EU – which make up the Group of Seven (G7) bloc of democracies – are due to hold talks in Tokyo on Tuesday – as the death toll in Gaza mounts and concerns grow that the war could devolve into a regional crisis.

Israel, after a surprise attack on October 7 by Hamas, the group that rules Gaza, that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, has waged a monthlong assault on the Gaza Strip, relentlessly bombarding the enclave and sending in ground forces for the first time since 2014. Israeli attacks have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them children, according to Gaza’s officials, while displacing 1.5 million people and decimating much of the territory’s infrastructure.

The war will feature prominently in the G7 meeting, but reaching common ground may be challenging due to the countries’ varying political and economic loyalties, analysts said.