Hamas warns Israeli invasion of Rafah will ‘torpedo’ truce talks - Al Jazeera English

Palestinian group issues warning as Biden says Israel shouldn’t invade without ‘credible’ plan to protect civilians.

Hamas has warned Israel that a ground offensive in Rafah would imperil negotiations on a truce and the exchange of captives and prisoners, as United States President Joe Biden said an assault should not go ahead without a “credible” plan to protect civilians in the city.

Aid groups and foreign governments, including Israel’s key ally the US, have voiced deep concern over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to extend ground military operations into the far-southern Gaza city.

Rafah, on the border with Egypt, is the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip in its four-month war against Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack.

“Any attack by the occupation army on the city of Rafah would torpedo the exchange negotiations,” a Hamas leader told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Netanyahu has told troops to prepare to enter the city that now hosts more than half of Gaza’s total population, spurring concern about the impact on displaced civilians.

A senior Biden administration official said on Sunday that negotiators working on a phased framework deal to release the remaining hostages have made “real progress” over the last few weeks.

The hostage release deal was the main focus of a 45-minute telephone call between Biden and Netanyahu on Sunday, although there were still some “significant” gaps to close, the official said, adding, “It’s pretty much there.”

Biden told Netanyahu the Gaza advance should not go ahead in the absence of a “credible” plan to ensure “the safety” of people sheltering there, the White House said.

Some 1.4 million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah, with many living in tents while food, water and medicine are becoming increasingly scarce.

Netanyahu had told US broadcaster ABC News that the Rafah operation would go ahead until Hamas is eliminated, adding Israel would provide “safe passage” to civilians wishing to leave.

When pressed about where they could go, Netanyahu said: “You know, the areas that we’ve cleared north of Rafah, plenty of areas there. But we are working out a detailed plan.”

‘Targeted raids’

Mediators held new talks in Cairo for a pause in the fighting and the release of some of the 132 hostages Israel says are still in Gaza, including 29 thought to be dead.

Hamas seized around 240 hostages on October 7, according to Israeli authorities . Dozens were released during a one-week truce in November.

Hamas’s military wing on Sunday said two hostages had been killed and eight others seriously wounded in Israeli bombardment in recent days.

Netanyahu has faced calls for early elections and mounting protests over his administration’s failure to bring home the hostages.

North of Rafah on Sunday, Israel’s military said troops were conducting “targeted raids” in the west of Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city, while Hamas reported violent clashes and said air strikes also hit Rafah.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of about 1,139 people, mostly civilians, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel has responded with a relentless offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip that the territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 28,176 people, mostly women and children.

The Israeli assault has left much of the territory in ruins and displaced more than 80 percent of the population.

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Donald Trump has 11-point polling lead over Joe Biden on handling of economy - Financial Times

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1. Donald Trump has 11-point polling lead over Joe Biden on handling of economy  Financial Times
2. Election 2024 FT Poll News: Trump Would Handle Economy Better Than Biden  Bloomberg
3. Lawmakers see blue-collar voters as key in Biden-Trump rematch  Roll Call
4. Trump has 11-point lead over Biden on economy, FT poll shows  The Boston Globe

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Middle East crisis live: International warnings mount ahead of planned Rafah offensive - The Guardian

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces have prevented oxygen from reaching the al-Amal hospital for over a week, resulting in the deaths of three patients.

The PRCS said Israel has also not provided medical equipment, and continues to block the delivery of fuel for the hospital’s electricity generators, despite the fuel supply running out in two days, risking a shutdown.

In a post on X, the PRCS wrote:

The Israeli occupation forces claim to have delivered oxygen cylinders to al-Amal hospital, but in reality, they have prevented oxygen from reaching the hospital for over a week, resulting in the deaths of three patients, despite continuous coordination efforts with international organisations.

Two days ago, after significant pressure, we obtained approval to bring oxygen to the hospital. The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance transported 25 oxygen cylinders from Nasser Hospital.

However, the occupation authorities demanded that the cylinders be placed closest to the hospital, promising to deliver them. The following day, only 21 oxygen cylinders were placed in front of the hospital building by the occupation forces.

A total of 28,176 Palestinian people have been killed and 67,784 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

An estimated 112 Palestinians were killed and 173 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

Most of the casualties have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.

Al Jazeera reports on the detentions carried out by Israeli troops across the occupied West Bank in the morning.

The outlet writes:

The Palestinian Wafa news agency says the Israeli forces arrested three young men at the northern entrance of the city of Jericho.

The arrests were made as they passed through a military checkpoint at the northern entrance to the city.

Earlier, arrests across the occupied West Bank were reported by the agency, including in the cities of Hebron, Yatta, al-Bireh and Bethlehem.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, said she was confident about the economic outlook despite uncertainties around war and geopolitics as the global economy has remained resilient.

In a speech at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Georgieva said the IMF would publish a paper on Monday that shows phasing out explicit energy subsidies could save $336bn in the Middle East, equivalent to the economies of Iraq and Libya combined.

In its latest regional economic update published last month, the IMF revised its GDP growth forecast for the Middle East and North Africa region downwards to 2.9% this year, due in part to short term oil production cuts.

“While uncertainties are still high, we can be a bit more confident about the economic outlook, because the global economy has been surprisingly resilient,” she was quoted by Reuters as saying in the speech.

Speaking about Israel’s war in Gaza, Georgieva warned of widening consequences.

“This exceptionally uncertain moment compounds the challenges of economies that are still recovering from previous shocks. And further widening of the conflict would aggravate the economic harm,” she added.

The threat of an Israeli incursion into Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah persisted on Sunday, with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promising “safe passage” to civilians displaced there, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Despite criticism, Netanyahu reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation to the city. In an interview airing Sunday on ABC News, Netanyahu said: “We’re going to do it”.

He said he agreed “with the Americans” that the offensive would need to first plan for the impact on civilians.

“We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave,” he said, according to published extracts of the interview and reported by AFP.

But it is unclear where such a large number of people, who are pressed up against the border with Egypt and sheltering in makeshift tents, can go.

Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah almost daily, even after telling civilians in recent weeks to seek shelter there from fierce ground combat in Khan Younis, just to the north.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said on Friday that a major Israeli offensive in Rafah “can only lead to an additional layer of endless tragedy”.

Netanyahu’s office has said four Hamas battalions were in Rafah and Israel could not achieve its stated goal of eliminating the militant group while they remained there.

The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, and Dutch foreign minister Hanke Bruins Slot have joined the chorus of international concern about the promised assault on Rafah.

“Deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah - over half of Gaza’s population are sheltering in the area,” Cameron said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Hard to see how large-scale military operations in such a densely populated area would not lead to many civilian casualties and a bigger humanitarian catastrophe. This is unjustifiable,” Bruins Slot said.

We are restarting our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military offensive to Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, despite international condemnation with more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people crammed into the area.

In an interview airing on Sunday, Netanyahu promised “safe passage” to civilians displaced there.

More on that story shortly. Here is an overview of some of the other latest key developments:

• Airstrikes on the Gaza Strip’s southernmost town of Rafah have killed at least 28 people. Each strike killed multiple members of three families, including 10 children, the youngest just three months old, the Associated Press reported.

• Hamas on Saturday warned that there could be “tens of thousands” of dead and injured if the Israeli military attacked Rafah. In a statement, Hamas said that any military action would have catastrophic repercussion. AFP said witnesses reported new strikes on Rafah early on Saturday, raising fears among Palestinians of a looming ground invasion.

• Israel’s plans for a military offensive on Rafah in the Gaza Strip are “alarming”, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borell, said.

• Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said any Israeli ground offensive on Rafah would have “disastrous consequences,” and asserted that Israel aims to eventually force the Palestinians out of their land. Another mediator, Qatar, also warned of disaster, while Saudi Arabia spoke of “very serious repercussions”.

• German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on X that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “humanitarian catastrophe in the making”. She said, “The people in Gaza cannot disappear into thin air”.

• An Egyptian official told the Guardian that under no circumstances would fleeing Palestinians be allowed to cross the border into the Sinai peninsula, and any attempt to relocate them to Egyptian soil would collapse the peace deal between Egypt and Israel. The population of Rafah has swelled to more than 1.5 million people – roughly three-quarters of Gaza’s population – as people flee fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

• Israel appears to be in breach of the orders issued a fortnight ago by the international court of justice requiring it to take immediate steps to protect Palestinians’ rights and cease all activities that could constitute genocide, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, has said.

• A food shipment for 1.1 million Palestinians is stuck at an Israeli port due to recent restrictions from Israeli authorities, says the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as an estimated 25% of families in Gaza face catastrophic hunger. The agency said that the Israeli contractor they work with received a call from Israeli customs authorities “ordering them not to process any UNRWA goods”.

• A senior Hamas official survived an assassination attempt in Lebanon by an alleged Israeli strike, a Palestinian security source told AFP. Another source told Reuters that the person targeted was close to Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas deputy chief killed last month in a suspected Israeli strike on a suburb of Beirut. Sources said a Hezbollah member and two civilians were killed by the strike in the coastal town of Jadra, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Lebanese border.

• The Gaza health ministry on Saturday said that at least 117 people were killed in overnight bombardment, including more than 20 in strikes in Rafah. It also said 152 were injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.

• A six-year-old Palestinian girl who went missing after the family’s car came under fire in Gaza has been found dead, the Hamas-run health ministry and her relatives said, accusing Israel of killing her. The last time Hind Rajab had been seen was about two weeks ago when she was surrounded by dead relatives after becoming trapped in the vehicle as they tried to flee Gaza City as Israeli forces advanced. The PPRCS had frequently posted updates on its X account pleading for updates and information on Rajab.

• The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that three children were killed in a strike in Rafah. The PCRS also said that Israeli forces raided al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s biggest city, on Friday after a weeks-long siege during which the PRCS reported “intense artillery shelling and heavy gunfire”.

• The PRCS accused Israeli forces of the ‘deliberate targeting’ of a PRCS ambulance that resulted in the death of two of its medics, Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun.

• The Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said neither Iran nor Lebanon had sought to expand hostilities in the region. “Iran and Lebanon confirm that war is not the solution, and that we absolutely never sought to expand it,” he told a press conference alongside his Lebanese counterpart in Beirut on Saturday.

• “Israel’s declared ground offensive on Rafah would be catastrophic and must not proceed,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. “There is no place that is safe in Gaza and no way for people to leave.”

• Israel’s army has deployed artificial intelligence-enabled military technology in combat for the first time in Gaza, raising fears about the use of autonomous weapons in modern warfare.

• Hezbollah said on Saturday it had seized an Israeli Skylark drone over Lebanese airspace “in good condition”. The Skylark is a small, unmanned aerial vehicle typically used for surveillance and produced by Israel-based weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.

• The Saudi foreign ministry cautioned against the “extremely dangerous repercussions” of Israel “storming and targeting” the city of Rafah. It said “this continued violation of international law and international humanitarian law” confirmed the necessity of convening the UN security council urgently “to prevent Israel from causing an imminent humanitarian catastrophe”.

• Israeli occupation forces continued their siege of the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis for the 20th day and reached its northern gate, reports Al Jazeera. “The occupation forces have been besieging us for 20 days and we are suffering from a shortage of food and drink,” Nahidh Abu Tamiyya, the head of the surgical department told an Al Jazeera correspondent.

• Two Palestinians have been killed by an Israeli sniper – one in front of the Nasser medical complex reception gate, and the other in the emergency department, according to Wafa news agency. It said that medical teams cannot move between the complex’s buildings due to the snipers, and that the lives of 300 health personnel, 450 patients and injured, and 10,000 displaced people inside the Nasser medical complex are threatened.

• The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarinisaid he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks. Lazzarini said he did not probe Israel’s claims against the employees before dismissing them and launching an investigation.

• Three people were killed in on Israeli airstrikes that targeted a building in an upmarket area near Damascus on early Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

• Iran’s football federation said on Saturday it had asked world football’s governing body, Fifa, to suspend Israel’s football federation over the country’s war in Gaza.

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Trump says he would 'encourage' Russia to attack Nato allies who do not pay their bills - BBC

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By James FitzGerald

BBC News

Donald Trump has said he would "encourage" Russia to attack any Nato member that fails to pay its bills as part of the Western military alliance.

At a rally on Saturday, he said he had once told a leader he would not protect a nation behind on its payments, and would "encourage" the aggressors to "do whatever the hell they want".

Members of Nato commit to defend any nation in the bloc that gets attacked.

The White House called the comments "appalling and unhinged".

Addressing crowds during the rally in South Carolina, Mr Trump said he had made his comments about Russia during a meeting of leaders of Nato countries.

He recalled that the leader of a "big country" had presented a hypothetical situation in which he was not meeting his financial obligations within Nato and had come under attack from Moscow.

Mr Trump said the leader had asked if the US would come to his country's aid in that scenario, which prompted him to issue a rebuke.

"I said: 'You didn't pay? You're delinquent?'... 'No I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.'"

• What is Nato and which countries are members?

A White House spokesman said the former president was "encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes", and labelled the comments "appalling and unhinged".

He added that the statement "endangers American national security, global stability and our economy at home".

Mr Trump, the favourite to run again as the Republican candidate in this year's US presidential election, has long been critical of Nato and what he sees as an excessive financial burden on the United States to guarantee the defence of 30 other nations.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, after Mr Trump left office. He has since bemoaned the amount of US money sent to Ukraine, which is not a Nato member.

The US has provided Ukraine with more financial support than any other country - totalling more than $44bn (£34bn) since the 2022 invasion, according to White House figures from December.

However, Republicans in Congress have since the turn of the year blocked all new funding - demanding tough measures to restrict migration into the US on its southern border, and then refusing the amended bill when it was presented earlier this week.

Mr Trump celebrated that rejection during Saturday's rally, saying the proposals made by President Biden had been "disastrous".

The two issues have now been successfully separated, meaning that senators are now able to debate the aid money separately.

Related Topics

• War in Ukraine
• Republican Party
• US election 2024
• Donald Trump
• Nato
• United States

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Kharkiv: Seven 'burned alive' as Russian drones hit oil depot - BBC

Reuters

By Jaroslav Lukiv

BBC News

Seven people have been killed in a Russian drone attack that caused a huge blaze in Ukraine's north-eastern city of Kharkiv, local officials say.

Among the victims were two parents with their three young boys who "burned alive" in their house, regional deputy police chief Serhiy Blovinov said.

"One whole street... turned into a hellish melted mass," he told Ukrainian TV after the Friday night attack.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 15 private houses had burned completely.

President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed a "just response" to Russian "terror".

He identified the three killed children as Oleksiy, 7, Mykhailo, 4 and Pavlo, who was only seven months old.

An elderly couple died in another house that was set ablaze on the same Kotelna street in the city's eastern Nemyshlianskyi district.

Mayor Terekhov said "the Russian aggressor is ruining our city" in a video message from the scene. "But we will overcome. We will win," he added.

He said the Russian attack left 57 local residents Russia left "without a home, without documents, without money, without personal belongings".

Ukraine's officials had earlier said that a petrol station was hit - but later corrected their report.

Kharkiv - Ukraine's second-largest city near the Russian border - has seen almost daily deadly Russian attacks in recent days.

Separately, one man was reported injured in Ukraine's southern city of Odesa in another Russian drone attack on Friday night.

Russia's military has made no public comments on the reported strikes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine in February 2022.

Related Topics

• War in Ukraine
• Russia
• Ukraine

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Hungarian President Novak resigns over child sexual abuse pardon - FRANCE 24 English

Hungarian President Katalin Novak, a close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, announced her resignation Saturday following outrage over a pardon granted to a man implicated in a child sexual abuse case.

Issued on: 10/02/2024 - 21:04

2 min

Soon afterwards another Orban supporter, former justice minister Judit Varga, announced she was withdrawing from public life over the affair.

The announcements followed growing pressure from opposition politicians and protests outside the presidential palace Friday evening.

"I am resigning my post," said 46-year-old Novak, acknowledging that she had made a mistake.

"I apologise to those who I hurt and all the victims who may have had the impression that I did not support them," the former minister for family policy added.

"I am, I was and I will remain in favour of protecting children and families."

Novak became the first woman to hold the essentially ceremonial role of president in March 2022.

The controversy was sparked by the pardon granted to a former deputy director of a children's home. He had helped to cover up his boss's sexual abuse of the children in their charge. 

The decision was made last April during a visit by Pope Francis to Budapest.

Since the independent news site 444 revealed the decision last week, the country's opposition had been calling for Novak's resignation. 

On Friday evening demonstrators gathered outside the presidential palace and three presidential advisers quit their posts.

Orban must 'take responsibility' 

Novak, who had been in Qatar to attend Hungary's match against Kazakhstan at the World Water Polo Championships on Friday, swiftly returned to Budapest.

As soon as her plane had landed she emerged and announced her resignation.

"The pardon granted and the lack of explanation may have given rise to doubts about zero tolerance of paedophilia," she said.

"But there can be no doubt on this subject", she added, before offering her apologies.

Minutes after her announcement, another ally of Orban, Judit Varga, also announced her "withdrawal from public life".

As justice minister, a post she quit in order to lead a European Parliament election bid, she had approved the pardon.

"I renounce my mandate as an MP and the head of the list for the European Parliament," she said on Facebook.

"It was quick: first Novak, then Varga," said Hungarian MEP Anna Donath, reacting to the news.

"But we know that no important decision can be taken in Hungary without Viktor Orban's approval," added Donath, a member of the small liberal Momentum party, on Facebook. 

"He has to take responsibility and explain what happened... it's his system".

In an attempt to calm national anger, Orban had announced on Thursday that he wanted to revise Hungary's constitution to exclude the possibility of pardoning paedophile criminals.

Novak, who has been temporarily replaced by the Speaker of Parliament Laszlo Kover, was named last year by Forbes magazine as the most influential woman in Hungarian public life.

Her departure leaves Hungary's political landscape even more male-dominated. Since mid-2023 there have been no women in Viktor Orban's 16-man cabinet.

(AFP)

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Dozens killed in Rafah airstrikes as full-scale Israeli ground offensive looms - The Guardian

Airstrikes on the Gaza Strip’s southernmost town of Rafah have killed at least 44 people as more than a million civilians sheltering in the area brace for the possibility of a full-scale Israeli ground offensive on the territory’s last place of relative safety.

As Israeli forces have expanded ground operations steadily southwards in their war against Hamas over the past four months, Rafah – situated on the border with Egypt, and home before the war to about 280,000 people – has become the last refuge for more than half of the strip’s population of 2.3 million.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Friday that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and defence ministry to draw up plans for troops to enter Rafah and evacuate civilians, leading to widespread panic in the overcrowded makeshift tent camps that now cover the area.

With two-thirds of Gaza already under evacuation orders, widespread destruction throughout the coastal strip and continuing fighting, it is unclear to where such a large number of people could safely be moved.

The Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, said on Saturday that an Israeli ground offensive on Rafah would have “disastrous consequences,” and that Israel’s aim was eventually to force the Palestinians from their land.

An Egyptian official told the Guardian that under no circumstances would fleeing Palestinians be allowed to cross the border into the Sinai peninsula, and that any attempt to relocate them to Egyptian soil would collapse the peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

A doctor at a UN-run clinic in Rafah said: “I encountered an elderly woman who was looking for a wheelchair for her disabled husband. She said: ‘If I can’t get this chair for my husband, it will be our end. With the occupation in Gaza, how can I take him to Sinai? I cannot leave him alone in Gaza.’”

Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah almost daily, even after telling civilians in recent weeks to seek shelter there from fierce ground combat in Khan Younis, just to the north.

Three airstrikes on homes in the Rafah area killed 44 people overnight into Saturday, according to a health official and Associated Press journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals. The strikes killed members of three families, including 12 children, the youngest three months old.

In Khan Younis, Israeli forces opened fire at Nasser hospital, the area’s largest, killing at least two people and wounding five, according to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. Ahmed Maghrabi, a physician at the hospital, said in a Facebook post that Israeli tanks had reached the hospital gates on Saturday morning, trapping those inside and making the facility inaccessible to those in need of medical attention.

Israel’s threats of a full-scale attack on Rafah – designed to put pressure on the Hamas leadership, which is believed to be hiding in tunnels in the area – have not yet been realised, and Netanyahu did not provide details or a timeline in his announcement.

He has, however, implied the operation is inevitable, and appears ready to push ahead despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that a Rafah offensive would be a “bloodbath”.

“It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu’s office said on Friday.

Outside Israel, criticism of his statement was swift. The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said on Friday that a major Israeli offensive in Rafah “can only lead to an additional layer of endless tragedy”.

Hamas said in a statement on Saturday that any Israeli military action in Rafah would have catastrophic repercussions that “may lead to tens of thousands of martyrs and injured”.

The Palestinian militant group, which assumed control of Gaza in 2007, said it would hold “the American administration, international community and the Israeli occupation” responsible if that happened.

Israel’s plans for Rafah drew unusually fierce criticism from the US, the Jewish state’s most important ally, after days of increasing friction between Netanyahu and the Biden administration.

Joe Biden described Israel’s military response in Gaza as “over the top” and said he was seeking a “sustained pause” in fighting in remarks to reporters earlier this week.

“I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top,” the US president said after his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, left the region without any progress on a ceasefire deal.

Biden said he had been pushing for a deal to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, increase humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians and pause the fighting temporarily to allow the release of hostages taken by Hamas.

US officials have also made clear to their Israeli counterparts that Washington expects significant progress towards a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict at the end of the fighting. Netanyahu, however, is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and his hawkish governing coalition could collapse if he is seen to be making too many concessions.

“I’m pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire,” Biden said. “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop.”

Netanyahu this week flatly rejected the terms of a Hamas counter-proposal for a ceasefire and exchange of hostages and prisoners after the success of a week-long truce in late November. He has also rebuffed US pressure, saying there could be no solution to Israel’s security issues except “absolute victory”.

He said at televised press conference that “surrendering to Hamas’s delusional conditions”, which include a call for a 135-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of the remaining 130 or so hostages, “would lead to another massacre, and to a great tragedy on Israel that no one would be willing to accept”.

In a blow to the hopes of the families of the remaining hostages being held by Hamas, Netanyahu also said they would be released only by continued military pressure on the militant group.

Israel’s war in Gaza, now in its fifth month, was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented offensive of 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted as bargaining chips.

The Israeli offensive has killed 28,000 people in Gaza, displaced more than 85% of the population and reduced over half of the strip’s infrastructure to rubble.

According to the UN, about 10% of children under five in Gaza are showing signs of acute malnutrition. Food deliveries that reach the strip are regularly mobbed by desperate and hungry people, residents say.

Violence triggered by the war in Gaza is escalating across the Middle East, as hostilities between Iran and Israel, as well as the US, move increasingly into the open through the actions of Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

During a visit to Lebanon on Saturday, the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said a political solution was the only way to end the Gaza conflict, and that Tehran was in talks with Saudi officials on the issue.

He also warned Israel against taking any steps towards a full-scale war against the powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, saying it would be Netanyahu’s “last day.” Hezbollah and Israel have traded near-daily fire across the disputed Israeli-Lebanese border since 7 October.

A senior Hamas official survived what Palestinian security forces called an Israeli assassination attempt in Beirut on Saturday in which two civilians were killed. Israel did not immediately comment on the allegation, and rarely acknowledges drone and airstrikes conducted beyond Palestinian territory.

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2024-02-10 19:42:00Z
CBMifGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZWd1YXJkaWFuLmNvbS93b3JsZC8yMDI0L2ZlYi8xMC9kb3plbnMta2lsbGVkLWluLXJhZmFoLWFpcnN0cmlrZXMtYXMtZnVsbC1zY2FsZS1pc3JhZWxpLWdyb3VuZC1vZmZlbnNpdmUtbG9vbXPSAQA