Netanyahu insists on Hamas’ ‘destruction’ as part of plan to end war in Gaza
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has insisted on Hamas’s destruction and said Israel’s conditions for ending the war in Gaza remain unchanged.
It came a day after Joe Biden said Israel was offering a new roadmap towards a full ceasefire in Gaza.
The US president said Israel’s three-stage offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza.
It would also see the “release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded, in exchange for (the) release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners,” Biden said.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Netanyahu described the commitment to a permanent ceasefire before Hamas military and government capacity is destroyed as a “non-starter”.
Netanyahu said:
Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.
Under the proposal, Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter.
The Prime Minister’s Office:
Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) June 1, 2024
A senior administration official said yesterday the four-and-a-half-page proposal had been endorsed by the Israeli government and had been presented to Hamas on Friday.
But it was unclear how enthusiastically Netanyahu had embraced the proposal, which Hamas said it had responded to “positively” (see earlier post at 08.31).
Key events
Rafah resident: ‘artillery bombardment has not stopped for a single moment’ overnight
On Saturday, residents reported tank fire in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in west Rafah, while witnesses in the east and centre of the southern city described intense artillery shelling.
“From the early hours of the night until this morning, the aerial and artillery bombardment has not stopped for a single moment,” a resident from west Rafah told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“There are a number of occupation (Israeli) snipers in high-rise buildings overseeing all areas of Tal al-Sultan … making the situation very dangerous.”
There was also shelling and gunfire from the Israeli army in Gaza City, in the north of the Palestinian territory, according to an AFP reporter.
For months, Israel urged Palestinian civilians to seek safety in Rafah as much of the rest of Gaza saw fighting and intense Israeli bombardments. Now Palestinian people are being told to move again, as Israeli troops move in to the last area that had not seen ground operations, but residents say there is nowhere else safe to go.
Growing international outrage about the Israeli push into Rafah, including an order from the UN’s top court to stop the offensive, and sharp criticism from the US after last week’s widely condemned attack, in which an Israeli airstrike killed at least 45 people in a tent camp in Rafah, have not had any apparent impact on Israel’s military plans.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, received a call from the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Saturday during which they discussed the latest Gaza ceasefire proposal, according to the Saudi state news agency.
Blinken also discussed the proposal with foreign ministers from Turkey and Jordan on Friday, the US state department said.
He “underscored that the proposal is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the long-term security of the region,” state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Here are some of the latest images coming out of Gaza amid the continuing Israeli on assault on the enclave:
European Commission disburses €16m in aid to Unrwa
The European Commission has processed a second tranche of assistance of €25m (£21.4m) for the Palestinian Authority to contribute to the payment of salaries and pensions of Palestinian civil servants and disbursed €16m (£13.7m) for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) to provide basic services such as health and education to Palestinian refugees.
It said the €25m payment would provide a vital contribution to the “significant challenges facing the Palestinian economy”, which has seen nearly all economic activity in Gaza wiped out by the war.
“With regards to Unrwa, in light of the progress made by the agency against the agreed conditions and measures, the commission has also processed the payment corresponding to the second tranche of €16m,” the commission said in a statement.
The EU is the largest provider of external assistance to the Palestinians.
We are disbursing €41 million to the Palestinian Authority and @UNRWA to support the payment of salaries and pensions, and to provide basic services such as health and education to Palestinian refugees.
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) May 31, 2024
The commission said Unrwa had confirmed that “ex-ante vetting and screening of its staff against the relevant EU sanctions list is carried out”.
Last month, Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said that all EU donors had resumed their support to Unrwa, which has been a vital source of aid in Gaza.
Allegations by Israel of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency.
At the end of April, Germany said it would restore cooperation and funding to Unrwa operations in the Gaza Strip after an independent review said Israel had not provided evidence to back up its claims.
Among those who have urged Hamas to agree to the proposal for a Gaza ceasefire was the UK foreign secretary David Cameron, who wrote on X that the group “must accept this deal so we can see a stop in the fighting”.
With a new hostage agreement on the table, Hamas must accept this deal so we can see a stop in the fighting, the hostages released and returned to their families and a flood of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
As we’ve long argued a stop in the fighting can be turned into a permanent…
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) May 31, 2024
UN chief António Guterres, meanwhile, “strongly hopes” the latest development “will lead to an agreement by the parties for lasting peace”, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said the Israeli offer “provides a glimpse of hope and a possible path out of the war’s deadlock”, while EU chief Ursula von der Leyen welcomed what she called a “balanced and realistic” approach to end the war.
A senior US official said the deal outlined by Joe Biden was almost identical to the terms Hamas had been demanding (but had previously been rejected), including a route to a permanent ceasefire.
It was unclear how enthusiastically Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had embraced the peace proposal, which the US president said had been put on the table by the Israeli government.
Iran has criticised the EU’s imposition of new sanctions on high-ranking officials and the Revolutionary Guards for supplying drones to Russia and its Middle East allies. You can read the EU press release here.
The new EU’s measures target Iran’s defence minister, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, and Esmail Qaani, the commander of the Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, among others.
The sanctions also target an armed forces command centre, the head of a state aviation firm and the Kavan Electronics Behrad company.
The Islamic republic’s foreign ministry described the move as “regrettable”, saying they were based on “repeated, absurd, and baseless excuses and accusations”.
“The European Union … once again resorted to the obsolete and ineffective tool of sanctions against the powerful Iran,” ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani said.
The sanctions forbid any EU citizen or company from engaging in business with the listed individuals and organisations.
The US and its allies including Israel accuse Iran of providing fleets of drones to its allies in the Middle East, notably to Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Hamas says it responds ‘positively’ to plan for Gaza ceasefire
As we mentioned in the opening summary, the US president, Joe Biden, has urged Hamas to accept a new peace deal he said Israel has put on the table.
The deal offered a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for the release of all hostages and the long-term reconstruction of the devastated enclave.
In reaction, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, issued a statement on Friday evening, saying it “considers positively” Biden’s speech regarding “a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, reconstruction and the exchange of prisoners”.
The first phase of Biden’s newly announced plan was similar to a plan which had been negotiated in Qatar and Cairo for months, but had collapsed largely because of fundamental disagreement between Hamas on Israel on whether the ceasefire would be permanent.
Although the terms of the new deal were set out by Biden, he repeatedly described it as an Israeli proposal.
However, he made clear he was aware there would be considerable resistance to it from the Israeli right, including the hard-right members of the governing coalition.
A statement issued by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office insisted Israel would keep fighting until the country’s aims are achieved, including “eliminating Hamas military and governance abilities”.
Opening summary
It has just gone past 10:20am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest blog covering Israel’s war on Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.
Benjamin Netanyahu has responded cooly to Joe Biden’s proposal for peace between Israel and Hamas, insisting the Israeli army will continue fighting until it has “eliminated” the Palestinian militant group’s capacity to rule Gaza and pose a military threat.
The Israeli prime minister’s comments came after Hamas said it had a positive view of the three-phase ceasefire proposal announced by the US president for a permanent truce in Gaza.
The plan would begin with a six-week complete ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from populated areas of Gaza, and calls for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and the reconstruction of the territory.
“It’s time for this war to end and for the day after to begin,” Biden said.
Netanyahu’s office said he had authorised his negotiating team to present the deal, “while insisting that the war will not end until all of its goals are achieved, including the return of all our hostages and the elimination of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities”.
In other key developments:
The World Food Programme (WFP) said daily life had become “apocalyptic” in parts of southern Gaza since Israel began its assault on Rafah in early May. “The sounds, the smells, the everyday life are horrific and apocalyptic,” Matthew Hollingworth, the organisation’s country director in Gaza, told journalists after returning from a trip to Gaza. “People sleep to the sounds of bombing, they sleep to the sounds of drones, they sleep to the sounds of war, as now tanks roll into parts of central Rafah, which is only kilometers away. And they wake to the same sounds.” In the exodus from the southern city, people had fled to areas where there was not enough water, healthcare or fuel, food was limited, telecommunications had stopped and there was not enough space to dig pit latrines, the WFP director for the Palestinian territories warned.
A joint US and UK air raid on Houthi missile launchers in Yemen has killed 16 people and injured more than 40, according to the Houthi health ministry. The toll could not confirmed but if accurate would represent the single largest loss of life since the US and UK started their campaign to degrade the Houthi military in January. The airstrikes hit the capital, Sana’a, the port of Hodeidah, and Taiz in the south-west of the Houthi-controlled area.
The Houthis later launched several drones and two ballistic missiles, the US military said, after the western strikes prompted retaliatory threats. US Central Command (Centcom) said it had intercepted four drones – three over the Red Sea and another over the Gulf of Aden – while a fifth drone crashed. The Houthis also launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles, Centcom said, adding no injuries or damage were reported.
The US secretary of state sought to press Hamas into accepting the new Gaza ceasefire plan in talks with the top diplomats of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In calls from his plane as he returned from a Nato meeting in Prague, Antony Blinken “emphasised that Hamas should accept the deal without delay”, a state department spokesperson said.
A former head of the Mossad has described his disbelief and disappointment at allegations that his successor at the Israeli intelligence agency threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), likening the conduct to mafia-like tactics. Tamir Pardo, who served as director of the Mossad between 2011 and 2016, was responding to a Guardian investigation about an alleged Mossad operation to put pressure on the former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to abandon a war crimes investigation.
The US state department falsified a report last month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in a department bureau on Tuesday.
UK government ministers have reviewed a further three months of the Israeli military’s presence in Gaza and found no reason to suspend arms exports to Israel. The latest review of evidence examined Israel Defense Forces’ behaviour until 24 April, the Foreign Office said. The extended review includes the Israeli killing of three British aid workers employed by the World Central Kitchen food charity.
Jordan announced it will host a summit on 11 June, jointly organised with Egypt and the UN, bringing together aid agency chiefs and heads of donor governments to discuss the humanitarian response.
The Israeli military said its forces had ended operations in north Gaza’s Jabalia area after launching hundreds of airstrikes. After the Israeli army’s withdrawal, ambulance and civil defence teams retrieved the bodies of dozens of people who were killed in Israeli attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp, according to reports. A correspondent from Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that first aid and civil defense crews recovered more than 70 bodies, including 20 children. The Israeli military continues pushing further into Rafah, in southernmost Gaza, saying Hamas fighters are there.
The leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives have invited Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress, a show of support amid partisan divides over Israel’s campaign in Gaza. It did not propose a date for the speech.
The body of a Mexican-French man who died during Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel arrived in Mexico City on Friday, authorities said. The remains of Orion Hernandez Radoux “were received at the airport … by personnel from the foreign ministry””, the ministry said. The Israeli army said last week that troops recovered his body in northern Gaza, along with those of two other men, including a Brazilian-Israeli.
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