Fresh strikes were reported across the Gaza Strip overnight into yesterday, as mediators urged Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden.
Since Biden spoke at the White House on Friday last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel would pursue the war — now nearing its ninth month — until it has destroyed Hamas and freed the captives taken during the Palestinian militant group’s unprecedented attack on Oct. 7 last year.
Hamas has said it “views positively” what Biden described as an Israeli proposal.
Photo: AFP
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Israeli Minister Without Portfolio Benny Gantz and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant to discuss the deal, the US Department of State said in a pair of statements on Sunday night.
In the calls, Blinken “commended” Israel on the proposal and “emphasized that Hamas should take the deal without delay.”
Netanyahu, a hawkish political veteran leading a fragile right-wing coalition government, is under intense domestic pressure from two sides.
Protesters backing an immediate hostage release, who rallied again on Saturday in Tel Aviv, want him to strike a truce deal, but his far-right allies are threatening to bring down the government if he does.
Meanwhile, fighting has continued to rock Gaza, with hospitals there reporting at least 19 killed in overnight strikes into yesterday morning.
Gaza’s European hospital said 10 people were killed and several wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house east of the main southern city of Khan Yunis, while six people were reported killed in a strike on a family home further north in the central Bureij refugee camp, Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said.
Airstrikes and shelling were also reported in Gaza City, in the territory’s north, as well as in Rafah, along its southern border with Egypt.
Netanyahu on Saturday said that “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.”
Mediators the US, Qatar and Egypt later said they called “on both Hamas and Israel to finalize the agreement embodying the principles outlined by President Joe Biden.”
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Sunday told ABC News that “we have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them — an Israeli proposal — that Israel would say yes.”
Biden said that Israel’s three-stage offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza and an initial hostage-prisoner exchange.
Israel and the Palestinians would then negotiate for a lasting ceasefire, with the truce to continue as long as talks are ongoing, he said, adding that it was “time for this war to end.”
Netanyahu took issue with Biden’s presentation, insisting that according to the “exact outline proposed by Israel” the transition from one stage to the next was “conditional” and crafted to allow it to maintain its war aims.
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, leaders of the two extreme-right parties in parliament, warned that they would leave the government if it endorsed the truce proposal — potentially costing Netanyahu’s coalition its majority.
However, opposition leader Yair Lapid, a centrist former Israeli prime minister, said the government “cannot ignore Biden’s important speech” and vowed to back Netanyahu if his far-right coalition partners quit.
“I remind Netanyahu that he has our safety net for a hostage deal,” Lapid wrote on social media.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including