Israel is ready for a humanitarian pause but rejects calls for a ceasefire
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects a ceasefire in Gaza as long as Hamas holds Israeli hostages, but is open to a humanitarian pause.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that a hostage deal with Hamas could be near, but declined to discuss details to avoid a breakdown in delicate negotiations over the release of those held during the militant attack on Israel Communities were captured on October 7th.
“I think the less I say about it, the better chance it has of happening,” he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Netanyahu praised Israel’s military pressure for getting Hamas to discuss the release.
“That’s the only thing that could lead to a deal,” he said. “We’ll talk about it when it’s there. We’ll announce it when it’s available.”
The hostage talks caused a great and sometimes contradictory stir. A Biden administration official confirmed a possible deal that would include the release of about 80 women and children in exchange for the release of Palestinian women and teenagers held by Israel, NBC News reported. The official, whom NBC did not name, acknowledged that there was no certainty that a deal would be struck.
But Portal reported that Hamas decided on Sunday to suspend hostage talks due to the Israeli attack on Al-Shifa hospital, a Palestinian official briefed on the hostage talks told the wire service.
USA pushes for release: The US is “actively involved in negotiations with Israel, Qatar and Hamas on the release of hostages,” says Biden’s top adviser
Developments:
∎ In Gaza City, the area around Al-Shifa Hospital was hit by heavy shelling. Palestinian officials say thousands of civilians have sought refuge there, but Israeli officials accuse Hamas of hiding a command post on the hospital grounds. Hamas denies this.
∎ The Israeli military said it attempted to deliver 80 gallons of fuel to the hospital, but Hamas prevented delivery to the medical center.
∎ The Israeli military said there was a safe corridor for evacuating civilians from Shifa to the southern Gaza Strip, but many Palestinians said they were afraid to go outside.
Newborn among dead: In Gaza’s largest hospital, there is a power outage for medical equipment
Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie, who last month visited Israeli communities devastated by militant attacks, said he supported Israel’s rejection of a ceasefire in Gaza. Israelis cannot be asked to step down in the face of a violent threat against their people from Hamas, he said. The United States must stand “shoulder to shoulder” with its ally, he said.
“I think the American people need to know that a month later they are still able to walk into one of these houses and smell death,” Christie said as he toured the ruins of Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Christie told the Times of Israel that Israelis must fight until they are safe in order to “come back and live here safely and securely.” Until that happens, I don’t think calls for a ceasefire make any sense.
Netanyahu has firmly rejected the Biden administration’s vision for postwar Gaza, saying the Palestinian Authority, which now administers the West Bank, will not take over government of the war-torn enclave. Israel will maintain general security control and retain the right to attack any “terrorist who may re-emerge,” Netanyahu said Saturday. Israel has been bombarding the Gaza Strip relentlessly since Hamas militants burst across the border on October 7 in a murderous rampage through Israeli communities.
Netanyahu, who blamed the Israeli attack for pushing Hamas closer to a deal to release hostages, vowed not to “give in” to global pressure to hand control of Gaza to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“There will be … no civil authority that raises its children to hate Israel, kill Israelis and eliminate the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “There can be no authority whose leader has still not condemned the horrific massacre 30 days later.”
International aid organizations in Gaza have “actively put the lives of Palestinian civilians at risk” by failing to support Israel’s orders to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip, an Israeli government spokesman says. Eylon Levy said the International Red Cross, the World Health Organization and the United Nations were among the organizations that refused for weeks to support or encourage Israeli-ordered evacuations in the lead-up to and early days of Israel’s ground assault on Gaza.
“Now they are endangering everyone by calling for a hasty evacuation in the middle of an urban ground war,” Levy wrote on social media. He said Hamas was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians but that authorities needed to “take a long, hard look in the mirror and examine their complicity with Hamas’s human shield strategy.”
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for global demonstrations against Israel over the Gaza war to step up, but again refused to fully commit his militant group to supporting Hamas. Nasrallah said that only the United States and Britain would fully support Israel in the war, noting that Western leaders who had initially condemned Hamas over the Oct. 7 attack were now pushing for a ceasefire and calling for to direct international pressure on the USA
Nasrallah, in a Times of Israel translation, said Hamas supporters must be prepared to escalate the war to weaken Israel, saying the Israeli economy had suffered “tens of billions of dollars in losses … despite the amount of military aid provided.” $14 billion.” through the USA”
The conflict on U.S. college campuses sparked by the Gaza war has led many Jewish and Muslim families to set new criteria for which schools their children should attend next year. Over the next few months, how college leaders handle the protests and hate speech could have a significant impact on which campus parents and students ultimately choose. For Jewish students in particular, the chaos has the potential to accelerate a trend that has seen decades of declining Jewish enrollment in the country’s most selective schools, where much of the controversy surrounding the war has taken place.
“There is a reckoning going on with Jewish families and in many of these institutions,” said Naomi Steinberg, a private college consultant in Florida who works primarily with Jewish students and parents. Read more here.
− Zachary Schermele
Choosing a university is difficult. The war between Israel and Hamas makes it even more difficult
Contribution: The Associated Press