Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel cabinet delays approval of Gaza ceasefire deal, as strikes on enclave kill 77

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250116-israel-cabinet-delays-approval-of-gaza-ceasefire-deal-as-strikes-on-enclave-kill-77

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) holds a meeting with the Security Cabinet after Iran’s missile attacks on Israel in West Jerusalem on October 01, 2024. [Avi Ohayon (GPO) / Handout – Anadolu Agency]

Israel said it had delayed holding a cabinet meeting on Thursday to ratify a ceasefire with Hamas, blaming the group for the hold-up, as Palestinian authorities said Israeli air strikes overnight had killed 77 people in Gaza, Reuters reports.

Hamas senior official, Izzat el-Reshiq, said the group remained committed to the ceasefire deal, agreed a day earlier, that was scheduled to take effect from Sunday to bring an end to 15-months of bloodshed.

President Joe Biden’s envoy, Brett McGurk, and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff were in Doha with Egyptian and Qatari mediators working to resolve the last remaining dispute, a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

The dispute involves the identities of several prisoners Hamas is demanding be released and it is expected to be resolved soon, the US official said.

Israeli government spokesperson, David Mencer, told reporters Israeli negotiators were in Doha to reach a solution.

The complex ceasefire accord emerged on Wednesday after mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the US to stop the war that has devastated the coastal territory and inflamed the Middle East.

WATCH: Israel Intensifies attacks on Gaza as ceasefire is agreed

The deal outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands have been killed. Hostages taken by Hamas, which controls the enclave, would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel.

The deal also paves the way for a surge in humanitarian aid for Gaza, where the majority of the population has been displaced and is facing acute food shortages, food security experts warned late last year.

Rows of aid trucks were lined up in the Egyptian border town of El-Arish waiting to cross into Gaza, once the border is reopened.

Israel’s acceptance of the deal will not be official until it is approved by the country’s security cabinet and government, and a vote had been slated for Thursday.

However, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has delayed the meeting, accusing Hamas of making last-minute demands and going back on agreements.

“The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

Hardliners in Netanyahu’s government were still hoping to stop the deal, though a majority of ministers were expected to back it.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party said in a statement that its condition for remaining in the government would be a return to fighting at the end of the first phase of the deal, in order to destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages back. Far-right police minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has also threatened to quit the government if the ceasefire is approved.

In Jerusalem, some Israelis marched through the streets carrying mock coffins in protest at the ceasefire, blocking roads and scuffling with police.

Despite the hold-up to the cabinet meeting, political commentators on Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, said the latest delay would likely be resolved and that the ceasefire was a done deal.

Calls for faster implementation 

For some Palestinians, the deal could not come soon enough.

READ: Israel’s Smotrich demands resuming Gaza war, displacing Palestinians

“We lose homes every hour. We demand for this joy not to go away, the joy that was drawn on our faces – don’t waste it by delaying the implementation of the truce until Sunday,” Gazan man, Mahmoud Abu Wardeh, said.

The accord requires 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the ceasefire, with 50 carrying fuel. The first phase of the agreement will also see Israel releasing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

While people celebrated the pact in Gaza and Israel, Israel’s military conducted more attacks, the civil emergency service and residents said.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 81 people had been killed over the past 24 hours and about 188 injured. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said at least 77 of those were killed since the ceasefire announcement.

The Israeli military is looking into the reports, a military spokesperson said.

Israel secured major gains over Iran and its proxies, mainly Hezbollah, as the Gaza conflict spread. In Gaza, however, Hamas may have been crippled, but without an alternative administration in place, it has been left standing.

If successful, the ceasefire will halt fighting that has razed much of heavily urbanised Gaza, killed over 46,000 people, and displaced most of the tiny enclave’s pre-war population of 2.3 million, according to Gaza authorities.

That, in turn, could defuse tensions across the wider Middle East.

With 98 foreign and Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza, phase one of the deal entails the release of 33 of them, including all women, children and men over 50.

Global reaction to the ceasefire was enthusiastic.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas-led gunmen burst into Israeli border-area communities on 7 October, 2023, killing 1,200 soldiers and civilians and abducting over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

READ: Dismantling UNRWA will be ‘catastrophic’ for Gaza and Palestinians: Expert

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Continue ReadingIsrael cabinet delays approval of Gaza ceasefire deal, as strikes on enclave kill 77

Trump National Security Pick Says Israel Has Green Light to Keep Attacking Gaza

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), President-elect Donald Trump’s national security adviser pick, walks to a Senate hearing on January 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Journalist Jeremy Scahill noted that Mike Waltz’s comments echo “a plan Netanyahu has hinted at: Israel views this deal as only one phase to get the Israeli and U.S. hostages out.”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to serve as national security adviser said late Wednesday that the incoming administration will support future Israeli attacks on Gaza even as Trump hailed the tenuous new cease-fire and hostage-release agreement as a signal “to the entire world that my administration would seek peace.”

In an appearance on Fox News late Wednesday after the agreement was announced, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) said that “we’ve made it very clear to the Israelis, and I want the people of Israel to hear me on this: If they need to go back in [to Gaza], we’re with them.”

“Hamas is not going to continue as a military entity and it’s certainly not going to govern Gaza,” Waltz added.

The national security adviser nominee expressed a similar position in a podcast appearance prior to the announcement of the cease-fire deal, which is currently in jeopardy as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Hamas of reneging on the terms of the agreement—a claim Hamas has rejected.

Asked whether a cease-fire agreement would mean “the war is over,” Waltz said, “Hamas would like to believe that.”

“But we’ve been clear that Gaza has to be fully demilitarized, Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute, and that Israel has every right to fully protect itself,” he added. “All of those objectives are still very much in place.”

“We need to get our people out,” Waltz continued, “and then we need to achieve those objectives in this war.”

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Drop Site‘s Jeremy Scahill noted that the approach Waltz laid out mirrors “a plan Netanyahu has hinted at: Israel views this deal as only one phase to get the Israeli and U.S. hostages out.”

Last month, Netanyahu said that Israeli forces would “return to fighting” once hostages are freed.

“There is no point in pretending otherwise,” said Netanyahu, “because returning to fighting is needed in order to complete the goals of the war.”

Under the first phase of the deal announced Wednesday, a six-week cease-fire would begin as soon as Sunday and 33 hostages would be freed in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian detainees. The second and third stages of the deal are contingent upon negotiations that will take place during the first.

The text also stipulates the “withdrawal of Israeli forces eastwards from densely populated areas along the borders of the Gaza Strip” and a reduction of Israeli troop presence in the Philadelphi corridor—an issue that has repeatedly emerged as a sticking point in cease-fire negotiations.

The agreement states that “the Israeli side will gradually reduce the forces in the corridor area during stage 1 based on the accompanying maps and the agreement between both sides.”

“After the last hostage release of stage one, on day 42, the Israeli forces will begin their withdrawal and complete it no later than day 50,” the text continues.

But Netanyahu’s office insisted Thursday that the same number of forces would remain in the corridor during the deal’s first phase—a position that critics said runs counter to the agreement.

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While Trump and his allies celebrated the announced agreement as a master stroke of dealmaking and aid groups voiced hope for some reprieve for devastated Palestinians in Gaza, Netanyahu’s spokesman told The New York Times in a text message that “there isn’t any deal at the moment.”

Israel’s cabinet was expected to vote on the deal Thursday, but Netanyahu delayed the meeting and accused Hamas of trying to “extort last-minute concessions.”

Hamas officials denied the charge, saying they are committed to the agreed-upon text.

Ruby Chen, the father of a 19-year-old Israeli-American soldier who was taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023, suggested Thursday that Netanyahu “might be looking to get out of” the deal as he faces backlash from far-right members of his coalition.

Citing unnamed sources, The Washington Post reported Thursday that “behind closed doors, Netanyahu has been promising his far-right allies that the war could resume after the first, 42-day phase of the cease-fire, when Hamas is to release 33 hostages in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.”

Paul Pillar, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote Thursday that “there remains the possibility that a renewed war in Gaza will, beginning a few weeks from now, become a problem for Trump just as it was for Biden.”

“But two main factors will incline President Trump not to exert any pressure on the Israeli government to turn away from renewing its devastation and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” Pillar predicted. “One is Trump’s relationship with his domestic evangelical political base, with its unconditional support for most anything Israel does. The other is that his ally Netanyahu has done him a big favor with his handling of the ceasefire negotiations, and now Trump owes Netanyahu favors in return.”

According to one Israeli report, Trump offered Netanyahu a “gift bag” of concessions in exchange for accepting a pre-inauguration cease-fire deal, including sanctions relief for violent Israeli settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingTrump National Security Pick Says Israel Has Green Light to Keep Attacking Gaza

Report Says Biden’s ‘Empty Threats’ on Gaza Fed Israeli Impunity

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) meet in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 18, 2023.
 (Photo: GPO/ Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

One Middle East expert said that it’s “hard to avoid the conclusion” that the U.S. administration’s ultimatums to Israel “have all just been a smokescreen.”

New reporting published Wednesday details the impotence and insincerity of President Joe Biden’s “multiple threats, warnings, and admonishments” to Israel as it annihilated the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians while receiving tens of billions of dollars in U.S. arms and unwavering diplomatic support.

Writing for ProPublica, Brett Murphy showed how multiple “red lines” issued by Biden administration officials were ignored by Israel with impunity. Murphy highlighted Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s October 2024 demand that Israel take “urgent and sustained actions” to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza—mainly by allowing far more aid into the embattled strip—within 30 days or face a military aid cutoff.

“Netanyahu’s conclusion was that Biden doesn’t have enough oomph to make him pay a price.”

Thirty days came and went without significant improvement or letup in Israel’s onslaught. Yet the Biden administration insisted it found no indication that Israel was using U.S.-supplied weapons illegally. The arms flow continued.

As Murphy reported:

That choice was immediately called into question. On November 14, a U.N. committee said that Israel’s methods in Gaza, including its use of starvation as a weapon, was “consistent with genocide.” Amnesty International went further and concluded a genocide was underway. The International Criminal Court also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for the war crime of deliberately starving civilians, among other allegations.

“Government officials worry Biden’s record of empty threats have given the Israelis a sense of impunity,” wrote Murphy.

This reporting is so utterly damning.www.propublica.org/article/bide…

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-01-15T21:55:16.200Z

Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, told Murphy that “Netanyahu’s conclusion was that Biden doesn’t have enough oomph to make him pay a price, so he was willing to ignore him.”

“Part of it is that Netanyahu learned there is no cost to saying ‘no’ to the current president,” al-Omari added.

Conversely, Murphy noted: “On Wednesday, after months of negotiations, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire deal. While it will become clear over the next days and months exactly what the contours of the agreement are, why it happened now, and who deserves the most credit, it’s plausible that [U.S. President-elect Donald] Trump’s imminent ascension to the White House was its own form of a red line.”

“Early reports suggest the deal looks similar to what has been on the table for months,” he added, “raising the possibility that if the Biden administration had followed through on its tough words, a deal could have been reached earlier, saving lives.”

As Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, told Murphy, “It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that [Biden’s] red lines have all just been a smokescreen.”

“The Biden administration decided to be all-in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something,” Walt added, as Israel kept killing Palestinians with U.S.-supplied weapons and continued a “complete siege” blamed for widespread starvation and sickness in the Gaza Strip.

Murphy wrote that Trump “will inherit a demoralized State Department” in which many officials who haven’t already resigned have “become disenchanted with the lofty ideas they thought they represented.”

As one senior department official told Murphy, Gaza “is the human rights atrocity of our time.”

“I work for the department that’s responsible for this policy. I signed up for this,” the official added. “I don’t deserve sympathy for it.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Genocide Joe Biden
Genocide Joe Biden
Continue ReadingReport Says Biden’s ‘Empty Threats’ on Gaza Fed Israeli Impunity

Cease-Fire Deal Reportedly Reached After 15 Months of Israeli Atrocities in Gaza

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

People watch a television along a street in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on January 15, 2025. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The cease-fire alone will not end the ongoing genocide that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said one Palestinian human rights organization.

This is a developing news story… Please check back for possible updates…

The U.S. and Qatar said Wednesday that negotiators have reached a cease-fire and hostage-release agreement between Israel and Hamas after more than 15 months of incessant Israeli bombing that killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions, and left Gaza in ruins.

At a press conference, Qatar’s prime minister said the agreement is set to take effect on Sunday. U.S. President Joe Biden said that “it is long past time for the fighting to end and the work of building peace and security to begin.”

Shortly before the formal announcement from the U.S. and Qatar, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the deal has yet to be cemented.

“Due to the strong insistence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas folded on its last-minute demand to change the deployment of IDF forces in the Philadelphi Corridor,” the prime minister’s office said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. “However, several items in the framework have yet to be finalized; we hope that the details will be finalized tonight.”

The reported deal, brokered by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, would entail “a six-week initial cease-fire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian detainees held by Israel,” according to Reuters, which cited an unnamed official briefed on the negotiations.

Al Jazeera, also citing anonymous sources, provided an outline of the reported deal:

  • The Israeli military will withdraw to within 700 meters (2,297 feet) inside Gaza.
  • Israel will release about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences.
  • Palestinian groups will release 33 Israeli captives.
  • Israel will allow injured people in Gaza to travel to receive medical treatment.
  • Israel will open the Rafah crossing with Egypt seven days after the start of the first stage.
  • Israeli forces will begin to pull back from Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, to withdraw from it completely in later stages.

Following news of potentially decisive progress toward a cease-fire, The Associated Press reported that “large crowds of cheering people” took to the streets in southern Gaza to celebrate. Meanwhile, the outlet noted, hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside of the Israeli military’s headquarters in Tel Aviv “calling for a deal to be completed.”

Reporting from central Gaza, Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud said that “we’re seeing people in tears” after news of a possible agreement spread in the besieged enclave.

“We’re seeing mothers here, who live in tents near the hospital… hugging and kissing their children, thanking God that they have survived,” said Mahmoud.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who voiced support for Israel’s catastrophic assault on Gaza during his 2024 campaign, took to his social media platform Wednesday to declare, in all-caps: “WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!”

Steve Witkoff, the incoming Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, joined members of Biden’s team in working to finalize the cease-fire agreement, which came as the official death toll from Israel’s assault climbed above 46,000—a figure that experts say is likely a significant undercount. The majority of the people killed in Israeli attacks have been women, children, or elderly.

Drop Site‘s Jeremy Scahill reported Tuesday that “the terms of the deal being negotiated are largely consistent with what was on the table last May when outgoing President Joe Biden first announced it.”

“Biden allowed Netanyahu to steamroll him for months—rewarding Israel with billions of dollars in arms transfers and political support after rejecting that cease-fire deal,” Scahill wrote. “Since that time, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed and maimed and an unknown number of Israeli captives killed, either by their captors or Israeli strikes. All the while, the administration and its backers repeatedly assured voters in the U.S. that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were working tirelessly to achieve a cease-fire deal.”

“What is required is for Israel to end all ongoing genocidal acts, open Gaza, and for the international community to ensure accountability for those responsible.”

The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian organization, said the apparent cease-fire agreement marks “a crucial step toward reducing the killing of Palestinians through deadly force.”

“However, the cease-fire alone will not end the ongoing genocide that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the group added. “What is required is for Israel to end all ongoing genocidal acts, open Gaza, and for the international community to ensure accountability for those responsible.”

Inger Ashing, CEO of the international humanitarian group Save the Children, said the cease-fire “must be permanent” and accompanied by urgent efforts to “end the siege and vastly increase the entry of aid.”

“For 15 months, about 1 million children in Gaza have been caught in a living nightmare with loss, trauma, and risks to their lives at every turn,” said Ashing. “If implemented, this pause will bring them vital reprieve from the bombs and bullets that have stalked them for more than a year. But it is not enough and the race is on to save children facing hunger and disease as the shadow of famine looms.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has vocally criticized Israel’s response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack and U.S. military aid to the Israeli government, said Wednesday that a cease-fire is “long-overdue” and “both sides must honor the deal and implement it as quickly as possible.”

“The senseless killing must stop. The hostages must be released,” said Sanders. “The United Nations and other aid organizations must finally be allowed unfettered access to all areas of the Gaza Strip in order to provide the massive amounts of humanitarian aid that is desperately needed. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people are struggling to survive, lacking food, water, and medical care in the middle of winter. Innocent lives hang in the balance.”

“This is just the first step to restoring peace,” the senator added. “The international community must insist that the cease-fire be sustained and formalized. A plan for rebuilding Gaza and establishing peaceful Palestinian governance of the area must be laid out. And there must be accountability for the many war crimes committed by both sides in this terrible conflict.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingCease-Fire Deal Reportedly Reached After 15 Months of Israeli Atrocities in Gaza