Prime Minister Keir Starmer (centre) hosts the European leaders’ summit to discuss Ukraine, at Lancaster House, London, March 2, 2025
PEACE campaigners slammed the continued rise in British military spending today as Sir Keir Starmer said Britain was ready to send troops to police a Ukrainian peace.
The Prime Minister hosted a summit at London’s Lancaster House today with European leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte and the presidents of the European Commission and European Council, all showing their support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also attended.
The summit followed an extraordinary row between Mr Zelensky, US President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance last week at the White House.
The US was not represented at the summit — underlining the deepening rift between European leaders and Washington.
Sir Keir told leaders it was time for them to step up and continue to support Kiev and meet a “once in a generation moment” for the security of Europe.
After the meeting he said a “coalition of the willing” could be sent to Ukraine to police a ceasefire, with British “troops on the ground and planes in the air,” but acknowledged that not all countries present had been willing to commit. He did not say which had and which hadn’t.
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Israeli soldiers and reservists in Southern Israel on November 13, 2023 [Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images]
Israel’s military has called up reservists in preparation for a possible resumption of its offensive in Gaza if Hamas fails to meet a Saturday deadline to release more Israeli hostages and a nearly month-old ceasefire breaks down, Reuters has reported.
Concern that the ceasefire will collapse is growing as fury mounts in Arab countries over President Donald Trump’s plan for the United States to take over Gaza, displace its Palestinian inhabitants and build an international beach resort.
Under the ceasefire deal in force since 19 January, Hamas agreed to free three more hostages on Saturday. However, the Palestinian resistance movement said this week it was suspending the handover because of what it said were Israeli violations of the ceasefire terms. Trump responded by saying that all hostages must be freed by noon on Saturday or he would “let hell break out”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then warned on Tuesday that his country would resume “intense fighting” if Hamas did not meet the deadline, but he did not say how many hostages should be freed.
Netanyahu added that he had ordered the military to gather forces in and around Gaza, and the military announced it was deploying additional forces to Israel’s south, including mobilising reservists.
The head of Hamas in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for a surprise visit to discuss the fragile ceasefire. A Hamas official told Reuters that mediators Egypt and Qatar had stepped up efforts to end the current impasse.
The standoff threatens to reignite a conflict in which Israel has devastated the Gaza Strip, internally displaced most of its people, caused shortages of food and running water and pushed the Middle East to the brink of a wider regional war.
Palestinians in Gaza expressed alarm that the ceasefire might collapse and urged Hamas and Israeli leaders to agree on an extension.
“We had barely started believing that a truce would happen and that a solution was on the way, God willing,” said Lotfy Abu Taha, a resident of Rafah in southern Gaza. “The people are suffering. The people are the victims.”
Israeli officials said government ministers had endorsed Trump’s threat to cancel the ceasefire unless all hostages are released on Saturday. Hamas, meanwhile, said it remained committed to the agreement, but that Israel must fulfil what it agreed to do when it signed the deal. Despite the Trump and Netanyahu threats, the movement has not agreed to release the hostages on Saturday.
Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in Dubai that Trump’s vision for Gaza could lead the Middle East into a new cycle of crises with a “damaging effect on peace and stability.”
Trump has said Palestinians in Gaza could settle in countries such as Jordan and Egypt. Both reject the proposal.
Egypt will host an emergency Arab summit on 27 February to discuss “serious” developments for Palestinians.
In a sign of Arab anger over Trump’s vision of Gaza, two Egyptian security sources said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi would not go to Washington for talks if the agenda included Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians. The date for such a visit has not been announced, and the Egyptian presidency and foreign ministry did not comment.
The Gaza war — described by the International Court of Justice as “plausible genocide” — followed the Hamas-led cross-border incursion on 7 October, 2023, in which at least 1,200 people were killed, many of them by the Israel Defence Forces carrying out the controversial “Hannibal Directive”. An estimated 250 Israelis and Thais were taken into Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
In response, Israel began its military offensive against Hamas which has killed at least 48,000 Palestinians in small, densely populated Gaza, according to Gaza health officials. Around 112,000 have been wounded, and 11,000 are missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by the apartheid state.
Hamas has freed 16 Israeli hostages from an initial group of 33 children, women and older men to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the first stage of the ceasefire deal. It also returned five Thai hostages.
Negotiations on a second phase, which mediators hoped would include agreement on releasing the remaining hostages and a full Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza, should be under way in Doha but an Israeli team returned home on Monday.
Palestinians fear a repeat of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), when nearly 800,000 people were driven out by Zionist terrorists when Israel was created in occupied Palestine. Trump has said that Palestinians would lose their legitimate right to return to their homes under his plan for Gaza.
Meanwhile, he wants Saudi Arabia, which wields heavy influence in other Arab and Muslim countries, to normalise ties with Israel. Riyadh has previously said that it will not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.
Under his first administration in 2017-21, Trump brokered normalisation accords between Israel and some Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates. Asked if the UAE could find common ground with Washington on Gaza, Abu Dhabi’s ambassador to the US, Yousef Al-Otaiba, said the US approach was difficult. “But at the end of the day we’re all in a solution-seeking business, we just don’t know where it’s going to land yet,” he said.
UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday that peace efforts in the region should be on the basis of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, state news agency WAM reported.
Trump’s Gaza plan upended decades of US Middle East policy which called for a Palestinian state co-existing in peace alongside Israel as the solution to one of the world’s most complex and volatile problems.
The Arab League’s Aboul Gheit said that the idea of the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 — in which Arab nations offered Israel normalised relations in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured during the June 1967 war — would be reintroduced.
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UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Displaced Palestinians walk past the rubble as they attempt to return to their homes on Sunday. Photograph: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
Truce in effect as Hamas names hostages to be freed: Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31
The long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has finally come into effect, behind schedule by almost three hours, during which Israeli forces continued to strike Gaza, blaming the militant group’s failure to release the names of the hostages due to be released on Sunday.
The ceasefire finally started at 9.15am GMT, after Hamas posted the names of the three hostages on its social media channels.
The Hamas-run civil defence agency said eight people had been killed in the Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip during the hours after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect. Three Palestinians were killed in eastern Gaza City by Israeli drones, medics in the territory said on Sunday. The Israeli military said that it had struck “terror targets” in northern and central Gaza, and it would continue to attack as long as Hamas did not meet its demands.
Hamas named the three female hostages as Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31. They will be released through the Red Cross, in return for 30 Palestinian prisoners each.
The ceasefire opens the way to a possible end to a 15-month war that has upended the Middle East. But the delay was a reminder of how fragile the process is likely to be.
Palestinians in the Bureij Refugee Camp, strive to maintain their routines under challenging conditions, surrounded by destroyed buildings, as the implementation of a ceasefire agreement is anticipated in the coming days in Gaza City, Gaza on January 17, 2025. [Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency]
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that the ceasefire agreement for the Gaza Strip will go into effect at 8.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Sunday, Jan. 19, Anadolu Agency reports.
Ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari confirmed the development on X: “As coordinated by the parties to the agreement and the mediators, the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, January 19, local time in Gaza.”
“We advise the inhabitants to take precaution, exercise the utmost caution, and wait for directions from official sources,” he added.
The Israeli army also issued a statement confirming its readiness to implement the deal.
“The agreement will take effect on Sunday, January 19, at 08:30,” the Israeli army said in a statement, noting that its forces “will carry out the operational plan in the field in accordance with the established agreements.”
Meanwhile, the Interior and National Security Ministry in Gaza announced preparations to deploy its forces in the enclave after the ceasefire enters into force.
Qatar announced a three-phase ceasefire agreement on Wednesday to end more than 15 months of deadly Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip with the ceasefire set to take effect on Sunday.
Nearly 46,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 110,600 injured in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, according to local health authorities.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
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.
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.
“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.
