GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Hamas warned Israel on Sunday that a ground offensive in Rafah, crowded with displaced Gazans, would imperil future hostage releases, while US President Joe Biden urged the protection of civilians in the besieged territory.
Foreign governments, including Israel’s key ally the United States, and aid groups have voiced deep concern over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to extend operations into the far-southern Gaza city.
Rafah, on the border with Egypt, has remained the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip in its four-month war against Hamas, triggered by the group’s October 7 attack.
“Any attack by the occupation army on the city of Rafah would torpedo the exchange negotiations,” a Hamas leader told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Netanyahu has told troops to prepare to enter the city which now hosts more than half of Gaza’s total population, spurring concern about the impact on displaced civilians.
Biden spoke to Netanyahu on the phone Sunday and told him the Gaza advance should not go ahead in the absence of a “credible” plan to ensure “the safety” of people sheltering there, the White House said.
Some 1.4 million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah, with many living in tents while food, water and medicine are becoming increasingly scarce.
Netanyahu had told US broadcaster ABC News the Rafah operation would go ahead until Hamas is eliminated, adding he would provide “safe passage” to civilians wishing to leave.
When pressed about where they could go, Netanyahu said: “You know, the areas that we’ve cleared north of Rafah, plenty of areas there. But, we are working out a detailed plan.”
Mediators held new talks in Cairo for a pause in the fighting and the release of some of the 132 hostages Israel says are still in Gaza, including 29 thought to be dead.
Hamas seized some 250 hostages on October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. Dozens were released during a one-week truce in November.
Hamas’s military wing on Sunday said two hostages had been killed and eight others seriously wounded in Israeli bombardment in recent days, a claim AFP is unable to independently verify.
Netanyahu has faced calls for early elections and mounting protests over his administration’s failure to bring home the hostages.
Israeli strikes have long hit targets in Rafah, and combat on Sunday seemed intense several kilometers (miles) to the north in Khan Yunis city. AFP correspondents heard repeated explosions and saw plumes of black smoke.
Israel’s military said troops were conducting “targeted raids” in the west of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, while Hamas reported violent clashes and said air strikes also hit Rafah.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel has responded with a relentless offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip that the territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 28,176 people, mostly women and children.
Hamas said dozens of bodies had been found in Gaza City, in the coastal strip’s north, after Israeli ground troops withdrew from the area.
Most of them “were martyred by bullets of snipers,” the group said in a statement.
Hossam Al-Sharqawi of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told reporters that “every day our ambulance guys (in Gaza) are martyred or injured.”
“This is unacceptable, this madness must stop.”
During a visit to a military base Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel aims for “the demilitarization of Gaza.”
“This requires our security control... over the entire area west of Jordan, including the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) were some of the latest to raise the alarm over the plan for Rafah, Gaza’s last major population center that Israeli troops have yet to enter.
“The OIC strongly warned that the continuation and expansion of the Israeli military aggression is part of rejected attempts to forcibly expel the Palestinian people from their land,” the 57-nation Jeddah-based bloc said on social media.
It stressed “that such acts fall under genocide and would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe and collective massacre.”
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also rejected “forced” displacement of people from Rafah, evoking the trauma of Palestinians’ mass exodus and forced displacement around the time of Israel’s creation in 1948.
Riyadh called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting, while Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the priority “must be an immediate pause in the fighting to get aid in and hostages out.”
Denouncing a “genocide” in Gaza, thousands rallied Sunday in Morocco’s capital Rabat and called on their government to undo a 2020 normalization pact with Israel.
Gazans, driven further and further south, have repeatedly said they can find no safe refuge from the fighting and bombing.
Farah Muhammad, 39, a mother of five displaced to Rafah from northern Gaza, said she felt helpless.
“There is no place to escape.”
Hamas warns Israeli invasion of Rafah will ‘torpedo’ hostage talks
https://arab.news/g8nbc
Hamas warns Israeli invasion of Rafah will ‘torpedo’ hostage talks
- Rafah, on the border with Egypt, has remained the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip in its four-month war against Hamas
How President Trump’s Middle East tour signaled a bold reset in US foreign policy
- From lifting sanctions on Syria to backing talks with Iran, Trump declared a readiness to end old conflicts, embracing transactional diplomacy
- Trump’s Gulf-focused strategy prioritizes mutually beneficial partnerships over traditional loyalties, casting Israel as a costly, underperforming ally
LONDON: Standing ovations and scenes of jubilation are not normally witnessed at investment forums. But there was nothing normal about the speech President Donald Trump delivered at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Riyadh last week.
Speaking at the beginning of a four-day tour of the region, Trump’s geopolitical surprises came thick and fast.
“After discussing the situation in Syria with the (Saudi) crown prince,” he said, “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.”
The last few words were almost drowned out by the wave of applause, which was followed by a standing ovation led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Although the announcement came as a big surprise to most, including seasoned analysts and even some in Trump’s inner circle, it was not entirely unexpected.
In December, for the first time in a decade, US officials had flown to Damascus, where they met with Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the commander of Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, which just two weeks earlier had led the dramatic overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime after 14 years of civil war.
As a result of that meeting, after which the US delegation said it had found Al-Sharaa to be wholly “pragmatic,” the US removed the longstanding $10 million bounty on his head. A month later, Al-Sharaa was appointed president of Syria.
The day after last week’s investment forum in Riyadh, Trump sat down for a face-to-face meeting with Al-Sharaa that produced what might well prove to be one of the most historic photographs in the region’s recent history: the Saudi crown prince, flanked by Trump and Al-Sharaa, standing in front of the flags of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.
The photograph sent a clear message: For the US, and for a region all too often subject to the whims of its largesse and military approbation, all bets were off.
The day before, Trump had more surprises for his delighted audience at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center.
“I have never believed in having permanent enemies,” the president said, and “I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very profound, which obviously they are in the case of Iran.”
He praised local leadership for “transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past” and criticized “Western interventionists … giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs.”
In a message that will have echoed loudly in Kabul, Baghdad, and even Tehran, he added: “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
Responding to Trump’s announcements, Sir John Jenkins, a seasoned diplomat who served as British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria, and as consul-general in Jerusalem, told Arab News: “I think this could be a real turning point.
“Post-Arab Spring demographics — lots of young people wanting a better life and better governance but not wanting to get there through ideology or revolution — and Mohammed bin Salman, Trump, and Syria have all come together at a singular time.”
Trump’s speech last week in Riyadh, he said, “was extraordinary, an intellectually coherent argument, and he means it.
“If you can form a cohesive bloc of Sunni states — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the rest of the GCC, Jordan, Syria and Egypt — which all aim in different ways to increase prosperity and stability instead of the opposite, then you potentially have a bloc that can manage regional stability and contain Iran in a way we haven’t had for decades. And that gives the US the ability to pivot.”
But a lot could still go wrong. “Iran, which is already trying hard to undermine Syria, will continue to play games,” said Jenkins.
“And then there’s Israel itself: Does it want strong and stable Sunni neighbors or not? It should do, but I’m not sure Bezalel Smotrich (Israel’s far-right finance minister, who this month vowed that Gaza would be ‘entirely destroyed’) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (the minister of national security who is pressing for Israel to seize and occupy Gaza) think so. That’s a headache for Israel’s Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu.
“But if you hook all this up to a possible US-Iran deal, which will give Iran incentives not to have sanctions come crashing back down, then there’s something there.”
For Al-Sharaa, even six months ago, the dramatic turnaround in his personal circumstances would have seemed fantastic, and as such is symptomatic of the tectonic upheavals presaged by Trump’s visit to the region.
Almost exactly 12 years ago, on May 16, 2013, the then-leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, judged responsible for “multiple suicide attacks throughout Syria” targeting the Assad regime, had been designated as a terrorist by the US Department of State.
Now, as the very public beneficiary of the praise and support of Trump and the Saudi crown prince, Al-Sharaa’s metamorphosis into the symbol of hope for the Syrian people is emblematic of America’s dramatic new approach to the region.
In Doha, the president chose the occasion of a visit to a US military base to make nice with Iran, a country whose negotiators have been quietly meeting in Oman with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, to discuss a nuclear deal.
“I want them to succeed,” said Trump, who in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the US from the original deal, fashioned by President Barack Obama and European allies, and reimposed economic sanctions. Now, he said in Doha last week, “I want them to end up being a great country.”
Iran, he added, “cannot have a nuclear weapon.” But, in a snub to Israel, which has reportedly not only sought US permission to attack Iranian enrichment facilities, but has even asked America to take part, he added: “We are not going to make any nuclear dust in Iran. I think we’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this.”
In fact, Trump’s entire trip appeared to be designed as a snub to Israel, which did not feature on the itinerary.
A week ahead of the trip, Trump had announced a unilateral ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen, who had sided with Hamas after Israel mounted its retaliatory war in Gaza in October 2023.
Under the deal, brokered by Oman and with no Israeli involvement, the US said it would halt its strikes in Yemen in exchange for the Houthis agreeing to stop targeting vessels in the Red Sea.
On May 12, the day before Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia, Hamas released Edan Alexander, the last surviving US citizen held hostage in Gaza, in a deal that came out of direct talks with no Israeli involvement.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump celebrated “a step taken in good faith towards the United States and the efforts of the mediators — Qatar and Egypt — to put an end to this very brutal war.”
Trump, said Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King’s College London’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, “threw Netanyahu, in fact Israel, under the bus.
“He totally surprised Netanyahu with a series of Middle Eastern diplomatic initiatives, which, at least from an Israeli perspective, hurt — indeed, humiliate — Israel,” he told Arab News.
“In the past, if one wished to get access to the White House, a good way to do so was to turn to Israel, asking them to open doors in Washington. Not any longer. Netanyahu, hurt and humiliated by Trump, seems to have lost his magic touch.
“Trump despises losers, and he probably regards Netanyahu as a loser, given the Gaza mess and Netanyahu’s failure to achieve Israel’s declared aims.”
It is, Bregman said, Trump’s famously transactional approach to politics that is shifting the dial so dramatically in the Middle East.
“Trump looks at international relations and diplomacy through financial lenses, as business enterprises. For Trump, money talks and the money is not to be found in Israel, which sucks $3 billion dollars a year from the US, but in the Gulf states.
“Trump is serious about America First, and Israel doesn’t serve this aim; the Gulf states do. For now, at least, the center of gravity has moved to the Gulf states, and the Israeli status in the Middle East has weakened dramatically.”
For Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor at California State University, San Marcos, the events of the past week stand in sharp contrast to those during Trump’s first presidency.
“During the first Trump administration, World War Three almost broke out, with aircraft carriers from my native San Diego deployed continuously to the Gulf to deter Iran, the (Houthi) strike on Saudi Aramco, and the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad at the beginning of 2020,” he told Arab News.
“Five years later, the Trump administration seems to be repeating the Nixon-Kissinger realist doctrine: ‘America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.’ In that regard, his administration might forge relations with Iran as Nixon did with China.”
Kelly Petillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, likewise views last week’s events as the beginning of “a new phase of US-Gulf relations.”
Among the remarkable developments is “Israel’s relative sidelining and the fact that Israel does not have the privileged relationship with Trump it thought it had,” she told Arab News. “The US agenda now is wider than unconditional support to Israel, and alignment with GCC partners is also key.
“Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have clearly become of key strategic importance to the US, with new deals on the horizon and the promise of expanding these relations. The announcements of more commercial ties have been accompanied with political declarations too, which overall represented positive developments for the region.”
Ultimately, said Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute, “Trump’s visit to the GCC highlighted two of his foreign policy priorities in the Middle East.
“Firstly, he sought to obtain a series of transactional, bilateral cooperation agreements in sectors such as defense, investment and trade,” she told Arab News.
“The second objective was to use the trip as a mechanism that could change conditions for ongoing diplomatic negotiations directly with Iran, between Hamas and Israel, and even Ukraine and Russia.”
It was, of course, no accident that Trump chose the Middle East as the destination for the first formal overseas trip of his second presidency.
“The Trump administration sought to court Gulf states closely to signal to other partners in the region, such as Israel, as well as the EU, that it can develop alternative partnerships to achieve what it wants in peace negotiations.”
Although a strategy to move forward with specific peace negotiations was “notably absent during his trip,” it was clear that “this trip was designed to lay the groundwork for potential momentum and to change some of the power dynamics with traditional US partners abroad, sowing the seeds of goodwill that could alter negotiations in the Trump administration’s favor.”
Israel recalls senior Gaza hostage negotiators, leaves team in Doha
- The indirect talks in Qatar began over the weekend, just as Israel’s new offensive was getting underway
JERUSALEM: Israel said Tuesday that it was recalling its senior Gaza hostage negotiators from Doha “for consultation,” days after launching an intensified campaign in the Palestinian territory.
The indirect talks in Qatar, which has played a mediating role throughout the war, began over the weekend, just as Israel’s new offensive was getting underway.
“After about a week of intensive contacts in Doha, the senior negotiation team will return to Israel for consultation, while working levels will remain in Doha for the time being,” read a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, accusing Hamas of refusing to accept a deal.
A source close to Hamas, however, said on Tuesday that Israel’s delegation “has not held any real negotiations since last Sunday,” blaming “Netanyahu’s systematic policy of obstruction.”
Earlier in the day, Qatar had said Israel’s “irresponsible, aggressive behavior” with the expanded campaign had undermined the chances of a ceasefire.
Following Netanyahu’s announcement, the main group representing the families of hostages still being held in Gaza said it was “profoundly alarmed and devastated” at the decision to recall the negotiators, warning their loved ones’ lives were in danger.
Militants took 251 hostages during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
European nations increase pressure on Israel to stop broad Gaza offensive
- Bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said “a strong majority” of its 27 member states backed the move
- Sweden said it would press the EU to level sanctions against Israeli ministers
GAZA CITY: European countries ramped up pressure on Israel to abandon its intensified campaign in Gaza and let more aid into the war-ravaged territory, where rescuers said fresh attacks killed dozens of people on Tuesday.
An AFP journalist saw some trucks entering the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza from the Israeli side on Tuesday, a day after the UN said it had been cleared to send aid for the first time since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2, sparking severe shortages of food and medicine.
The dire humanitarian situation in the Strip has prompted an international outcry, with the European Union saying it would review its trade cooperation deal with Israel over alleged human rights abuses following a foreign ministers’ meeting on Tuesday.
The bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said “a strong majority” of its 27 member states backed the move, adding “the countries see that the situation in Gaza is untenable... and what we want is to unblock the humanitarian aid.”
Sweden said it would press the EU to level sanctions against Israeli ministers.
“Since we do not see a clear improvement for the civilians in Gaza, we need to raise the tone further,” said Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard.
And Britain suspended free-trade negotiations with Israel, summoned the Israeli ambassador and said it was imposing sanctions on settlers in the occupied West Bank in its toughest actions so far against Israel’s conduct of the war.
“Blocking aid, expanding the war, dismissing the concerns of your friends and partners. This is indefensible and it must stop,” Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in an impassioned speech to parliament.
Responding to Britain’s moves, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said “external pressure will not divert Israel from its path in defending its existence and security.”
COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said “93 UN trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including flour for bakeries, food for babies, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical drugs were transferred” to Gaza on Tuesday.
The spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres confirmed dozens of trucks were allowed in, but spoke of difficulties receiving the deliveries.
“Today, one of our teams waited several hours for the Israeli green light to... collect the nutrition supplies. Unfortunately, they were not able to bring those supplies into our warehouse,” Stephane Dujarric said.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said that the nine trucks cleared to enter on Monday were “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed.”
He told the BBC on Tuesday that 14,000 babies could die in the next 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, replying to a Democrat’s comment during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting, said he understood “that it’s not in sufficient amounts, but we were pleased to see that decision was made” to restart aid shipments.
The Israeli army stepped up its offensive at the weekend, vowing to defeat Gaza’s rulers Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war.
Strikes overnight and early Tuesday left “44 dead, mostly children and women, as well as dozens of wounded,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Bassal said 15 people were killed when a petrol station was hit near the Nuseirat refugee camp, and eight others were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City to the north.
The Israeli military told AFP it had “struck a Hamas terrorist who was operating from within a command and control center” inside the school compound. There was no comment on the other incidents.
At the bombarded petrol station, Nuseirat resident Mahmoud Al-Louh carried a cloth bag of body parts to a vehicle.
“They are civilians, children who were sleeping. What was their fault?” he told AFP.
In a statement on Tuesday, the military said it had carried out strikes on more than “100 terror targets” in Gaza over the past day.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would “take control of all the territory of the Strip” with its new campaign.
Israel resumed operations across Gaza on March 18, bringing an end to a two-month ceasefire amid deadlock over how to proceed.
Negotiators from Israel and Hamas began a new round of indirect talks in Doha over the weekend, just as the intensified campaign was getting underway.
Qatar, which has been involved in mediation efforts throughout the war, said Tuesday that Israel’s “irresponsible, aggressive behavior” had undermined the chances of a ceasefire.
Hours later, Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of refusing to accept a deal, saying Israel was recalling its senior negotiators but leaving the “working levels” of its team in Doha.
A source close to Hamas alleged that Israel’s delegation “has not held any real negotiations since last Sunday,” blaming “Netanyahu’s systematic policy of obstruction.”
The Hamas attack in October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
Gaza’s health ministry said Tuesday at least 3,427 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,573.
Israeli politician slammed for saying country should not ‘kill babies for a hobby’
- “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies for a hobby,” Golan said
- The chairman of Israel’s Democrats party is a former major general in the military
JERUSALEM: Israeli government and opposition leaders condemned on Tuesday a left-wing politician, Yair Golan, after he said in a radio interview that “a sane country... does not kill babies for a hobby.”
“Israel is on the path to becoming a pariah state among the nations — like the South Africa of old — if it does not return to behaving like a sane country,” said Golan, chairman of Israel’s Democrats party.
“A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies for a hobby, and does not set goals involving the expulsion of populations,” he told Israel’s Kan public radio.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Golan, a former major general in the military, of “wild incitement” against Israeli troops and of “echoing the most despicable anti-Semitic blood libels against the (Israeli army) and the State of Israel.”
Golan also drew condemnation from government critics, with opposition leader Yair Lapid saying in a post on X: “Our fighters are heroes and are defending our lives. The statement that they kill children as a hobby is incorrect and is a gift to our enemies.”
Education Minister Yoav Kisch, of Netanyahu’s party, called for an incitement investigation into Golan, whose party is a coalition of several left-wing factions.
“Golan is not a member of Knesset and does not have immunity. I expect the attorney general to immediately open an investigation against him for incitement,” Kisch said on X.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar also took to X, saying Golan’s comments would “undoubtedly serve as fuel for the fire of global antisemitism — at a time when Israel is fighting for its survival against a coalition determined to destroy it.”
Military chief Eyal Zamir in a statement condemned remarks that cast doubt on the “morality” of the army’s actions and of its troops.
Responding to criticism, Golan said on X that he was trying to sound the alarm on the direction he believed Israel was headed.
The government’s war plans are “the realization of the fantasies of (Itamar) Ben Gvir and (Bezalel) Smotrich,” Golan said, referring to two far-right ministers.
“If we allow them to realize them, we will become a pariah state,” the left-wing politician said.
During a press conference, Golan said his criticism “was in no way directed at the army.”
“My criticism is aimed at the government, not the army, which is my home and in my heart,” he told journalists.
“A government that says we can abandon hostages and starve children is a government that speaks like a spokesperson for Hamas,” he added.
Golan, a vocal opponent of Netanyahu’s government and its policies, has been a controversial figure since a 2016 speech in which he appeared to draw parallels between Israeli society and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s.
In November 2024, he accused Netanyahu of putting his own political interests before the country’s following a decision to dismiss defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Abbas to discuss weapons in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps during Beirut visit: delegation member
- Mahmoud Abbas will meet with the Lebanese president during his three-day visit to the country
RAMALLAH: A member of Mahmoud Abbas’ delegation to Beirut told AFP on Tuesday that the Palestinian president will discuss the issue of weapons in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps during his three-day visit to the country.
“The issue of Palestinian weapons in the camps will be one of the topics on the agenda for discussion between President Abbas, the Lebanese President and the Lebanese government,” said Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee who is accompanying Abbas on the visit.
