GCC’s chief urges regional collective action at counter-terrorism conference in Kuwait

LONDON: High-profile Israeli public figures have called for “crippling sanctions” to be launched against Israel by the international community to avert further disaster in Gaza.

The appeal came in a letter to The Guardian by a group of 31 signatories, including academics, artists and public intellectuals.

The letter was signed by Academy Award recipient Yuval Abraham; former Attorney General of Israel Michael Ben-Yair; former Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg; and winners of the Israel Prize, the country’s top cultural award, among others.

Israel is “starving the people of Gaza to death and contemplating the forced removal of millions of Palestinians from the strip,” the letter says.

Its signatories are esteemed figures in journalism, science, academia and more, representing a significant shift in Israeli public life, as more prominent figures begin to criticize the war in Gaza.

The letter’s endorsement of severe international sanctions against Israel is also taboo; politicians in the country have called for the targeting of those who promote such measures.

Israel’s war in Gaza, which is reaching the two-year mark, is also generating further public angst and criticism of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The wider Jewish diaspora is engaged in renewed debate over the trajectory and morality of the war.

This week, two of Israel’s top human rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, published reports that described their country’s actions in Gaza as “genocidal.”

Tuesday’s letter says: “The international community must impose crippling sanctions on Israel until it ends this brutal campaign and implements a permanent ceasefire.

“No one should be unaffected by the pervasive hunger experienced by thousands of Gazans. No one should spend the bulk of their time arguing technical definitions between starvation and pervasive hunger.

“The situation is dire, and it is deadly. Nor should we accept arguments that because Hamas is the primary reason many Gazans are either starving or on the verge of starving, that the Jewish state is not also culpable in this human disaster. The primary moral response must begin with anguished hearts in the face of such a large-scale human tragedy.

“Blocking food, water, medicine, and power — especially for children — is indefensible,” it said. “Let us not allow our grief to harden into indifference, nor our love for Israel to blind us to the cries of the vulnerable. Let us rise to the moral challenge of this moment.”

Earlier this month, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in comments to The Guardian, condemned his country’s planned “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza as a concentration camp.

Forcing Palestinians inside the zone from the rest of the enclave would amount to ethnic cleansing, he added.

Netanyahu and his government continue to deny the existence of famine in Gaza, or any potential Israeli links to the disaster unfolding in the territory.

BEIRUT: Washington is ramping up pressure on Beirut to swiftly issue a formal cabinet decision committing to disarm Hezbollah before talks can resume on a halt to Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Without a public commitment from Lebanese ministers, the US will no longer dispatch US envoy Thomas Barrack to Beirut for negotiations with Lebanese officials, or pressure Israel either to stop airstrikes or pull its troops from south Lebanon, according to the sources, who include two Lebanese officials, two diplomats and a Lebanese source familiar with the matter.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington and Beirut have been in talks for nearly six weeks on a US roadmap to fully disarm the militant Lebanese Hezbollah party in exchange for Israel to end its strikes and withdraw its troops from five points in southern Lebanon.

The original proposal included a condition that Lebanon’s government pass a cabinet decision pledging to disarm Hezbollah. Hezbollah has publicly refused to hand over its arsenal in full, but the group has privately weighed scaling it back.

The group, designated a terrorist organization by the US and much of the West, has also told Lebanese officials that Israel must take the first step by withdrawing its troops and stopping drone strikes on Hezbollah fighters and arms depots.

Hezbollah’s main ally, Lebanese speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, asked the US to ensure that Israel halt its strikes as a first step, in order to fully implement the ceasefire agreed last year that ended months of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, according to four of the sources.

Israel rejected Berri’s proposal late last week, the four sources said. There was no immediate response from the Israeli prime minister’s office to questions from Reuters on the issue.

The US then began insisting that a cabinet vote take place imminently, all the sources said.

“The US is saying there’s no more Barrack, no more papers back and forth — the council of ministers should take a decision and then we can keep discussing. They cannot wait any longer,” the Lebanese source said.

The source and the Lebanese officials said Prime Minister Nawaf Salam would seek to hold a session in the coming days. Barrack met Salam in Beirut last week and said Washington cannot “compel” Israel to do anything.

In a post on X after his visit, Barrack said that “as long as Hezbollah retains arms, words will not suffice. The government and Hizballah need to fully commit and act now in order to not consign the Lebanese people to the stumbling status quo.”

All the sources said that Lebanon’s rulers fear that a failure to issue a clear commitment to disarm Hezbollah could trigger escalated Israeli strikes, including on Beirut.