Middle-East
Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpasses 25,000 while Israel announces the death of another hostage
The Palestinian death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday, while Israel announced the death of another hostage and appeared far from achieving its goals of freeing more than 100 others and crushing the militant group.
The war's deaths, destruction and displacement are without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The war has divided Israelis while the offensive threatens to ignite a wider conflict involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that support the Palestinians.
Furious with the Israeli government and demanding the release of remaining hostages, relatives and others set up a tent camp outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem and vowed to stay until a deal is reached.
Netanyahu, in a defiant new statement, said he stressed in his conversation Friday with U.S. President Joe Biden that he rejects Hamas demands for a cease-fire, Israeli forces' withdrawal and the release of Palestinians held by Israel in exchange for the remaining hostages. He said that agreeing means another devastating Hamas attack “would only be a matter of time.”
Netanyahu also rejects calls from U.S, its closest ally, for postwar plans that would include a path to Palestinian statehood. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the refusal to accept a two-state solution unacceptable.
“The Middle East is a tinderbox. We must do all we can to prevent conflict igniting across the region," Guterres added. "And that starts with an immediate humanitarian cease-fire to relieve the suffering in Gaza.”
GAZA DEATH TOLL CLIMBS
The war began with Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel's military announced the death of 19-year-old Sgt. Shay Levinson, who was among the hostages. His date of death was given as Oct. 7, but there were no further details. According to Israeli media, his body is still in Gaza.
Read: Palestinian death toll from Israeli attacks in Gaza, West Bank nears 20,000
Israel has responded to the Oct. 7 attack with a bombing campaign and ground invasion that laid waste to entire neighborhoods in northern Gaza and spread south, striking some areas where it told civilians to seek refuge. Ground operations are now focused on the southern city of Khan Younis and built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.
“The plumes of smoke from tanks, artillery and the planes of the air force will continue to cover the sky over the Gaza Strip until we will achieve our goals,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.
Since the war started, 25,105 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, while another 62,681 have been wounded, the Health Ministry said. The toll included the 178 bodies brought to Gaza’s hospitals since Saturday, Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said.
The overall toll is thought to be higher because many casualties remain buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot reach, Al-Qidra said.
The Health Ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures but says about two-thirds of the people killed in Gaza were women and minors. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, but its casualty figures from previous wars were largely consistent with those of U.N. agencies and even the Israeli military.
The Israeli military says it has killed around 9,000 militants, without providing evidence, and blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it positions fighters, tunnels and other militant infrastructure in dense neighborhoods. The military released footage of a tunnel under a residential neighborhood in Khan Younis where the army believes at least 20 hostages were kept at different times.
Read: Death toll from northwestern China earthquake rises to 127
Israel’s military said the demolition last week of a key building at Israa University in Gaza was under review, and asserted that preliminary findings indicated Hamas had used the compound for military purposes. The university has said the “attack” came weeks after Israeli forces occupied the building.
The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s residents, with hundreds of thousands packing U.N.-run shelters and camps in the south. U.N. officials say a quarter of the population of 2.3 million is starving as a trickle of humanitarian aid reaches them because of the fighting and Israeli restrictions.
Israel said 260 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Sunday, the highest number since the war began. About 500 entered daily before that, according to the U.N.
“Bread does not suffice for one hour,” said Ahmad Al-Nashawi, who accepted donated food at a tent camp in the southern city of Rafah. “You can see how many children we have other than women and men. What matters most for a child is to eat.”
ISRAELIS INCREASINGLY DIVIDED
At the new protest camp outside Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence, hostages' families urged the government to act.
Read more: Israeli offensive shifts to crowded southern Gaza, driving up death toll despite evacuation orders
"It’s not logical that you’re telling us the war must continue, and you keep saying that because of military pressure we will release them, but we don’t see a single one released because of this pressure,” said Gilad Korengold, the father of hostage Tal Shoham.
Some top Israeli officials have begun to acknowledge that Netanyahu's goals of “complete victory” over Hamas and returning the remaining hostages might be mutually exclusive.
A member of Israel’s War Cabinet, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, said last week that the only way to free the hostages was through a cease-fire.
But Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners push him to step up the offensive, with some calling for the “voluntary” emigration of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and the re-establishment of Jewish settlements there.
Hamas is believed to be using the hostages as shields for its top leaders. Israel has rescued one hostage, and Hamas says several have been killed in Israeli airstrikes or during failed rescue operations.
Hostages' families want an exchange like the one during a weeklong November cease-fire. Other Israelis are frustrated by the security failures ahead of the Oct. 7 attack and by Netanyahu's handling of the war.
Near the site of an Oct. 7 massacre during a music festival, families of Israeli victims planted trees.
“What happened after 109 days? Nothing. We’re just still waiting,” said one father, Idan Bahat.
American teen's death in West Bank sparks father's outcry against US military aid to Israel
The father of an American teen killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank railed against Washington's military support for Israel, as hundreds of mourners buried the 17-year-old in the family's ancestral Palestinian village Saturday.
The death of Tawfiq Ajaq on Friday drew an immediate expression of concern from the White House and a pledge from Israeli police to investigate.
It was the latest fatal shooting in the West Bank, where nearly 370 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza more than three months ago. The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed concern about violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in recent months.
During Saturday's funeral, the teen's father criticized the long-standing U.S. support for Israel. “They are killer machines,” he said of Israeli forces. “They are using our tax dollars in the U.S. to support the weapons to kill our own children.”
Tawfiq Ajaq was born and raised in Gretna, Louisiana, near New Orleans, relatives said. His parents brought him and his four siblings to the village of Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharqiya last year so they could reconnect with Palestinian culture.
On Saturday, crowds of Palestinians pulsed through village streets, following men who held aloft a stretcher with the teen's body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
Hafez Ajaq implored Americans to “see with their own eyes” the ongoing violence in the West Bank.
“The American society does not know the true story,” he said. “Come here on the ground and see what’s going on. ... How many fathers and mothers have to say goodbye to their children? How many more?”
The circumstances of the shooting remained unclear.
Ajaq's relative, Joe Abdel Qaki, said that Ajaq and a friend were having a barbecue in a village field when he was shot by Israeli fire, once in the head and once in the chest.
Abdel Qaki said he arrived at the field shortly after the shooting and helped transport Ajaq to an ambulance. He said Israeli forces briefly detained him and other Palestinians at the scene, asking for their IDs before the men could get to Ajaq.
He said Ajaq died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Israeli police said they received a report Friday regarding a “firearm discharge, ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.” Police did not identify who fired the shot, though it said the shooting targeted people “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities along Highway 60," the main north-south thoroughfare in the West Bank.
Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharqiya is located just east of the highway.
Police said the incident would be investigated. Investigations of those involved in fatal shootings of Palestinians by Israel's police and military have rarely yielded speedy results, and indictments are uncommon.
Asked about the shooting, U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby said that officials at the White House were “seriously concerned about these reports.”
“The information is scant at this time. We don’t have perfect context about exactly what happened here,” Kirby said. “We’re going to be in constant touch with counterparts in the region to — to get more information.”
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas staged its deadly attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, Israeli forces have clamped down on suspected militants in the West Bank, carrying out near nightly arrest raids.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 369 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7. Most of the Palestinians were killed during shootouts in the West Bank that the Israeli military says began during operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen. In several documented instances, Israeli forces and settlers have killed Palestinians who witnesses report were not engaged in violence.
The U.S. has given military and diplomatic support to Israel's war on Hamas, but has urged Israel to scale back the intensity of its attacks. Nearly 25,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in Israel's offensive, Gaza health officials said.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state.
Israel's Netanyahu rejects any Palestinian sovereignty in post-war Gaza, rebuffing Biden
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that he “will not compromise on full Israeli control” over Gaza and that “this is contrary to a Palestinian state,” rejecting U.S. President Joe Biden’s suggestion that creative solutions could bridge wide gaps between the leaders' views on Palestinian statehood.
In a sign of the pressures Netanyahu’s government faces at home, thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv calling for new elections, and others demonstrated outside the prime minister’s house, joining families of the more than 100 remaining hostages held by Hamas and other militants. They fear that Israel's military activity further endangers hostages' lives.
Netanyahu is also under heat to appease members of his right-wing ruling coalition by intensifying the war against Hamas, which governs Gaza, while contending with calls for restraint from the United States, its closest ally.
Netanyahu posted his statement on social media a day after his first conversation with Biden in nearly a month. Discussing his administration's position Friday, Biden said “there are a number of types of two-state solutions" and, asked if a two-state solution was impossible with Netanyahu in office, Biden replied, “No, it’s not.”
After Netanyahu's statement, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for the United States to go further. "It is time for the United States to recognize the state of Palestine, not just talk about a two-state solution,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “the refusal to accept the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and the denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people, are unacceptable.” Speaking in Uganda, he said the refusal would “indefinitely prolong” the conflict.
Netanyahu has said Israel must fight until it achieves “complete victory” and Hamas no longer poses a threat but has not outlined how this will be accomplished.
But a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot, has called a cease-fire the only way to secure the hostages' release, a comment that implied criticism of Israel's current strategy.
Critics have accused Netanyahu of preventing a Cabinet-level debate about a post-war scenario for Gaza. They say he is stalling to prevent conflict within his coalition. Netanyahu's office called the claim that he was unnecessarily prolonging the war “utter nonsense.”
Read: Biden and Netanyahu have finally talked, but their visions still clash for ending Israel-Hamas war
Israel launched its war against Hamas after the militant group's unprecedented Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and saw about 250 others taken hostage. Health authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza say Israel's offensive has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
The offensive, one of the most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has pulverized much of the territory and displaced more than 80% of its population of 2.3 million people. An Israeli blockade that allows only a trickle of aid into Gaza has led to widespread hunger and outbreaks of disease, United Nations officials have said.
Netanyahu has insisted that the only way to secure the hostages’ return is by crushing Hamas through military means. More than 100 hostages, mostly women and children, were released during a brief November cease-fire in exchange for the release of Palestinian women and minors imprisoned by Israel. Israel has said that more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza, but only about 100 are believed to be alive.
The protest outside Netanyahu's home in the coastal town of Caesarea grew, with police pushing a few attendees away, sparking arguments.
“We can’t take it anymore. We’ve been told to sit quiet, let the government do its job. Well, it’s not bringing us any result for the last two months,” said Yuval Bar On, whose father-in-law, Keith Siegel, is among the hostages.
The protest began Friday when the father of a 28-year-old held by Hamas began what he called a hunger strike. Eli Shtivi pledged to eat only a quarter of a pita a day — the amount some hostages reportedly receive some days — until the prime minister agrees to meet with him.
At the Tel Aviv protest, former hostage Chen Goldstein-Almog told the crowd that “if we, as a society, as a state, don’t do everything, I mean everything, to return the abductees, the living and the dead, we have no right to exist, as a state and as a society.”
The Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the military was not carrying out attacks in areas where it knows or assumes there are hostages and the army works “in all possible ways to bring them home.”
Read: Netanyahu says no one can halt Israel's war to crush Hamas, including the world court
Dozens of anti-war protesters also gathered in the Israeli city of Haifa, carrying signs reading “Stop genocide” and scuffling with police who tried to confiscate the placards. Police made one arrest.
As part of its search for the hostages, Israel's military dropped leaflets on Gaza's southernmost town of Rafah. The leaflets, with photos of dozens of hostages, carried a message suggesting benefits for anyone who spoke up.
“You want to return home? Please report if you identified one of them,” the message read.
Hours later, Al-Majd al-Amni, a media outlet linked to the Hamas internal security force, warned Palestinians against supplying any information about Israeli soldiers held hostage in Gaza.
The war has rippled across the Middle East, with Iranian-backed groups attacking U.S. and Israeli targets. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon threatens to erupt into all-out war, and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are targeting international shipping in the Red Sea despite U.S.-led airstrikes.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike on Syria's capital destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians, Syrian and Iranian state media reported. Also Saturday, an Israeli drone strike on a car near the Lebanese port city of Tyre killed two people, the state-run National News Agency reported. It was not immediately clear who the target was.
Read more: Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill at least 35 as Netanyahu says war will continue for months
In Gaza, residents reached by phone after a seven-day communications blackout reported heavy bombardment and fighting between militants and Israeli troops in and around the southern city of Khan Younis and the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in the north.
The fighting has forced many families to leave their homes, many of which were reduced to rubble, said Halima Abdel-Rahman, a woman displaced from northern Gaza who now shelters in Bani Suheila on the outskirts of Khan Younis.
A car was apparently struck by a drone in Rafah, killing four, according to an Associated Press cameraman at a local morgue. Israel's military didn't immediately comment.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, meanwhile, mourners gathered for the funeral of Tawfiq Ajaq, a 17-year-old American Palestinian shot and killed a day earlier near Ramallah. The circumstances of the shooting remained unclear, and police said the incident was under investigation.
An Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital killed at least 5 Iranian advisers, officials say
An Israeli strike on the Syrian capital on Saturday destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians, Syrian and Iranian state media reported.
The Syrian army said the building in the tightly guarded western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh was entirely destroyed, adding that the Israeli air force fired the missiles while flying over Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli military did not comment.
A few hours later, an Israeli drone strike on a car near the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre killed two Hezbollah members who were in the vehicle and two people who were in a nearby orchard, an official with the group and Lebanon's state news agency said. One of those killed was Ali Hudruj, a local Hezbollah commander, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, without giving further details.
Nour News, which is believed to be close to Iran’s intelligence apparatus, identified two of the dead in Damascus as Gen. Sadegh Omidzadeh, the intelligence deputy of the guard's expeditionary Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy, who goes by the nom de guerre Hajj Gholam. The guard later issued statements identifying the five dead as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi, Saeed Karimi and Mohammad Amin Samadi. It gave no ranks for them. The difference in information could not be immediately reconciled.
An opposition war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least six people — five Iranians and a Syrian — were killed in the missile attack that struck while officials from Iran-backed groups were holding a meeting. The Observatory's chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said three of the Iranians were commanders, adding that four other people are still missing under the rubble.
The Telegram channel for Iranian state TV reported that Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the Israeli attack on Damascus, adding that “the Islamic Republic will not leave the crimes of the Zionist regime unanswered.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani condemned the Israeli strike in a statement saying that “without any doubt, the blood of these high-ranking martyrs will not be wasted.”
Iran also tried again to link Israel to the Islamic State group, something its leaders have been trying to do since a suicide bombing by the extremists in early January in Iran killed more than 90 people.
Security forces deployed around the destroyed four-story building as ambulances and fire engines were seen in the area. A search for people trapped under the rubble was underway. Windows were also shattered in nearby buildings.
A grocer near the scene of the strike said he heard five consecutive explosions at about 10:15 a.m., adding that he later witnessed the bodies of a man and a woman being taken away as well as three wounded people.
“The shop shook. I stayed inside for a few seconds then went out and saw the smoke billowing from behind the mosque,” the man, who asked that his name not be used for security reasons, told The Associated Press.
“What happened was terrifying. I collapsed,” said Khaled Mawed, who lives nearby.
The strike came amid widening tensions in the region as Israel pushes ahead with its offensive in Gaza. Israel’s assault there, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, caused widespread destruction and uprooted over 80% of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.
Israel launched the offensive after an unprecedented cross-border attack into Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage. Roughly 130 hostages are believed by Israel to remain in Hamas captivity. The war has stoked tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.
Last month, an Israeli airstrike on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria. Israel has also targeted Palestinian and Lebanese operatives in Syria over the past years.
Iranian and Syrian officials have long acknowledged Iran has advisers and military experts in Syria, but denied there were any ground troops. Thousands of fighters from Iran-backed groups took part in Syria's conflict that started in March 2011, helping tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar Assad.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.
Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Earlier this month, a strike said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas commander Saleh Arouri in Beirut.
Over the past weeks, rockets have been fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, adding to tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border and attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Women and children are the main victims of the Israel-Hamas war with 16,000 killed, UN says
Women and children are the main victims in the Israel-Hamas war, with some 16,000 killed and an estimated two mothers losing their lives every hour since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, the United Nations agency promoting gender equality said Friday.
As a result of the more than 100-day conflict, UN Women added, at least 3,000 women may have become widows and heads of households and at least 10,000 children may have lost their fathers.
In a report released Friday, the agency pointed to gender inequality and the burden on women fleeing the fighting with children and being displaced again and again. Of the territory’s 2.3 million population, it said, 1.9 million are displaced and “close to one million are women and girls” seeking shelter and safety.
UN Women’s executive director, Sima Bahous, said this is “a cruel inversion” of fighting during the 15 years before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Previously, she said, 67% of all civilians killed in Gaza and the West Bank were men and less then 14% were women.
She echoed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ calls for a humanitarian cease-fire and the immediate release of all hostages taken captive in Israel on Oct. 7.
“However much we mourn the situation of the women and girls of Gaza today, we will mourn further tomorrow without unrestricted humanitarian assistance and an end to the destruction and killing,” Bahous said in a statement accompanying the report.
“These women and girls are deprived of safety, medicine, health care, and shelter. They face imminent starvation and famine. Most of all they are deprived of hope and justice,” she said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says nearly 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, 70% of them women and children. The United Nations says more than a half million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving.
In Israel, around 1,200 people were killed during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war, and some 250 people were taken hostage by militants. More than 100 hostages are believed to still be held captive in Gaza.
Bahous said UN Women had heard “shocking accounts of unconscionable sexual violence during the attacks” by Hamas, and she echoed U.N. calls for accountability, justice and support for all those affected.
Despite escalating hostilities in Gaza, the agency said women-led and women’s rights organizations continue to operate. It found that 83% of women’s organizations surveyed in the Gaza Strip are at least partially operational, mainly focusing on the emergency response to the war.
But UN Women said its analysis of funding from last year’s flash appeal for Gaza found that just 0.09% of funding went directly to national or local women’s rights organizations.
Bahous said there is a need for much more aid to get to Gaza, especially to women and children, and for an end to the war.
“This is a time for peace,” she said. “We owe this to all Israeli and Palestinian women and girls. This is not their conflict. They must no longer pay its price.”
Biden and Netanyahu have finally talked, but their visions still clash for ending Israel-Hamas war
President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally spoke Friday after a glaring, nearly four-week gap in direct communication during which fundamental differences have come into focus over a possible pathway to Palestinian statehood once the fighting in Gaza ends.
Biden and his top aides have all but smothered Netanyahu with robust support, even in the face of global condemnation over the mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian suffering in Gaza as the Israelis have carried out military operations in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
But the leaders' relationship has increasingly shown signs of strain as Netanyahu has repeatedly rebuffed Biden's calls for Palestinian sovereignty, gumming up what the U.S. president believes is the key to unlocking a durable peace in the Middle East — the oft-cited, elusive two-state solution.
Neither side shows signs of budging.
Friday's phone call came one day after Netanyahu said that he has told U.S. officials in plain terms that he will not support a Palestinian state as part of any postwar plan. Biden, for his part, in Friday's call reaffirmed his commitment to work toward helping the Palestinians move toward statehood.
“As we’re talking about post-conflict Gaza ... you can’t do that without also talking about the aspirations of the Palestinian people and what that needs to look like for them,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
The leaders spoke frequently in the first weeks of the war. But the regular cadence of calls between Biden and Netanyahu, who have had a hot-and-cold relationship for over three decades, has slowed considerably. Their 30- to 40-minute call Friday was their first conversation since Dec. 23.
Both sides are hemmed in by domestic political considerations.
The chasm between Biden, a center-left Democrat, and Netanyahu, who leads the most conservative government in Israel’s history, has expanded as pressure mounts on the United States to use its considerable leverage to press Israel to wind down a war that has already killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians.
There is also growing impatience with Netanyahu in Israel over the lack of progress in freeing dozens of hostages still held by Islamic militants in Gaza.
“There is certainly a reason to be concerned,” says Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, “The more and more we see political considerations dominating the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu, which is likely to continue because of the upcoming presidential election and the weakness of both leaders, the more we will see them pulling apart.”
In their most recent calls, Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu has grown more evident, even though the U.S. leader has been careful to reaffirm his support for Israel at each step, according to U.S. officials who requested anonymity to discuss the leaders' private interactions.
Yet, Biden, at least publicly, has not given up on the idea of winning over Netanyahu. Asked by a reporter on Friday if a two-state solution is impossible while Netanyahu is in office, Biden replied, “No, it's not.”
Aides insist Biden understands the political box Netanyahu finds himself in with his hard-right coalition and as he deals with ongoing corruption charges that have left the prime minister fighting for his freedom, not just his political future.
Biden, meanwhile, faces American voters in November, in a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump. Netanyahu and Trump forged a close relationship during the Republican’s term in office. Biden faces criticism from some on his left who believe he hasn't pushed the Israelis hard enough to demonstrate restraint as it carries out military operations.
Key Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, this week warned that Netanyahu's position on statehood could complicate negotiations in the Senate on a spending package that includes military aid for Israel.
Expect Netanyahu to “use every trick that he has to keep his coalition together and avoid elections and play out the clock,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum. ”And I’m sure that part of it is a conviction that if he waits until November, he may end up with Donald Trump back in the Oval Office.”
In recent weeks, some of the more difficult conversations have been left to Ron Dermer, a top aide to Netanyahu and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., and Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. The two top aides talk almost daily — sometimes multiple times during a day, according to a U.S. official and an Israeli official, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Other senior Biden administration officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as well as senior advisers Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, have been at the forefront of the administration's push to engage the Israelis and other Middle East allies as the Biden-Netanyahu dialogue has become less constructive.
Netanyahu, who has opposed calls for a two-state solution throughout his political career, told reporters this week that he flatly told U.S. officials he remains opposed to any postwar plan that includes establishment of a Palestinian state.
The prime minister's latest rejection of Biden's push in that direction came after Blinken this week said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Israel and its Middle East neighbors had “a profound opportunity” to solve the generational Israel-Palestinian conflict. Asked if he thought Netanyahu was up to making the most of the moment, Blinken demurred.
“Look, these are decisions for Israelis to make,” Blinken said. “This is a profound decision for the country as a whole to make: What direction does it want to take? Does it see — can it seize — the opportunity that we believe is there?”
The Biden-Netanyahu relationship has seen no shortage of peaks and valleys over the years. As vice president, Biden privately criticized Netanyahu after the the Israeli leader embarrassed President Barack Obama by approving the construction of 1,600 new apartments in disputed East Jerusalem in the middle of Biden’s 2010 visit to Israel.
Netanyahu publicly resisted, before eventually relenting to, Biden's calls on the Israelis to wind down a May 2021 military operation in Gaza. And in late 2019, during a question and answer session with voters on the campaign trail, Biden called Netanyahu an “extreme right” leader.
The path to a two-state solution — one in which Israel would co-exist with an independent Palestinian state — has eluded U.S. presidents and Middle East diplomats for decades.
But as the war grinds on, Biden and his team have pressed the notion that there is a new dynamic in the Middle East in which Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors stand ready to integrate Israel into the region once the war ends, but only if Israel commits to a pathway to a Palestinian state.
Biden has proposed that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, could run Gaza once combat ends. Netanyahu has roundly rejected the idea of putting the Palestinian Authority, which is beset by corruption, in charge of the territory.
Netanyahu argues that a Palestinian state would become a launchpad for attacks on Israel. So Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said. “That collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can we do?”
White House officials have sought to play down Netanyahu's public rejection of Biden's call for a two-state solution, noting that the prime minister's rhetoric is not new.
They hold out hope Israel could eventually come around to accepting a Palestinian state that comes with strong security guarantees for Israel.
"I don’t think Biden has any illusions about Netanyahu,” said Daniel Kurtzer, who served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt during the Bill Clinton administration and to Israel under George W. Bush. “But I don’t think he’s ready to slam the door on him. And that’s because he gets the intersection between the policy and the politics.”
EU Parliament resolution calls for permanent cease-fire in Gaza
European lawmakers on Thursday adopted a resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in Israel’s war against Hamas, on the condition that the Palestinian militant group in Gaza be dismantled and that all hostages it holds be released.
The conflict has divided European Union countries and political groups at the legislature, and reaching a consensus on the wording of the resolution was not an easy task.
The original text underlined the need for a permanent cease-fire. It was adopted after an amendment tabled by conservative lawmakers was passed, insisting that Hamas needed to be dismantled for a cease-fire to happen and calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all remaining hostages.
The resolution, which is non-binding and highly symbolical, was adopted by 312 votes in favor, 131 against and 72 abstentions. It was the first time the Parliament called for a cease-fire after lawmakers in October agreed on a call for a "humanitarian pause."
Read: UN agency chiefs say Gaza needs more aid to arrive faster, warning of famine and disease
The amendment insisted that all the hostages be "immediately and unconditionally released and (that) the terrorist organization Hamas is dismantled.”
Palestinian militants are still putting up resistance across Gaza in the face of one of the deadliest military campaigns in recent history. More than 24,400 Palestinians have been killed. Some 85% of the narrow coastal territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, and the United Nations says a quarter of the population is starving.
Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas to ensure it can never repeat an attack like the one on Oct. 7 that triggered the war. Militants burst through Israel’s border defenses and stormed through several communities that day, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing around 250, taking them back to Gaza as hostages.
Since the attack, the bloc has struggled to strike a balance between condemning Hamas, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself and ensuring that the rights of civilians on both sides are protected under international law.
Read:A global day of protests draws thousands in Washington and other cities in pro-Palestinian marches
Hamas is on the EU’s list of terrorist groups.
European lawmakers also expressed their “deep concern at the dire and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” and asked for the moribund “two-state solution” between Israel and Palestinians to be revived, and for the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Houthi rebels strike a US-owned ship off the coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden, raising tensions
Houthi rebels fired a missile, striking a U.S.-owned ship Monday just off the coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden, less than a day after they launched an anti-ship cruise missile toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea.
The attack on the Gibraltar Eagle, later claimed by the Houthis, further escalates tensions gripping the Red Sea after American-led strikes on the rebels. The Houthis' attacks have roiled global shipping, amid Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, targeting a crucial corridor linking Asian and Mideast energy and cargo shipments to the Suez Canal onward to Europe.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which oversees Mideast waters, said Monday's attack happened some 110 miles (177 kilometers) miles southeast of Aden. It said the ship’s captain reported that the “port side of vessel hit from above by a missile.”
Private security firms Ambrey and Dryad Global told The Associated Press that the vessel was the Eagle Gibraltar, a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier. The U.S. military's Central Command later acknowledged the strike.
“The ship has reported no injuries or significant damage and is continuing its journey,” Central Command said.
Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed the attack in a recorded television address that aired Monday night.
“The Yemeni armed forces consider all American and British ships and warships participating in the aggression against our country as hostile targets,” he said.
The vessel is owned by Eagle Bulk Shipping, a Stamford, Connecticut-based firm traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In a statement to The Associated Press, the company said the strike caused “limited damage to a cargo hold but (the ship) is stable and is heading out of the area.”
“All seafarers onboard the vessel are confirmed to be uninjured,” the firm said. “The vessel is carrying a cargo of steel products. Eagle Bulk management is in close contact with all relevant authorities concerning this matter.”
Satellite-tracking data analyzed by AP showed the Eagle Gibraltar had been bound for the Suez Canal, but rapidly turned around at the time of the attack.
Central Command said it detected a separate anti-ship ballistic missile launch toward the southern Red Sea on Monday, though it ”failed in flight and impacted on land in Yemen."
The U.S. Maritime Administration, under the Transportation Department, also issued a warning of a continuing "high degree of risk to commercial vessels” traveling near Yemen.
“While the decision to transit remains at the discretion of individual vessels and companies, it is recommended that U.S. flag and U.S.-owned commercial vessels” stay away from Yemen in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden “until further notice,” the advisory said.
Sunday's missile launch toward the American warship also marked the first U.S.-acknowledged fire by the Houthis since America and allied nations began strikes Friday on the rebels following weeks of assaults on shipping in the Red Sea.
The Houthi fire in the direction of the USS Laboon, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer operating in the southern reaches of the Red Sea, Central Command said.
The missile came from near Hodeida, a Red Sea port city long held by the Houthis, the U.S. said.
“An anti-ship cruise missile was fired from Iranian-backed Houthi militant areas of Yemen toward USS Laboon,” Central Command said. “There were no injuries or damage reported."
The Houthis did not acknowledge that attack.
It wasn’t presently clear whether the U.S. would retaliate for the latest attacks, though President Joe Biden has said he “will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
The first day of U.S.-led strikes Friday hit 28 locations and struck more than 60 targets with cruise missiles and bombs launched by fighter jets, warships and a submarine. Sites hit included weapon depots, radars and command centers, including in remote mountain areas, the U.S. has said.
The Houthis have yet to acknowledge how severe the damage was from the strikes, which they said killed five of their troops and wounded six others.
U.S. forces followed up with a strike Saturday on a Houthi radar site.
Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea, saying they were avenging Israel’s offensive in Gaza against Hamas. But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade.
Even the leader of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, Hassan Nasrallah, obliquely referenced the widening Houthi attacks on ships in a speech Sunday, saying that “the sea has become a battlefield of missiles, drones and warships” and blaming the U.S. strikes for escalating maritime tensions.
“The most dangerous thing is what the Americans did in the Red Sea, (it) will harm the security of all maritime navigation,” Nasrallah said.
Though the Biden administration and its allies have tried to calm tensions in the Middle East for weeks and prevent any wider conflict, the strikes in the Red Sea threaten to ignite one.
It's also affecting shipping for the Middle East nation of Qatar, one of the world's top natural gas suppliers. Three liquid natural gas tankers that had recently loaded in Qatar and were bound for the Suez Canal remain idling off Oman, while another coming from Europe to Qatar remains off Saudi Arabia. QatarEnergy and government officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemeni government-in-exile that the Houthis are fighting, sought to distance itself from the attacks on Houthi sites as it tries to maintain a delicate détente with Iran and a cease-fire it has in Yemen. The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war in Yemen that began in 2015 has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
The American military did not specifically say the fire targeted the Laboon, following a pattern by the U.S. since the Houthi attacks began. However, U.S. sailors have received combat ribbons for their actions in the Red Sea — something handed out only to those who face active hostilities with an enemy force.
Iran strikes targets in northern Iraq and Syria as regional tensions escalate
Iran said late Monday it had launched strikes against a “spy headquarters and gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” shortly after missiles hit an upscale area near the U.S. consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
The security council of the Kurdish regional government said in a statement that four civilians were killed and six injured in the strikes.
Peshraw Dizayi, a prominent local businessman with a portfolio that included real estate and security services companies, was killed in one of the strikes along with members of his family, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by former Iraqi member of parliament Mashan al-Jabouri, who said that one of the missiles had fallen on Dizayi’s “palace, next to my house, which is under construction on the road to the Salah al-Din resort.”
Other regional political figures also confirmed Dizayi's death.
Soon after, a statement from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on state media said it had struck “terrorist operations” including Islamic State targets in Syria “and destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles.” Another statement claimed that it had hit a headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
The Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility earlier this month for two suicide bombings targeting a commemoration for an Iranian general slain in a 2020 U.S. drone strike. The attack in Kerman killed at least 84 people and wounded an additional 284 at a ceremony honoring Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Last month, Iran accused Israel of killing a high-ranking Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in an airstrike on a Damascus neighborhood.
An Iraqi security official said Irbil was targeted with “several” ballistic missiles but did not give further details. An official with an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia said 10 missiles fell in the area near the U.S. consulate. He said the missiles were launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
A U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that had not been made public said the U.S. tracked the missiles, which hit in northern Iraq and northern Syria, and no U.S. facilities were struck or damaged in the attacks. The official said initial indications were that the strike were “reckless and imprecise.”
In 2022, Iran claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck in the same area near the sprawling U.S. consulate complex in Irbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard.
The strikes come at a time of heightened tensions in the region and fears of a wider spillover of the ongoing war in Gaza.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have launched near-daily drone attacks on bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, which the groups have said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel, and in an attempt to force U.S. troops to leave the region.
UN agency chiefs say Gaza needs more aid to arrive faster, warning of famine and disease
Gaza urgently needs more aid or its desperate population will suffer widespread famine and disease, the heads of three major U.N. agencies warned Monday, as authorities in the enclave reported that the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war had surpassed 24,000.
While the U.N. agency chiefs did not directly point a finger at Israel, they said aid delivery is hobbled by the opening of too few border crossings, a slow vetting process for trucks and goods going into Gaza, and continuing fighting throughout the territory — all of which Israel plays a deciding factor in.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has prompted unprecedented destruction in the tiny coastal enclave and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and pushed more than a quarter into starvation, according to the U.N.
It has also stoked regional tensions, with Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen carrying out strikes in support of the Palestinians. A missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels hit an American-owned cargo ship on Monday, days after U.S.-led strikes against the group over its attacks on international shipping.
In Gaza, civilians have grown desperate. Footage shared online by Al Jazeera showed hundreds of people rushing toward what appeared to be an aid truck in what the news outlet said was Gaza City. The Associated Press couldn't independently verify the video and it wasn't clear when it was filmed.
The World Food Program, UNICEF and the World Health Organization said Monday that new entry routes need to be opened to Gaza, more trucks need to be allowed in each day, and aid workers and those seeking aid need to be allowed to move around safely.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said U.N. agencies and their partners “cannot effectively deliver humanitarian aid while Gaza is under such heavy, widespread and unrelenting bombardment.” He said the deaths of 152 U.N. staffers in Gaza since the start of the war is “the largest single loss of life in the history of our organization."
DEATH TOLL RISES
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Monday that the bodies of 132 people killed in Israeli strikes were brought to Gaza hospitals over the past day, raising the death toll from the start of the war to 24,100.
The ministry, which doesn't distinguish between fighters and noncombatants in its tally, says two-thirds of those killed in the war were women and children. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 8,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Israel blames Hamas for the high Palestinian death toll, saying its fighters make use of civilian buildings, and launch attacks from densely populated urban areas.
On Monday, the military said its forces and aircraft targeted militants in the second-largest city Khan Younis in southern Gaza, a current focus of the ground offensive, as well as in northern Gaza, where the Israeli military says it continues to expand its control.
A day after the White House said it was time Israel to curtail its military offensive, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the intense offensive in southern Gaza will soon be scaled back once Israel takes military control of the area.
In Israel, a woman was killed and 12 other people were wounded in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in a suburb of Tel Aviv that police said was carried out by at least two Palestinians. They were later arrested. The suspects stole three different cars and attempted to run down pedestrians, police said.
Hamas praised the attack, but neither it nor other Palestinian armed groups claimed responsibility for it.
Palestinians have carried out a number of attacks against Israelis since the start of the war, mainly in Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank. Around 350 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, mostly in confrontations during Israeli arrest raids or violent protests.
HAMAS SAYS 2 HOSTAGES KILLED IN AIRSTRIKES
The war began on Oct. 7, when a Hamas-led surprise attack into Israel killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The militants captured around 250 people and are still holding nearly half of them after releasing more than 100 in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a November cease-fire.
Hamas released a video late Monday showing three hostages – Noa Argamani, 26, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itay Svirsky, 38. It includes brief individual statements from all three, likely speaking under duress, in which they call on Israel to halt the war and say they have little food and water and are in danger from Israeli airstrikes.
Later in the video, Argamani says separate airstrikes killed Sharabi and Svirsky and that she herself was wounded. Footage then shows what appear to be the bodies of Sharabi and Svirsky.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said the army had told the families of Svirsky and another hostage that it was “very concerned” over whether they were still alive. He said Israel had struck a building near where the hostages were being held but did not know their location at the time.
Gallant, Israel's defense minister, said Monday that military pressure is the only way to win the release of the remaining hostages, and he ruled out a cease-fire.
UNPRECEDENTED HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
The fighting, now in its 101st day, has set off an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which was already struggling from a lengthy blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas took power in 2007.
The crisis has been especially severe in northern Gaza: The U.N. said Sunday that less than a quarter of aid convoys have reached their destinations in the north in January, because Israeli authorities denied most access. Israeli officials had no immediate comment.
The U.N. agencies said they want access to the Israeli port of Ashdod, located about 40 kilometers (24 miles) north of Gaza, which they say would allow larger amounts of aid to be shipped in and then sent directly to northern Gaza, much of which Israel leveled in the opening weeks of the war.
Israel has blamed the U.N. and other groups for the problems with aid delivery.
Moshe Tetro, an official with COGAT, an Israeli military body in charge of civilian Palestinian affairs, said last week that aid delivery would be more streamlined if the U.N. provided more workers to receive and pack the supplies. He said more trucks were needed to transfer the aid to Israel for security checks and that the working hours at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt needed to be extended.
Israel sealed off Gaza after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack. It relented after its top ally, the U.S., pressed it to loosen its restrictions. The U.S., as well as the U.N., have continued to push Israel to ease the flow of aid.