Remains defiant amid mounting criticism at home, abroad; 18 more die in Gaza
Concerns grew today over the chances of securing a Gaza truce, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected making any “concessions” in stalled talks towards a hostage release deal.
Netanyahu told a televised press conference at the end of a day of nationwide protests that he would “not give in to pressure” to renege on demands in indirect negotiations with Hamas to end the war, now nearing its 12th month.
Analyst Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group said Netanyahu’s remarks showed “he won’t stop the war… until Hamas surrenders, and he basically announced there won’t be a hostage deal”.
Gripped by grief and fury after six dead hostages were recovered from Gaza, Israelis took to the streets on Sunday and Monday to ramp up pressure on their government to secure the release of the remaining captives.
The military said the six were all captured alive during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war, and shot dead by the captors shortly before troops had found them.
“These murderers executed six of our hostage,” said Netanyahu, who has increasingly faced accusations from critics in Israel as well as Hamas officials and analysts of prolonging the war for political gain.
US President Joe Biden, who on Monday met negotiators working alongside Qatar and Egypt to try to secure a truce deal, replied “no” when asked by reporters in Washington if he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to secure a hostage deal.
The veteran Israeli leader, whose ruling coalition relies on the support of far-right ministers opposed to a truce, insisted that “we say yes” while it is Hamas that has refused to make concessions.
“I will not give in to pressure,” Netanyahu told the press conference, saying Israel must control Gaza’s border with Egypt, the Philadelphi Corridor, to stop Hamas from re-arming.
Israeli left-leaning daily Haaretz said Netanyahu was “masking his motives with security concerns” but said he was primarily concerned with his own political survival.
“His coalition… might unravel if a Gaza deal goes through,” it said.
Netanyahu “wants to occupy Gaza on some level indefinitely” and was now “just saying it more openly”, Zonszein told AFP.
Despite “huge opposition” among Israelis who support a Gaza deal, “there’s also nobody in the political realm that’s able to challenge him,” said the analyst.
Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967 and maintained troops and settlers there until 2005, when it withdrew but imposed a crippling blockade and, since the start of the current war, a siege.
Meanwhile, in West Bank, Israeli forces were operating today in the northern areas nearly a week into military raids in the occupied territory that the Palestinian health ministry said killed at least 27.
An Israeli air strike overnight that the military said targeted militants in Tulkarem killed a 15-year-old Palestinian, said a hospital source in the city.
The correspondent said paved streets had been overturned by Israeli bulldozers in several areas, which the army says is a way to detonate explosive devices hidden under roads.
The Jenin city council said that 70 percent of roads and streets have been destroyed since the start of the raid.
Fighting meanwhile raged on in Gaza. At least 16 people have been killed in Gaza by Israeli attacks since dawn, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
Earlier, civil defence rescuers reported two killed, including a child, in an Israeli strike that hit a displacement camp near Khan Yunis today.
The civil defence agency as well as witnesses and AFP correspondents reported more air strikes and artillery shelling across southern and central Gaza.
Israel’s military campaign against Gaza has so far killed at least 40,819 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
With Gaza lying in ruins and the majority of the 2.4 million residents forced to flee, often taking refuge in cramped and unsanitary conditions, disease has spread.
After the first confirmed polio case in 25 years, a vaccination drive got underway Sunday with localised “humanitarian pauses” to the fighting.
The World Health Organization today said more than 161,000 children received an initial dose. It added that the first round would take another 10 days.
