{"id":39596,"date":"2024-04-30T23:47:47","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T23:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/netanyahu-vows-to-invade-rafah-with-or-without-cease-fire-deal\/"},"modified":"2024-04-30T23:47:47","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T23:47:47","slug":"netanyahu-vows-to-invade-rafah-with-or-without-cease-fire-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/netanyahu-vows-to-invade-rafah-with-or-without-cease-fire-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu Vows to Invade Rafah \u2018With or Without\u2019 Cease-Fire Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"549\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/30\/multimedia\/30mideast-crisis-leadall-01-hjwb\/30mideast-crisis-leadall-01-hjwb-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,549&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Netanyahu Vows to Invade Rafah \u2018With or Without\u2019 Cease-Fire Deal\" title=\"Netanyahu Vows to Invade Rafah \u2018With or Without\u2019 Cease-Fire Deal\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed anew on Tuesday to launch an invasion into the southern Gaza Strip, even as a renewed push for a cease-fire agreement was showing glimmers of a potential breakthrough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After seven months of an Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the United States, Qatar and several other countries have been hoping to broker a cease-fire, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is visiting the Middle East to press for an agreement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But with Hamas arguing that any agreement should include an end to the war, and with right-wing politicians in Israel threatening to leave the government coalition if the long-planned incursion into the southern Gazan city of Rafah is delayed, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel reserved the right to keep fighting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,\u201d he said in a meeting with the families of hostages being held in Gaza, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.il\/en\/pages\/event-forum300424\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">according to a statement<\/a> from his office. \u201cWe will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there \u2014 with or without a deal \u2014 in order to achieve the total victory.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s comments came a day before he was to meet with Mr. Blinken, who, along with other Biden administration officials, has been pressing Israel to avoid a major assault on Rafah in order to minimize civilian casualties. The war has already killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, Gazan health officials say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At a news briefing on Tuesday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, made clear that the United States remained opposed to an Israeli strike against Hamas in Rafah without a meaningful plan to protect civilians, which American officials say they have not seen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAs for what is in the public domain coming out of the prime minister\u2019s office, you guys would have to talk to him and his team about that rhetoric and the motivation for it,\u201d Mr. Kirby said. \u201cAll I can say is we don\u2019t want to see a major ground operation in Rafah. That hasn\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Although Israeli officials have repeatedly said that they plan to move into Rafah, which they describe as the last stronghold of Hamas, over the weekend they seemed to make concessions aimed at securing a cease-fire deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Israelis said they were open to holding off on the invasion if it meant freedom for the hostages seized during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and indicated that they were prepared to settle for an initial release of fewer hostages than they had been demanding. For weeks they had been insisting on the release of 40 hostages, but in a new offer, they said they would agree to 33.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Earlier in the week, Mr. Blinken, calling Israel\u2019s revised offer \u201cextraordinarily generous,\u201d said the onus for agreeing to a deal was now on Hamas. On Tuesday, Mr. Kirby said the administration was awaiting a response.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis is a very good proposal and Hamas ought to jump on it and time is of the essence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s comments about invading Rafah injected new uncertainty into whether there would be a truce. It was not clear whether the threat to invade might be a tactic intended to pressure Hamas or to appease hard-liners in the prime minister\u2019s coalition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Rafah, both sides appeared to be bracing for a large military operation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In anticipation of an Israeli ground offensive, some families there have been moving north into areas of Gaza where fighting had taken place earlier in the war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Among them was Mohammed Foara and his family, who had to move for the fifth time in seven months. Earlier in the war, their oldest child was killed by an airstrike in Nuseirat, in central Gaza.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI fear for them more and more,\u201d Mr. Foara said of his four surviving children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Blinken, who is on his seventh trip to the Middle East since the Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people, discussed the proposed cease-fire deal at meetings in Saudi Arabia on Monday. On Tuesday, he visited Jordan, where he met with King Abdullah II to discuss the proposal, as well as Jordan\u2019s humanitarian aid contributions to Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The secretary of state visited a warehouse where workers were loading trucks for the first attempt to send medical and food aid overland from Jordan to the Israeli-Gazan border crossing of Erez. He praised the start of the new aid corridor and said that a pier being built by the U.S. military to bring aid by sea to coastal Gaza would be operational in about one week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Blinken and his aides have been trying to work on a range of issues in the region, including continuing the flow of U.S. arms to Israel, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a political solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In talks with Jordanian officials, Mr. Blinken had also been expected to address issues around the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Mr. Blinken later left for Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Biden administration has raised the prospect of the authority, which is <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/11\/24\/world\/middleeast\/palestinian-authority-gaza-war.html\" title=\"\">considered by many Palestinians<\/a> to be authoritarian and corrupt, helping to govern a postwar Gaza, an idea that Israel\u2019s government opposes. Jordanian officials have close ties with Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the authority, and other prominent Palestinians in the organization.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Officials from Hamas and the political faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, with which Hamas has long competed for power in Gaza and the West Bank, met in Beijing recently for what Lin Jian, a spokesman for China\u2019s foreign ministry, described on Tuesday as \u201cin-depth and candid talks on promoting intra-Palestinian reconciliation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Lin said the two sides had agreed to continue a dialogue. Representatives of Fatah and Hamas also met in February in Russia without any apparent progress toward a unified government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Peter Baker<!-- --> and <!-- -->Joy Dong<!-- --> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/30\/world\/middleeast\/netanyahu-invasion-rafah-cease-fire.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed anew on Tuesday to launch an invasion into the southern Gaza Strip, even as a renewed push for a cease-fire agreement was showing glimmers of a potential breakthrough. After seven months of an Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the United States, Qatar and several other countries have been hoping [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/30\/multimedia\/30mideast-crisis-leadall-01-hjwb\/30mideast-crisis-leadall-01-hjwb-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7275,2294,38074,4758,4761,3961],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39598,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39596\/revisions\/39598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}