Israel widens offensive in central Gaza as Netanyahu refuses to discuss postwar plan

The Israeli military expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reported to have refused requests from security officials to make plans for control of Gaza after the war with Hamas ends.

Over the last few days, three requests to the prime minister’s office were conveyed on behalf of the directors of the Mossad, the Shin Bet, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff and the defence ministry to arrange a meeting on decisions relating to “the day after” Israel declares it has achieved its goals against the Palestinian militant group in control of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Tuesday night.

Israel-Gaza war: Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel paying 'heavy price'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Gaza war has come at a "very heavy price" for his side.

The military says more than a dozen soldiers have been killed in the territory since Friday, bringing the total of the ground assault to 154.

Saturday was one of its deadliest days - but the Israeli PM there was "no choice" but to keep fighting.

There’s only one way out of this Gaza war and Netanyahu is blocking it. Joe Biden must force him from power

Joe Biden’s bond with Israel and the Jewish people runs so deep he is said to feel it in his kishkes (that’s “guts”, for the non-Yiddish speakers among you). Biden demonstrated that early in the current crisis by visiting Israel within days of the 7 October massacre, which saw 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, killed, many tortured and mutilated. He demonstrated it again, just as swiftly, with the dispatch of two US aircraft carriers to the region, aimed at deterring Hezbollah and its Iranian backers from attacking Israel from the north – his one-word message: “Don’t.” And he showed it once more just last week, wielding the US veto at the United Nations – making Washington all but a lone voice against the global chorus demanding that Israel end its offensive in Gaza, which has left so many thousands dead.

Former US ambassador to Israel says Netanyahu is a ‘clear and present danger’ to Israel

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk slammed Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu as Sunday “clear and present danger” to the country, and called on him to resign “before he does even more damage to Israel.”

“[Netanyahu’s] determination to stay in power no matter the cost is a clear and present danger to Israel. He needs to resign…yesterday!” Indyk wrote in a post on X Sunday morning.

Benny Gantz eyes his moment to topple Israel’s Netanyahu

TEL AVIV — All eyes are on when retired general Benny Gantz is going to make his move against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since Hamas’ murderous attacks on October 7, Israelis have largely put partisan politics aside, but the strain for such a highly rambunctious nation is starting to show. With the first phase of action in Gaza coming to a close, the weeks ahead now look set to roll into a potential endgame for Netanyahu, as many Israelis blame him for last month’s catastrophic security blunder.

Netanyahu: Don’t accuse me of boosting Hamas with Qatari money

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vehemently denied accusations he allowed Qatar to fund and strengthen the militant group Hamas in order to divide Palestinians into rival political camps, slamming the claims as “ridiculous.”

Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel argue his government spent years actively boosting Hamas in Gaza by allowing Qatar to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to the coastal enclave in a risky game of “divide-and-rule,” that was meant to play the Islamist militants from Hamas off against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The Netanyahu doctrine: how Israel’s longest-serving leader reshaped the country in his image

An attack like Hamas’s 7 October massacre was not supposed to have been possible. Certainly not while prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in charge. He was, as his acolytes put it, “Mr Security”. He wanted to be remembered, he said, as “the protector of Israel”. He boasted that Israel had never known a more peaceful and prosperous time than the roughly 16 years he has been in power. It was under his successive administrations that Israel installed the Iron Dome system to intercept rockets from the Gaza Strip, and constructed, along the Gaza border, a 40-mile, $1.1bn fence, equipped with underground sensors, remote-controlled weapons and an expansive camera system. The success of Netanyahu’s vision of Fortress Israel could be measured in the imperceptibility of the Palestinians and their suffering from the comfort of a Tel Aviv cafe.

Netanyahu scrambles to quell revolt by far right over Gaza fuel

TEL AVIV — Benjamin Netanyahu scrambled to quell a revolt by religious nationalists and settler leaders within his increasingly unruly governing coalition demanding he reverse a decision to let two fuel trucks per day enter Gaza — a concession the Israeli prime minister made amid growing U.S. and international pressure. 

Rebellious coalition partners demanded to have more say over the conduct of the war after Netanyahu’s decision was announced Friday. They argued there should be no delivery of fuel, however limited, to the Palestinian coastal enclave — or any other humanitarian concessions — until Hamas frees the 240 Israeli hostages the group seized on October 7, when gunmen launched an attack on southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, Israeli officials say.

Netanyahu: Israeli ground invasion ‘the one thing’ that might lead to a hostage deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to confirm reports about a possible deal with Hamas to free Israeli hostages trapped in Gaza on Sunday, but attributed any movement toward an agreement to Israel’s deadly ground offensive in the region.

“There could be [a deal], but I think the less I said about it, the more I’ll increase the chances that it materializes,” Netanyahu told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday during an interview on “Meet the Press.”

Netanyahu Calls Palestinians ‘Collateral Damage’ As Israel Destroys Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Palestinian civilians being killed en masse are simply “collateral damage” in his military’s destruction of Gaza.

The right-wing leader appeared on multiple cable news shows to speak on the current state Israel’s monthlong siege on Gaza, which human rights experts have warned amount to ethnic cleansing and war crimes. For much of his appearances, Netanyahu attempted to downplay both his responsibility in the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israelis as well as his military’s role in killing Palestinians.

Netanyahu rejects growing calls for a cease-fire as Israel battles Hamas outside main Gaza hospital

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Saturday against growing international calls for a cease-fire, saying Israel’s battle to crush Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants will continue with “full force.”

A cease-fire would be possible only if all 239 hostages held by militants in Gaza are released, Netanyahu said in a televised address.

The Israeli leader also insisted that after the war, now entering its sixth week, Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain security control there. Asked what he meant by security control, Netanyahu said Israeli forces must be able to enter Gaza freely to hunt down militants.

Netanyahu Rejects Calls for Ceasefire as Gaza Death Toll Surpasses 8,300

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected international calls for an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza during a press conference on Monday.

Since the Hamas-led infiltration attack on October 7 that killed around 1,400 people, Israeli forces have waged a genocidal bombing campaign against Palestinians, killing more than 8,300 people in Gaza — more than a third of whom are children, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. Thousands more Gazans are estimated to be trapped under the rubble.

‘Netanyahu Got All the Warnings,’ Says Former Head of Israeli Military Intelligence

Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of over 200 others on Oct. 7 was more than a national tragedy for Israel — it was also a massive intelligence failure. Now, as Israel goes to war against Hamas, vital questions abound: Why didn’t Israeli leadership see this coming? If Israel defeats Hamas, what will take its place? And what are the odds that Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, could get pulled into a direct role in the conflict?

Netanyahu told to ‘quit now’ as ex-leaders pin blame on dysfunctional government

Former Israeli military, political and intelligence officials have expressed doubts over the leadership of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as debate rages inside the country about the response to the Hamas attacks on 7 October that killed 1,400 Israelis.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak described the terrorist attack as “the most severe blow Israel has suffered since its establishment to date”. “I don’t believe that the people trust Netanyahu to lead when he is under the burden of such a devastating event that just happened under his term,” he told the Observer.

Warning: Benjamin Netanyahu is walking right into Hamas’s trap

You cannot think straight when you’re in pain. That’s truer still when the pain is combined with fury at those who caused it. There’s a reason we speak of “blind rage”: when anger descends, we cannot see what’s in front of us. And if that’s true of individuals, it’s truer still of nations.

That was the message Joe Biden brought when he travelled to Israel this week. Drawing on his own experience of multiple bereavements, he consoled Israelis grieving for the more than 1,400 civilians killed by Hamas in the 7 October massacre and those waiting for word on the 203 hostages, including young children and the elderly, still held in Gaza. In what has become his signature style, Biden shared in their pain.

Survivors of kibbutz attack turn their ire on Netanyahu

Tomer Eliaz, a 17-year-old boy in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, was forced to go door-to-door by Hamas and tell neighbors to come out, saying he would be killed if they didn’t.

Several opened up and were murdered, while others were hauled off as hostages to Gaza. After using the teenage boy as bait, the Islamist militants shot him dead too.

Just 800 meters from the Gaza border, Nahal Oz was one of the first Hamas targets on October 7, and the events of that morning are now painfully seared into the minds of residents Elad Poterman and Addi Cherry.

‘He’s unfit’: Israel fiercely divided over Netanyahu’s hostage response

Dressed in a T-shirt bearing her missing granddaughter, Roni Eshel’s, smiling face, Zehava Eshel addressed a crowd of protesters gathered in front of the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv. “The country was supposed to protect her,” she said, her voice hoarse.

The Israeli military have labelled 19-year-old Roni Eshel, an IDF soldier stationed at a base near the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, as a missing person. All that the Eshel family know is that Roni last texted her mother from a friend’s phone in the early hours of Saturday 7 October, during the unprecedented incursion by Hamas militants that has so far left more than 1,300 Israelis dead.

Since then, Zehava Eshel said, the family has heard very little.

The danger of leaving things be: how the world ‘failed miserably’ in the Middle East

Joe Biden’s high-stakes visit to the Middle East to avert an all-out war raises serious questions about the level and nature of the president’s previous engagement in the region.

Just as Israel suffered a total intelligence breakdown over the horrific Hamas attacks, diplomats stand charged with their own collective system failure, at the heart of which was treating the Palestinian issue as best managed, not solved.

While the EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said “the world has failed miserably” in the Middle East, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was forced to deny the Biden team took its eye off the ball, when asked about his claim three weeks ago that the region was “quieter” than it had been in two decades.

ICC Should Investigate Netanyahu for War Crimes, Spanish Minister Says

Spain’s minister of social rights released a statement Monday calling on her country’s coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the ongoing aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip and the devastating blockade that has prevented the free flow of desperately needed humanitarian aid.

“Using the horrific murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed factions as an excuse to justify Israel’s crimes in general and the massacre in Gaza in particular is unacceptable,” Ione Belarra, the leader of Spain’s left-wing Podemos party, said in a video statement posted to social media.

The Viral Protester Who Explains Why Benjamin Netanyahu’s Long Political Career May Finally End

The familiar pattern of countries rallying around their elected officials has not been the case in Israel, where huge majorities of the public blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government for security lapses enabling the Palestinian group Hamas to invade and massacre Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

The Israeli death toll from Hamas’ deadly incursion and the subsequent battle with the Israeli military now exceeds 1,300 people, the vast majority of them civilians. The Islamist militant group has also taken an estimated 150 Israelis as hostages.