Category Archives: Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel says it will ‘address concerns’ from US after threat to withhold arms funding over Gaza – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. You can read our latest report on the Israel-Gaza war here and all our coverage from the region here.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.

Palestinian health officials said at least 11 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.

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US warns Israel of potential halt to arms transfers if Gaza aid is not distributed

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A private letter from Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin to Benjamin Netanyahu gives Israel 30 days to act

The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.

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Any retaliation against Iran will be based on national interest, says Israel

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Comments from PM’s office come amid continued attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and after reports of assurances to US

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said that Israel will decide alone on the form of any retaliation to Iran’s barrage of 180 missiles fired at the country earlier this month, although it would listen to advice from Washington.

The comments came after US media reported that the Israeli prime minister had given an assurance to the US president, Joe Biden, that Israel would not attack sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme or oilfields before the US presidential election.

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UK remains distant from any Israeli plan to attack Iran | Patrick Wintour

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Ministers are unclear on what action Israel is preparing to take, which shows how far the UK is from endorsing it

The UK will not participate in or coordinate any Israeli attack on Iran, but no decisions have been taken on how to respond if Iran then decides to take further retaliatory action against Israel.

UK ministers also remain unclear on what military action Israel is preparing to take, or its timing, which shows how far the UK is from endorsing an attack on Iran, and how it would prefer a route to de-escalation.

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Feedback loop: the tangled ties between the US election and the Middle East war

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Benjamin Netanyahu has humiliated Biden’s America and seems to anticipate Trump’s return, but what would that mean for Israel?

The year since the 7 October attack has demonstrated just how densely intertwined US presidential politics is with the trajectory of events in the Middle East. Each exerts a gravitational pull on the other, often in ways that are damaging for both.

Foreign policy rarely matters much in US presidential elections, but this year could be an exception. In a contest likely to be decided by small margins in a handful of states, the fallout from the conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, with a potential war with Iran looming, could have a significant impact on Kamala Harris’s prospects.

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Biden and Netanyahu speak as Gallant warns of ‘deadly’ surprise attack on Iran

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Leaders talk for first time in weeks as US administration seeks to weigh in on Israel’s plans

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time in weeks on Wednesday amid expectations of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran, which Yoav Gallant warned would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

Netanyahu’s defence minister issued the warning in a video message on Israeli media on Wednesday night, broadcast after he postponed a scheduled trip to Washington.

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Israel on high alert for 7 October as it escalates Gaza and Lebanon conflicts

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Overnight Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, while at least 10 people were reportedly injured after a Hezbollah rocket hit the city of Haifa

Israel will hold memorials for the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks on Monday as the war it launched in response escalates on two fronts, with heavy bombing raids and mass evacuation orders issued in Lebanon and Gaza amid the growing possibility of a retaliatory airstrike against Iran.

As Israelis across the country prepared to mark one year since Hamas launched its devastating attack, a region that has spiralled into unprecedented crisis was on high alert. In Israel, authorities said they were on the lookout for attacks timed to coincide with the anniversary after a gunman opened fire on pedestrians in a central bus station in a city in the Negev desert, killing one and wounding 10 in the second attack in the last week.

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Netanyahu hits out at Macron over call for halt to arms exports to Israel

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Israeli prime minister turns on French counterpart’s continuing efforts towards a ceasefire and end to violence in Lebanon

A call by Emmanuel Macron for a halt in arms supplies to Israel for use in Gaza has been met with an angry rebuttal from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The French president’s comments were directed mainly at the US and were part of continuing French efforts to revive its call for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

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Biden issues terse words to Netanyahu over peace deal and election influence

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President says he does not know whether Israeli PM is delaying peace deal in order to influence US election

Joe Biden had terse words at the White House on Friday for Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he didn’t know whether the Israeli prime minister was holding up a peace deal in the Middle East – where Israel is at war with Hamas in Gaza and on a military offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon – in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None. None, none. And I think Bibi should remember that,” Biden said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. He added: “And whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know – but I’m not counting on that.”

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Israel launches intense attacks on Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s south

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Reports suggest strikes were targeting Hashem Safieddine, seen as most likely candidate to replace Hassan Nasrallah

The Israeli military launched a series of strikes on southern Beirut on Thursday night, in one of the most intense bombardments on the city since the campaign began last week as Hezbollah continued to attack northern Israel.

The raids came as Israel also cut off a key road near to Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing with Syria that has been used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israeli bombardments in recent days.

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Israel vows to retaliate after Iran launches unprecedented missile attack

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Iran sends more than 180 ballistic missiles in dramatic escalation of conflict

Israel has vowed to retaliate after Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at targets across Israel in a dramatic intensification of a conflict that appeared to be escalating out of control.

“Iran made a big mistake tonight – and it will pay for it,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his security cabinet late on Tuesday. “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies.”

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Missile attack on Israel signals that widely feared regional conflict has ignited

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As forces of restraint in the Middle East weaken with every passing day, Israeli officials declare Iranian attack a declaration of war

The sight of missiles descending on Tel Aviv on Tuesday night was the clearest sign imaginable that the regional conflict so widely feared over the past year may finally have ignited.

This is the second Iranian aerial attack on Israel in less than six months, but last time there was several days’ notice; the much slower drones and cruise missiles arrived first, and the principal target was a military base in the underpopulated Negev desert.

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Israel has begun ground attacks on Hezbollah inside Lebanon, says US

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Israel tells US state department it is targeting infrastructure just inside Lebanon, while Beirutis are urged to evacuate

Israeli forces appeared to have launched what sources called “limited ground operations” targeting Hezbollah inside southern Lebanon, US and other officials said late on Monday.

“This is what they have informed us that they are currently conducting, which are limited operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure near the border,” the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told journalists.

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US looks unable to talk Netanyahu out of planned invasion of Lebanon

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An emboldened Israel appears to believe it can safely ignore a lame duck US president and grab the chance to reset the Middle East’s security dynamics

The Biden administration is losing influence over whether Benjamin Netanyahu launches a ground invasion into southern Lebanon or not.

For more than a year, Joe Biden and his senior advisers have managed to forestall an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon in fear of a larger war that could envelop the entire Middle East.

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The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated

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Israel’s airstrike on Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon has far-reaching implications for Tehran and Washington

When Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, told reporters in New York on Friday that the coming days will determine the future path of the Middle East, he could not have been more prescient, even if at the time he was hoping that Hezbollah and Israel could be persuaded to step back from the brink.

Now, with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed killed, the region, after 11 months, has finally stepped over the brink and into a place it has truly never been before.

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Netanyahu defies calls for ceasefire at UN as Israeli missiles target Beirut

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To half-empty chamber, Israeli PM says his country ‘seeks peace’ but will continue ‘degrading’ Hezbollah

Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off global appeals for a ceasefire in a defiant speech to the United Nations that was delivered barely an hour before massive airstrikes targeting Hezbollah’s leader levelled several apartment blocks in Beirut.

Addressing the general assembly in New York, Israel’s prime minister presented his country as a champion of peace and prosperity for the Middle East, even as its security forces prepared an attack that spread terror in the streets of the Lebanese capital and heightened fears of an all-out regional war.

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Israel’s strike on Hezbollah leader is an alarming escalation in conflict

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Long-understood rules governing balance of deterrence between militant group and Israel have been blown away

Israel’s claimed assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive strike on an underground headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs marks the most alarming escalation in almost a year of war between the Shia militant organisation and Israel.

Immediately after a bellicose speech by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the UN general assembly – where he appeared to directly threaten Iran as well as promise to continue “degrading” Hezbollah – the first reports of a major strike began to emerge.

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UN hostility will not trouble Netanyahu, but now he has angered the US | Patrick Wintour

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Tension between the Israeli PM and the UN has never been so high, but his behaviour over the Lebanon ceasefire has given him a bigger problem

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has for decades used set-piece speeches to the UN to denounce it. In 2017, he said it had been “the epicentre of global antisemitism” and there was “no limit to the UN’s absurdities when it comes to Israel”, but never have the tensions between him and the body he reviles reached such a pitch.

Since the 7 October massacre by Hamas, Israel has ignored four UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and has not just described the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa as a terrorist state, but launched a campaign to bankrupt it. Arab envoys have walked out when the Israeli ambassador has started to speak.

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Lebanon ceasefire hopes fade as Netanyahu issues contradictory statements

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Twin statements by Israeli PM appear to wrongfoot US officials ahead of his speech at UN general assembly

Optimism that a three-week ceasefire could be reached between Hezbollah and Israel appeared to recede as Benjamin Netanyahu issued a pair of contradictory statements on the proposal within hours of each other, as fresh Israeli strikes on Lebanon in the early hours of Friday killed 25 people.

In the latest statement from Netanyahu’s office, issued overnight on Friday, the Israeli prime minister chided reporting on the issue as he confirmed Israel had been consulted regarding a US-led ceasefire proposal.

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‘Clear timeline’ for Palestinian statehood needed: Penny Wong escalates language in UN speech

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Penny Wong says she shares frustration of ‘great majority of countries’ about a lack of progress to recognise a Palestinian state

Australia has suggested the world should set “a clear timeline for the international declaration of Palestinian statehood” in a sign of increasing frustration about the stalled peace process.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, will float the idea in a speech to the UN general assembly in New York on Saturday Australian time (Friday US time). Benjamin Netanyahu was also due to address the gathering amid mounting concern about an escalating regional war.

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