Category Archives: Benjamin Netanyahu

Capitol Hill on alert over protests as Netanyahu due to address Congress

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Police mount major security operation to seal off US Capitol from protesters before Israeli prime minister to speak

Capitol Hill is on high alert for a day of protest from thousands of demonstrators representing a broad coalition of groups voicing opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, when he addresses a joint session of the US Congress.

With tensions over Israel’s 10-and-half-month war in Gaza running high, police mounted a major security operation to seal off the US Capitol from protesters long before Netanyahu is due to speak at 2pm ET.

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Bernie Sanders condemns speech to Congress by ‘war criminal’ Netanyahu

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Independent senator says in floor speech invitation to Israeli PM, due to give address on Wednesday, is ‘disgrace’

The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to the US Congress, calling him a “war criminal” presiding over a “rightwing extremist government”.

Sanders delivered his remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday as Congress expects Netanyahu to give a speech to Congress on Wednesday afternoon. The speech comes after an underwhelming arrival to the US, just after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from November’s elections.

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Netanyahu to arrive in Washington as fears grow of wider war in Middle East

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Israeli PM will visit US amid political tumult and his meeting with Biden will be a test of US president’s influence

Benjamin Netanyahu is due to arrive in Washington on Monday at a moment of historic political tumult, as he is scheduled to meet the outgoing US president, Joe Biden, and address a divided Congress amid fears of a growing regional war in the Middle East.

The Israeli prime minister’s arrival will come just a day after Biden bowed out of the presidential race, and will be a major test of Biden’s ability to project US influence and restraint on Israel in the lame duck period of his presidency. Netanyahu will be forced to walk a tightrope as he balances between the Donald Trump-led Republican party and a reinvigorated Democratic campaign that may unite behind the vice-president, Kamala Harris.

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Israel says it intercepted missile fired by Houthis at port city of Eilat

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Houthi military says US ship in Red Sea also targeted after Israeli strikes on oil facilities and power station in Yemen

Israeli forces have said they intercepted a ballistic missile fired by Houthi militants in Yemen targeting the southern city of Eilat, in retaliation for a series of Israeli strikes on the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah.

Meanwhile, forest fires engulfed parts of northern Israel after a barrage of rocket fire from Lebanon.

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Netanyahu rejects calls for immediate inquiry into 7 October security failures

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PM tells parliament he wants to ‘beat Hamas’ before investigation into deadliest attack in Israel’s history

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected calls for an immediate independent inquiry into the security failures that allowed the deadliest attack in his country’s history.

Speaking to Israel’s parliament, Netanyahu told lawmakers: “First, I want to beat Hamas.”

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Dozens killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza Strip

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Targets include ‘humanitarian zone’ and school harbouring displaced people, where IDF says there were Hamas fighters

At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, health officials have said, including in an attack on a school sheltering displaced people and another on an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone”, as ceasefire talks in the nearly 10-month-old conflict appeared to stall again.

The Red Crescent said on Tuesday that 17 people were killed in a bombing near a petrol station in Mawasi, an area on the Mediterranean shoreline packed with hundreds of thousands of displaced people that Israel had previously declared an evacuation zone. Another 16 were killed in a strike that targeted the UN-run al-Awda school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, medics at a nearby hospital said.

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Palestinians told to leave Gaza City as Israel steps up offensive

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Evacuation order follows deadly airstrikes on locations including schools and shelters in past few days

The Israeli military told all Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza City and head south on Wednesday as it stepped up a military offensive in the territory that has killed dozens of people over the past 48 hours.

The evacuation order, carried out by dropping leaflets urging “all those in Gaza City” to take two “safe routes” south to the area around the central town of Deir al-Balah, came after a series of deadly strikes over the past two days in other parts of Gaza.

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Labour expected to drop challenge to ICC over Netanyahu arrest warrant

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Exclusive: UK government appears unlikely to go ahead with legal bid, while Keir Starmer has spoken with Israeli PM over Gaza ceasefire

The new Labour government is expected to drop a bid to delay the international criminal court (ICC) reaching a decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The development came as Keir Starmer, the new UK prime minister, told the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, that he believed the Palestinians had an undeniable right to a Palestinian state. Starmer spoke to Abbas on Sunday about the “ongoing suffering and devastating loss of life” in Gaza.

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Israeli government accused of trying to sabotage Gaza ceasefire proposal

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Mossad chief gave mediators list of new demands and it was not clear whether Hamas would accede to them, reports say

The Israeli government has been accused of attempting to sabotage a US-backed ceasefire proposal, according to Israeli media, by introducing new demands despite previously accepting the plan.

Hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza had risen in recent days following reports that Hamas had given initial approval for a new proposal for a phased deal, after ninth months of war since the attack on 7 October.

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Fears of long war in Gaza as new chapter opens and ‘intense fighting’ eases off

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Israel’s ground offensive is nearing its conclusion amid the threat of indefinite occupation and a continuing insurgency

Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the phase of “intense fighting” against Hamas in Gaza is coming to an end, but with no publicly unveiled plans for the next stage of Israel’s campaign, Palestinians and Israelis alike fear that the unfolding ­chapter in the conflict could amount to a long period of insurgency-style warfare and indefinite occupation.

Israel’s generals are expected to announce soon that the last main ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, in the southernmost city of Rafah, is over, although the prime minister has made clear that the war will not end until Israel achieves “total victory”, which he defines as the complete eradication of Hamas as a civilian and military entity.

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Israel risking disastrous war against Hezbollah for political reasons, says former US official

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Harrison Mann, military expert who quit over Gaza, says ruinous war in Lebanon would pull US into regional conflict

Israel risks going to war against Hezbollah to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival, but it would be a miscalculation that could lead to mass civilian deaths in both Lebanon and Israel, a former US military intelligence analyst has warned.

Harrison Mann, a major in the Defence Intelligence Agency who left the military last month over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, also told the Guardian that such a disastrous new war would pull the US into a regional conflict.

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US Congress faces growing calls to withdraw Netanyahu invitation: ‘a terrible mistake’

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Notable Israelis add their voices to oppose invite extended by Mike Johnson, which Democrats plan to boycott

A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”.

The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”, including intelligence failures that led to last October’s deadly Hamas attack and the ensuing bloody war in Gaza which shows no sign of ending.

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Israeli court rules ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted for military service

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Decision threatens Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government with collapse as Gaza conflict drags on

Israel’s supreme court has ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jewish men must be drafted into military service, a politically explosive decision that threatens the stability of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The unanimous ruling on Tuesday, from an expanded panel of nine judges, upheld an interim decision last month that the state had no authority to offer the current exemption for ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, men. It found that yeshivas – Orthodox seminaries for Torah study – should be ineligible for state subsidies unless students enlisted in the military.

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Intense phase of Israel’s war with Hamas nearing end, says Netanyahu

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Israeli PM says he hopes for diplomatic solution to conflict but will solve it in ‘a different way’ if necessary

Israel’s prime minister has said the most intense phase of the assault against Hamas in Gaza is coming to an end, freeing up forces to move to the Lebanese border, where escalating exchanges of fire with the militant group Hezbollah have increased fears of a wider war.

In his first public interview with a Hebrew-language network outlet in more than eight months of conflict, broadcast on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu also walked back on his commitment to a US-backed ceasefire proposal with Hamas, instead suggesting a more limited offer.

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Labour would comply with ICC arrest order for Netanyahu, Lammy reiterates

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Shadow foreign secretary repeats belief in ‘rules-based order’ and also says UK would not seek EU membership

David Lammy has reiterated that Labour would seek to implement an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu if one was issued by the international criminal court.

Speaking to CNN, the shadow foreign secretary said a Labour government would comply if an order was issued for the arrest of the Israeli prime minister, adding that he expected the response to be the same all over Europe.

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Israeli defence minister flies to US for ‘critical’ talks on Gaza and Lebanon

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Yoav Gallant to meet top officials as Benjamin Netanyahu repeats claim of ‘dramatic drop’ in US arms shipments

Israel’s defence minister has flown to meet senior Biden administration officials in Washington for what he has described as “critical” talks over the twin conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Yoav Gallant, accompanied by the Israel Defense Forces’ deputy chief of staff, will meet the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, as well as the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Joe Biden’s special envoy, Amos Hochstein.

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‘All day you hear bombs’: on Israel’s northern border as war with Hezbollah looms

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Doctors prepare underground hospital units, people flee their homes and in rural kibbutz tension hangs in the air

Beneath the 800-bed Galilee medical centre in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya, treatment is being conducted in an underground complex beneath the hospital.

About 7km from the border with Lebanon, a frontier visible from the hospital’s car park and already under threat from Hezbollah’s missiles and explosive drones, the doctors are aware that in the event of an escalating war their facility will be on the frontline.

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Benjamin Netanyahu dissolves Israeli war cabinet

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Move is apparent rebuff to far right and attempt to tighten grip on decision-making over Hamas and Hezbollah

Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the Israeli war cabinet that had been overseeing the conflict in Gaza, rebuffing his far-right allies who had been seeking seats, and apparently moving to solidify his grasp on decision-making over the fighting with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah across the Lebanese border.

The prime minister announced the move to ministers, saying the war cabinet had been established as part of an agreement in which the moderate politician Benny Gantz and his National Unity party joined an emergency coalition last year.

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Netanyahu reportedly criticises military tactical pause in Gaza amid divisions with IDF

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Israel’s prime minister is said to have called the decision ‘unacceptable’ after Itamar Ben-Gvir said whoever decided it was a ‘fool’

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly criticised plans announced by the military to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into Gaza to facilitate the delivery of aid

On Sunday the military announced a daily pause that would begin in the Rafah area at 8am and remain in effect until 7pm along the main Salah al-Din road, to allow aid trucks to transit between the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, adding that the pause would take place every day until further notice.

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