Peace and Justice Post

 The Palestinian group accused Netanyahu of attempting to “obstruct and thwart” a deal

by Kyle Anzalone, Antiwar. com, October 7, 2025

Hamas issued its demands for reaching an agreement with Israel to release the remaining hostages and end the war. Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect negotiations to attempt to reach an agreement under a framework proposed by President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Hamas gave its demands for reaching a deal. The Palestinian group’s positions include a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from all of Gaza, the unrestricted entry of humanitarian and relief aid, and the immediate rebuilding of the Strip overseen by Palestinians.

Demanding the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza may create a barrier to reaching a deal. Under Trump’s 20-point peace plan, Israel would engage in a phased withdrawal from Gaza but retain a large buffer zone around the Strip.

Additionally, the President’s proposal called for the rebuilding of Gaza to be completed by a trust that includes Trump as the chair and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair on the board.

Trump unveiled the peace plan in a presser with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. However, after Hamas agreed to release the Israeli hostages on Friday and Trump called for an immediate ceasefire, Netanyahu has continued military operations in Gaza.

Tuesday’s negotiations between Hamas and Israel, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, were the second day of talks. On Monday, Egyptian and Qatari officials reported the negotiations were “positive,” and Trump said the deal had a “good chance.”

Netanyahu has remained pessimistic that a deal will be completed, reportedly leading to friction with Trump. On Friday, Axios reports, Trump lashed out at Netanyahu on a call when he expressed skepticism about Hamas agreeing to release the hostages.

Hamas and Trump have said that a ceasefire is critical to facilitating the release of the remaining 48 Israeli hostages in Gaza. Israeli strikes in Gaza continued on Tuesday. Netanyahu says he will not order the IDF to halt operations until all the hostages are returned to Israel.

Hamas’s spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said that the group was working to “overcome all obstacles” to reach an agreement, but Netanyahu was attempting to “obstruct and thwart” a deal as he had “deliberately thwarted all previous rounds.”

Israel has assassinated multiple Hamas negotiators over the past two years. Last month, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of the Palestinian group’s leadership in Qatar as they were meeting to discuss a ceasefire and hostage exchange proposed by Trump. The Israeli strikes failed to kill the targeted Hamas official.

On Tuesday, Trump said he had dispatched American negotiators to join the ongoing talks in Egypt.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Anitwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.

Israel continues heavy attacks on central and southern Gaza despite telling Palestinians in Gaza City to flee there

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, September 24, 2025 at 1:25 pm ET | Gaza, Israel

Israeli strikes and gunfire across the Gaza Strip killed at least 84 Palestinians on Wednesday, medical sources told the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The IDF continues its assault on Gaza City, where it aims to forcibly displace the entire civilian population and raze every building to the ground, but it also continues to launch attacks in central and southern Gaza despite telling the Palestinians in Gaza City to head south.

Al Jazeera reported that an Israeli strike hit a stadium in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza that has been turned into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, killing 12 people, including seven women and two children.
Palestinians injured and killed in an Israeli attack on Nuseirat while waiting to receive humanitarian aid are brought to Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat camp, Gaza, on September 24, 2025 (IMAGO/APAimages via Reuters Connect)

“Despite these endless evacuation orders from Israeli forces telling Palestinians to leave Gaza City for the central and southern areas of the Strip, they are still being targeted wherever they go,” said Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary.

WAFA reported that three Palestinians were killed while waiting for humanitarian aid northwest of Rafah, southern Gaza. Among the three killed was Mohammed al-Satari, a 36-year-old soccer player who previously played for the Shabab Rafah Sports Club.

In Gaza City, medics told Reuters that 20 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes on a shelter housing displaced people near a market in the center of the city.

“We were sleeping in God’s care, there was nothing – they did not inform us, or not even give us a sign – it was a surprise,” Sami Hajjaj, a survivor of the attack, told Reuters. “There are children and women, around 200 people maybe, six-seven families, this square is full of families.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update, which it releases about midday Gaza time, that it recorded the deaths of 33 Palestinians and the recovery of four bodies of Palestinians killed by previous Israeli attacks. The ministry said that its violent death toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 65,419, and the number of wounded has climbed to 167,160. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.

Israel Katz made the comments as the Houthis have continued their attacks on Israel following the assassination of the Yemeni PM

by Dave DeCamp | September 4, 2025 at 2:17 pm ET | Israel, Yemen

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday repeated a threat to unleash biblical plagues on Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on Israel, which have continued following the Israeli assassination of the prime minister of the Sanaa-based government.

“The Houthis are firing missiles at Israel again. A plague of darkness, a plague of the firstborn – we will complete all ten plagues,” Katz wrote on X, referring to plagues brought upon Egypt in the book of Exodus.

Katz has previously used the “plague of darkness” in apparent reference to Israel’s strikes on Yemeni power plants and other energy infrastructure. He also referenced the “plague of the firstborn,” which resulted in the deaths of all firstborn males in Egypt in Exodus, when announcing the Israeli strikes that targeted Yemeni civilian leadership and killed Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi.

Yemen’s Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, announced another missile attack on Israel on Thursday and repeated their vow that the operations in support of the Palestinians in Gaza will continue until there’s a ceasefire and an end to the blockade on the Palestinian territory.

“The suffering of our oppressed Palestinian people in Gaza makes it imperative for all peoples to take action and break all restrictions in fulfillment of their religious, moral, and humanitarian duty to end this unprecedented crime in our contemporary history. Everyone bears responsibility, and their duty will not be done until it is fulfilled,” said Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree. “Yemenis will continue to support Gaza until the aggression against it stops and the siege is lifted.”

Saree also said the missile targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion airport and claimed that it reached its target and that US and Israeli air defenses failed to intercept it. Much earlier in the day, the Israeli military said a missile fired from Yemen landed in an open area outside of Israeli territory, but it’s unclear if it was the same one announced by Saree. The IDF claimed later in the day that its forces intercepted two drones fired from Yemen.

The Houthis are known for their resilience and did not back down in the face of a very heavy US bombing campaign that the Trump administration conducted from March 15 to May 6, which killed more than 250 civilians. The US gave up on trying to get the Houthis to stop their attacks on Israel and their blockade of Israeli shipping and agreed to a ceasefire with the group.

Gaza hospitals recorded another three starvation-related deaths due to the Israeli siege

by Dave DeCamp | August 26, 2025 at 1:54 pm ET | Gaza, Israel

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that Israeli forces killed 75 Palestinians and wounded 370 over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli attacks continue across the Strip.

On top of the violent deaths, the Health Ministry also recorded three starvation-related deaths due to the Israeli siege. “This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition to 303, including 117 children,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.

Israeli strikes on Tuesday included the bombing of a tent in southern Gaza near the city of Khan Younis that killed six members of the same family, including three children, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The IDF has continued its heavy attacks on Gaza City as it prepares to take over the city, plans that involve cleansing the city of its Palestinian population and then completely destroying it. Gaza City residents told Reuters that Israeli tank and aerial attacks pounded the city’s eastern neighborhoods throughout the night.

“Earthquakes, we call it, they want to scare people to leave their homes,” said Ismail, a 40-year-old Gaza City resident. Health officials told Reuters that at least 18 people were killed in and around Gaza City overnight.

Last week, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that famine is occurring in the Gaza Governorate, which encompasses Gaza City and its surrounding towns. The IPC is calling for an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian catastrophe.

Israeli forces also continued to kill Palestinians attempting to reach aid, with the Health Ministry recording the death of 17 aid seekers and the injury of 122. Since the end of May, the ministry has recorded the killing of 2,140 aid seekers, and more than 15,737 have been injured.

The Health Ministry said that since October 7, 2023, its violent death toll has reached 62,819, and the number of wounded has climbed to 158,629. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, August 17, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday and said that he had fulfilled a promise to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state that he made to the settlers 25 years ago.

According to The Times of Israel, the Israeli leader recalled his visit to the Ofra settlement in the year 2000 and saying that “we would do everything to ensure our continued hold on the Land of Israel, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, to thwart the attempts that existed then — and unfortunately still exist — to try to uproot us from here. Thank God, what I promised — we kept.”

Netanyahu said he prevented a Palestinian state despite significant external pressure. “Pressures from home, pressures from abroad, a series of American presidents who wanted to uproot us and to establish a Palestinian state here. We stood firm together. We upheld the promise of the generations,” he said.

The Ofra settlement was started in 1975 and, like all other Israeli settlements in the West Bank, is illegal under international law. Netanyahu was visiting the settlement on Sunday for an event marking its 50th anniversary.

The visit came after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced a major settlement expansion that he said would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” The plan is seen as Smotrich’s reaction to the UK, France, Canada, and Australia declaring their intent to recognize a Palestinian state.

The Trump administration has also expressed significant opposition to its allies’ plans to recognize a Palestinian state, and President Trump has even suggested a trade deal with Canada could be scrapped over Ottawa’s plans.

Netanyahu chose to blow up the ceasefire and starve Gaza’s population in order to force a surrender from Hamas, while top military and security officials favored moving to the second phase of a ceasefire, leaked cabinet meeting minutes reveal.

By Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss, August 7, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at cabinet meeting on January 22, 2023. (Photo: Israel National Photo Collection/Government Press Office)

Israel decided to starve the people of Gaza as a strategy of war and in order to sabotage the ceasefire deal, according to Israeli cabinet meeting minutes leaked on Wednesday to Israel’s Channel 13. 

The document purports to show that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused multiple proposals that would have secured the release of the remaining Israeli captives during the ceasefire between January and March 2025. Netanyahu decided to break the ceasefire, against the advice of top Israeli military and security officials, and to cut off all aid to Gaza to “force Hamas to surrender,” the leak shows.

The Israeli cabinet’s meeting, dated March 1, was to discuss the fate of the ceasefire with Hamas as the first phase of the agreement was set to expire. The prospective second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to see the beginning of talks on the permanent end of the war. The minutes released by Channel 13 show that army and intelligence officials argued for concluding the ceasefire deal, while cabinet ministers opposed it.

Major General Nitzan Alon, the Israeli army official in charge of prisoners and missing persons, reportedly argued that “the only opportunity to release the captives is to discuss the conditions of phase two,” while Ronen Bar, the chief of the Israeli internal intelligence agency (the Shabak), said that his “preferred option is to move forward with phase two,” stating that Israel could “easily” return to war later. “Let’s get everyone back first, then resume the fight,” he reportedly said.

The minutes also revealed that a senior Israeli security official told the ministers that “it is possible to secure the release of more captives, but that requires engaging in talks about phase two — ending the war.” The government, however, led by Netanyahu, rejected the proposal. He was backed by Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, who reportedly said that Israel was “not prepared to end the war while Hamas remains in power.” Dermer, who supports Netanyahu’s hardline position on Gaza, was named by the Prime Minister as head of the negotiating team in the ceasefire talks.

Also backing Netanyahu’s refusal was hardline Finance Minister Bezelel Smotrich, who lashed out at military and intelligence officials, insisting that they were “misleading the public” into thinking Israel could “stop the war and return to it later,” which Smotrich regarded as “ignorance.” 

For his part, Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, supported a partial deal, saying that, “If Hamas returns even a number of hostages — less than half — that’s excellent.”

On March 18, Israel broke the ceasefire by launching a wave of bombings on Gaza, killing 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the first minutes of the onslaught. Israel also announced the complete closing of the crossing points, causing an immediate drop in available goods in the strip and cutting off the entry of humanitarian aid. The continuation of the blockade caused the spread of severe hunger, which UN agencies have qualified as famine. UNICEF has called the deaths of Palestinian children due to starvation “unconscionable”.

Israel also halted the work of UN agencies in Gaza, limiting the distribution of the little aid it began to allow in since April to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The GHF is the controversial Israeli-backed and U.S.-run organization that replaced the UN in May, and has forced Palestinians to travel to four distribution centers in the southern Gaza Strip to collect aid. The centers have been described as “death traps” that use aid as “bait” to lure Palestinians into southern Gaza. There, the Israeli army opens fire on aid-seekers, resulting in numerous recorded “aid massacres.” As of the time of writing, 1,561 people have been killed at GHF sites or while waiting for aid trucks in the north, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

According to the Health Ministry, some 160 Palestinians, including 90 children, have died due to malnutrition brought on by starvation.

Middle East Monitor, August 2, 2025

The Palestinian resistance group Hamas said Saturday it will not give up its arms unless an “independent, fully sovereign” Palestinian state is established, Anadolu reports.

The statement came following reports by the Israeli daily Haaretz citing a recording attributed to US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff: “Hamas has said that they are prepared to be demilitarized.”

“We are very, very close to a solution to end this war,” Witkoff is also heard saying, according to Haaretz.

“Commenting on reports by some media outlets quoting US envoy Steve Witkoff as saying the movement expressed willingness to disarm, we reiterate that resistance and its weapons are a national and legitimate right as long as the occupation continues — a right recognized by international laws and conventions,” Hamas said in a statement on Telegram.

The group added that such rights “cannot be relinquished except with the full attainment of our national rights, foremost being the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Witkoff met families of Israeli hostages in Tel Aviv on Saturday, as hundreds rallied to demand a ceasefire deal that would secure their release from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

Witkoff’s visit, his third to Hostage Square since the war began, came shortly after Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad released footage showing two emaciated Israeli captives, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, prompting renewed outrage.

On Friday, Witkoff visited an aid center in southern Gaza operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Diplomatic merchandise: Exploiting the issue of Palestinian recognition

He said the aim was to give US President Donald Trump “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”

The visit comes amid mounting criticism of US-Israeli coordination in Gaza, particularly regarding the group’s distribution model, which Palestinians say serves as a tool for displacement under the guise of humanitarian relief as well as a “death trap” for many Palestinian aid seekers, with over 1,300 killed since May while waiting for relief supplies.

Hamas on Thursday denounced the visit as a “propaganda stunt” aimed at deflecting global outrage over what rights groups and UN officials have described as Israel’s systematic starvation campaign.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, at least 169 Palestinians, including 93 children, have died of hunger-related causes, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.​​​​​​​

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Starvation is just one weapon if eradicating ‘the enemy’ is the Netanyahu government’s ultimate objective

Analysis | Middle East

1. regions middle east
2. israel-gaza

Paul R. Pillar, Jul 30, 2025

The prospects for negotiating a ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip appear as dim as ever. Israeli and U.S. representatives walked out of talks with Hamas in Qatar that had been mediated by the Qataris and Egyptians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about “alternative” means of achieving Israel’s goals in the territory.

President Donald Trump, echoing Netanyahu’s levying of blame on Hamas, asserted that “Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die.” Trump went on to mention a need to “finish the job,” evidently referring to Israel’s continued devastating assault on the Strip and its residents.

I have been thinking for a long time about the negotiation of ceasefires. Nearly 50 years ago, I wrote a book, “Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process,” which explored the diplomatic and military dynamics of how two belligerents negotiate a peace while simultaneously fighting a war.

What is taking place in Gaza now is mostly not a war, even though that term commonly is applied to the violence there. It is instead a largely unilateral assault on a population and its means of living. It is a situation in which one side, Israel, has — as Trump might put it — nearly all the cards.

The news stories emerging almost daily from Gaza are not about pitched battles between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas fighters. They are mostly not about battles at all. Instead, they are about the latest large-scale killing by Israel of Gazans, mostly civilians, at a rate that has averaged about 150 deaths per day since the current round of carnage began in late 2023. Civilians are killed largely with airstrikes but also more recently through getting shot while seeking ever-scarcer food.

Mass starvation has become perhaps the most gut-wrenching part of the Gaza catastrophe, and one where Israel has again tried to shift blame onto Hamas. A longtime Israeli accusation in endeavoring to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—the principal international organization with the mission of aiding Palestinian refugees, including in Gaza—is that Hamas supposedly was stealing UNRWA-supplied food. Trump has echoed that accusation.

A study by the U.S. Agency for International Development (before the Trump administration dismantled the agency) of reported incidents of loss or theft of U.S.-supplied humanitarian assistance in Gaza found no evidence that Hamas has engaged in widespread diversion of aid. More recent press reporting shows that the IDF itself has found no evidence of Hamas seizing or diverting aid.

Israel’s opposition to UNRWA has nothing to do with Hamas or with theft of humanitarian aid. It instead concerns how UNRWA — because it is a United Nations agency explicitly focused on Palestinians — constitutes an international recognition that the Palestinians are a nation and that many of them are refugees from their homeland.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza got worse once Israel succeeded in pushing UNRWA aside. The U.S.-backed and Israeli-controlled alternative aid scheme is not only woefully inadequate in meeting immediate needs but also designed as an adjunct to Israel’s ethnic cleansing objectives. The limitation of aid to a few distribution points facilitates the forced relocation of surviving Gazans into what amounts to a concentration camp, as a possible prelude to removal from the Gaza Strip altogether.

Some aid has recently been dropped into Gaza by air. Airdrops are an ineffective and inefficient way of trying to relieve the starvation. The amounts delivered are a tiny fraction of what is needed. The cost of delivery is far higher than by land. As demonstrated by an earlier U.S. effort to deliver aid this way, some of the supplies are lost because they fall into the sea or, even worse, kill people crushed by falling pallets. But for some donors, an airdrop serves as a visually dramatic conscience-calming gesture.

For Israel, it serves as a distraction from the fact that the biggest impediment to getting humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip is Israel’s continued land blockade of the territory. Valuing that distraction, Israel itself has joined in the airdrop gesture. At the same time, however, Israel continues to allow only a trickle of aid to cross the land border, with many hundreds of truckloads left to spoil and be destroyed by the IDF.

In my decades-old book, I identified a type of war ending that is an alternative to a negotiated settlement as “extermination/expulsion,” meaning that the militarily dominant side physically obliterates its opponent or pushes it out of contested territory. Extermination/expulsion of the opponent is an appropriate label for Israel’s objective in Gaza.

The prevailing Israeli conception of the opponent, or enemy, in Gaza is the entire Palestinian population, an attitude that was already well rooted on the Israeli Right before the Hamas attack in October 2023 and has grown even stronger and wider since then. The deaths already inflicted, directly or indirectly, by the IDF have significantly advanced the extermination objective. The expulsion part has mostly been the stuff of internal Israeli deliberations, although it came more into the open when Trump gave Netanyahu’s government the gift of endorsing the ethnic cleansing with his Riviera-in-Gaza proposal.

Among the dead were 25 Palestinians killed by the IDF while seeking aid

by Dave DeCamp | July 28, 2025 at 11:10 am ET | Gaza, Israel, Palestine

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday that Israeli Forces killed at least 98 Palestinians over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli strikes continued and more aid seekers were gunned down by the IDF.

The Health Ministry said that the bodies of another two Palestinians were found in the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, as ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them until now.”

Israeli strikes on Monday included an attack that hit a house and neighboring tents in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza. At least 12 people were killed in the strike, including Soad al-Shaer, who was seven months pregnant.
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed in an overnight Israeli strike, according to medics, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 28, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

According to The Associated Press, after Shaer was killed, her baby girl was delivered in a complex emergency cesarean at the Nasser Hospital. The baby was placed in an incubator and was breathing with assistance from a ventilator, but died later in the day.

Another Israeli strike hit a house in Khan Younis, killing 11 people. According to officials at the Nasser Hospital, more than half of the dead were women and children.

Israeli strikes also hit other parts of Gaza, with Gaza’s Civil Defense agency reporting that it conducted rescue operations in North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir el-Balaha, Rafah, and Khan Younis. The heavy Israeli attacks continued despite the IDF announcing on Sunday that it would hold daily “tactical pauses” to facilitate more aid deliveries amid an international outcry as Palestinians are starving to death every day due to the Israeli siege.

The Health Ministry also said that Israeli forces killed 25 aid seekers and wounded 237. Since the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating at the end of May, the Health Ministry has recorded the Israeli killing of 1,157 aid seekers and the wounding of 7,758.

The ministry said that the latest violence has brought its overall death toll since October 7, 2023, to 59,921 and the number of wounded to 145,233. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.