Netanyahu rejects postwar prospect of Palestinian state
Israeli leader’s stance underscores deep split with the U.S. He vows to pursue a ‘decisive victory over Hamas.’
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he has told the United States he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario, underscoring the deep divisions between the close allies three months into Israel’s assault on Gaza.
The U.S. has called on Israel to scale back the offensive that aims to eliminate Gaza’s Hamas rulers, and American officials have said the establishment of a Palestinian state should be part of the “day after.”
But in a nationally broadcast news conference, Netanyahu vowed to press ahead with the offensive until Israel realizes a “decisive victory over Hamas.” He also rejected the idea of Palestinian statehood. He said he had relayed his positions to the Americans.
“In any future arrangement ... Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?”
“The prime minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends,” he added.
More than 100 days after Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 cross-border attack, Israel continues to wage one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, with the goal of dismantling the militant group that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and rescuing scores of captives. The war has stoked tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.
An Israeli airstrike on a home killed 16 people, half of them children, in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, medics said early Thursday. The Israeli military continued to strike targets in areas of the besieged territory where it had told Palestinian civilians to seek refuge.
Meanwhile, there was no word on whether medicines that entered the territory Wednesday as part of a deal brokered by France and Qatar had been distributed to dozens of hostages, held by Hamas, who suffer from chronic illnesses.
More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed, about 85% of the narrow coastal territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, and the United Nations says a quarter of the population is starving.
Hundreds of thousands have heeded Israeli evacuation orders and packed into southern Gaza, where shelters run by the U.N. are overflowing and massive tent camps have gone up. But Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets in all of Gaza, often killing women and children.
Dr. Talat Barhoum at Rafah’s Najjar hospital confirmed the death toll from the new strike in the town and said dozens more were wounded. Associated Press video from the hospital showed relatives weeping over the bodies of loved ones.
“They were suffering from hunger, they were dying from hunger, and now they have also been hit,” said Mahmoud Qassim, a relative of some of those who were killed.
Internet and cellphone services in Gaza have been down for five days, the longest of several outages during the war, according to internet access advocacy group NetBlocks. The outages complicate rescue efforts and make it difficult to obtain information about the latest strikes and casualties.
The war has rippled across the Middle East, with Iran-backed groups attacking U.S. and Israeli targets. Low-intensity fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon threatens to erupt into all-out war, and Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to target international shipping despite U.S.led airstrikes.
The Israeli military said it fired an interceptor at a “suspicious aerial target” — probably a drone or missile — approaching over the Red Sea on Thursday, triggering air-raid sirens in the southern Israeli coastal city of Eilat. The Houthis have launched drones and missiles toward Israel that have mostly fallen short or been intercepted and shot down.
Iran has launched a series of missile attacks targeting what it described as an Israeli spy base in Iraq and militant bases in Syria as well as in Pakistan, which carried out reprisal strikes against what it described as militant hideouts in Iran early Thursday.
It was unclear whether the strikes in Syria and Pakistan were related to the Gaza war. But they showcased Iran’s ability to carry out long-range missile attacks at a time of heightened tensions with Israel and the U.S., which has provided crucial support for the Gaza offensive and carried out its own strikes against Iran-allied groups in Syria and Iraq.
Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas to ensure that it can never repeat an attack like that on Oct. 7, when militants burst through Israel’s border defenses and stormed through several communities, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostages.
Israel has also vowed to rescue all the hostages remaining in captivity after more than 100 — mostly women and children — were freed during a November cease-fire in exchange for the release of scores of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Family members and supporters were marking the 1st birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest Israeli hostage, in a somber ceremony Thursday in Tel Aviv.
The red-haired infant and his 4-year-old brother, Ariel, were captured along with their mother, Shiri, and their father, Yarden. All four remain in captivity.
The agreement to ship in medicines was the first to be brokered between the warring sides since November. Hamas said that for every box of medicine bound for the hostages, 1,000 would be sent for Palestinian civilians, in addition to food and humanitarian aid.
Qatar confirmed late Wednesday that the medicine had entered Gaza, but it was unclear yet whether it had been distributed to the hostages, who are being held in secret locations, including underground bunkers.
Both France and Hamas had said that the International Committee of the Red Cross, which helped facilitate the hostage releases, would have a role in distributing the medications. But on Thursday, the Red Cross said that “the mechanism that was agreed to does not involve the ICRC playing any part in its implementation, including the delivery of medication.”
Hamas has continued to fight back across Gaza, even in the most devastated areas, and launch rockets into Israel. It says it will not release any more hostages until there is a permanent cease-fire, something Israel and top ally U.S. have ruled out.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says at least 24,448 Palestinians have been killed, with more than 60,000 wounded. It says many other dead and wounded are trapped under rubble or unreachable because of the fighting. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths but says about two-thirds of those killed were women and children.