Netanyahu Stands Firm on Cease-Fire Terms Amid Growing Outrage in Israel

[Pelican Press 0]

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Netanyahu Stands Firm on Cease-***** Terms Amid Growing Outrage in *******

Brushing aside pleas from allies and the demands of ******** protesters for an immediate cease-***** in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ******* on Monday vowed to maintain ******** control along the border between Egypt and Gaza, a contentious plan that appeared to dim, if not dash, prospects for a truce.

In his first news conference since the bodies of six slain hostages were recovered over the weekend, Mr. Netanyahu told reporters on Monday night that, to ensure its security, ******* needed to assert control over the Gazan side of the border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, calling it the lifeline of ******.

****** has said ******** control of the corridor is a nonstarter in negotiations for a truce, demanding instead a complete ******** withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

“If we leave, there will be enormous diplomatic pressure upon us from the whole world not to return,” Mr. Netanyahu said of the corridor, as a large crowd protested near his private residence in Jerusalem on Monday night.

Mr. Netanyahu made the comments a day after the ******** military announced that the six hostages had been found ***** in a tunnel underneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The discovery devastated Israelis and spurred both the mass protests on Sunday and a widespread work stoppage by the country’s largest labor union.

But despite the national grief, the strike on Monday was a mixed success, and subsequent protests throughout the day were relatively muted, revealing a country deeply divided over how to end the war in Gaza.

Many Israelis support a cease-***** deal to bring home the hostages. But others, particularly on the right, support Mr. Netanyahu’s security conditions and ******* any agreement with ******.

In the hours before Mr. Netanyahu spoke on Monday night, two close allies of ******* signaled mounting frustration with the direction of the war in Gaza.

President Biden issued a one-word rebuke of Mr. Netanyahu’s unwillingness to yield on his conditions for a cease-***** and ******** release deal. Asked a series of questions by reporters about whether the ******** prime minister was doing enough for a deal to get back the hostages, he said simply “No.”

And Britain announced that it would suspend the exports of some weapons to *******, a significant hardening of its position on the war in Gaza under a new Labour government. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the decision was based on a legal review that concluded there was a “clear risk” that the weapons could be used in a way that would breach international law.

Mr. Netanyahu suggested on Monday that the pursuit and ******** of ****** militants in Gaza would go on unabated. “We are crushing ******,” he said. “But we still need to take away its ability to rule” in Gaza, he added.

******, he added, “would pay a heavy price” for the deaths of the six hostages and he questioned what message it would send if ******* let up in the fighting. “Slay hostages and you’ll get concessions?” he asked.

The ******** of the protests and labor strikes to persuade Mr. Netanyahu to change course appeared to be a reflection of the increasingly deep fissures in ******** society over the course of the war. Mr. Netanyahu’s hawkish right-wing allies are urging the destruction of ****** militants in Gaza, scoffing at calls for an immediate cease-***** as tantamount to capitulation.

Flights at Ben-Gurion International Airport were disrupted for two hours on Monday morning, protesters blocked intersections in some ******** cities, and schools and banks and some municipal offices closed or cut services in response to the call for a strike by *******’s largest labor union. But there were also many signs of business as usual across the country.

Many municipalities continued work as normal, and some transport services returned to operation by Monday afternoon. In Jerusalem, where few shops were closed, Yaakov Levi, 60, the owner of a wine store, said he was sympathetic to the protests, but questioned whether a strike would achieve anything.

“Shutting down the market won’t change the opinion of the government’s decision makers,” he said.

Union leaders agreed to halt the labor strike at 2:30 p.m. local time, more than eight hours after it began, after a court ruled that the work stoppage was “political” and that organizers had not given enough notice for it to go ahead.

The protests in Tel Aviv on Sunday night appeared to be the largest of the war, an outpouring of grief over the ****** of the six hostages.

On Monday thousands of mourners gathered in a ********* in Jerusalem for the burial of one of the hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an ********-********* whose parents had crisscrossed the globe to lobby for their son’s freedom, meeting with President Biden, ******* Nations Secretary General António Guterres and Pope Francis.

The ******** was attended by President Isaac Herzog of ******* who spoke of the plight of the remaining hostages in Gaza, pressing the country’s leaders “to save those who can still be saved.”

“This is not a political goal, and it must not become a political dispute,” he said. “It is a supreme moral, ******* and human duty of the state of ******* to its citizens.”

Amid the grieving, ****** on Monday released a roughly two-minute video that appeared to show Eden Yerushalmi another of the six hostages ******* in Gaza. It is not clear when the video was filmed.

In the video, Ms. Yerushalmi, 24, calls on Mr. Netanyahu to reach a cease-***** deal and says she fears for her life amid the ******** military strikes. The circumstances of how the video was filmed were unclear, and the footage appears to have been edited.

Rights groups and international law experts say that a ******** video is, by definition, made under duress, and that the statements in it are usually coerced. ******** officials have called the videos a form of “psychological warfare,” and experts say their production can constitute a war ******.

The Biden administration has insisted that it retains hope for a cease-***** in Gaza and the return of the approximately 100 hostages who still remain in Gaza, dozens of whom are presumed ***** by the ******** authorities. Asked on Monday by reporters whether he was planning to present a final ******** deal this week, Mr. Biden responded: “We’re very close to that.”

But both ******** and ****** officials have voiced skepticism over positive cease-***** predictions by the Biden administration. They say the differences between the two warring parties are still entrenched, particularly over issues like the Philadelphi Corridor.

Tor Wennesland, a senior U.N. official who visited Gaza on Monday, painted a picture of desolation and despair.

“The scale of destruction is immense, the humanitarian needs are colossal and soaring, and civilians continue to bear the brunt of this conflict,” Mr. Wennesland said. “I unequivocally condemn the horrifying civilian ****** toll in Gaza.”

Medical teams distributed polio vaccines on Monday, the second day of an urgent campaign to stem the spread of the crippling ********. The ******* Nations has described the emergence of polio, a ******** eradicated from most of the world, as a measure of the collapse of Gazan society and infrastructure after nearly 11 months of bombardments.

Reporting was contributed by Ephrat Livni, Natan Odenheimer, Mark Landler, David E. Sanger, Adam Rasgon, Gabby Sobelman and Isabel Kershner.

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