Netanyahu ‘trying to maneuver’ in video message, Middle East expert says
US President Donald Trump has told Hamas to sign his peace plan for Gaza or it will “pay in hell.”
A few hours after agreeing to the plan in Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put out a video in Hebrew that seemed to counter some of the core points of this peace plan, including the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.
Middle East affairs and international security expert H.A. Hellyer told DW it was worth paying “close attention” to the video.
“When you consider the history of the past two years, at multiple points Netanyahu has sabotaged negotiations and other peace plans and other plans that were meant to lead to a ceasefire,” Hellyer said, pointing to the matter being widely covered in Israeli media.
“So it’s no surprise that he’s trying to maneuver on this occasion as well,” Hellyer said.
He pointed out that the plan put before Arab states last week was “significantly different” to the one announced yesterday. These changes, he said, pertained to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, anything to do with the Palestinian state and the disarmament of Hamas.
“They didn’t go back to the Arab Muslim states that had put their names and credibility on the line by endorsing. They simply had Netanyahu come to the White House yesterday, discuss with the president, and then the new … plan was announced,” Hellyer said.
On the question of the creation of a Palestinian state, Hellyer said: “I think that Netanyahu has made it abundantly clear he will not see a Palestinian state established in the Palestinian territories.”
Italy’s Meloni calls on Gaza aid flotilla to ‘stop now’
Italy has warned organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla that Israel would consider their incursion as a “hostile act.”
The Italian Ministry of Defense announced that the Italian Navy frigate Apino, dispatched to the region, could take on board any participants of the flotilla who wished to transfer.
“A final warning will be issued tomorrow, October 1, upon reaching 150 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, where the military vessel
will stop and remain available for any assistance and rescue operations,” according to a statement from the defense ministry.
The flotilla has been sailing towards Gaza with over 40 civilian boats carrying parliamentarians, lawyers and activists including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, with the goal of breaking Israel’s aid blockade.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called on the flotilla to immediately stop their mission, arguing that a confrontation with Israel could upset the current “fragile balance” that could lead to peace based on the plan proposed by US President Donald Trump.
“Many would be happy to disrupt” that plan, Meloni said in a statement. “I fear that the flotilla’s attempt to breach the Israeli naval blockade could provide a pretext for this. Also for this reason, I believe the flotilla should stop now,” she added.
Italian spokeswoman for the flotilla, Maria Elena Delia, said that activists had been informed about Italy’s instructions for the ship to turn back, but she confirmed that the flotilla had no intention of heeding the warning.
Delia said activists were bracing for another strike in the coming hours. “Israel will probably attack us tonight, because all the signals point to this happening,” she said in a video on Instagram.
Israel has denied claims that it attacked the flotilla last week, but it has vowed to use any means to prevent the boats from reaching Gaza.
‘Majority in Israel want to end the war,’ Israeli political correspondent says
Tal Schneider, political and diplomatic correspondent for Israeli online newspaper The Times of Israel, spoke to DW about the significance of the Gaza peace deal.
“I think it is an impressive plan if it can go through,” Schneider said, adding that the picture is incomplete, but what matters to the Israeli people is the release of the hostages and how the plan would enable that.
“They’re going to be released. All of them. Not in small groups, you know, within 72 hours,” she said of the plan.
Schneider noted that the idea of the Israel Defense Forces withdrawing from Gaza and an international governing body taking over is something that Israelis would worry about. She added that people in Israel are weary of international organizations and their effectiveness.
Moreover, Schneider pointed out that a few hardline Israeli ministers could disrupt the plan.
“Because they disagree totally. They want annexation. They want the war to continue forever. They want, you know, to see the last person of Hamas being killed,” Schneider said, adding that for hardliners in Israel, the war with Hamas is a “never-ending event.”
“But obviously the people do not agree with that. The majority here wants to end the war,” she stressed.
Schneider also said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the hardliners in his cabinet are likely betting on Hamas rejecting the plan, which would enable them to “get more of a free hand.”
Gaza peace plan is ‘foreign interference,’ Palestinian NGO tells DW
Ines Abdel Razek, a co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), spoke to DW about what the Gaza peace plan proposed by Donald Trump means for Palestinians.
“I think what what we need to really understand is what this plan is and isn’t,” Abdel Razek said. “It’s not a Palestinian plan. So Palestinians are not deciding for themselves. This is violating the first and foremost right of Palestinians to self-determination and to decide for themselves.”
“It’s an Israeli American plan to continue the violence and the genocide against Palestinians in other forms,” she added, noting that a lot of the conditions in the plan and its proposals “are completely illegal under international law.”
“I think it’s about understanding how this is coercion,” Abdel Razek said, adding that the plan has been formulated after the destruction of the entire strip and the displacement of 2 million Palestinians, after pushing people “towards the brink of death and desperation.”
She said the plan would normalize the very real possibility of an Israeli army occupation and eventual annexation of Gaza.
“This is pure colonization. This is pure foreign interference,” Abdel Razek said, denouncing that the plan seeks to bring foreign interference to Gaza from the very people who are responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people.
UN not involved in preparing Trump plan, but ready to deliver aid
The United Nations said that although it was not involved in the preparation of Donald Trump’s so-called 20-point peace plan, it remains ready to increase deliveries of food and humanitarian aid to the people of the war-torn Gaza Strip as soon as conditions allow.
The UN, along with the Red Crescent, was namechecked in the proposal presented by Trump on Monday.
The international organization declared a famine in Gaza last month, blaming Israel’s monthslong “systematic obstruction” of food deliveries for the tragic situation.
Point 12 of Trump’s plan states that “full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip,” adding that it “will proceed without interference.”
Speaking in Geneva, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke emphasized that the UN was not involved in drafting the proposal, but said, “Aid is ready and available to move in from various agencies, and has been so for a long time.”
Laerke said UN humanitarian workers would, “do what we always do — try to deliver aid to the people who desperately need it.”
International humanitarian agencies have been largely shut out of Gaza since March, when Israel announced that aid deliveries would instead be carried out by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
GHF, which has been overwhelmed by the task, will not be allowed to operate further should the plan go into effect, as it is associated with one of the warring parties, Israel.
Trump is ‘waiting for Hamas,’ gives them ‘three or four days’
US President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that the Islamist militant group Hamas needs to quickly decide whether it wants to accept the terms of his Gaza peace plan.
Asked how long the group had to put down its arms and join a ceasefire, Trump said, “We’re going to do about three or four days.”
He then added, “We’re just waiting for Hamas, and Hamas is either going to be doing it or not. And if it’s not, it’s going to be a very sad end.”
Qatar has said it will hold talks with Hamas negotiators as well as representatives from Egypt and Turkey on Tuesday after the militants have reviewed Trump’s proposal.
Many international leaders have voiced approval for the plan, yet demands that Hamas disarm and be excluded from holding power in Gaza in the future would seem difficult for the group to accept.
Trump, however, made it clear that the group must accept the plan, otherwise Israel will have a green light to take whatever actions it deems necessary to pursue its ultimate aim of destroying the group once and for all.
Netanyahu says Israel will ‘forcibly resist’ Palestinian statehood
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday flatly rejected the idea of Palestinian statehood, the prospects of which were left open in US President Trump’s so-called 20-point peace plan.
In a video posted on the messaging app Telegram, Netanyahu said he had “absolutely not” agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state, an idea that he likened to “national suicide” for Israel last week when addressing the United Nations General Assembly.
The Israeli leader made clear that no clause stipulating the creation of such a state was contained in Trump’s plan before vowing to ‘forcibly resist’ any effort to create one.
Divided reactions to Tony Blair’s proposed Gaza role
US President Donald Trump surprised many on Monday by announcing that his plan for peace in Gaza included a “board of peace” to be headed by himself and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Blair, who was an unapologetic supporter of George W. Bush’s ill-fated 2003 invasion of Iraq on claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction, is seen by many in the Middle East with great mistrust.
Moreover, considering Trump’s previous statements, as well as Britain’s highly complicated role in the region for the past century, many fear the board to be nothing more than a vehicle for the neo-colonial takeover of Gaza.
On Monday, Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative political party, told the Washington Post newspaper: “We’ve been under British colonialism already. He [Blair] has a negative reputation here. If you mention Tony Blair. The first thing people mention is the Iraq war.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories and herself no stranger to controversy, blasted the idea in a social media post, writing, “Tony Blair? Hell No” and suggesting he should be put on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
More positively, others point to Blair’s previous role leading the so-called Middle East Quartet representing the UN, US, EU and Russia in the region. In that capacity the former statesman was charged with fostering institution building and economic development.
However, critics say he did little to stop illegal Israeli settlements during his tenure, which stretched from 2007 to 2015.
More recently, he has led the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which claims to advocate for “turning bold ideas into reality.”
Others, such as the current UK Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, say that although Blair’s appointment “will raise some eyebrows,” the former politician’s track record is not all bad, pointing to his role in brokering the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of conflict in Northern Ireland.
“If he can bring those considerable skills there,” Streeting told the BBC, “in both diplomacy and statecraft… that can only be a good thing.”
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-trump-gives-hamas-3-to-4-days-to-accept-plan/live-74182238
