Arab world condemns Israel for new airstrikes across Gaza: The Arab world is condemning Israel after it launched a new series of deadly air strikes across Gaza, in spite of the fragile cease-fire that’s been in place since January. The health ministry claims more than 400 people died in the overnight raids.
President Benjamin Netanyahu says he ordered the strikes after Hamas rejected a proposal to extend the first phase of the cease-fire and refused to release the remaining Israeli hostages. Hamas wanted the second phase of negotiations to begin and is blaming the U.S. for providing unconditional military support to Israel.
CBS News national security contributor joins us now. They say they resumed strikes because of the repeated refusals to release hostages and its rejection of all offers from envoy Steve Witkoff and mediators. What’s their strategy?
Hamas’ strategy has seemed to be to try to get Israel to just agree to a permanent cessation of hostilities on Hamas’ terms. The flip side is that Israel has been very focused on only talking about a permanent cease-fire if, and only if, Hamas agrees to leave the Gaza Strip and/or to dismantle its military leadership.
That is a big gap between the two parties. So what we’ve had over the past several weeks since phase one ended, Lindsay, is Hamas refusing to concede to Israel’s demands and Israel indicating that for phase one to continue, hostages had to be released.
That did not occur, and now they have resumed strikes. We don’t know if these strikes are an effort to get Hamas back to the negotiating table in a meaningful way, or are a new phase of the war.
Does this mean that we are potentially further from a potential phase two of a cease-fire?
We just don’t know at this point. Again, this could be a negotiating tactic, a pressure campaign, or it could mean that Israel has given up on negotiations and is purely trying to obliterate Hamas and change its military strategy in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military ordered people to evacuate eastern Gaza and head toward the center of the territory. Does that tell you that a ground offensive could be imminent?
It certainly indicates that there will be prolonged strikes and what occurred overnight was not a one-off event. We should expect more Israeli military activity as the Israelis assess, at least for now, diplomacy has failed to achieve a meaningful objective.
Turning to the call between presidents Trump and Putin, how significant of a step toward peace is this if Ukraine isn’t at the table right now?
Essentially the United States is negotiating with Ukraine and Russia at the same time. Ukraine has agreed to the 30-day cease-fire proposal, the United States just got Putin to agree ostensibly to a cease-fire against energy infrastructure.
The reality is that the United States has a lot of leverage over Ukraine when it comes to getting Ukraine to also agree to an energy cease-fire because the U.S. provides intelligence and security assistance to Ukraine. I think this was a step toward a bridging proposal and the Ukrainians are likely going to be on board with that proposal.
Source: raialkhalij + aljazeera