Latest news with #Binyamin Netanyahu
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
EU seems to suddenly discover it has leverage on Israel
The European Union 's foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas has spent a lot of time on the phone to Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar over the last few weeks. For most of Israel's 22-month war in Gaza the EU has been seen as a bystander, paralysed by its inability to come to a joint position. Then word came through late last week that Israel had committed to letting a lot more humanitarian aid into the devastated Palestinian enclave, in a deal brokered by the EU. This would mean a 'substantial' increase in the number of trucks bringing food and other vital aid allowed into Gaza. Food supplies to kitchens and bakeries would resume, power lines to a plant supplying clean drinking water would be repaired, and closed border crossings would be opened, as part of the deal. The promise from Israel to stop choking off the flow of food, medicine and fuel into Gaza was unlikely to have been the result of a sudden change of heart by prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu 's government. The concessions were more likely an attempt to head off what had been growing momentum inside the EU to – finally – sanction Israel, or threaten to do so, if the dire conditions in Gaza did not improve. It seems it took nearly two years of a war in which at least 58,000 Palestinians have been killed for the EU to discover it has some leverage over Israel. The 11-week total blockade stopping aid entering Gaza, which left a cohort of its civilian population at risk of starvation, pushed the EU to up the pressure on Israel. An effort started by Ireland and Spain, and more recently taken up by the Dutch, forced a review that found Israel had breached obligations to respect human rights made in an 'association agreement' with the EU. The EU's foreign ministers this week debated a set of options the union could take in response. They included suspending the agreement, which governs EU-Israel relations, or shelving a free trade deal. A paper put on the table by Kallas said the EU could ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, blacklist certain Israeli politicians or end visa-free travel for Israelis to the EU. There has been a huge amount of behind-the-scenes lobbying from Israel recently. That suggests a real concern about the reputational damage of being sanctioned by the EU. The deal on humanitarian aid was announced six days before EU foreign ministers were meeting in Brussels to debate options. The commitment to let more aid into Gaza has shifted the focus on to whether Israel follows through on that pledge, limiting the appetite to press ahead with any penalty for now. Most of the potential sanctions would require the unanimous support of all 27 capitals. That is a non-starter. Hungary, Germany, Italy, Austria and Czech Republic have blocked efforts to have the EU hold Israel accountable for its military campaign in Gaza. Suspending the free trade deal only requires a sizeable majority of support. That would be a major blow to Netanyahu, as the EU is Israel's biggest trading partner. However, for that to happen either Germany or Italy would need to switch positions, given their size, to secure enough support to suspend the trade deal. Both governments opposed the EU pursuing any of the proposed sanctions against Israel at the meeting of foreign ministers this week. They pointed to the tentative aid commitments as a win, thanks to backchannel dialogue with Israel. 'If the threat of the stick is not plausible then you have no leverage,' says Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, a former EU ambassador to the Palestinian territories. The EU's response to Israel's war in Gaza had been defined by a 'complete absence of action', he says. There was a big question mark over whether Israel would stick to commitments it had made in its agreement with the EU, he says. One note of caution should be the fact Kallas has not said how many extra aid trucks Israel has agreed to let enter Gaza a day. Kühn von Burgsdorff served as head of the EU mission to the West Bank and Gaza from 2020 until mid-2023, where he says he 'saw the injustice before my eyes'. A German who spent 31 years as a diplomat for the EU, Kühn von Burgsdorff says the union's timid response to Israel's bombardment of Gaza is a 'disaster' for its standing in the world. It is a point the governments of Ireland and Spain have been making since the start of the conflict. 'It's about who we are, the Europeans, how we want our voice to be heard and influence the world,' Spain's foreign minister José Manuel Albares said this week. 'Europe is about human rights, about democracy, about international law and that's what we should uphold, whether it is in Ukraine or in Gaza,' he said.
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition in jeopardy as ultra-Orthodox party quits government
The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party has resigned from prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu 's coalition, leaving him with a wafer-thin majority of 61 lawmakers in the 120-seat Knesset parliament. On Thursday a second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas , is expected to follow suit, leaving Mr Netanyahu with a minority coalition of 50 seats. The government is not expected to fall immediately, but a minority coalition will not be able to function for long without Mr Netanyahu calling early elections. UTJ quit the coalition after Mr Netanyahu failed to present a Bill that would enshrine in law an exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva religious seminary students. The 21-month Gaza war , the longest in Israel's history, has caused a serious rift in Mr Netanyahu's coalition. READ MORE Many of the voters of the right-wing parties have already served hundreds of days of army reserve duty, causing a huge strain on families and businesses. The ultra-Orthodox parties, in contrast, serve a constituency that, with a few exceptions, does not serve in the army. Calls for a more equitable sharing of the burden have been rebuffed by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and political leaders, who fear that military service will be the first step towards the adoption of a more secular lifestyle. The next elections must be held by October 2026. Even if Shas also leaves the government, the two ultra-Orthodox parties are reportedly uninterested in toppling the coalition at this juncture and forcing new elections, realising that any future coalition will also be unlikely to agree to authorise draft dodging. The high court has already ruled that the ultra-Orthodox, with the exception of a small group of exceptional Torah scholars, must serve in the military like all Jewish males. [ Israeli pledge to let more aid into Gaza will be kept under 'close watch', EU says Opens in new window ] A range of sanctions are being mulled against the draft dodgers, including ending welfare payments, withholding driving licences and preventing travel abroad. But many of the ultra-Orthodox claim they would rather go to prison than enlist in the army. The upcoming Knesset summer recess, which starts on July 27th, will give Mr Netanyahu three months to try to come up with a compromise while ruling with a minority government. Alternatively, he could try to conjure up another reason to go to elections, realising that going to the polls having failed to draft the ultra-Orthodox will not be a vote winner. [ Future of Israel's plan to force Gazans to southern city hangs in balance Opens in new window ] Mr Netanyahu also faces the prospect of the total disintegration of his coalition if he clinches a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal that prompts the two far-right parties to leave his government. Such a scenario is a distinct possibility as both parties have warned that ending the war without what they term 'total victory' over Hamas will force them to work to topple the government.
Times
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
The IDF soldiers defying Netanyahu's expulsion zone in Gaza
When the Israeli soldier first entered Gaza, he believed the war was righteous. But with each passing deployment, Avshalom Zohar Sal's missions made less and less sense to him and the war goals grew murkier and murkier. 'What I saw the first time I entered was not what I encountered the second time, nor the third nor the fourth,' he said. 'Every time, Gaza looked different, the mission looked different, and my personal feelings were different.' The step that Sal, 28, then took has put him at the heart of an extraordinary power struggle in Israel. He and two friends, reservists serving in the war, hired lawyers to petition the High Court to rule on whether Israel's actions in Gaza nearly two years after the atrocities of October 7, 2023, had become a violation of international law. The appeal is a 'last resort' for the petitioners, who 'suspect that the leaders of the state and the army are asking them to be partner to a war that has forced displacement, forced transfer and even the expulsion of thousands, millions of citizens at its core'. At the same time Binyamin Netanyahu 's government was drawing up a plan to transfer part of the population of southern Gaza into an enclosed camp containing only vetted civilians. Anyone outside of the 'humanitarian city', which could include up to 600,000 people, would then be considered a terrorist and a potential target of Israeli fire. Two months after the petition was lodged, the office of Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff, issued his response last weekend, stating that the 'concentration and movement of the population are not part of the objectives of the war, and that the IDF certainly does not force the population to move inside or outside the Gaza Strip'. The refusal marked an unprecedented red line through the defence ministry's blueprint and reportedly led to a heated exchange between Zamir and Netanyahu during a war cabinet meeting. Israel's acknowledged war goals are to destroy Hamas and free the remaining hostages taken on October 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel. 'If the mission is now, expulsion, occupation and Jewish settlement, like they are discussing, then it's an illegal one and I will not do it,' said Sal. 'This will either lead to an unprecedented confrontation between the army and state, the likes of which we've never seen before, or the army will bow and salute the order, and carry out a plan that will harm Israel for generations to come.' Gazans at al-Shifa hospital mourn relatives killed by Israeli bombing on Saturday MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK More than 56,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the Hamas-run health ministry and charities say that a large proportion of Gaza's 2.3 million people are at risk of starvation because of Israeli restrictions on food and medicine. A report based on interviews with soldiers by +972 Magazine in Israel said that civilian evacuations in Gaza are sometimes enforced by drones used to bomb civilians to force them to leave their homes or prevent them from returning to evacuated areas. Negotiations are continuing over a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which would allow the release of some of the hostages still held in Gaza. It had been hoped that a deal would be struck last week. • Israel Katz, the defence minister, has said that he planned to use that time to build an encampment for civilians in the largely destroyed city of Rafah, where Israeli troops will remain stationed, one of the sticking points of the deal. It was Katz's earlier offer for Palestinians to 'voluntarily emigrate' with no return date, that persuaded Sal and his friends to submit their petition. The deadline for his ministry to issue a response passed on Thursday. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) say there is no disagreement between the government and the army. A senior general said that civilians would be moved according to international law the same way they have been moved throughout the war: by issuing evacuation orders to numbered blocks that correspond with certain areas and turning those areas into active combat zones, giving civilians 24-72 hours to clear out or else be considered an active threat. The transfer of the Gazan population is not a war goal, said Brigadier General Oren Solomon, because the war goal is to eliminate Hamas. But the way to do it is to separate the general population from the terrorists by building several camps. 'We don't go against the political directives. We act on them. The debate is over how it will happen, and we know that we can't just make one place. We understand that the humanitarian city can't take the entire population, so we must make a few like that,' Solomon said. ABDALHKEM ABU RIASH/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES The pilot plan is to move 600,000 Palestinians in the tent city of Al-Mawasi, a narrow strip of coastal land where thousands of homeless Palestinians reside. Israel says Hamas are hiding among the displaced civilians, and so Al-Mawasi must be cleared out and the civilians checked and moved to the 'sterile' zone with 'tents, water, medical care, food — all without being stolen by Hamas'. The plan has been discussed in the Israeli media, but there has been little reaction from mainstream society, which remains traumatised by October 7. 'The sentiment of the majority of the population are indifferent to the humanitarian situation in Gaza,' said Idit Shafran Gittleman, a former director of the military and society programme at the Israel Democracy Institute. 'Their main thought is, 'Don't give us October 7 again. Do whatever you need to do so we can live here without this fear of October coming again.'' She does not see a scenario where there is mass refusal to serve, nor a situation where the prime minister will sack the new army chief. If the plan is passed through the cabinet, the army must enact it. However, the legal apparatus — including a court ruling against the transfer brought on by Sal's petition — may stop the plan in its tracks. It has come at a personal cost for the educator and reservist, who is about to move in with his girlfriend to a kibbutz on the Gaza border. 'People will see this and call me a traitor from one side, and a Palestinian child killer on the other,' Sal said. 'No one thinks about this situation that I find myself in as an Israeli citizen. I am different from what the government purports to represent, that I possess values rooted in Judaism and Israel that are completely anti-war.'
Irish Times
10-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Israel promises to increase aid supplies to Gaza
Israel has promised it will allow a 'substantial' increase of humanitarian aid, food and other supplies into Gaza , following negotiations with the European Union. The move comes several days before EU foreign ministers were due to debate taking action to put pressure on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to end the humanitarian blockade that has choked off the supply of aid flowing into Gaza. In a deal agreed in recent hours, Israel committed to allow trucks full of aid waiting at the border to Gaza to enter the devastated Palestinian enclave , a spokesman for the European Commission said. The deal, aimed at addressing the humanitarian crisis and heading off the starvation of Palestinian civilians, was negotiated by the EU's foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas and Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar. READ MORE 'These measures are or will be implemented in the coming days with the common understanding that aid at scale must be delivered directly to the population and that measures will be continued to be taken to ensure there is no aid diversion to Hamas,' a spokesman for Ms Kallas said on Thursday. Under the agreement Israel has committed to allow a greater number of aid trucks into Gaza, open more crossing points in the north and the south of the territory, including routes for aid to get into the strip from Jordan and Egypt. The EU said the deal would also allow for the resumption of fuel deliveries to humanitarian facilities, and the repairing of vital infrastructure. EU officials said Israel agreed to stop blocking off the power supply of a water desalination facility which had provided clean drinking water to civilians in Gaza. The commission, which is the EU's executive arm, said the agreement would also enable 'the distribution of food supplies to bakeries and public kitchens throughout the Gaza Strip'. At least 57,500 Palestinian have been killed during Israel's 21-month military occupation and bombardment of Gaza, according to health authorities in the Palestinian territory. Political pressure increased on Israel after a total blockade of aid for 11 weeks earlier this year brought the population in Gaza to the point of starvation. Aid agencies have said deliveries of food, medicine and fuel into the war-torn enclave since then have been wholly insufficient. There have been multiple incidents of civilians being shot and killed by Israeli forces while trying to pick up aid from a small number of designated distribution centres set up under effective Israeli control in recent weeks. The concessions from Israel come several days before the EU's 27 foreign ministers were to discuss a range of options they could take to increase pressure on Israel to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
