July 28, 2025
Dave DeCamp
Dave DeCamp
According
to Haaretz, Netanyahu is pursuing the plan to prevent Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich from quitting the government
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu is set to propose to his political-security cabinet a US-supported
plan to begin annexing the Gaza Strip, Haaretz reported on Monday.
The report said that the plan is being proposed to appease Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and prevent him from quitting the government. Smotrich is angry over Netanyahu’s steps to slightly increase humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza amid international outrage over the starvation deaths in Gaza caused by the Israeli siege.
Under the plan, Israel will declare that it is giving Hamas a few days to agree to a ceasefire, the conditions of which are unclear. Hamas’s position is that it’s willing to free all remaining Israeli captives in exchange for a permanent truce, but Israel has only entertained the idea of a temporary ceasefire.
If Hamas doesn’t agree to the proposal, Israel will then begin annexing territory with Gaza. It will start by annexing the “buffer zone” it created along Gaza’s border with Israel and areas in northern Gaza that are adjacent to the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon, with the ultimate goal of annexing the entire Palestinian territory.
The Haaretz report said that, according to details Netanyahu has already presented to government ministers, the plan has received approval from the Trump administration. Netanyahu conveyed that Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer presented the proposal to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that it has the approval of the White House.
Since the US and Israel quit ceasefire talks last week, President Trump has hinted that he believes Israel should escalate its military assault by suggesting it needs to “finish the job” in Gaza. He also said Israel needs to “make a decision,” without specifying what that decision might be.
Sources told Haaretz that Smotrich told Netanyahu that he would “judge by actions” and that if the annexation plan moves forward, he would “remain in the government for the time being.”
Smotrich and other Israeli ministers have spoken openly about their desire for an Israeli takeover of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population. “We will occupy Gaza and make it an inseparable part of Israel,” Smotrich said at a Gaza annexation conference at the Knesset last week.
The event was titled “The Gaza Riviera – From Vision to Reality,” a nod to President Trump’s calls for a US takeover of the territory, which he has said would involve the removal of the Palestinian population. At the event, Smotrich said that Israel has the “green light from the president of the United States to turn Gaza into a prosperous strip, a resort town with employment.”
Smotrich said that a “proposed plan to relocate Gazans to other countries will serve as a means of facilitating the settlement of the strip” and that annexation could start with northern Gaza.
Netanyahu is also openly in favor of expelling Palestinians from Gaza. Back in May, Netanyahu said that enacting the “Trump plan” was a condition for ending Israel’s genocidal war. The Israeli leader also told a Knesset committee that the IDF was destroying homes in Gaza so Palestinians had nowhere to go and that their forced removal from the territory was “inevitable.”
“That’s real starvation stuff, I see it. You can’t fake that,” the president told reporters while meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a Trump golf course in Scotland.
Trump said the US would become “even more involved” with getting aid into Gaza. However, the current US aid system, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has created death traps for Palestinians as they are regularly gunned down by the Israeli military near GHF sites.
Earlier in the day, Trump was asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s claim that there was no starvation in Gaza, and replied, “Based on television, I would say not particularly because those children look very hungry.” In other comments, Trump said Israel has “a lot of responsibility” for the starvation and must work to get more food into Gaza.
The UN and other aid groups that operate in Gaza have been calling for Israel to lift all restrictions on aid deliveries and for a ceasefire, which is required to provide a full humanitarian relief effort for Gaza’s starving population. But both the US and Israel recently quit ceasefire talks with Hamas, and Trump appears to be suggesting that Israel should escalate military operations.
“Hamas doesn’t want to give the hostages. I told Bibi that he will have to now maybe do it in a different way,” Trump said on Monday, adding that a ceasefire is “possible” but “you have to end it.”
While Trump claims Hamas doesn’t want to release the remaining Israeli captives, the group’s long-standing offer is that it would release all of them in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. But Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the genocidal war, and there’s no sign that Trump is willing to pressure him to do so by leveraging US military aid, which Israel relies on to sustain its operations in Gaza.
Two leading Israeli human rights
organizations — B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) — issued
reports on Monday that conclude Israel is committing the crime of genocide
against the Palestinians in Gaza.
The reports mark the first time Israeli rights groups have stated that Israel is conducting genocide, a conclusion that’s been reached by many other international rights organizations and genocide scholars.
“An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” B’Tselem said in its report titled “Our Genocide.”
The PHRI report said the evidence shows “a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems through targeted attacks on hospitals, obstruction of medical aid and evacuations, and the killing and detention of healthcare personnel.”
PHRI said Israel’s action fit the criteria for genocide under international law. It said Israel is committing three “core acts” that are defined in the Genocide Convention, including “killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s destruction in whole or in part.”
B’Tselem strongly condemned Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel but said it didn’t justify Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza. “Our analysis shows how the Israeli government has cynically exploited the trauma experienced by many Israelis and used it to carry out genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” the group said. “One crime does not justify another – certainly not the mass killing of civilians or an attempt to erase and destroy an entire group.”
Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem, warned that the genocide could be spread to the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “The lives of all Palestinians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, are being treated as worthless. They can be starved, killed, displaced – and the situation keeps getting worse,” she said.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on
Monday that Israeli Forces killed at least 98 Palestinians over the previous
24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli strikes continued and more aid
seekers were gunned down by the IDF.
The Health Ministry said that the bodies of another two Palestinians were found in the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, as ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them until now.”
Israeli strikes on Monday included an attack that hit a house and neighboring tents in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza. At least 12 people were killed in the strike, including Soad al-Shaer, who was seven months pregnant.
According to The Associated Press, after Shaer was killed, her baby girl was delivered in a complex emergency cesarean at the Nasser Hospital. The baby was placed in an incubator and was breathing with assistance from a ventilator, but died later in the day.
Another Israeli strike hit a house in Khan Younis, killing 11 people. According to officials at the Nasser Hospital, more than half of the dead were women and children.
Israeli strikes also hit other parts of Gaza, with Gaza’s Civil Defense agency reporting that it conducted rescue operations in North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir el-Balaha, Rafah, and Khan Younis. The heavy Israeli attacks continued despite the IDF announcing on Sunday that it would hold daily “tactical pauses” to facilitate more aid deliveries amid an international outcry as Palestinians are starving to death every day due to the Israeli siege.
The Health Ministry also said that Israeli forces killed 25 aid seekers and wounded 237. Since the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating at the end of May, the Health Ministry has recorded the Israeli killing of 1,157 aid seekers and the wounding of 7,758.
The ministry said that the latest violence has brought its overall death toll since October 7, 2023, to 59,921 and the number of wounded to 145,233. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on
Monday that at least 14 more Palestinians have died of starvation caused by the
US-backed Israeli siege on the Palestinian territroy.
“Gaza Strip hospitals recorded 14 new deaths in the past 24 hours due to famine and malnutrition,” the ministry wrote on Telegram. “This brings the total number of deaths from famine and malnutrition to 147, including 88 children.”
A source at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City told Al Jazeera that among the dead was Muhammad Ibrahim Adas, an infant who died of malnutrition due to the shortage of baby formula. Babies have been especially vulnerable since malnourished mothers are unable to produce breast milk.
The latest starvation deaths come after Israel announced several steps to allow more aid to enter Gaza, including air-dropped aid, allowing more aid trucks to enter, and enacting “tactical pauses” in areas where its military isn’t operating. Israel took the steps in the face of significant international pressure over its starvation campaign.
The UN and other aid groups have said there’s been some progress in getting more aid into Gaza, but warn the humanitarian catastrophe cannot be averted unless all restrictions are lifted and there is a complete ceasefire.
“Opening all the crossings and flooding Gaza with assistance is the only way to avert further deepening of starvation among the people of Gaza. What’s needed is at least 500/600 trucks of basics every day,” the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, said on Monday.
“Meanwhile, we call once again, for a long-term ceasefire as part of an agreement that would bring respite to starving people, an uninterrupted flow of basic supplies as well as the release of all hostages,” UNRWA added.
Jewish settlers in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank launched an overnight attack on Taybeh, the last
village in the Palestinian territory that is entirely populated by Christians.
According to Vatican News, the attack began around 2:20 am on Monday morning when settlers entered the town, set three cars on fire, threw stones at homes, attempted to light one house on fire, and spray-painted threatening graffiti written in Hebrew.
When young residents from the village emerged to defend themselves, the settlers fled. The Israeli military arrived about an hour later, and no arrests were made.
Taybeh continues to come under attack despite international attention on the town after settlers set a fire right next to the historic Church of St. George, which was first built in the fifth century. Residents were able to put the fire out before it damaged the church, but the incident prompted three priests based in the town to issue a plea for help amid the growing settler attacks.
A week after the fire was set, Christian leaders from the region visited the town and issued a statement strongly criticizing settler violence and the Israeli government’s support of it.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also visited Taybeh and called the attack on the church an “act of terror” and a “crime.” His comments were surprising due to his history of staunch support for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Israeli settlements.
The purpose of the attacks on Taybeh and other villages in the West Bank is to terrorize residents enough to get them to flee so the settlers can steal their land. The Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches of Jerusalem, a group of Christian leaders based in Jerusalem, said in their statement condemning the attacks that settlers had erected a billboard in Taybeh that read “you have no future here.”
The report said that the plan is being proposed to appease Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and prevent him from quitting the government. Smotrich is angry over Netanyahu’s steps to slightly increase humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza amid international outrage over the starvation deaths in Gaza caused by the Israeli siege.
Under the plan, Israel will declare that it is giving Hamas a few days to agree to a ceasefire, the conditions of which are unclear. Hamas’s position is that it’s willing to free all remaining Israeli captives in exchange for a permanent truce, but Israel has only entertained the idea of a temporary ceasefire.
If Hamas doesn’t agree to the proposal, Israel will then begin annexing territory with Gaza. It will start by annexing the “buffer zone” it created along Gaza’s border with Israel and areas in northern Gaza that are adjacent to the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon, with the ultimate goal of annexing the entire Palestinian territory.
The Haaretz report said that, according to details Netanyahu has already presented to government ministers, the plan has received approval from the Trump administration. Netanyahu conveyed that Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer presented the proposal to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that it has the approval of the White House.
Since the US and Israel quit ceasefire talks last week, President Trump has hinted that he believes Israel should escalate its military assault by suggesting it needs to “finish the job” in Gaza. He also said Israel needs to “make a decision,” without specifying what that decision might be.
Sources told Haaretz that Smotrich told Netanyahu that he would “judge by actions” and that if the annexation plan moves forward, he would “remain in the government for the time being.”
Smotrich and other Israeli ministers have spoken openly about their desire for an Israeli takeover of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population. “We will occupy Gaza and make it an inseparable part of Israel,” Smotrich said at a Gaza annexation conference at the Knesset last week.
The event was titled “The Gaza Riviera – From Vision to Reality,” a nod to President Trump’s calls for a US takeover of the territory, which he has said would involve the removal of the Palestinian population. At the event, Smotrich said that Israel has the “green light from the president of the United States to turn Gaza into a prosperous strip, a resort town with employment.”
Smotrich said that a “proposed plan to relocate Gazans to other countries will serve as a means of facilitating the settlement of the strip” and that annexation could start with northern Gaza.
Netanyahu is also openly in favor of expelling Palestinians from Gaza. Back in May, Netanyahu said that enacting the “Trump plan” was a condition for ending Israel’s genocidal war. The Israeli leader also told a Knesset committee that the IDF was destroying homes in Gaza so Palestinians had nowhere to go and that their forced removal from the territory was “inevitable.”
The
comments came after Netanyahu put out a video claiming there was 'no
starvation' despite the daily malnutrition deaths caused by the Israeli siege
President Trump acknowledged on
Monday that there was “real starvation” in the Gaza Strip, comments that came
after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed there was “no
starvation” despite the daily malnutrition deaths that have been caused by the
US-backed Israeli siege.“That’s real starvation stuff, I see it. You can’t fake that,” the president told reporters while meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a Trump golf course in Scotland.
Trump said the US would become “even more involved” with getting aid into Gaza. However, the current US aid system, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has created death traps for Palestinians as they are regularly gunned down by the Israeli military near GHF sites.
Earlier in the day, Trump was asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s claim that there was no starvation in Gaza, and replied, “Based on television, I would say not particularly because those children look very hungry.” In other comments, Trump said Israel has “a lot of responsibility” for the starvation and must work to get more food into Gaza.
The UN and other aid groups that operate in Gaza have been calling for Israel to lift all restrictions on aid deliveries and for a ceasefire, which is required to provide a full humanitarian relief effort for Gaza’s starving population. But both the US and Israel recently quit ceasefire talks with Hamas, and Trump appears to be suggesting that Israel should escalate military operations.
“Hamas doesn’t want to give the hostages. I told Bibi that he will have to now maybe do it in a different way,” Trump said on Monday, adding that a ceasefire is “possible” but “you have to end it.”
While Trump claims Hamas doesn’t want to release the remaining Israeli captives, the group’s long-standing offer is that it would release all of them in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. But Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the genocidal war, and there’s no sign that Trump is willing to pressure him to do so by leveraging US military aid, which Israel relies on to sustain its operations in Gaza.
The reports mark the first time Israeli rights groups have stated that Israel is conducting genocide, a conclusion that’s been reached by many other international rights organizations and genocide scholars.
“An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” B’Tselem said in its report titled “Our Genocide.”
The PHRI report said the evidence shows “a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems through targeted attacks on hospitals, obstruction of medical aid and evacuations, and the killing and detention of healthcare personnel.”
PHRI said Israel’s action fit the criteria for genocide under international law. It said Israel is committing three “core acts” that are defined in the Genocide Convention, including “killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s destruction in whole or in part.”
B’Tselem strongly condemned Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel but said it didn’t justify Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza. “Our analysis shows how the Israeli government has cynically exploited the trauma experienced by many Israelis and used it to carry out genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” the group said. “One crime does not justify another – certainly not the mass killing of civilians or an attempt to erase and destroy an entire group.”
Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem, warned that the genocide could be spread to the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “The lives of all Palestinians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, are being treated as worthless. They can be starved, killed, displaced – and the situation keeps getting worse,” she said.
Among
the dead were 25 Palestinians killed by the IDF while seeking aid
The Health Ministry said that the bodies of another two Palestinians were found in the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, as ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them until now.”
Israeli strikes on Monday included an attack that hit a house and neighboring tents in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza. At least 12 people were killed in the strike, including Soad al-Shaer, who was seven months pregnant.
According to The Associated Press, after Shaer was killed, her baby girl was delivered in a complex emergency cesarean at the Nasser Hospital. The baby was placed in an incubator and was breathing with assistance from a ventilator, but died later in the day.
Another Israeli strike hit a house in Khan Younis, killing 11 people. According to officials at the Nasser Hospital, more than half of the dead were women and children.
Israeli strikes also hit other parts of Gaza, with Gaza’s Civil Defense agency reporting that it conducted rescue operations in North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir el-Balaha, Rafah, and Khan Younis. The heavy Israeli attacks continued despite the IDF announcing on Sunday that it would hold daily “tactical pauses” to facilitate more aid deliveries amid an international outcry as Palestinians are starving to death every day due to the Israeli siege.
The Health Ministry also said that Israeli forces killed 25 aid seekers and wounded 237. Since the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating at the end of May, the Health Ministry has recorded the Israeli killing of 1,157 aid seekers and the wounding of 7,758.
The ministry said that the latest violence has brought its overall death toll since October 7, 2023, to 59,921 and the number of wounded to 145,233. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.
Among
the dead was an infant who died due to the baby formula shortage
“Gaza Strip hospitals recorded 14 new deaths in the past 24 hours due to famine and malnutrition,” the ministry wrote on Telegram. “This brings the total number of deaths from famine and malnutrition to 147, including 88 children.”
A source at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City told Al Jazeera that among the dead was Muhammad Ibrahim Adas, an infant who died of malnutrition due to the shortage of baby formula. Babies have been especially vulnerable since malnourished mothers are unable to produce breast milk.
The latest starvation deaths come after Israel announced several steps to allow more aid to enter Gaza, including air-dropped aid, allowing more aid trucks to enter, and enacting “tactical pauses” in areas where its military isn’t operating. Israel took the steps in the face of significant international pressure over its starvation campaign.
The UN and other aid groups have said there’s been some progress in getting more aid into Gaza, but warn the humanitarian catastrophe cannot be averted unless all restrictions are lifted and there is a complete ceasefire.
“Opening all the crossings and flooding Gaza with assistance is the only way to avert further deepening of starvation among the people of Gaza. What’s needed is at least 500/600 trucks of basics every day,” the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, said on Monday.
“Meanwhile, we call once again, for a long-term ceasefire as part of an agreement that would bring respite to starving people, an uninterrupted flow of basic supplies as well as the release of all hostages,” UNRWA added.
According to Vatican News, the attack began around 2:20 am on Monday morning when settlers entered the town, set three cars on fire, threw stones at homes, attempted to light one house on fire, and spray-painted threatening graffiti written in Hebrew.
When young residents from the village emerged to defend themselves, the settlers fled. The Israeli military arrived about an hour later, and no arrests were made.
Taybeh continues to come under attack despite international attention on the town after settlers set a fire right next to the historic Church of St. George, which was first built in the fifth century. Residents were able to put the fire out before it damaged the church, but the incident prompted three priests based in the town to issue a plea for help amid the growing settler attacks.
A week after the fire was set, Christian leaders from the region visited the town and issued a statement strongly criticizing settler violence and the Israeli government’s support of it.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also visited Taybeh and called the attack on the church an “act of terror” and a “crime.” His comments were surprising due to his history of staunch support for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Israeli settlements.
The purpose of the attacks on Taybeh and other villages in the West Bank is to terrorize residents enough to get them to flee so the settlers can steal their land. The Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches of Jerusalem, a group of Christian leaders based in Jerusalem, said in their statement condemning the attacks that settlers had erected a billboard in Taybeh that read “you have no future here.”
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