Report: Israeli negotiating team leaving Doha
Reuters news service, quoting an unnamed Israeli official “close to the Mossad spymaster heading up the talks”, reports that Israel has recalled its negotiators from talks over a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of Israeli captives held there.
The source told Reuters that this decision was made after deeming the talks to be “at a dead end”, and blamed Hamas’s demands as well as its Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, accusing him of sabotaging diplomacy “as part of a wider effort to inflame this war over Ramadan”.
Yesterday, a Hamas statement accused Israel of failing to listen to any of its demands, and said that the group will be sticking to its initial position in future negotiations: “A comprehensive ceasefire, withdrawal [of Israeli forces] from the Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced, and a real exchange of prisoners”.
US says Israel’s claim UN resolution hampered hostage talks is ‘inaccurate’
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller has told reporters the Palestinian group Hamas’s response to a proposal for the release of captives was prepared before the US abstained on the UN Security Council vote on Monday, not after.
“That statement, which I believe said that Hamas pulled out of the hostage talks, or Hamas rejected the most recent proposal because of the United Nations Security Council Resolution – that statement is inaccurate in almost every respect and it is unfair for the hostages and their families,” Miller told reporters.
“For the United States, we are not going to engage in rhetorical distractions on this issue. We are going to continue to work to try to bring the hostages home,” he added.
US will continue aid drops into Gaza: White House
The United States will continue supplying humanitarian relief from the air into the Gaza Strip, the White House has said, despite Palestinians dying – by drowning, stampedes and falling aid boxes – while trying to reach the aid.
“Airdrops are one of the many ways that we are helping to provide desperately needed aid to Palestinians in Gaza, and we will continue to do so,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council told reporters, after 18 Palestinians died, 12 of them by drowning, while trying to recover dropped food supplies.
US will continue to pretend to be helping
It's a start
Belgian capital bans purchase of products made in Israeli settlements
The Brussels City Council has halted the public procurement of products from illegal Israeli settlements, after a motion was unanimously adopted late last night. The motion asks the local authority to ensure that its purchases do not benefit companies working in conditions that do not respect international law, human rights or environmental law.
In 2015, the EU issued new guidelines for the labelling of products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Under international law, all settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are considered illegal, but Israel continues to press on with plans to expand them.
Last week, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in the occupied West Bank as state land, in a move that will facilitate the use of the ground for settlement building.
I hope many more bans follow, make it country wide, Europe wide.
