Truce in Gaza won’t stop fight against Hezbollah: Yoav Gallant
The Israeli defence minister says the army will continue to battle Hezbollah in Lebanon even if his country reaches a ceasefire deal with Hamas and allied groups in Gaza.
Yoav Gallant wrote on X: “My orders in the south and the north are clear: Even if we reach a settlement in the south, we will continue to fight in the north until we bring Hezbollah to a settlement and restore the [Israel’s] residents with security.”
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire since Israel launched its war on Gaza in the wake of the deadly Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7.
Netanyahu: Gaza deal must allow fighting until Israel’s goals met
Any Gaza ceasefire deal must allow Israel to keep fighting until it achieves its war objectives, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said again.
In a statement, he listed Israeli demands that he says are non-negotiable ahead of more ceasefire talks this week in Cairo and Doha. The deal must prohibit weapons smuggling to Hamas via the Gaza-Egypt border, and should not allow thousands of fighters to return to the north, Netanyahu said.
Israel will also “maximise” the number of live captives returned, the statement added.
Lapid slams ‘provocative’ PM statement on negotiation conditions
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid slammed a statement issued by PM Benjamin Netanyahu listing the prerequisite conditions the Israeli government will put forward in the next round of ceasefire talks in Doha and Cairo.
“What is the benefit of provocative statements when we are at a crucial moment in the negotiations on which the lives of the prisoners depend?” Lapid asked on X.
Lapid has long called on the government to halt the war on Gaza and negotiate a deal with Hamas on the release of the captives.
Stopping Israeli crimes shouldn’t be a negotiation: Rights group
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, says: “Starving people, bombarding civilians, torturing Palestinians in prisons – stopping these Israeli crimes should never be subject to negotiation, any more than a murderer should negotiate how many more people he will kill before he stops.”
She made her comments in response to a report that a ceasefire deal would see 600 trucks of humanitarian aid entering Gaza daily, and after questions were raised about why humanitarian relief isn’t entering now on that scale.
🎯Starving people, bombarding civilians, torturing Palestinians in prisons- stopping these Israeli crimes should never be subject to negotiation, any more than a murderer should negotiate how many more people he will kill before he stops. https://t.co/Mly0N1q304
— Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) July 7, 2024
