Qatar attack ‘not going to change’ US-Israel ties: Rubio
The United States is “not happy” about Israel’s air strikes targeting Hamas in Qatar, but the attack will not change Washington’s allied status with Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed for the region.
“Obviously, we were not happy about it, the president was not happy about it,” he told reporters before departing Washington for discussions with Israeli officials.
“It’s not going to change the nature of our relationship with the Israelis. But we are going to have to talk about it – primarily what impact does this have” on diplomatic efforts to bring about a truce in war-ravaged Gaza, Rubio added.
“We will examine whether the events of the past week have had an impact on achieving the goal of releasing the hostages en masse. President Trump wants all hostages released and Hamas to no longer pose a threat, so we can move on to rebuilding Gaza and providing security. We will examine the impact of last week’s events on this.”
Israeli group says PM Netanyahu ‘obstacle’ to ending Gaza war
The main Israeli group campaigning for the release of captives held in Gaza says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an obstacle to ending the war and freeing the abductees.
“The targeted operation in Qatar proved beyond any doubt that there is one obstacle to returning the … hostages and ending the war: Prime Minister Netanyahu. Every time a deal approaches, Netanyahu sabotages it,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
Netanyahu earlier said getting rid of Hamas’s leaders living in Qatar would remove “the main obstacle” to releasing all captives and ending the war on Gaza.
Israeli soldiers raid home of Palestinian Oscar-winner
Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra says Israeli soldiers forced their way into his occupied West Bank home, and went through his wife’s phone while looking for him.
Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra said. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said he heard from family members in the village that nine Israeli troops had stormed his house.
The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, about his whereabouts and went through her phone while his nine-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.
As of Saturday night, Adra said he had no way of returning home to check on his family because Israeli troops blocked the entrance to the village and he was afraid of being detained.
Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker, chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of the occupied West Bank, where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he said he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar for the documentary No Other Land.
