Like Aviv, Israel (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would discuss “Victory on Hamas”, Couting Iran and expanding diplomatic relations with the Arab countries during his meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Tuesday’s meeting at the White House will be the first of Trump with a foreign leader since his return to the position. This comes as the Arab mediators begin to start intimidating work of the brokerage The next phase an agreement to finish war in the Gaza Strip and release dozens of hostages held by activists.
Hamas, who quickly reaffirmed its control over Gaza Since the ceasefire settled last month, he said that he would not release the hostages that should be released in the second endless phase to the war and the total withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Netanyahu is under assembly pressure Far -right partners to resume war after the end of the first phase in early March. He said that Israel was still attached to the victory over Hamas and the return of all the hostages captured in the attacks of activists on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war.
We don’t know where Trump is.
He was a fervent supporter of Israel, but also undertook to end the wars in the Middle East and took credit for helping to negotiate the cease-fire agreement. The agreement interrupted the fighting and led to the release of 18 hostages which had been detained for more than 15 months, as well as hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
An Israeli air strike on a vehicle in the Central Gaza injured five people on Sunday, including a child in critical condition, according to Al-Awda Hospital, who made the victims. The Israeli army said it had shot the vehicle because it contained a checkpoint while heading north in violation of the cease-fire agreement. The army said it was attached to the agreement.
Netanyahu kisses Trump’s call to the peace by force ”
In a statement published before his departure on Sunday, Netanyahu said that they would discuss “victory over Hamas, reaching the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terrorist axis in all its components”, referring to The Iranian alliance of militant groups Throughout the region, including Hamas.
He said that by working together, they could “strengthen security, widen the circle of peace and reach an era of peace remarkable by force”.
The war began when thousands of activists led by Hamas burst into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians and taking around 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were released during a week-long ceasefire in November 2023, eight were rescued alive and dozens of bodies were recovered by Israeli forces.
The air and land war of Israel killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of women and children, according to local health authorities who do not say how many deaths were fighters. War left great parts of several cities in ruins And moved around 90% of the Gaza population of 2.3 million people.
Under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas will release a total of 33 hostages, including eight, Hamas, says it is dead, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israeli forces have withdrawn from most regions and have granted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians To return to devastated northern Gaza.
Negotiations on the second phase, in which the war would end and the 60 remaining hostages would have returned, should begin on Monday. If the United States, Qatar and Egypt are unable to negotiate an agreement between Israel and Hamas, war could resume in early March.
Aspirations for a greater agreement
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff joined the ceasefire negotiations for a year in their last weeks last month and has helped push the agreement on the finish line. He met Netanyahu in Israel last week and the two were to officially start the talks in the second phase of Washington on Monday.
Trump, who negotiated normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries during his first mandate, was looking for a broader and potentially historical agreement in which Israel would forge links with Saudi Arabia.
But the kingdom, which resisted similar supplications of the Biden administration, said that it would only accept such an agreement if the war ends and that there is a credible path to a Palestinian state in Gaza , in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the war of the Middle East of 1967.
The Netanyahu government is opposed to the Palestinian state, and a key partner, the far -right Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened to leave the power coalition if the war does not resume next month. This would increase the probability of the first elections to which Netanyahu could be elected.
Violence in the West Bank
Even if the ceasefire of Gaza held for two weeks, Israel has increased its operations in occupied West Bank. On Sunday, the army said it was Expand an operation focused on the volatile city of Jenin in the city of Tamun.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that a 73 -year -old man was killed by Israeli troops in Jenin early on Sunday. There was no immediate comment from the army.
The ministry had previously reported five killed, including a 16 -year -old, in Israeli air strikes overnight.
The army said it killed two activists – one of whom had been released as part of the a week’s Gaza ceasefire in November 2023 – in an air strike in a village near Jenin. He said the two provided an imminent attack and that additional strikes targeted two other militant cells.
The West Bank has experienced an increase in violence since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel throwing almost daily military arrest raids. There was also an increase in the violence of the colonists against the Palestinians and the Palestinian attacks against the Israelis.
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The writer Associated Press Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.
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