Israeli officials told their Egyptian counterparts on Friday that Israel is ready to give hostage negotiations "one last chance" to reach a deal with Hamas, but if there isn't progress soon it will move forward with a ground invasion of Rafah, two senior Israeli officials said.
The Egyptians are increasingly concerned about a possible Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and are making a last minute push for a hostage deal that would lead to a ceasefire in Gaza and stop an invasion of Rafah.
Egyptian officials have raised concerns that an Israeli operation in the city would lead to tens of thousands of Palestinians entering their territory, potentially involving a breach of the border that would endanger Egypt's security.
Israel has for weeks said it would invade Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinian are estimated to be sheltering amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Israeli officials said the talks with the Egyptians on Friday were constructive and that the Egyptians made it clear they intend to put pressure on Hamas to secure a deal for the release of hostages.
if memory serves me well, Israel has ordered Gaza civilians to evacuate to all points of the compass since the start. They have then bombed each compass point to oblivion. And if we say "no" we are branded terrorist sympathisers and branded as antisemites.
Maybe if the US state department and Congress didn't actively work to fund this assault, and the US President didnt just give more military aid to support the destruction, then it wouldn't be inevitable.
Letting Hamas stay in Rafah and boast how they had defeated Israel is absolutely unacceptable to the voters in Israel. It would lead be a model for using hostages and human shields in future attacks. Short of sending our forces to fight Israeli forces no pause or end in miliary aid will be enough to stop the clearing of Rafah.
Israel's enemies boast of destroying Israel and October 7 was a pretty good indication of what that would mean. Israel has nuclear weapons. Anything that reduces Israel's superiority in conventional forces or encourages Israel's enemies risks turning places Middle Eastern cities into sheets of radioactive glass.
@ISIDEWITH1yr1Y
@ISIDEWITH1yr1Y
Are we to believe Israel has enough reservists to call up to invade Rafah? Wouldn’t this make them also highly vulnerable in the North?
Uh, it seems like Egypt was the one sending the warning. This is israel not heeding it. So sad Jimmy Carter is still alive to see the end of camp david
@Qu0rumSwiftDemocrat1yr1Y
"We cannot support a major military operation in Rafah,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters last week while in Italy."
We've come to a point where our words have no meaning and no consequences.
We just approved another infusion of billions of dollars of weapons to a rogue government in Israel -- a government that violates international laws, that violates our own conditions on weapons we give them, and that, in essence, treats us as it's lackey.
Our White House and Congress should be ashamed to have the blood of tens of thousands of civilians on our hands and to be so subservient to a nation that we bankroll.
Many of us will remember this abomination come November.
Human Rights Watch has described Gaza as an “open-air prison” pre Oct 7. Economic hardship includes more than half (53%) of Gaza’s population lives in poverty. Young people, in particular, face a staggering 75% unemployment rate.
Hamas by any other name is still Hamas. You can dismantle, you can destroy, you can dismember Hamas, but if don't allow the Palestinian people a human standard quality of life, there will be a continuous parade of one Hamas group after another.
@ISIDEWITH1yr1Y
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