Wednesday Briefing: Netanyahu's Next Steps in Gaza
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, discussed the path forward in the war in Gaza during a meeting yesterday with the military's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. The general presented 'the options for continuing the military campaign in Gaza,' the prime minister's office said, without specifying what they were.
Netanyahu's office also told some Israeli reporters that the prime minister might expand military operations across all of the Gaza Strip. Three officials briefed on the matter cautioned that no decision had been made about the way forward.
Israel, facing growing international condemnation over starvation in Gaza, is now allowing some private businesses to deliver goods to the enclave and is trying to refocus attention on the plight of hostages held by Hamas.
At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York, diplomats denounced Hamas but also called for Israel to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Related: The war in Gaza has put Germany, which has a unique relationship with Israel because of the Holocaust, into an uncomfortable position.
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Washington Post
8 minutes ago
- Washington Post
U.S. plans to ease human rights criticism of El Salvador, Israel, Russia
Leaked drafts of the State Department's long-delayed annual human rights reports indicate that the Trump administration intends to dramatically scale back U.S. government criticism of certain foreign nations with extensive records of abuse. The draft human rights reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia, copies of which were reviewed by The Washington Post, are significantly shorter than the ones prepared last year by the Biden administration. They strike all references to LGBTQ individuals or crimes against them, and the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened. The draft report for El Salvador, which, at the Trump administration's urging, has agreed to incarcerate migrants deported from the United States, states that the country had 'no credible reports of significant human rights abuses' in 2024. The State Department's previous report for El Salvador, documenting 2023, identified 'significant human rights issues' there — including government-sanctioned killings, instances of torture, and 'harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.' Several Venezuelans whom the Trump administration sent to the Salvadoran prison said they were subjected to repeated beatings. The leaked draft reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia underscore how the Trump administration is radically rethinking America's role in global human rights advocacy. The documents also are consistent with internal guidance circulated earlier this year by State Department leaders who advised staff to truncate the reports to the minimum required by statutory guidelines and executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, and to remove references to government corruption, gender-based crimes and other abuses the U.S. government historically has documented. The State Department declined to address questions about the leaked documents reviewed by The Post. 'The 2024 Human Rights report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report,' a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the news media, said Wednesday. 'The human rights report focuses on core issues.' This official said the Trump administration would bring a new focus to some issues, including backsliding on freedom of expression in some countries allied with the United States, even as the administration has itself faced criticism on free-speech grounds for seeking to deport foreigners studying in the United States who have criticized Israel's conduct in Gaza. U.S. diplomats have compiled the State Department's annual human rights reports for almost 50 years. Their findings are considered the most thorough and wide-ranging of their kind and are routinely relied upon by courts inside and outside the United States. The human rights reports are congressionally mandated to be sent to lawmakers by the end of February. Public release typically happens in March or April. The State Department is yet to officially release this year's reports, which cover activities and observations made in 2024. Current and former U.S. officials say most of this year's reports were nearly completed when the Biden administration transitioned out in January. The drafts for El Salvador and Russia are marked 'finalized,' while the draft for Israel is marked 'quality check.' All were edited in the last few days, the documents show. It is unclear whether the reports eventually transmitted to Congress and released to the public will mirror the drafts. The internal guidance circulated by State Department leaders earlier this year instructed diplomats responsible for drafting reports to remove references to numerous potential human rights violations, including governments that had deported people to a country where they could face torture, crimes that involve violence against LGBTQ people and government corruption. The internal guidance was written by Samuel Samson, a Trump political appointee at the State Department. Samson, initially little known in Foggy Bottom, attracted attention after writing an article for the agency's Substack in May criticizing Europe for what he alleged was the continent's descent into 'a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom, and numerous other assaults on democratic self-governance.' Samson was tasked with reviewing the country reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia. While all three reports continue to describe human rights abuses in those countries, each was whittled down considerably from a year before and all bear significant changes to the language used to describe alleged abuses. The draft prepared for Israel, for instance, is 25 pages long; last year's report was more than 100 pages. Meanwhile, a comparison of the documents covering El Salvador shows the Trump administration downplaying the country's history of prison violence, emphasizing that there has been a reduction overall while stating that purported deaths were under government review. Trump has expressed fondness for El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, and hosted him in the Oval Office earlier this year after the administration secured an agreement to deport people to the country's notorious CECOT megaprison. The Salvadoran Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Scrutiny of corruption and judicial independence also is significantly scaled back in the draft report for Israel. The 2023 report compiled by the Biden administration addresses the corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another of Trump's international allies, and judicial overhaul efforts, which critics say threatens the independence of the country's judiciary. The Trump administration's draft report for Israel makes no mention of corruption or threats to the independence of Israel's judiciary. Previous human rights reports also have mentioned Israeli surveillance of Palestinians and restrictions of their movement, including an Amnesty International finding on Israel's use of 'experimental facial recognition system to track Palestinians and enforce movement restrictions.' This issue is not addressed in the draft report either. The Israeli Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The draft reports examined by The Post contain no reference to gender-based violence or violence against LGBTQIA people. Keifer Buckingham, who worked on these issues at the State Department until January, said it was a 'glaring omission' in the case of Russia, where the country's Supreme Court had banned LGBTQIA organizations and labeled them 'extremist,' with raids and arrests last year. The Russian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Buckingham chastised Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who as a U.S. senator for many years was a vocal defender of human rights. 'Secretary Rubio has repeatedly asserted that his State Department has not abandoned human rights, but it is clear by this and other actions that this administration only cares about the human rights of some people … in some countries, when it's convenient to them,' said Buckingham, who now works as managing director at the Council for Global Quality. During his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio praised the State Department's annual human rights reports. In 2012, he said 'the world has been a better place [for two centuries] because America has strived to defend these fundamental human rights both at home and abroad.' 'The State Department's annual human rights report sheds light on foreign governments' failure to respect their citizens' fundamental rights,' he said a statement then, adding that it was important for the world to know that 'the United States will stand with freedom-seeking people around the world and will not tolerate violations against their rights.' U.S. officials have repeatedly pointed to a speech given by Trump during a visit to the Middle East in May as an example of the new way Washington relates to the world, with an emphasis on sovereignty over universal rights. Speaking in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Trump had criticized 'Western interventionists … giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs.' This shift of the U.S. role in promoting human rights has coincided with a change in U.S. promotion of democracy. In a cable sent in July, Rubio instructed diplomats to no longer publicly comment on other countries' elections, including making an assessment of whether the election was 'free and fair,' unless there is a 'clear and compelling U.S. foreign policy interest to do so.' The move was a shift from long-standing U.S. practice — even under Rubio himself. The secretary had personally congratulated world leaders in Trinidad and Tobago and Ecuador for conducting 'free and fair' elections since January. Last month, the Trump administration tightened sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, stepping up a feud with the Brazilian government for the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, for his alleged role in a violent coup plot in 2022. In announcing those sanctions, the U.S. Treasury Department invoked the Magnitsky Act, a law that allows the American government to impose penalties on foreign nationals accused of corruption and human rights violations. In a statement, Rubio said that Moraes had committed 'serious human rights abuse, including arbitrary detention involving flagrant denials of fair trial guarantees and violations of the freedom of expression.' Moraes has said that the court would not yield to foreign pressure, but on Wednesday eased some house arrest restrictions on Bolsonaro. Clara Ence Morse and Meg Kelly contributed to this report.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump plans to meet Putin next week in Ukraine peace bid
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to meet with Vladimir Putin as soon as next week in a fresh bid to broker a peace deal with Ukraine after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held a 'highly productive' meeting with the Russian president. Trump hailed the meeting as having made 'great progress,' but he didn't elaborate. A Kremlin spokesman said the meeting lasted three hours and was 'useful and constructive.' 'Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,' Trump posted on his social media site. 'President Trump wants this brutal war to end,' added White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump told European allies about his plans to meet with Putin and his hopes to broker a three-man meeting between the two of them and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, several American and European media outlets reported. A face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy could amount to a crucial crossroads in the war that Putin launched against neighboring Ukraine more than three years ago. In announcing his plans, Trump didn't mention his looming Friday deadline for Putin to start talking peace with Kyiv, raising obvious questions about whether the threat is still hanging over the Kremlin. Trump last week set a stricter deadline of '10 or 12 days' for Putin to wind down the war against Ukraine or start peace negotiations, threatening 'severe tariffs' and other economic penalties against Russia and its economic partners if it refuses. Zelenskyy, who also spoke with Trump on Wednesday, said Putin's agreement to meet could suggest that pressure from Trump is working, though he warned that the wily Kremlin leader could be raising hopes for peace as a negotiating tactic without any intention of agreeing to end the conflict. 'The main thing is that they do not deceive us in the details,' Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people. Moscow had so far shrugged off Trump's deadline as empty bluster, noting he has given numerous previous ultimatums on various issues that turned out to be toothless threats. Russia believes it has the upper hand on the battlefield, at least in the short and medium term, giving it little reason to agree to even a brief ceasefire. Its troops have made modest advances along the long front line in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and ousted Ukrainian troops from a sliver of a Russian border territory that they had previously seized. Russia has also increasingly mounted deadly missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. Earlier on Wednesday, Witkoff took a morning stroll in Moscow with Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president's envoy for investment and economic cooperation, which was captured in footage aired by a Russian news agency. Dmitriev played a key role in three rounds of direct talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine, as well as discussions between Russian and U.S. officials, but the negotiations made no progress on ending the three-year war. Trump has recently flip-flopped to a much harsher stance on Russia after seeing Putin for months spurn his demands for concessions. Still, Trump has shown himself to be unwilling to take a firm stance of defending Ukraine and sticking to it, giving Putin an incentive to wait out any threats. The new deadline and threat to impose 'secondary sanctions' on nations that buy Russian energy, like India, China and Turkey, are particularly problematic because those economic powerhouses have no control over Russia's stance on Ukraine. They're unlikely to cut economic ties with Moscow in response to such U.S. demands, especially when Trump himself was cozying up to Putin just a few weeks ago. The White House announced it is tacking on a new 25% tariff on products imported from India, raising the total tax to 50%, which suggests it doesn't consider Putin has met the deadline.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump plans to meet Putin next week in Ukraine peace bid
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to meet with Vladimir Putin as soon as next week in a fresh bid to broker a peace deal with Ukraine after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held a 'highly productive' meeting with the Russian president. Trump hailed the meeting as having made 'great progress,' but he didn't elaborate. A Kremlin spokesman said the meeting lasted three hours and was 'useful and constructive.' 'Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,' Trump posted on his social media site. 'President Trump wants this brutal war to end,' added White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump told European allies about his plans to meet with Putin and his hopes to broker a three-man meeting between the two of them and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, several American and European media outlets reported. A face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy could amount to a crucial crossroads in the war that Putin launched against neighboring Ukraine more than three years ago. In announcing his plans, Trump didn't mention his looming Friday deadline for Putin to start talking peace with Kyiv, raising obvious questions about whether the threat is still hanging over the Kremlin. Trump last week set a stricter deadline of '10 or 12 days' for Putin to wind down the war against Ukraine or start peace negotiations, threatening 'severe tariffs' and other economic penalties against Russia and its economic partners if it refuses. Zelenskyy, who also spoke with Trump on Wednesday, said Putin's agreement to meet could suggest that pressure from Trump is working, though he warned that the wily Kremlin leader could be raising hopes for peace as a negotiating tactic without any intention of agreeing to end the conflict. 'The main thing is that they do not deceive us in the details,' Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people. Moscow had so far shrugged off Trump's deadline as empty bluster, noting he has given numerous previous ultimatums on various issues that turned out to be toothless threats. Russia believes it has the upper hand on the battlefield, at least in the short and medium term, giving it little reason to agree to even a brief ceasefire. Its troops have made modest advances along the long front line in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and ousted Ukrainian troops from a sliver of a Russian border territory that they had previously seized. Russia has also increasingly mounted deadly missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. Earlier on Wednesday, Witkoff took a morning stroll in Moscow with Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president's envoy for investment and economic cooperation, which was captured in footage aired by a Russian news agency. Dmitriev played a key role in three rounds of direct talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine, as well as discussions between Russian and U.S. officials, but the negotiations made no progress on ending the three-year war. Trump has recently flip-flopped to a much harsher stance on Russia after seeing Putin for months spurn his demands for concessions. Still, Trump has shown himself to be unwilling to take a firm stance of defending Ukraine and sticking to it, giving Putin an incentive to wait out any threats. The new deadline and threat to impose 'secondary sanctions' on nations that buy Russian energy, like India, China and Turkey, are particularly problematic because those economic powerhouses have no control over Russia's stance on Ukraine. They're unlikely to cut economic ties with Moscow in response to such U.S. demands, especially when Trump himself was cozying up to Putin just a few weeks ago. The White House announced it is tacking on a new 25% tariff on products imported from India, raising the total tax to 50%, which suggests it doesn't consider Putin has met the deadline.
