Israel says Trump's Middle East visit is the ‘window of opportunity' for hostage deal
A senior Israeli defense official on Monday said President Donald Trump's upcoming visit to the Middle East is the "window of opportunity" to secure a hostage deal, otherwise Israel will initiate a new military operation in the Gaza Strip.
"If there is no hostage deal, Operation 'Gideon Chariots' will begin with great intensity and will not stop until all its goals are achieved," the official said according to a Reuters report in reference to a Sunday night decision by Israel's security cabinet to expand operations in the Gaza Strip.
Israel will use the roughly 10-day time frame to prepare for its new operations, which will entail calling up tens of thousands of reserve troops with the goal of taking over all the Gaza Strip.
In an apparent move to counter the terror group Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces will remain in captured territory rather than withdraw forces after an operation is complete. Israel has not presented a plan for how long it intends to occupy the Palestinian lands in a move that violated U.N.-brokered treaties and internationally recognized borders.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not respond to Fox News Digital's questions.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement that the plan approved by the cabinet to occupy territory and sustain Israel's presence in Gaza should be named the "Smotrich-Netanyahu plan" to "give up on the hostages and Israel's security and national resilience."
In the statement, the forum said that this plan is an admission by the government that it is choosing territories over freeing the hostages and noted that more than 70% of Israelis have opposed military prioritization over hostages in recent polling.
Trump had planned to make his trip to the Middle East, where he will visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates between May 13 and 16, his first international visit since re-entering the White House, to signify the significance of the region to the U.S.
While this will still be a major geopolitical visit, his first international trip ended up being his visit to Italy for Pope Francis' funeral, where he held close discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Neither the White House nor the State Department immediately responded to Fox News Digital's questions regarding Israel's increasingly aggressive position and how it is impacting hostage and peace deal negotiations.
Comments made by Netanyahu last week sent ceasefire negotiators reeling after he, for the first time, confirmed that returning the hostages taken by Hamas nearly 580 days ago on Oct. 7, 2023 was not his top priority.
"We have many objectives, many goals in this war. We want to bring back all of our hostages," Netanyahu said. "That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve."
The Israeli prime minister also on Saturday justified his increasingly aggressive operations in Gaza that have resulted in the death of more than 50,000 in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, including more than 15,600 children as of late-March, as "a war between civilization and barbarism."
Qatar, which has been heavily involved in hostage negotiations and ceasefire efforts, responded in a Saturday post on social media and said the comments "fall short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility."
"Portraying the ongoing aggression against Gaza as a defense of 'civilization' echoes the rhetoric of regimes throughout history that have used false narratives to justify crimes against innocent civilians," said Majed Al Ansari, advisor to Qatar Prime Minister Mohammad Al-Thani and spokesman for the foreign ministry.
Ansari did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's questions.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Middle Eastern Headlines at 2:14 p.m. GMT
Palestinians say Israeli fire kills 5 near aid sites. Israel says it fired warning shots
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
National Guard troops arrive in Los Angeles on Trump's orders to quell immigration protests
LOS ANGELES (AP) — National Guard troops began arriving in Los Angeles early Sunday on orders from President Donald Trump in response to clashes in recent days between federal immigration authorities and protesters seeking to block them from carrying out deportations. Members of California's National Guard were seen staging early Sunday at the federal complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Metropolitan Detention Center, one of several sites that have seen confrontations involving hundreds of people in last two days. The troops included members of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, according to a social media post from the Department of Defense that showed dozens of National Guard members with long guns and an armored vehicle. Trump has said he is deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests, which he called 'a form of rebellion.' Early Sunday, the deployment was limited to a small area in downtown Los Angeles. The protests have been relatively small and limited to a downtown section. The rest of the city of 4 million people is largely unaffected. Their arrival follows clashes near a Home Depot in the heavily Latino city of Paramount, south of Los Angeles. As protesters sought to block Border Patrol vehicles, with some hurling rocks and chunks of cement, federal agents unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls. Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement. On Sunday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the National Guard would 'keep peace and allow people to be able to protest but also to keep law and order.' In a signal of the administration's aggressive approach, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty Marines 'if violence continues' in the region. The move came over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsome, marking the first time in decades that a state's national guard was activated without a request from its governor, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Newsom, a Democrat, said Trump's decision to call in the National Guard was 'purposefully inflammatory." He described Hegseth's threat to deploy Marines on American soil as 'deranged behavior.' Trump's order came after clashes in Paramount and neighboring Compton, where a car was set on fire. Protests continued into the evening in Paramount, with several hundred demonstrators gathered near a doughnut shop, and authorities holding up barbed wire to keep the crowd back. Crowds also gathered again outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles, including a detention center, where local police declared an unlawful assembly and began to arrest people.
CNN
24 minutes ago
- CNN
Dem Rep: Trump deploying National Guard ‘only going to make things worse'
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders tells CNNs Dana Bash that President Trump "does not believe in the rule of law" and "thinks he has a right to do anything he wants."
