The US visit by Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, was already under way when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a trip to Washington by other senior officials after the Biden administration decided not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Jerusalem, 17 March 2024.
Singapore ordered the Israel embassy to take down an ‘insensitive and inappropriate’ social media post that could undermine security in the city-state, in the latest test of traditionally warm ties between the two nations.The number of “civilian casualties is far too high, and the amount of humanitarian aid is far too low” in the Gaza war, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a blunt welcome to his Israeli counterpart at the Pentagon on Tuesday.
The US defence official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said that Austin emphasised Israel must move the more than one million civilians sheltering in Rafah, in southern Gaza, out of harm’s way before launching an attack on Hamas forces there.Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas broke down again, with Netanyahu accusing the Islamist group of making “extreme demands”.on Tuesday.
“We intend to fight this fight to the very end,” Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister and one of Netanyahu’s closest allies, said to Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “If the position of the United States is that there shouldn’t be a major military operation in Rafah, then we won’t be on the same page. We have to go into Rafah and finish the job.”
Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza has killed more than 32,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there, which doesn’t distinguish between fighters and civilians. “That post, on the Israeli Embassy social media page, is completely unacceptable,” Home Minister K Shanmugam told reporters on Monday. Posts like these can “inflame tensions and can put the Jewish community here at risk. The anger from the post can potentially spill over into the physical realm.”
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