Israel threatens Hamas with ’annihilation’ as Trump says Gaza ceasefire ‘very close’
Israel has said Hamas must accept a hostage deal in Gaza or “be annihilated”, as Donald Trump announced that a ceasefire agreement was “very close”.
It comes amid dire conditions on the ground, with the United Nations warning that Gaza’s entire population was at risk of famine.
Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported that on Friday, defence minister Israel Katz said Hamas must agree to a ceasefire proposal presented by US envoy Steve Witkoff or be destroyed, after the Palestinian militant group said the deal failed to satisfy its demands. However, Hamas said it was still considering the text.
“The Hamas murderers will now be forced to choose: accept the terms of the ‘Witkoff deal’ for the release of the hostages – or be annihilated,” said Katz.
Negotiations to end nearly 20 months of war in Gaza have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming operations in March after a short-lived truce.
In the US, the Trump told reporters “they’re very close to an agreement on Gaza”, adding: “We’ll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, food shortages in Gaza persist, with aid only trickling in after the partial lifting by Israel of a more than two-month blockade.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), called Gaza “the hungriest place on Earth”. He said:
It’s the only defined area – a country or defined territory within a country – where you have the entire population at risk of famine.
In other developments:
-
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), has described the difficulties faced by the UN in delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip as an “an operational straitjacket”. Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was “in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history”. Once truckloads entered Gaza, they were often “swarmed by desperate people”, he said.
-
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming. The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said.
-
Israeli airstrikes have struck western Syria, the Israeli military and Syrian state media have said, and reportedly one civilian has been killed in the first such attack on the country in nearly a month. “A strike from Israeli occupation aircraft targeted sites close to the village of Zama in the Jableh countryside south of Latakia,” state television said.
-
Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that Iran considers nuclear weapons “unacceptable”, reiterating the country’s longstanding position amid delicate negotiations with the United States. Iran has held five rounds of talks with the US in search of a new nuclear agreement to replace the deal with major powers Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
-
The commander of Kurdish forces that control northeast Syria said on Friday that his group is in direct contact with Turkey and that he would be open to improving ties, including by meeting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Key events
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud has delayed a planned trip to the West Bank after Israel blocked it, a Saudi source told Reuters.
Palestinian sources said the visit was at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to host a Saudi-led delegation of Arab foreign ministers in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
The ministers needed approval from Israel which controls access to the West Bank.
The Times of Israel reports that today, a convoy of tractors that set out from kibbutzim across Israel has arrived at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, calling for the return of hostages held in Gaza.
Organised by the Kibbutz Movement and the Hostages Families Forum, it marks more than 600 days since the hostages were taken by Hamas in October 2023.
Israeli airstrikes target sites in western Syria, reportedly killing one
Israeli airstrikes have struck western Syria, the Israeli military and Syrian state media have said, and reportedly one civilian has been killed in the first such attack on the country in nearly a month.
Earlier this month Damascus had announced indirect talks with Israel to calm tensions, and the US called for a “non-aggression agreement” between the two countries, which are technically at war.
“A strike from Israeli occupation aircraft targeted sites close to the village of Zama in the Jableh countryside south of Latakia,” state television said.
State news agency Sana reported one civilian was killed “as a result of an Israeli occupation airstrike targeting the vicinity of Zama”.
The Israeli military said it had “struck weapon storage facilities containing coastal missiles that posed a threat to international and Israeli maritime freedom of navigation, in the Latakia area of Syria”.
“In addition, components of surface-to-air missiles were struck,” it said, adding it would “continue to operate to maintain freedom of action in the region, in order to carry out its missions and will act to remove any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile reported that jets likely to be Israeli struck military sites on the outskirts of Tartus and Latakia.
Hamas said on Friday it was still reviewing a US proposal for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where 27 people were killed in new Israeli airstrikes, according to hospital officials.
The ceasefire plan, which has been approved by Israeli officials, won a cool initial reaction Thursday from the militant group, reports the Associated Press (AP). But President Donald Trump said on Friday negotiators were nearing a deal.
“They’re very close to an agreement on Gaza, and we’ll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow,” Trump told reporters in Washington. Late in the evening, asked if he was confident Hamas would approve the deal, he told reporters: “They’re in a big mess. I think they want to get out of it.”
US negotiators have not publicised the terms of the proposal, but a Hamas official and an Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, told the AP on Thursday that it called for a 60-day pause in fighting, guarantees of serious negotiations leading to a long-term truce and assurances that Israel will not resume hostilities after the release of hostages, as it did in March.
In a terse statement issued a few hours before Trump spoke, Hamas said it is holding consultations with Palestinian factions over the proposal it had received from US envoy Steve Witkoff.
A United Nations spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, urged the parties to “find the political courage” to secure an agreement.
Here are some of the latest images coming in today via the newswires:
The commander of Kurdish forces that control north-east Syria said on Friday that his group is in direct contact with Turkey and that he would be open to improving ties, including by meeting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reports Reuters.
The public comments represented a significant diplomatic overture by Mazloum Abdi, whose Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fought Turkish troops and Ankara-backed Syrian rebels during Syria’s 14-year civil war.
Turkey has said the main Kurdish group at the core of the SDF is indistinguishable from the militant Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which decided earlier this month to disband after 40 years of conflict with Turkey.
According to Reuters, Abdi told regional broadcaster Shams TV in an interview aired on Friday that his group was in touch with Turkey, without saying how long the communication channels had been open. “We have direct ties, direct channels of communication with Turkey, as well as through mediators, and we hope that these ties are developed,” Abdi said.
There was no immediate comment from Turkey on Abdi’s remarks.
Abdi said his forces and Turkish fighters “fought long wars against each other” but that a temporary truce had brought a halt to those clashes for the last two months. Abdi said he hoped the truce could become permanent.
When asked whether he was planning to meet Erdoğan, Abdi said he had no current plans to do so but “I am not opposed … We are not in a state of war with Turkey and in the future, ties could be developed between us. We’re open to this”.
The Al-Monitor news website reported on Friday that Turkey had proposed a meeting between Abdi and a top Turkish official, possibly Turkey’s foreign minister or its intelligence chief. A Turkish diplomatic source denied the report, saying “the claims about Turkey and our country’s authorities” in the story were “not true”, without elaborating.
In December, Turkey and the SDF agreed on a US-mediated ceasefire after fighting broke out as rebel groups advanced on Damascus and overthrew Bashar al-Assad.
Abdi in March signed a deal with Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa to incorporate the semi-autonomous administration of north-east Syria into the main state institutions based in Damascus. On Thursday, Erdoğan accused the SDF of “stalling” implementation of that deal.
In the interview, Abdi denied accusations that the SDF was in contact with Israel. “People have accused us of this. In this interview, I am saying publicly that we have no ties with Israel,” he said. But he said his group supported good ties with Syria’s neighbours. According to Reuters, when asked if that included Israel, Abdi responded, “with everyone.”
Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that Iran considers nuclear weapons “unacceptable”, reiterating the country’s longstanding position amid delicate negotiations with the United States.
“If the issue is nuclear weapons, yes, we too consider this type of weapon unacceptable,” Araghchi, Iran’s lead negotiator in the talks, said in a televised speech, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We agree with them on this issue.”
Iran has held five rounds of talks with the US in search of a new nuclear agreement to replace the deal with major powers president Donald Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The two governments are at odds over Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, which Washington has said must cease but which Tehran insists is its right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
Nonetheless, Trump said on Wednesday that “we’re having some very good talks with Iran”, adding that he had warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu against striking its nuclear facilities as it would not be “appropriate right now”.
Trump has not ruled out military action but said he wants space to make a deal first, and has also said that Israel, and not the US, would take the lead in any such strikes.
Israel strike on south Lebanon kills one
Lebanese official media said an Israeli strike killed one person in the south on Saturday despite a six-month-old ceasefire, as Israel said it targeted a Hezbollah militant.
The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said a man was killed when an Israeli drone targeted his car as he was heading to pray at a mosque in Deir al-Zahrani, about 20km (12 miles) from the Israeli border.
Israel has continued to bomb Lebanon despite the 27 November truce that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including two months of open war.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Israeli army said the strike killed a regional commander “of Hezbollah’s rocket array”.
It said that during the conflict, the operative “advanced numerous projectile attacks … and was involved recently in efforts to reestablish Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure” in south Lebanon.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hezbollah fighters were to pull back north of the Litani River, 30km (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle military infrastructure to its south. Israel was to withdraw all forces from Lebanon but it has kept troops in five areas it deems “strategic”.
The Lebanese army has deployed in the south and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
Gaza is ‘hungriest place on Earth’ with all its people at risk of famine, says UN
Lorenzo Tondo
Gaza is “the hungriest place on Earth”, according to the UN, which has warned that the Palestinian territory’s entire population is at risk of famine.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the territory was “the only defined area – a country or defined territory within a country – where you have the entire population at risk of famine. One hundred per cent of the population at risk of famine,” he said on Friday.
Laerke detailed the difficulties faced by the UN in delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Nine hundred trucks of humanitarian aid had been authorised by Israel to enter the strip since the blockade was partially lifted, but so far only 600 had been off-loaded on the Gaza side of the border, and a smaller number of shipments had then been picked up for distribution within the territory because of security considerations, he said.
Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was “in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history”.
Once truckloads entered Gaza, they were often “swarmed by desperate people”, he said.
Daniel Meron, Israel’s UN ambassador, rejected the claim, saying UN agencies “cherrypick the facts to paint an alternative version of reality and demonise Israel”.
“In a desperate effort to remain relevant, they lambast the best efforts of Israel and its partners to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid to the civilian population. UN feeds Hamas, we make sure aid gets to those in need,” he wrote on X.
In a reflection of the increasingly dire conditions inside the territory, a UN spokesperson said late on Friday that “armed individuals” had raided a warehouse at a field hospital in Deir al-Balah, “looting large quantities of medical equipment, supplies, medicines, nutritional supplements that was intended for malnourished children”.
Israel blocks Ramallah meeting
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming.
The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said. The ministers would require Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan, reports Reuters.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said, according to Reuters. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Palestinian Authority official said that the issue of whether the meeting in Ramallah would be able to go ahead was under discussion.
The move comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, due to be held in New York on 17-20 June to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French president Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognising a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity”.
Israel threatens Hamas with ’annihilation’ as Trump says Gaza ceasefire ‘very close’
Israel has said Hamas must accept a hostage deal in Gaza or “be annihilated”, as Donald Trump announced that a ceasefire agreement was “very close”.
It comes amid dire conditions on the ground, with the United Nations warning that Gaza’s entire population was at risk of famine.
Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported that on Friday, defence minister Israel Katz said Hamas must agree to a ceasefire proposal presented by US envoy Steve Witkoff or be destroyed, after the Palestinian militant group said the deal failed to satisfy its demands. However, Hamas said it was still considering the text.
“The Hamas murderers will now be forced to choose: accept the terms of the ‘Witkoff deal’ for the release of the hostages – or be annihilated,” said Katz.
Negotiations to end nearly 20 months of war in Gaza have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming operations in March after a short-lived truce.
In the US, the Trump told reporters “they’re very close to an agreement on Gaza”, adding: “We’ll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, food shortages in Gaza persist, with aid only trickling in after the partial lifting by Israel of a more than two-month blockade.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), called Gaza “the hungriest place on Earth”. He said:
It’s the only defined area – a country or defined territory within a country – where you have the entire population at risk of famine.
In other developments:
-
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), has described the difficulties faced by the UN in delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip as an “an operational straitjacket”. Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was “in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history”. Once truckloads entered Gaza, they were often “swarmed by desperate people”, he said.
-
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming. The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said.
-
Israeli airstrikes have struck western Syria, the Israeli military and Syrian state media have said, and reportedly one civilian has been killed in the first such attack on the country in nearly a month. “A strike from Israeli occupation aircraft targeted sites close to the village of Zama in the Jableh countryside south of Latakia,” state television said.
-
Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that Iran considers nuclear weapons “unacceptable”, reiterating the country’s longstanding position amid delicate negotiations with the United States. Iran has held five rounds of talks with the US in search of a new nuclear agreement to replace the deal with major powers Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
-
The commander of Kurdish forces that control northeast Syria said on Friday that his group is in direct contact with Turkey and that he would be open to improving ties, including by meeting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
