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Netanyahu pressed on 2-state solution for Israel-Hamas war as southern Gaza hit with relentless shelling
Editor’s note: This article includes an image of a dead child which some readers may find disturbing.
Gaza Strip — Gazans sheltered Monday from intense bombing and shooting in the city of Khan Younis, as pressure built on Israel for an eventual two-state solution involving statehood long sought by Palestinians. Witnesses reported deadly strikes and fierce fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants overnight in the southern city which has become the latest epicenter of the war.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported on Monday that more than 120 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours.
“Artillery shelling has not stopped since 5:00 am,” said Yunis Abdel Razek, 52, sheltering with his family at the city’s Al-Aqsa University.
STAFF/REUTERS
Mahdi Antar, 21, had sought refuge at Al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. “The situation is terrifying. Tonight and today are very difficult, bombing and shooting. I do not know what to do. I think they will storm the hospital,” he said.
Victims of the latest Israeli strikes were brought to the hospital, at least one on a hand-pulled cart.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces were “besieging” their ambulance center “and targeting anyone attempting to move in the area.”
At one building that had been hit, men walked over broken concrete with only flashlights casting a dusty light to help them search in the darkness for survivors.
Netanyahu defies U.S., rejects 2-state solution
The strikes came as European Union foreign ministers held meetings in Brussels with top diplomats from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab states. The 27 EU ministers first met Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz before sitting down separately with the Palestinian Authority’s top diplomat, Riyad al-Maliki.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told Israel “peace and stability cannot be built only by military means.”
“Which are the other solutions they have in mind? To make all the Palestinians leave? To kill off them?” Borrell said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn condemnation from the United Nations and defied the United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, by rejecting calls to enter negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state. The U.S. government has long advocated the elusive two-state solution as the only way to defuse the long-standing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The Israeli leader reaffirmed and defended his rejection of the concept in a video statement broadcast Sunday evening, saying his “insistence is what has prevented, over the years, the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel. As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”
On Monday, Maliki demanded the EU call for an immediate cease-fire and urged the bloc to consider sanctions against Netanyahu for “destroying the chances for a two-state solution.”
Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu/Getty
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said “the whole world” sees a two-state solution as “the only way out of this misery.”
Katz told reporters he was in Brussels to discuss the need “to bring back our hostages and restore security for the citizens of Israel.”
Hamas calls its terror attack a “defensive act”
The talks came a day after Hamas issued a 16-page report, in Arabic and English, explaining the background to the group’s unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on southern Israel, which sparked the current war.
Hamas, long designated a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union, called the attacks a “defensive act” and “necessary step” against Israeli occupation, “reclaiming the Palestinian rights and on the way for liberation and independence like all peoples.”
Israeli officials say Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and seized about 240 others as hostages. About half have been freed, but some 132 people are still believed to be held captive in Gaza by Hamas or other groups.
In response, Israel has carried out a relentless offensive that has killed at least 25,295 people in Gaza, around 70% of them women and children, according to the latest toll issued by Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Hostage families storm Israeli government meeting
U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that the Israeli offensive has killed 20% to 30% of the Hamas fighters in Gaza, and is still far from its stated goal of destroying the group entirely, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
In a video statement issued after the Hamas report, Netanyahu said Israel’s soldiers would “have fallen in vain” and security would not be guaranteed if his government were to accept Hamas’ demands for the release of the remaining hostages. Those include ending the war immediately, withdrawing Israeli forces from Gaza, releasing Palestinian prisoners and guaranteeing that Hamas remains in power, Netanyahu said.
The Israeli leader is under intense pressure to return the captives and account for security failings surrounding the Oct. 7 attacks.
Relatives and supporters of the captives have held regular rallies and on Monday upped the pressure by storming a parliamentary finance committee meeting, where they shouted and brandished signs.
“Shame on you!” shouted one of the protesters at the Israel lawmakers. “They are your brothers as well. Get up!”
Reuters/Knesset Channel
“Yesterday the prime minister comes up and says there won’t be a deal? On the back of whom will there not be a deal? What right does he have not to negotiate a deal?” demanded another.
In a bid to secure a new hostage exchange deal, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News that White House coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk was traveling to the region Monday to meet top officials in Cairo, followed by a trip to Qatar. The three countries helped broker a one-week truce in late November that saw 80 hostages freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Rising tensions and violence across the Middle East i—nvolving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – have stoked fears of a wider conflagration.
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A long-running heat wave that has already shattered previous records across the U.S. persisted on Sunday, baking parts of the West with dangerous temperatures that caused the death of a motorcyclist in Death Valley and held the East in its hot and humid grip.
An excessive heat warning — the National Weather Service’s highest alert — was in effect for about 36 million people, or about 10% of the population, said NWS meteorologist Bryan Jackson. Dozens of locations in the West and Pacific Northwest tied or broke previous heat records.
Many areas in Northern California surpassed 110 degrees, with the city of Redding topping out at a record 119. Phoenix set a new daily record Sunday for the warmest low temperature: it never got below 92 F.
A high temperature of 128 F was recorded Saturday and Sunday at Death Valley National Park in eastern California, where a visitor died Saturday from heat exposure and another person was hospitalized, officials said.
ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP via Getty Images
The two visitors were part of a group of six motorcyclists riding through the Badwater Basin area amid scorching weather, the park said in a statement.
The person who died was not identified. The other motorcyclist was transported to a Las Vegas hospital for “severe heat illness,” the statement said. Due to the high temperatures, emergency medical helicopters were unable to respond, as the aircraft cannot generally fly safely over 120 F, officials said.
The other four members of the party were treated at the scene.
“While this is a very exciting time to experience potential world record-setting temperatures in Death Valley, we encourage visitors to choose their activities carefully, avoiding prolonged periods of time outside of an air-conditioned vehicle or building when temperatures are this high,” said park Superintendent Mike Reynolds.
Officials warned that heat illness and injury are cumulative and can build over the course of a day or days.
“Besides not being able to cool down while riding due to high ambient air temperatures, experiencing Death Valley by motorcycle when it is this hot is further challenged by the necessary heavy safety gear worn to reduce injuries during an accident,” the park statement said.
ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP via Getty Images
The soaring temperatures didn’t faze Chris Kinsel, a Death Valley visitor who said it was “like Christmas day for me” to be there on a record-breaking day. Kinsel said he and his wife typically come to the park during the winter, when it’s still plenty warm — but that’s nothing compared with being at one of the hottest places on Earth in July.
“Death Valley during the summer has always been a bucket list thing for me. For most of my life, I’ve wanted to come out here in summertime,” said Kinsel, who was visiting Death Valley’s Badwater Basin area from Las Vegas.
Kinsel said he planned to go to the park’s visitor center to have his photo taken next to the digital sign displaying the current temperature.
Across the desert in Nevada, Natasha Ivory took four of her eight children to a water park in Mount Charleston, outside Las Vegas, which on Sunday set a record high of 120 F.
“They’re having a ball,” Ivory told Fox5 Vegas said. “I’m going to get wet too. It’s too hot not to.”
Jill Workman Anderson also was at Mount Charleston, taking her dog for a short hike and enjoying the view.
“We can look out and see the desert,” she said. “It was also 30 degrees cooler than northwest Las Vegas, where we live.”
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Triple-digit temperatures were common across Oregon, where several records were toppled — including in Salem, where on Sunday it hit 103 F, topping the 99 F mark set in 1960. On the more humid East Coast, temperatures above 100 degrees were widespread, though no excessive heat advisories were in effect for Sunday.
“Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors,” read a weather service advisory for the Baltimore area. “Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances.”
Rare heat advisories were extended even into higher elevations including around Lake Tahoe, on the border of California and Nevada, with the weather service in Reno, Nevada, warning of “major heat risk impacts, even in the mountains.”
“How hot are we talking? Well, high temperatures across (western Nevada and northeastern California) won’t get below 100 degrees until next weekend,” the service posted online. “And unfortunately, there won’t be much relief overnight either.”
More extreme highs are in the near forecast, including possibly 130 F around midweek at Furnace Creek, California, in Death Valley. The hottest temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was 134 F in July 1913 in Death Valley, though some experts dispute that measurement and say the real record was 130 F, recorded there in July 2021.
Tracy Housley, a native of Manchester, England, said she decided to drive from her hotel in Las Vegas to Death Valley after hearing on the radio that temperatures could approach record levels.
“We just thought, let’s be there for that,” Housley said Sunday. “Let’s go for the experience.”
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix, there have been at least 13 confirmed heat-related deaths this year, along with more than 160 other deaths suspected of being related to heat that are still under investigation, according to a recent report.
That does not include the death of a 10-year-old boy last week in Phoenix who suffered a “heat-related medical event” while hiking with family at South Mountain Park and Preserve, according to police.
In California, crews worked in sweltering conditions to battle a series of wildfires across the state.
In Santa Barbara County, northwest of Los Angeles, the growing Lake Fire had scorched more than 25 square miles of dry grass, brush and timber after breaking out Friday. There was no containment by Sunday. The blaze was burning through mostly uninhabited wildland, but some rural homes were under evacuation orders.
