Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu repeats threat to seize parts of Gaza if Hamas does not release hostages | Israel
Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu repeats threat to seize parts of Gaza if Hamas does not release hostages
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated threats on Wednesday to seize territory in the Gaza Strip if Hamas failed to release the remaining hostages it still holds.
“The more Hamas continues in its refusal to release our hostages, the more powerful the repression we exert will be,” Netanyahu told a hearing in parliament, which was occasionally interrupted by shouting from opposition members. “This includes seizing territory and it includes other things,” he said, according to Reuters.
Key events
The Atlantic magazine on Wednesday published what it said was the full text of a chat group mistakenly shared with a journalist by top Trump administration officials laying out plans of an imminent attack on Yemen.
Details, including the times of strikes and types of planes being used, were all laid out in screenshots of the chat, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The magazine said it was publishing after the Trump administration repeatedly denied that any classified information had been included in the unsecure chat.
As reported earlier, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to seize parts of Gaza if Hamas does not release hostages.
Hamas said, in a statement, that hostages would return “in coffins” if Israel cotinues bombing the territory.
Netanyahu told parliament on Wednesday that “the more Hamas persists in its refusal to release our hostages, the stronger the pressure we will exert”.
“This includes the seizure of territories, along with other measures I will not elaborate here,” he added, days after his defence minister Israel Katz had warned: “The more Hamas refuses to free the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed by Israel”.
“Every time the occupation attempts to retrieve its captives by force, it ends up bringing them back in coffins,” Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday.
The militant group said it was “doing everything possible to keep the (Israeli) occupation’s captives alive, but the random Zionist bombardment is endangering their lives”.
Gal Gilboa-Dalal, an Israeli survivor of the 2023 attack whose brother was taken hostage, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he can “constantly imagine our reunion. This moment felt closer than ever, and unfortunately, it’s drifting away from me again,” he said of his brother Guy Gilboa-Dalal, taken from a music festival near the Gaza border and last seen in a video shared by Hamas last month.
“We are fighting here against a terrorist organisation that only understands force,” said Gal. “On the other hand, I am terrified that these bombings and this operation... will endanger the hostages there. There’s no way to know what the terrorists might do to them or if a missile might accidentally hit them,” he added.
France is “deeply concerned” by the arrests of journalists in Turkey including Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Yasin Akgul in the crackdown on protests after the jailing of the Istanbul mayor, a French diplomatic source told AFP on Wednesday.
“We are deeply concerned by reports of repression against protesters and journalists in Turkey,” said the source, asking not to be named, adding that Akgul “was covering the protests professionally”.
Palestinians involved in yesterday and today’s anti-Hamas protests in Gaza have spoken about their motivations with local journalists.
“We are sick of the bombing, killing and displacement,” Ammar Hassan, a young man from Beit Lahiya who took part in the protest, told the Associated Press.
Hassan said it started as an anti-war protest with just a few dozen people but then swelled to more than 2,000, with people chanting against Hamas.
“It’s the only party we can affect,” he said over the phone to the AP. “Protests won’t stop the (Israeli) occupation, but it can affect Hamas,” he said.
“The protest was not about politics. It was about people’s lives,” said Mohammed Abu Saker, a father-of-three from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, who joined the demonstration. “We want to stop the killing and displacement, no matter the price. We can’t stop Israel from killing us, but we can press Hamas to give concessions,” he said.
A similar protest erupted in the heavily destroyed area of Jabaliya, according to witnesses.
One of the protesters in Jabaliya, who requested anonymity, said they joined the demonstration because “everyone failed us.” They said they chanted against Israel, Hamas, the western-backed Palestinian Authority and even Arab mediators.
Syria’s authorities delayed a visit planned for Wednesday by the Lebanese defence minister that aimed to discuss tensions along the border, officials from the two countries told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“We were informed on Tuesday by the Syrian party of the postponement of the visit” of Lebanese minister Michel Menassa, a Lebanese official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The delay was “in no way related to tensions or conflicts”, the official added, without specifying the date to which it had been postponed.
A Syrian government source meanwhile told AFP that the delay was due to “preparations for the formation of a new government”.
Menassa had been set to meet his Syrian counterpart, Murhaf Abu Qasra, in the first visit by a Lebanese minister since the cabinet was formed in February.
Border tensions flared earlier in March after Syria’s new authorities accused Lebanese armed group Hezbollah of kidnapping three soldiers into Lebanon and killing them. The Iran-backed group, which fought alongside the forces of toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, denied involvement. But the ensuing cross-border clashes left seven Lebanese dead.
Israel’s military said two projectiles were fired from Gaza into Israeli territory on Wednesday, with one intercepted and the other falling in an area near the Gaza border, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Following the sirens that sounded at 12.03 (10.03 GMT) in the communities near the Gaza Strip, two projectiles were identified crossing into Israeli territory from central Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement.
It added:
One projectile was successfully intercepted by the IAF (air force) and a fallen projectile was identified in the area of Zimrat”.
As we reported earlier, hundreds of Palestinians joined protests in northern Gaza, shouting anti-Hamas slogans and calling for an end to the war with Israel, in what has been described as the largest protest against the militant group inside the territory since the 7 October attacks.
Here is a video report on the story:
Hundreds of Palestinians join protest against Hamas in northern Gaza – video
Agence France-Presse (AFP) has a little bit more detail on Netanyahu’s comments today (see 10.43am GMT). The news agency reports the Israeli prime minister as saying:
The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release our hostages, the stronger the pressure we will exert.
I say this to my colleagues in the Knesset, and I say it to Hamas as well: This includes the seizure of territories, along with other measures I will not elaborate here.”
Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu repeats threat to seize parts of Gaza if Hamas does not release hostages
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated threats on Wednesday to seize territory in the Gaza Strip if Hamas failed to release the remaining hostages it still holds.
“The more Hamas continues in its refusal to release our hostages, the more powerful the repression we exert will be,” Netanyahu told a hearing in parliament, which was occasionally interrupted by shouting from opposition members. “This includes seizing territory and it includes other things,” he said, according to Reuters.
Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires:
Palestinians protest demanding an end to the war, chanting anti-Hamas slogans, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Photograph: ReutersA view of damage on a residential building after it was hit by an Israeli attack killing a Palestinian man and his son in Bureij camp, central Gaza on Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesLeader of France's the National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella (R) listens to Israel's minister of diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, during a visit to a memorial for victims and hostages of the 2023 Hamas attacks at the Supernova music festival site in southern Israel. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty ImagesA man inspects a building destroyed by Saudi-led coalition aerial attacks, on Tuesday, in Sana'a, Yemen. Photograph: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images
The Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday that at least 830 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on 18 March, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to the ministry’s statement, the figure included 38 people killed in the past 24 hours. It also reported that the overall death toll had reached 50,183 since the war began on 7 October 2023.
Israeli bombardment of Gaza could kill hostages, says Hamas
Hamas warned on Wednesday that hostages may be killed if Israel attempts to retrieve them by force and airstrikes continue in the Gaza Strip, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The group said in a statement that it was “doing everything possible to keep the occupation’s captives alive, but the random Zionist (Israeli) bombardment is endangering their lives,” adding: “every time the occupation attempts to retrieve its captives by force, it ends up bringing them back in coffins”.
Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet in Jerusalem on Sunday, two Greek sources told Reuters on Wednesday.
The agenda of the talks was expected to be extensive, one of the sources said. The two leaders last met in Israel in 2023.
Greece condemned the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas but has called for an end to the war in Gaza, and respect for ceasefire agreements. It says the unhindered and continuous flow of humanitarian aid to all parts of Gaza remains a priority while the displacement of Palestinians could lead to regional instability. Hospitals in Greece have also received children from Gaza in need of medical care.
According to Reuters, on Sunday the leaders are likely to discuss the war, foreign affairs and bilateral issues, including a project on a subsea power cable to link continental Europe to the east Mediterranean.
Greek power grid operator IPTO is building the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI) cable, which will link transmission networks of Europe to Cyprus. It will later stretch to Israel through the Mediterranean sea, reports Reuters.
Greece this month dismissed media reports that the project has stalled over financial and geopolitical concerns and reaffirmed its commitment to the planned link.
Adam Gabbatt
US president Donald Trump defended his embattled national security adviser on Tuesday and said the leak of highly classified military plans was “the only glitch in two months”, as scrutiny intensified into how top US officials shared operational details for bombing Yemen in a group chat.
In an interview with NBC, the president said, “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” as Democrats called for an investigation into the sharing of the plans for this month’s major airstrikes in Yemen on the Signal app. Later on Tuesday, during a meeting with ambassadors, Trump said his administration would investigate the incident but claimed “there was no classified information” shared on Signal.
“Certainly we’ll look at this,” Trump said. “But the main thing was nothing happened. The attack was totally successful.”
The Atlantic reported that Waltz, who was a congressman representing Florida before being appointed national security adviser by Trump, sent a connection request on the chat app Signal to the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on 11 March. Goldberg was then included in a chat group in which detailed information about plans for an attack on the Houthi armed group in Yemen was shared.
Trump told NBC News that Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation, and defended Waltz, claiming that the leak was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”, as the White House sought to downplay the incident.
Asked how Goldberg was added to the chat, Trump said:
It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
Goldberg said he assumed he was being spoofed until the attacks in Yemen occurred exactly as the participants described in the chat.
In his first public comments since the Atlantic story broke, Waltz on Tuesday said:
We are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”
Key figures in the Trump administration, including Waltz; the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; were present in the Signal chat.
Hamdan Ballal: Oscar-winning Palestinian director released from Israeli detention
Lorenzo Tondo
An Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces has been released from detention.
Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians left a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were being held on Tuesday. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.
The three had spent the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack, according to Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel.
Ballal told reporters that the settlers beat him in front of his home and filmed the assault. He said he was held at an army base, blindfolded, for 24 hours and forced to sleep under a freezing air conditioner.
Hamdan Ballal is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP
“All my body is pain,” he told the Associated Press. “I heard the voices of the soldiers, they were laughing about me … I heard ‘Oscar’ but I didn’t speak Hebrew.”
Tsemel, representing the three men, said they received only minimal care for their injuries from the attack and said she had no access to them for several hours after their arrest.
Earlier this month Ballal and the other directors of No Other Land, which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, appeared on stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles to accept the award for best documentary film.
Tsemel said Ballal and the other detained people had been accused of throwing stones at a young settler. They deny the allegations.
All three Palestinians were driven to a hospital in the city of Hebron.
The film’s co-director Yuval Abraham posted on X:
After the assault, Hamdan was handcuffed and blindfolded all night in an army base while two soldiers beat him up on the floor, his lawyer Leah Tsemel said after speaking with him just now.’’
Syria condemn 'flagrant' Israeli violation after deadly bombardment
Syria described Israeli attacks as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty after a deadly bombardment on Tuesday in the country’s south, where Israel’s military said it had responded to incoming fire.
The violence near the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights followed Israeli airstrikes in central Syria.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Syrian foreign ministry in a statement condemned “the continued Israeli aggression on Syrian territory, which saw a dangerous escalation in the village of Kuwayya” in the southern Daraa province.
It said “heavy artillery and air bombardment targeted residential and farming areas, leading to the death of six civilians”, raising an earlier toll provided by local authorities.
The ministry said:
This escalation comes in the context of a series of violations that started with Israeli forces’ penetrating into Quneitra and Daraa provinces, in an ongoing aggression on Syrian territory, in flagrant violation of national sovereignty and international law.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli military said that its troops “identified several terrorists who opened fire toward them in southern Syria”, without providing a specific location. “The troops returned fire in response and the IAF (air force) struck the terrorists,” it added in a statement, reports AFP.
Daraa governor Anwar al-Zoabi said in a statement that “Israeli occupation army violations and repeated attacks on Syrian territory pushed a group of residents to clash with a military force that tried to penetrate” Kuwayya. The situation “led to an escalation” by Israeli forces “with artillery shelling and drone bombardment”, said the statement posted on Telegram.
Provincial authorities said 350 families had fled to shelters in a nearby village.
Houthi media in Yemen reported on Wednesday at least 17 strikes in Saada and Amran, blaming the United States for the attacks, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The rebels’ Ansarollah website said US warplanes carried out “aggressive air raids … causing material damage to citizens’ property”, but gave no details of casualties.
Washington on 15 March announced a military offensive against the Houthis, promising to use overwhelming force until the group stopped firing on vessels in the key shipping routes of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. That day saw a wave of US airstrikes that officials said killed senior Houthi leaders, and which the rebels’ health ministry said killed 53 people, reports AFP.
Since then, Houthi-held parts of Yemen have witnessed near-daily attacks that the group has blamed on the US, with the rebels announcing the targeting of US military ships and Israel.
The Houthis began targeting shipping vessels after the start of the Gaza war, claiming solidarity with Palestinians, but paused their campaign when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza in January. Earlier this month, they threatened to renew attacks in the vital maritime trade route over Israel’s aid blockade on the Palestinian territory, triggering the first US strikes on Yemen since president Donald Trump took office in January.
Last week, Trump threatened to annihilate the Houthis and warned Iran against continuing to aid the group.
Lorenzo Tondo
At least one appeal to join the anti-Hamas protests in northern Gaza was circulating on the social media network Telegram.
“I don’t know who organised the protest,” one man told Agence France-Press. “I took part to send a message on behalf of the people: Enough with the war,” he said, adding that he had seen “members of the Hamas security forces in civilian clothing breaking up the protest”.
Majdi, another protester who did not wish to give his full name, said the “people are tired”. “If Hamas leaving power in Gaza is the solution, why doesn’t Hamas give up power to protect the people?” he told AFP.
Separate clips showed dozens of people in Jabalia refugee camps, in the western part of Gaza City, burning tyres and calling for the war to end. “We want to eat,” they chanted.
Some Gaza residents said the protests could spread to other parts of the war-torn territory, whose inhabitants are exhausted and traumatised after a year and a half of conflict.
Since Hamas launched its attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, modest protests have occasionally broken out in Gaza, with demonstrators demanding an end to the war.
Many of the slogans chanted on Tuesday evoked the Bidna N’eesh (‘We Want to Live’) movement, which emerged during the 2019 Gaza economic protests. Those protests were violently suppressed by Hamas, which said they were orchestrated by its rival, Fatah.
Israel regularly calls for people in Gaza to mobilise against Hamas, which has been in power in the territory since 2007.
Hundreds join protest against Hamas in northern Gaza
Hundreds of Palestinians have joined protests in northern Gaza, shouting anti-Hamas slogans and calling for an end to the war with Israel, in what has been described as the largest protest against the militant group inside the territory since the 7 October attacks.
Videos and photos shared on social media late on Tuesday showed hundreds of people, mostly men, chanting “Hamas out” and “Hamas terrorists” in Beit Lahia, where the crowd had gathered a week after the Israeli army resumed its intense bombing of Gaza after nearly two months of a truce.
The protests took place in front of the Indonesian hospital in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Some protesters were seen carrying banners emblazoned with slogans including “Stop the war” and “We want to live in peace”.
Palestinians attend a rally calling for an end to the war, in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities released a Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, a day after he was attacked by a group of about 15 armed Israeli settlers and detained by soldiers.
Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians were accused of throwing stones at a settler, allegations they deny.
More on both of these stories in a moment, but first here are some other news developments:
Houthi media in Yemen reported on Wednesday at least 17 strikes in Saada and Amran, blaming the United States for the attacks. The rebels’ Ansarollah website said US warplanes carried out “aggressive air raids … causing material damage to citizens’ property”, but gave no details of casualties.
Japan’s defence minister Gen Nakatani says his country will provide medical treatment for two Palestinian women for injuries and illnesses from the conflict in Gaza, and one of them has arrived in Tokyo. The treatments, Nakatani said, are part of Japan’s efforts to address the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza and followed a request from the World Health Organization.
At least 50,144 Palestinian people have been killed and 113,704 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Fresh Israeli evacuation orders affect as many as 120,000 people living in heavily damaged northern Gaza, and cover two hospitals and a one primary health care center, the UN humanitarian agency said Tuesday. Israel said it ordered civilians to evacuate late on Monday because its forces need to advance into two areas where Palestinian militants recently fired rockets.
Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, told the UN security council it “must not come to pass” that Syria backslides into conflict, fragmentation, and having its sovereignty routinely violated by external powers. Pedersen said the other road, restoring sovereignty and regional security, “requires the right Syrian decisions,” but the country’s interim authorities cannot do it alone and need increased and continuing international support.
US president Donald Trump nominated conservative media critic and pro-Israel commentator Leo Brent Bozell III as ambassador to South Africa. The move on Tuesday comes during strained diplomatic relations with the country, including over its stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Syria described Israeli attacks as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty after a deadly bombardment on Tuesday in the country’s south, where Israel’s military said it had responded to incoming fire. The violence near the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights followed Israeli airstrikes in central Syria.
