What happened on Day 157?

The international community must stop applying double standards when it comes to IDF actions during the Israel-Hamas war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday in a virtual address. 

“You can not say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and then oppose Israel when it takes the action necessary to achieve that goal,” Netanyahu stated.

“You can not say that you oppose Hamas’s strategy of using civilians as human shields and then blame Israel for the civilian casualties that result from this Hamas cynical strategy.

“For Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy. For Hamas, every civilian death is a strategy,” he said. 

“It is wrong and immoral to hold Israel to a standard for avoiding civilian casualties that no other country on earth is held to,” he stated.

We will finish the job. Watch my speech at the AIPAC policy conference >> pic.twitter.com/QvPEyzfQvc

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 12, 2024

PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, in 2018. (credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)

Growing tension between Netanyahu's government and Biden administartion

Netanyahu spoke amid growing tension between his government and the Biden administration over Israel’s policies concerning the Gaza war.

The US had hoped to finalize a six-week pause to the war, that would allow for the release of some 40 out of the remaining 134 hostages held in Gaza and to expand the absence of those hostilities into a deal for a permanent ceasefire.

Instead, the continuation of the war into the holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday night Ramadan, has deepened the humanitarian crisis in the enclave and increased the risk that combat in Gaza could spark a regional war.

The international community has increasingly pressed Israel to halt the war, even though it has not achieved its goal of destroying Hamas, a goal many countries, including the United States, support.

The US and the international community are concerned, in particular, about the pending Israeli military operation into Rafah in southern Gaza, which is considered to be the last Hamas stronghold. 

It has also been concerned by Hamas assertions that over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza war-related violence. Israel has said that over 13,000 of the fatalities are combatants.

Before the Gaza war, in speaking of modern-day conflicts, the UN had said that 90% of wartime casualties are civilian.

US National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby, however, has repeatedly said that one civilian casualty is unacceptable, and United Nations experts have spoken of an unusually high casualty count in this war.

Those speaking of fatalities often speak of the 31,000 as if it is a solely civilian count and not one that also includes combatants.

US President Joe Biden, in his Ramadan message on Sunday, said that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians, including thousands of children. 

Netanyahu defended Israel’s casualty record in his AIPAC speech, explaining that the IDF has “taken measures to minimize civilian casualties that no other army has taken in history. Just ask Colonel John Spencer, a world expert on urban warfare, who is in charge of urban warfare at West Point. We have taken measures to minimize civilian casualties that no other army has taken in history.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may not be able to retain his hold on power and could be replaced by a more moderate government, the United States predicted as tensions have increased between the two governments over the Gaza war.

A senior political official said in response that “Israeli citizens, and not anyone else, elect the prime minister. Israel is not a protectorate of the US but an independent and democratic country whose citizens are the ones who choose the government. We expect our friends to act to overthrow the terror regime of Hamas and not the elected government in Israel.”

An anonymous official in the Hamas terrorist movement told Sky News Arabia that " There is coordination with Hezbollah in the field or regarding the next stage," the source posted on X on Tuesday.

The anonymous souce also claimed that Israel had planned for a prolonged war in the Gaza Strip, which could last years, according to Al-Balad. The official added that the "decision on peace," presumedly meaning a ceasefire, did not come down to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. 

“We may witness a truce in Gaza during the month of Ramadan without announcing it," the official said while accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not being serious about a ceasefire agreement. 

Israel accuses Hamas of not being serious about a ceasefire

Hamas is more interested in igniting the Middle East during Ramadan than in pausing the Gaza war; Mossad warned on Saturday night that it seemed that a hostage deal was not in the offing before the start of the Muslim holy month that begins on Sunday night, the Jerusalem Post reported.  

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march outside the Israeli embassy to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, during a protest in Washington, U.S., March 2, 2024. (credit: Bonnie Cash/Reuters)

“At this stage, Hamas is holding to its position as if it was uninterested in a deal and is striving to ignite the region during Ramadan at the expense of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip,” Mossad said.

Hamas’s “delusional" demands are the sticking point in arriving at any deal to secure the release of the hostages, Netanyahu told reporters in mid-February.  “The [demands] mean only one thing: defeat for Israel. Of course, we will not agree to them. But when Hamas drops these delusional demands, we can move forward.”

Tovah Lazaroff and Reuters contributed to this report.

Likud MK Nissim Vaturi claimed on the Knesset channel on Tuesday that the IDF’s high command purposefully failed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 7. 

“Why did they call the prime minister at 6:29 in the morning? Why not at night? You have a dilemma; inform the prime minister,” Vaturi said at the beginning of his remarks.

"There is no way that there is a situation of ‘the boy who cried wolf’ and you put the prime minister to sleep. 

MK Nissim Vaturi at a 40 signatures debate, at the plenum hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, on June 26, 2023 (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

“I have exact dates that the censors will approve. He spoke about specific issues in the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, and they told me, 'No, you are talking nonsense.' The military failed Prime Minister Netanyahu on October 7. The prime minister must be informed. There is a warning—let us know," he added.

Vaturi's previous remarks 

In January, in an interview with Kol BaRama radio, Vaturi reiterated previous comments he had made in November, claiming, "Gaza must be burned." 

"I said 'burn Gaza,' burn, what do you mean? Go in and tear them apart. There is not even a thought here, there is no consideration. That IDF soldiers will not think for one second and get hurt because we have to be humane," he said ahead of the genocide case at the International Court of Justice. 

 Senior United Nations officials on Tuesday welcomed the opening of a maritime corridor from Cyprus to deliver additional aid to the Gaza Strip, but said it could not replace the delivery of humanitarian assistance by land.

"For aid delivery at scale, there is no meaningful substitute to the many land routes and entry points from Israel into Gaza. The land routes from Egypt, Rafah in particular, and Jordan also remain essential to the overall humanitarian effort," said UN Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag and UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) Executive Director Jorge Moreira da Silva.

"The maritime corridor brings, however, much needed additionality and is part of a sustained humanitarian response to provide aid as effectively as possible through all possible routes," they said.

An anonymous Saudi Arabian official told Al-Arabiya on Tuesday that the only possible route for Saudi to establish ties with Israel is through the establishment of Palestinian statehood.

“We don’t have a partner on the other side that is helping us to make this step,” the official said while claiming that normalization with Israel was still possible but more difficult since October 7. “But there must be an irreversible, irrevocable” establishment of a Palestinian state, the official asserted.

Pushing for Palestinian statehood

The United States is engaged in ongoing “planning processes” on how best to advance the establishment of a Palestinian state, US State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller said in January.

“Yes, we are actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with real security guarantees for Israel,” Miller told reporters in Washington on Wednesday. "We support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and we do a lot of work in the government to think about how to bring it about.”

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also pushed Israel for recognition of a Palestinian state in January, claiming that it would be the best way to marginalize Iran.

US SECRETARY of State Antony Blinken holds a news conference in Tel Aviv, last week. (credit: Mark Schiefelbein/Reuters)

“If you build that integration, if you bring Israel in, if you make the necessary commitments to security, and you move down the path to a Palestinian state, that’s the single best way to isolate, to marginalize Iran and the proxies,” Blinken said. 

Do Palestinians want a two-state solution?

A poll conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that only 28% of Palestinians support a two-state solution, and 70% oppose it, the Jerusalem Post reported in June 2023. 

A November poll conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development found that 74.7% of Palestinians supported the existence of only a singular Palestinian state. 

The support for a single Palestinian state was more commonly held by Palestinians living in the West Bank (77.7%) than Palestinians living in Gaza (70.4%.)

A total of 17.2% of respondents said they supported a two-state solution, with Palestinians in Gaza (22.7%)  supporting this solution to a greater extent than Palestinians living in the West Bank (13.3%.)

Only 5.4% of respondents supported a “one-state for two peoples” solution.

Tovah Lazaroff and Barak Ravid contributed to this report.

A knife-wielding terrorist attempted to stab an Israeli citizen on the outskirts of Givat Ronan in the West Bank, the military said on Tuesday.

No casualties were reported. IDF troops are pursuing the terrorist and searching the area, the military added.

"Israel's very future, its very survival is at stake; we have no other option but total victory," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the AIPAC conference on Tuesday. 

"Israel will win this war no matter what," To win this war, we must destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah. If not, Hamas will regroup, rearm, and reconquer Gaza, and then we'll be back to square one. This is an intolerable threat that we cannot accept," he emphasized.

"We will destroy Hamas, free our hostages, and ensure that Gaza doesn't ever pose a threat to Israel again."

We will finish the job. Watch my speech at the AIPAC policy conference >> pic.twitter.com/QvPEyzfQvc

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 12, 2024

The German Air Force will take part in humanitarian airdrops into Gaza, amid an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, at the request of the foreign ministry in Berlin, government sources said on Tuesday.

With aid agencies saying deliveries into Gaza have been held up by bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the start of the war on Oct. 7, and even Israel's allies demanding easier aid access to the enclave, attention has shifted towards alternative routes including sea and airdrops.

The UN estimates a quarter of the population in Gaza is now at risk of starvation.

Several countries have taken part in the drops so far, including Jordan, the United States, Egypt, France and Belgium. Morocco was also scheduled to join the effort, Israeli media reported.

An Iraqi terror group, the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, claimed it targeted and hit Ben-Gurion Airport in a drone strike on Tuesday, according to a report by Iranian state-owned media Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

This is a developing story.