Netanyahu has announced the complete halt to all humanitarian aid to Gaza. He, with the support of the US, has unilaterally changed the terms of the ceasefire deal and is using starvation to coerce Hamas into accepting it.
Israel has cut off humanitarian supplies to Gaza in an effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a change in the ceasefire agreement to allow for the release of hostages without an Israeli troop withdrawal.
The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday it was imposing a blockade on Gaza because Hamas would not accept a plan which it claimed had been put forward by the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to extend phase one of the ceasefire and continue to release hostages, and postpone phase two, which envisaged an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal, and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease. Israel will not allow a ceasefire without the release of our hostages,” it said in a statement. “If Hamas continues its refusal, there will be further consequences.”
🔴 Prime Minister of Israel has officially announced the country is blocking all goods and supplies from entering Gaza. Cutting off humanitarian aid to a civilian population, especially in a war zone constitutes a war crime under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention… https://t.co/XE1b6sS7ce
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) March 2, 2025
Ah yes, the Darth Vader school of negotiation: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
When the USSR started letting its Jewish citizens leave the USSR in the early 1980s, a lot of them went to Israel. They brought the Soviet corruption and power-hunger with them.
Putin was raised in the Soviet way of thinking and Zelenskyy was right to call attention to the fact that Putin doesn’t follow through with his agreements, either.
Netanyahu and Putin are two peas in a pod.
He’d have been right to point that out to anyone else. But pointing it out to Trump was inviting the response “Yeah? So?”. Stiffing people on agreements is practically Trump’s brand. It’s one of the things he actively admires about Putin. To him, sticking to an agreement is a sign of weakness.
It has been pointed out that the damage Trump is doing to the US will not be limited merely to this term of office (or however many more he has), but will echo down history. His legacy is going to be the end of the US as a country that anyone trusts, and eventually, has any use for. Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and others will not be able to entirely replace US contributions to things they do (e.g. NATO) overnight, obviously… but I’ll eat my shoes if the leaders of those states aren’t already making plans to end whatever interdependencies they have with the US. It is starting slowly -- Tesla sales are taking a hit, and a major supplier of naval fuel services in Norway is boycotting the US Navy. But these things will, I hope, become more widespread and damaging to the US, to the point that I hope, and cautiously predict, that in 50 years, perhaps less, the opinions and actions of the US President will carry no more weight or relevance to world affairs than the Prime Minister of Canada… possibly less.
Katydid, regarding the politics of Israelis who came from the Soviet Union: There was a wave of immigration from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, followed by a larger one in the late 1980s. These immigrants hated almost everything about the Soviet Union, which placed them in the nationalistic right wing of Israeli politics. (They did admire the USSR as the main force to defeat Nazi Germany, and admired the Soviet education system, especially in math/physical sciences.) But they didn’t quite fit with the coalition between the right wing and ultra-orthodox religion, with many of them being intermarried or descendants of intermarried Jews. Thus came about the party named ‘Yisrael Beitenu’ (Israel is our home) which supports right wing nationalism combined with policies opposed to the religious establishment. However, that was a generation ago. The power of descendants of CIS immigrants is much smaller now (CIS immigrants had small families and remained behind the typical Israeli families). Even Yisrael Beitenu worked on broadening its appeal to voters who have nothing to do with being CIS-derived. They are now the party of right wingers who hate Netanyahu personally.
As for Netanyahu personally -- he has nothing to do with Soviet or CIS immigration. He is the son of an original Jabotinsky follower. They follow the doctrine that the only way to succeed is to be a wall of iron, hold tight, fight forever, until the other side gives up.
@ 3 sonofrojblake
This is a charming fantasy, and utterly unrealistic.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/US-GDP-in-Comparison-to-Global-Economies_fig1_291299372
Alas, those of us in the non-superpowers still have to live in the real world.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/262742/countries-with-the-highest-military-spending/
@Silentbob:
It took the British Empire less than 50 years to go from being the pre-eminent global power (on which the sun never set) to being a hollowed out remnant consisting of just the UK (as a post-war wreck entirely dependant on the somewhat dubious kindness of the US) and a handful of minor island tax havens. It’s also not that long ago that the USSR was the second global superpower.
Things change, and sometimes they change a lot faster than you might think.
@anat: I’m taking it from context that CIS refers to the USSR emigrants?
I went to university in an east-coast city (not New York) where a lot of former-Soviet Jews immigrated because there was already a strong community they could join that welcomed them. In the mid-1980s, most of them had first passed through Israel and found it not at all to their liking and quickly moved on. A lot of them were in my Russian classes wrecking the grading curve (smile) and in my math and computer science classes.
Wherever Netanyahu arose, he is a war criminal and is paralleling Putin.
Third and therefore final post on the subject of Putin and Netanyahu being in league:
@Katydid #8
CIS stands for Commonwealth of Independent States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States), a union formed by most of the former USSR republics (except for the Baltic states) right after the dissolution of the USSR. In the context of the discussion the term most likely distinguishes people who came to Israel from the territory of the former USSR after there was no more USSR, i.e. after 1991.
Katydid: CIS = Commonwealth of Independent States, Russia’s attempt to maintain influence on other former Soviet republics.
My point was that Netanyahu didn’t need Russian influence to become who he was, he learned it all at home. (There were 2 other 2nd generation party members in the early 1990s competing with Netanyahu on future leadership of Likud. The 3 were known collectively as ‘the princes’. The 2 others were Dan Meridor and Benny Begin. Meridor was as moderate as one can be in the Likud, Begin was a classical Jabotinsky follower (which translates to -- Israel must be strong, always prepared to fight, peace is just the lull before the next war). Both held minor positions in Netanyahu’s first government (1996-1999), both left when they couldn’t stand the personality cult that their party became.)
Someone can probably rewrite The scorpion and the frog for current events.
Does CIS still exist? Was it ever meaningful? IIRC it was supposed to be a commonwealth of the WHITEST former SSRs — Russia, Belarus and…Ukraine. Maybe also Moldova?