Telecom and internet services are down in Gaza again; Netanyahu says no cease-fire until

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will call foreign leaders Monday to discuss efforts to increase humanitarian relief to civilians in Gaza, the White House said in a statement. The Biden administration did not specifically mention which leaders she would be speaking to.

— Christine Wang

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, said Sunday that the United States has not taken a hard enough stance in support of Palestinians.

“We need to see the U.S. playing the role of an honest mediator, not adopting the Israeli narrative,” Zomlot said in a Sunday interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We need a grown-up in the room and that is the U.S.”

Zomlot’s comments followed a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the West Bank city of Ramallah earlier on Sunday where notably, no joint statement was issued afterward. Zomlot said that is because there is still tension between the U.S. and Palestine.

A statement from Blinken’s office noted the points where the two leaders are on the same page: the necessity for humanitarian aid, prioritizing civilian lives and finding a pathway to Palestinian independence.

But Blinken and Abbas still diverged when it came to demands for an immediate ceasefire. Blinken has expressed support for “humanitarian pauses” of the violence in order to ease aid deliveries and hostage rescues. However, he has also continued to stand by the U.S. position that a total ceasefire could allow Hamas to regroup and repeat its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Palestine wants the U.S. to favor a ceasefire.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t heard that and that’s why we did not come up with a joint statement,” Zomlot said.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, will introduce a non-binding resolution in the Senate on Monday threatening U.S. military action against Iran if it expands the war between Israel and Hamas.

Such an expansion may occur by “activating” Hezbollah or by killing American troops through Iran-backed proxies in Syria or Iraq, Graham said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed militant group based in Lebanon, which shares a border with Israel’s north.

“There is no Hamas without the ayatollah’s support. There’s no Hezbollah without the ayatollah’s support,” Graham said. “The Great Satan in the region isn’t Israel or the United States, it’s Iran.”

Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, threatened escalation with Israel on Friday, in his first address since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

A Senate resolution is meant to deter Iran from stoking a broader regional conflict, the senators said.

“It’s aggressive but it’s absolutely necessary,” Blumenthal said.

“[Iran] is financially fueling, equipping, supplying all of these proxies that have as their goal to disrupt and destabilize the region,” he added.

— Greg Iacurci

Former President Barack Obama says “nobody’s hands are clean” in the Israel-Hamas war and acknowledged that he’s questioned in recent days whether his administration could have done more to push for a durable peace when he was in power.

“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth,” Obama said in an interview Pod Save America. “And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean. That all of us are complicit to some degree.” The former president went on to tell his interviewers, Obama administration alumni Dan Pfieffer and Tommy Vietor, that he has asked himself since the start of the war, “Was there something else I could have done?”

The former president did make an attempt at peace between Israel and Palestinians during his second term, but months of talks collapsed in 2014 amid disagreements on Israeli settlements, the release of Palestinian prisoners and other issues.

“I look at this and I think back what could I have done during my presidency to move this forward — as hard as I tried, I’ve got the scars to prove it,” Obama said in excerpts of an interview released on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The entire interview is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.

— Associated Press

Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog reiterated that Israel will not end the war until Hamas is neutralized.

“We cannot stop before we dismantle this terror machine,” Herzog said in a Sunday interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Herzog’s comments come during the fourth consecutive weekend of protests internationally, where hundreds of thousands have gathered to demand a ceasefire in the war.

Plus, U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, have stated the need for at least a temporary pause in violence for humanitarian aid deliveries and hostage rescues. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that there will be no temporary ceasefire until Hamas releases all of its prisoners.

Herzog doubled down on the fact that Israel will not stop its bombardment until Hamas is taken over. And he said that process is especially precarious due to the complicated nature of the Gazan warzone.

“Gaza is probably the biggest terror complex in the world,” Herzog said.

He said there is a vast network of tunnels and other infrastructure within Gaza that is necessary “to uproot” in order to prevent Hamas from repeating the Oct. 7 attack. The Israel Defense Force has said that Hamas’ infrastructure is sometimes buried beneath schools and hospitals, which would mean that an attack on Hamas’ resources could easily turn into an attack on innocent civilian lives.

Herzog said that efforts are in progress to move civilians out of the warzone but the complexity of the military operations in Gaza has meant they move “very slowly, very deliberately.”

— Rebecca Picciotto

Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday that Hamas is “committed to the extermination of Israel,” and that Israel is rightfully working to end that threat.

“What Israel is doing — appropriately so — is targeting Hamas to degrade it and then destroy it, and we are helping them in that effort,” Reed said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“It is somewhat reminiscent of our efforts against Isis in Iraq,” he added.

In that effort, Israel must comply with law, and also win hearts and minds in a way that avoids or minimizes harm to civilians, Reed said. The U.S. is helping Israel with military intelligence to better inform selected and precise targets, he added.

As it works to root out Hamas, Israel also needs to aid the Palestinian people — as both a humanitarian mission and “a smart tactical move,” Reed said.

“What you want to do is separate Hamas from the Palestinian people, and you do that by making it appear — and in fact make it a reality — that they can find some support … within the Israel lines and they can’t find that within Hamas-controlled territory,” Reed said.

— Greg Iacurci

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency says the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The date of the meeting was not disclosed in the report on Sunday.

According to IRNA, Khamenei praised the patience and endurance of the people of Gaza and emphasized Iran’s policy of supporting the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Khamenei urged Islamic countries and international organizations to take serious actions in support of Gaza’s people.

Israel’s military last week accused Haniyeh, who lives in exile, of flying to Iran on a “private jet” as the people of Gaza suffer in a devastating Israeli offensive against Hamas.

Israel accuses Iran of destabilizing the region by supporting proxies like Hamas and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

— Associated Press

Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said on Sunday that all communications and internet services have been cut again within the Gaza Strip.

“The main routes that were previously reconnected (were) cut off again from the Israeli side,” it said.

— Reuters

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Sunday defended the move to tie Israel military aid to spending cuts for the Internal Revenue Service, saying, “It’s more important to protect Israel right now than it is to hire more IRS agents.”

“We want to pay for it,” Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What a concept.”

The House of Representatives passed a $14.3 billion aid package for Israel, while cutting an equivalent amount of IRS funding. The bill, Johnson’s first major legislative action as speaker, passed 226 to 196 on a largely party-line vote.

However, the measure appears to be a non-starter in the Democrat-controlled Senate. President Joe Biden has also vowed to veto it.

“The proposal is simply not a serious one,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY.

Congress increased IRS funding by $80 billion over a decade as part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August 2022, a climate-focused package spearheaded by Democrats.

The IRS plans to use the funding to improve customer service and technology, and crack down on wealthy households that may be dodging their tax bills. It intends to hire about 20,000 new employees as part of the initiative.

Republicans have been trying to axe the additional funding. More than $20 billion of the funding was already cut as part of a debt-limit deal earlier this year.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House-passed Israel aid package found that the measure would actually raise the deficit by over $12 billion over a decade. It would take away enforcement resources to audit the wealthy, costing the IRS almost $27 billion in lost tax revenue, CBO said.

— Greg Iacurci

United States Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer said Sunday that it is necessary to pause the violence in Gaza for humanitarian aid deliveries and hostage rescues, though he continued to reject calls for an overall ceasefire.

“Humanitarian pauses,” as Finer called them in a Sunday interview on ABC’s “This Week,” would “allow the Palestinian residents of Gaza take a breath amid this heavy heavy bombardment.”

Finer’s call for a temporary ceasefire echoes President Joe Biden who has said that pauses are necessary to safely release Hamas’ prisoners and shepherd enough aid into Gaza.

On Saturday, 30 more aid trucks crossed into Gaza, bringing the total to 451. The process of delivering those trucks has been logistically complicated. The threat of shelling and lack of fuel have made the roads of Gaza tricky to navigate and sometimes delayed aid convoys, humanitarian workers have said. A pause of the siege would make that passage easier.

Meanwhile, the hostage situation has brought its own set of difficulties.

“Those negotiations are going on quietly behind the scenes, they have taken longer than any of us would like,” Finer said in a Sunday interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Finer added that more than 300 Americans have left Gaza through diplomatic efforts, though there are still U.S. citizens who remain.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there will be no pause in fighting until Hamas releases all of its hostages.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest against U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Turkey, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, near the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza until all of the more than 240 hostages captured by militant Palestinian group Hamas during its Oct. 7 attacks are returned.

“There will be no ceasefire without the return of our hostages, we say this to both our enemies and our friends. We will continue until we beat them,” Netanyahu told air and ground crews at the Ramon Air Force Base in southern Israel, reiterating the government’s position.

— Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is making a short detour on his urgent Mideast diplomacy tour, stopping in Cyprus where he’s meeting the nation’s leader.

The State Department said Blinken was meeting briefly on Sunday with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos mainly to thank them for Cyprus’ role in temporarily hosting some American citizens who fled from Israel in the first weeks of the Gaza war.

The U.S. chartered at least one cruise liner that took Americans from the Israeli port of Haifa to Larnaca as Israel’s military operations against Hamas intensified and the group accelerated rocket attacks on Israel following its Oct. 7 surprise attack.

Blinken is on his way to Turkey to meet senior officials on Monday.

— Associated Press

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed the situation in Gaza with his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts in separate phone calls, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Sunday.

Fidan had exchanged views on “stopping the attacks targeting the civilian population in Gaza” and on achieving an urgent ceasefire, the source said.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas, not civilians, and that the Islamist Palestinian group is using residents as human shields.

Fidan also discussed efforts to guarantee the unimpeded and continuous provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, the source added.

Fidan will meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for talks on Gaza in Ankara on Monday.

— Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought his frenetic Mideast diplomatic push on the Israel-Hamas war to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his latest bid to ease civilian suffering in the Gaza Strip and begin to sketch out a post-conflict scenario for the territory.

Blinken traveled to Ramallah for his previously unannounced visit in an armored motorcade and under tight security just hours after Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. Despite the secrecy and the State Department refusing to confirm the trip until after Blinken had…