When the Hezbollah militant group began trading rocket fire with Israel in October, Zoe Sages and her family left their home near the Lebanese border and decamped to a hotel further south. More than nine months later, they and hundreds of other members of the Sasa kibbutz are still there, striving to maintain their communal way of life and children’s schooling.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said conditions for a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas were “becoming ripe”, suggesting the two sides were getting closer to agreeing to at least a temporary halt to their war in Gaza.
Trump plans to meet Netanyahu as Middle East conflict persists
Donald Trump said he would meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, the latest effort by the Republican nominee to build ties with foreign leaders.
Trump announced the sit-down on his social media site, saying “we had Peace and Stability in the Region” during his presidency and vowing “we will have it again”. Israel has been mired in a deadly war against Hamas since the group’s 7 October attack.
Trump (78) initially said the meeting would take place on Wednesday and then on Thursday, before making another post saying it would happen on Friday at the request of Netanyahu’s office.
The meeting comes in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid, a seismic decision that created more uncertainty about US leadership abroad. Vice-President Kamala Harris, Biden’s likely replacement on the Democratic ticket, is still sharpening her foreign policy positions, including how she will approach Israel’s war in Gaza.
Netanyahu is in Washington this week to deliver an address to Congress on Wednesday. The Israeli leader was also expected to meet Biden on Thursday afternoon and speak separately with Harris.
The prime minister was one of Trump’s closest allies during his presidency, but the former president profanely ranted about his onetime colleague for congratulating Biden on his 2020 election victory, Axios reported in 2021.
Trump has said he would support Israel’s fight against Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union. But he has also been critical of Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war; at one point saying the Israeli leader should “finish up” the conflict.
Netanyahu said this week that conditions for a ceasefire and hostage deal were “becoming ripe”, suggesting prospects for an agreement to temporarily halt the war were improving.
Trump has also made inflammatory statements criticising Democrats who have voiced support for Palestinians and campus protests against the war, accusing Jews who support Democrats of hating their religion and Israel.
Israel’s wars with Hamas, Hezbollah leave evacuees in limbo
When the Hezbollah militant group began trading rocket fire with Israel in October, Zoe Sages and her family left their home near the Lebanese border and decamped to a hotel further south.
More than nine months later, they and hundreds of other members of the Sasa kibbutz are still there, striving to maintain their communal way of life and children’s schooling. While the government pays for their food and accommodation, the pressures of living in a 30-square-metre room in the sweltering town of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee are taking their toll.
“The community wants to return home 100%,” said Sages (36), a human-resources director and mother of three who moved to Israel from the UK in 2006. “The questions would be under what conditions and whether normality will return.”
Sages is one of hundreds of thousands of people in Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian territory of Gaza whose lives have been upended since Hamas-led militants invaded southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people. Israel’s retaliatory and ongoing air and ground assault has claimed more than 38,000 lives in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.
Lebanon-based Hezbollah opened fire in solidarity with Hamas, launching drones, rockets and missiles at towns and villages across northern Israel. The Israeli military has responded with hundreds of strikes of its own, and communities on both sides of the border have fled.
Domestic pressure on Netanyahu to enable evacuees to return home has raised the prospect of an all-out conflict, which could devastate both countries. Hezbollah, which like Hamas is designated a terrorist group by the US, has accumulated a vast arsenal of rockets since the two sides last fought a war in 2006.
Israeli authorities had said a Gaza ceasefire could end Hezbollah attacks and enable families to resettle in time for the new school year, which begins on 1 September. But Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced on Tuesday that evacuee children would continue their studies in the districts to which they had relocated.
“This is a regrettable decision that was forced upon us,” he said in a statement, in which he urged the government to escalate fighting to restore stability.
Within Israel, about 143,000 people had evacuated their homes or were eligible to do so by late June, 68,500 of whom were from the north near Lebanon and 74,500 from the south, according to a report from the Knesset Research and Information Center. The number of people housed in hotels fell to 22,800 by the end of June, down from a peak of about 50,000, as evacuees made alternate accommodation plans or braved the violence and returned home.
It costs the state about 500 shekels ($137) a night to house an adult and half that for each child. The subsidisation programme has thrown a lifeline to the hotel industry, which has been among the hardest hit by the war as scores of incoming flights were cancelled and international visitors stayed away. Even so, the Israel Hotel Association says about 10% of the 450 establishments owned by its members have shut or are in danger of doing so, with tourism likely to recover by 2026 at the earliest.
In Lebanon, about 93,000 people have been displaced and the bulk of them are being sheltered by family or forced to fend for themselves because the government can’t afford to provide support. The nation’s economy has been in crisis since about 2020, when a banking and government-debt emergency wiped out people’s savings and pushed three-quarters of the population into poverty.
The plight of the displaced is at its worst in Gaza. Many Palestinian families have been uprooted multiple times as the Israeli campaign moved south and laid waste to much of the territory.
About 90% of the 2.1 million people in the densely populated strip have fled their homes and lack access to sufficient shelter, food, medical services and clean water, according to the United Nations. It estimates that more than 70% of homes have been damaged or destroyed in the fighting.
The fighting in Gaza has shown signs of slowing down, with Israel reporting significant headway in eliminating Hamas leaders and its extensive tunnel network. Yet on Monday, the military ordered civilians to leave parts of the city of Khan Younis once again to make way for a fresh assault.
Said Al-Ashi (19) is one of the displaced. A medical student, he left Gaza City in the north along with his sister, mother and grandmother when Israel first attacked.
They took shelter with a relative in Khan Younis before moving to the southernmost town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border. They have since relocated to a tent at Al-Mawasi, a sandy coastal expanse with hardly any infrastructure that’s now home to hundreds of thousands of uprooted people.
“Instead of spending my time studying, preparing for classes and meeting new friends at the university, my time is lost on water queues, collecting plastic and dry branches to make a fire, or fleeing the bombardment,” Al-Ashi, who is now trying to secure a bursary to continue his studies outside of Gaza, said by phone.
Netanyahu says prospects for a hostage deal with Hamas improving
Netanyahu said conditions for a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas were “becoming ripe”, suggesting the two sides were getting closer to agreeing to at least a temporary halt to their war in Gaza.
Netanyahu spoke while in Washington on his first foreign trip since the conflict began almost nine months ago.
The prospect of all remaining hostages being returned was improving “for the simple reason that we are putting very strong pressure on Hamas”s said Netanyahu. “We see a certain change, and I think that this change will increase.”
He reiterated the Israeli military would continue its attacks on the Iran-backed Islamist group. Those were, he said, demoralising Hamas and moving it closer to accepting a deal.
“The enemy’s spirit is starting to break,” said Netanyahu.
A ceasefire deal “will not take place all at once — there will be stages”, he said. “However, I believe that we can advance the deal and leave us in possession of the leverage to bring about the release of the others.”
Israeli media has reported that government negotiators were meant to travel to Qatar, a key mediator, on Thursday to resume talks with Hamas.
The discussions centre on a three-phase peace plan presented by Biden in late May, which the White House hopes will lead to a permanent end to the fighting. One sticking point has been Israel’s insistence that it can resume the war to destroy Hamas. DM
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