STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. The American Muslim political coalition, American Muslim 2024 Election Task Force (AM Task Force), is urging Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 U.S. election, concerned about Biden’s Israel policy, but also worried about Donald Trump being elected. U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked by the debate moderator if he would recognize Palestine as an independent country if elected president. Trump’s vague response: “I’ll have to see it.”
The Biden administration has sent to Israel large numbers of munitions, including more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles, since the start of the war in Gaza, said two U.S. officials briefed on an updated list of weapons shipments.
While the officials didn’t give a timeline for the shipments, the totals suggest there has been no significant drop-off in U.S. military support for its ally, despite international calls to limit weapons supplies and a recent administration decision to pause a shipment of powerful bombs.
Senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, stated that negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release agreement with Israel had not shown progress and seemed to be an Israeli tactic to increase the time to carry out genocide in Gaza.
Hamdan also blamed the U.S. for putting pressure on Hamas to accept Israel’s conditions. ” Hamas is ready to be positive towards any proposal that ensures a permanent ceasefire, complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and a serious exchange agreement,” Hamdan said, referring to the possible exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Indonesia strongly condemns Israel’s move to legalize five Jewish settlement posts in the West Bank, Palestine. “Israel’s settlement and continuous occupation in Palestine’s territory are violations of international law and relevant U.N. resolutions,” said the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry on its social media X post.
Together with the international community, the ministry emphasized that Indonesia will continue to demand Israeli accountability and the implementation of a two-state solution. Israel is committed to fighting Hamas until the Iran-backed militant group is eliminated and all the other goals of the war are achieved, PM Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on his social media account that Malaysia was willing to cooperate with Indonesia, including sending a joint peacekeeping force to Gaza, Palestine, if mandated by the United Nations. Anwar said he had a three-minute phone conversation with Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto.
Two recent surveys have found that Indonesian consumer boycotts have eroded sales of products from multinational companies believed to be affiliated with Israel. CEO of consumer survey company Compas, Hanindia Narendrata, said that the global “Eyes on Rafah” campaign in Palestine, which went viral in late May 2024, was also followed by a strengthening boycott movement, resulting in a slump in Israeli-affiliated products and an increase in sales of domestic products in Indonesia.
Based on Compas data, 156 of 206 brands that people believed to be affiliated with Israel experienced decline in sales. The products most affected by the boycott were the mother and baby products as well as food and beverage categories.
Hamas has accepted a U.S. proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement aimed at ending the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source told Reuters. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Bill Burns is expected to travel to Doha next week to join negotiations on the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, two Israeli sources said. Burns is expected to hold a joint meeting with the Prime Minister of Qatar, the director of the Israeli Mossad and the head of the Egyptian intelligence service.
Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, met with French officials and discussed French and American efforts to restore calm in the Middle East, a White House official said. “France and the United States share the goal of resolving the current conflict across the Blue Line by diplomatic means, allowing Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return home with long-term assurances of safety and security,” the official says, referring to the demarcation line between the two countries.
The Lebanese Hezbollah group said it launched over 200 rockets at several military bases in Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed one of its senior commanders. Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and top Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya discussed the latest developments in the Gaza Strip and negotiations aimed at reaching a ceasefire there during a meeting, Hezbollah said.
The State Department’s top intelligence official is warning that the war in Gaza is bolstering recruitment among terrorist organizations and providing “inspiration for lone actors” furious over the United States’ staunch support for Israel.
The Hamas-led assault into Israel on Oct. 7 “was, is and will be a generational event that terrorist organizations in the Middle East and around the world use as a recruiting opportunity,” Brett Holmgren, the assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, told The Washington Post in an interview.
Indonesia condemned the attack mounted by Israeli occupation forces on Central Gaza’s al-Jaouni School, which is operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
“Indonesia strongly condemns Israel’s barbaric attack on al-Jaouni School in the Nuseirat refugee camp operated by UNRWA in Central Gaza (7/6),” the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry wrote in a statement on X on Monday. The ministry noted that Israel had continued to commit atrocities and had been consistent in violating international law. In the statement, Indonesia also criticized the U.N. Security Council and countries backing Israel for not taking firm action.
Any Gaza cease-fire deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until its objectives are met, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as talks over a U.S. plan aimed at ending the nine-month-old war were expected to restart. Hopes of a cease-fire in Gaza ebbed on Monday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Hamas both issued statements that narrowed the chances of reaching a compromise about the territory’s future.
In a statement, Mr. Netanyahu said he would agree only to a deal that would “allow Israel to resume fighting until all of the objectives of the war have been achieved.” The comments reiterated his long-held position that the war must continue until Israel has destroyed Hamas’s military and governing abilities.
Hamas, which opposes any cease-fire unless it is permanent, said on Monday that Israel’s continuing military operations across Gaza risked returning “the negotiating process to point zero.”
Israeli forces advanced deeper into the Gaza Strip’s largest city in pursuit of militants who had regrouped there, sending thousands of Palestinians fleeing from an area ravaged in the early weeks of the nine-month-long war. Hamas warned that the latest raids and displacement in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of long-running negotiations over a cease-fire and hostage release, after the two sides had appeared to have narrowed the gaps in recent days.
United Nations human rights experts have accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza. “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent UN experts said in a statement.
