Israel-Hamas war: Biden to visit Israel for Netanyahu talks

US President Joe Biden will travel to Jordan on Wednesday to meet with Arab leaders following his trip to Israel, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Kirby said Biden will meet with Jordanian King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"We've been crystal clear about the need for humanitarian aid to be able to continue to flow into Gaza. That has been a consistent call by President Biden and certainly by this entire administration," Kirby said.

Biden's trip to Israel will be his strongest message yet to stand alongside Israel as it reels from the devastating terror attacks of October 7. 

Biden's administration has pledged military support for Israel, sending US carriers and aid to the region.

Biden has also called for aid to be allowed into Gaza, where the situation remains dire.

Around one million people have evacuated from northern Gaza to the south of the strip, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told reporters Monday.

"My main concerns right now... is to get aid into Gaza," he said, "because they won't get out of Gaza."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to develop a plan to enable humanitarian aid to reach civilians in Gaza.

Blinken was in talks for more than six hours with Israel's war cabinet, with the meeting extending beyond midnight in Israel.

The US top diplomat was on the region's fifth consecutive day of round-the-clock diplomacy. He returned to Israel on Monday after visiting six Arab countries in four days.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that Blinken and Netanyahu were forced to shelter in a bunker for five minutes during their meeting after sirens rang out.

Speaking to reporters earlier after meeting Blinken, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: "This will be a long war; the price will be high. But we are going to win for Israel and the Jewish people and for the values that both countries believe in." 

US President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Tuesday.

"The president will reaffirm United States solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security," Blinken said.

"Israel has the right and indeed the duty to defend its people from Hamas and other terrorists and to prevent future attacks," he added.

Blinken held overnight talks in Tel Aviv with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's war cabinet.

The visit comes as concerns increase the Israel-Hamas war could expand into a larger regional conflict.

"He's coming here at a critical moment for Israel, for the region and for the world," Blinken said about Biden's visit. 

 

The Israel Defense Forces said it was "striking military targets of the terrorist organization Hezbollah on Lebanese territory" during the early hours of Tuesday.

Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli territory claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people, tensions have risen along the Lebanon-Israel border.

Hezbollah militants fired anti-tank missiles on Israeli army positions and Israeli troops shelled border areas on the Lebanese side of the border.

Several countries, including the US and Germany, have designated Hezbollah a terrorist group.  

The Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, has released a video, which purportedly shows a suspected hostage in the Gaza Strip.

The video shared on their official Telegram channel shows the woman, who identified herself as 21-year-old Mia Schem, with a wound on her arm receiving medical treatment and addressing the camera directly.

She said she was taken from Sderot, a small Israeli city near the Gaza border.

"Please get me out of here as soon as possible," she said in Hebrew.

It is unclear where, when, and under what circumstances the short video was filmed. DW News could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.

Abu Obeideh, spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, said in a televised statement earlier Monday that some foreign hostages would be released by the group “when conditions are ripe."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel will not stop Gaza operations until Hamas militants were destroyed, according to an Israeli readout of the call between the leaders on Monday.

Putin told Netanyahu that Moscow wanted to help prevent a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, according to the Russian readout of the call.

Putin expressed Moscow's willingness to work towards "ending the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation and achieving a peaceful settlement through political and diplomatic means."

Putin briefed Netanyahu on conversations with the leaders of Iran, Egypt, Syria and the Palestinian Authority, the Russian statement said.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been meeting with Netanyahu and the war cabinet for hours now in Israel, where it is past midnight.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken to US President Joe Biden before he travels to Israel on Tuesday, the White House confirmed. 

"It is important to me to also express my solidarity with Israel very practically with my visit," Scholz told reporters Monday, while confirming a "later trip" to Egypt.

The German leader will be the first head of government to visit Israel following the Hamas terror attacks on the country. There are reports suggesting that Biden is also considering an invitation extended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit.

Scholz is set to use his trip to reassert his solidarity with Israel, as he has done in remarks delivered in German Parliament .

"We condemn the terrorists and we say very clearly, Israel has the right under international law to defend its citizens against such acts of barbarism," Scholz said at the Bundestag last week.

Scholz told reporters he wishes to discuss "concrete practical issues" with the Israeli prime minister and other officials, including the organization of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

He emphasized that the discussion also needs to focus on preventing the conflict between Hamas and Israel from spreading to other regions, such as northern Israel.

A string of diplomats from several countries have visited Israel thus far, including German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

Following his visit to Israel, Scholz will then travel to Egypt, although the exact details of this leg of his trip are not yet clear.

Former US Ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, spoke to DW about US diplomatic engagement in the crisis, saying the US can be instrumental in pressuring Israelis to avoid inflicting large numbers of innocent Palestinian casualties.

Feierstein, who also worked as a diplomat in Israel and is now with an NGO based in Washington DC, said the US is engaged in both trying to deter any participation by Hezbollah or Iran in the conflict while also expressing "a great deal of concern about the humanitarian situation inside of Gaza."

"The announcement by the Israelis that they were restoring water to the southern Gaza area, and also, of course, the intense diplomatic engagement with both the Israelis and the Egyptians to try to get relief supplies in" were examples of the US getting results in its diplomatic efforts, Feierstein said. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv for his second visit in less than a week. He's scheduled to meet Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, along with the Israeli war cabinet. 

Feierstein warned that Israel's stated objective in Gaza, namely eliminating Hamas' leadership and structures, could prove very difficult to achieve, based on recent US experiences against Islamist militants.

"We, of course, in 2001, thought that we were going to eliminate al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is still there. We've said that we're going to eliminate ISIS. ISIS is still there. These kinds of organizations don't get eliminated. There is no military solution to this, to this situation," Feierstein said.

"And of course, the more that the Israelis are responsible for, you know, for indiscriminate military action, the more deeply embedded these organizations become within the population. So it's a situation where the harder you try, often the worse the outcome," he added.

Feierstein said Israel should be cautious to "leave room" for future talks "not with Hamas, but with Palestinians," that would hopefully lead to "a permanent, sustainable peace."

The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, said it was working to ban support of the activities of the militant group Hamas and to outlaw the pro-Palestinian network Samidoun at the earliest opportunity.

"We are working with all available capacities to ensure the implementation of the measures as quickly as possible," the body's president, Thomas Haldenwang, told Germany's Bundestag in a special briefing on Monday. 

Chancellor Olaf Scholz first announced plans for the restrictions last week, in response both to Hamas' October 7 attack and isolated scenes of Samidoun activists in Germany celebrating it. 

You can read more on the story here. 

Christoph Heusgen, a former adviser to Angela Merkel and now chairman of the Munich Security Conference, who is currently attending a conference in Nairobi, told DW that the Israel-Hamas conflict could have consequences as far away as Kenya. The African country was a victim of very vicious attacks by al-Shabab terrorists, he added.

"Therefore, it is very important that in response to this outrageous attacks of the Hamas against Israel, the defense forces actually use and apply international humanitarian law. This will be key for security worldwide," Heusgen said.

Heusgen sees the expected visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Israel as "a visit of solidarity." The former diplomat thinks Scholz will use the visit to assure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of how seriously post-war Germany takes its security guarantees for Israel.

"Germany has always said that it supports Israel's security, that this is something that is enshrined in our German DNA," he said.

But at the same time, Heusgen noted, it was essential for Germany that international law be upheld. "I assume that this respect for international law is also part of the message that the Chancellor will convey to his Israeli counterparts," he added.

The German government on Monday provided an update on its efforts to bring German citizens home. Commercial airlines have cut flights out of Israel since the latest Israel-Hamas conflict broke out, stranding some Germans in Israel. 

The German Foreign Office said around 3,000 German citizens had returned back to Germany from Israel with the help of Berlin's government. There had been some criticism domestically about how fast the government acted and how much it helped, but the ministry argued these were not fair. 

"Everyone who wanted to leave the country was able to," the spokesman for Annalena Baerbock said, adding there had at no point been "lacking capacities" to get people out. 

The German government at first offered its citizens special Lufthansa flights to return home, among other measures.

 

After Lufthansa stopped flying out of Tel Aviv on Friday, Germany then organized military transports via its air force, the Luftwaffe. 

"We are always able to bring more people out of Israel," the spokesperson said, before noting the ministry believed those who still remained were more likely to be those "who want to stay in Israel long-term." 

He also reiterated Germany's new travel warning for Israel, saying that places in the country are "not tourist destinations" as of now. 

Almost 3,000 Germans are still registered in the ELEFAND electronic crisis list for Israel, with most of the individuals wishing to stay in the country for now, the spokesperson said. 

The foreign ministry spokesperson also noted that aside from the eight Germans believed to have been taken hostage in Israel, there   was a further "low three digit" number of Germans who remain in the Gaza Strip. The German government is now seeking to get these Germans out of Gaza via the Rafah crossing in Egypt, which remains closed as of now.       

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has returned to Israel on Monday, after he held discussions in six Arab countries.  

Blinken earlier visited Israel last Thursday, following Hamas's terror attacks on October 7. During that visit, Blinken expressed solidarity with Israel and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

Over the past few days, Blinken has been to Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, seeking to prevent a broader spillover of the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East. 

Blinken will again meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, along with Netanyahu's security cabinet. Blinken said on Sunday that he would use the second visit in Israel to convey what he heard from US Arab partners in the region. 

Blinken's return comes amid reports that US President Joe Biden is weighing a visit to Israel. The White House has not officially confirmed that decision. 

Biden on Monday canceled a planned visit to Colorado, adding to speculation that a trip might be in the works.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to soon visit Israel, according to German media outlets Bild and ntv.

Both outlets said Scholz would visit Israel on Tuesday. Bild cited Israeli unnamed sources for its reporting. 

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Israel on Friday. During that visit, she expressed solidarity from both the German government and German people with Israel, following Hamas' terror attacks in Israel on October 7.   

Baerbock spoke with German Foreign Minister Eli Cohen during her visit and called for Hamas to release all hostages it abducted during the terror attacks. Several of the estimated 199 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are believed to be German citizens.      

The Gaza Strip is suffering from a "very severe" shortage of drinking water, amid the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the strip. The bombing is a response to Hamas terrorists attacking Israel, killing 1,300 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians.

Gaza's Interior Ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging platform on Monday that Israel has not pumped "a single liter of potable water into any of the strip's provinces for the tenth day in a row."

Citizens were forced to drink unsuitable water, the ministry added, warning of "a dangerous health crisis that threatens citizens' lives."

TheUnited Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees also reported on Monday that "Gaza is running dry."

"A quarter of a million people moved to shelters over the past 24 hours," UNRWA said on social media.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said Monday that 11 journalists have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since the latest war on Hamas began.

Israel has launched a series of airstrikes on Hamas in Gaza, in response to the October 7 terror attacks in Israel. Those attacks left over 1,300 people in Israel dead, with 199 people being taken hostage. 

The journalists' union added that 20 other members of the media have been injured since October 7.