International
Israeli far-right minister asks the US to “respect” its rejection of the truce in Gaza
Israel’s Finance Minister, the anti-Arab ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, asked the United States to “respect Israeli democracy and the position of its officials,” after the Government of the North American country criticized him for rejecting a possible truce with the Islamist group Hamas.
“Just as the United States would reject international pressure to reach a surrender agreement with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, Israel will not be subjected to any external pressure that could damage its security,” the minister wrote on social network X.
“I respect the position of the United States and thank it for its support of Israel in the face of regional threats, but I hope it respects Israeli democracy and the position of the citizens of Israel and its elected officials,” he added.
The United States, Israel’s main partner and supplier of weapons, is also a mediator – along with Qatar and Egypt – in the war between the Jewish State and the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
On Thursday, the mediating countries demanded that Israel and Hamas “resume urgent discussions on August 15 in Doha or Cairo to close all remaining gaps and begin the implementation of the agreement without further delay.”
The initiative received extensive support from the international community, and even Israel – which is receiving more and more pressure to sign the agreement – agreed to send a delegation with the mediators.
However, Smotrich said that the draft of the truce agreement – prepared by US President Joe Biden – is a “dangerous trap” that creates “an illusory symmetry between Israeli hostages (…) and despicable terrorists.”
The Biden government will not allow “extremists,” even in Israel, to deviate talks about the ceasefire from their course, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.
“The idea that [Biden] would support an agreement that puts Israel’s security at risk is simply erroneous, outrageous, absurd,” the spokesman stressed, stressing that Smotrich “should be embarrassed.”
However, the far-right minister returned to the charge this Saturday: “The surrender agreement lets most of the kidnapped die, frees many murderers, returns terrorists to the north of the Gaza Strip, leaves the border and allows Hamas to smuggle weapons and restore its power to return and attack Israel,” he wrote in X.
“No criticism or attack will distract me from the goal,” he concluded.
Until now, the agreement had been stalled by Hamas’ demand that the ceasefire be definitive, and the insistence of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to resume fighting until the Islamist group was “extinguished”.
The war broke out on October 7 of last year after a Hamas attack on Israel that left about 1,200 dead and 251 kidnapped. Currently, 111 hostages remain in the Strip, although at least 39 would have lost their lives.
After more than 10 months of escalation, the Israeli offensive has left in the Gaza Strip almost 40,000 dead – mostly children and women – more than 90,000 injured, 10,000 missing under the rubble and 1.9 million displaced people who survive in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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