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Mounting criticismFollowing talks with Blinken, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said the prime minister “doesn’t have any political excuse not to move to a deal for the release of the hostages.”Regardless of whether a truce is reached, Netanyahu has vowed to send Israeli ground troops into Rafah, despite US opposition to any operation that fails to provide protection for the 1.5 million civilians sheltering in Gaza’s southernmost city.”We will do what is necessary to win and overcome our enemy, including in Rafah,” he pledged at the start of a cabinet meeting Thursday.Separately, Netanyahu told a delegation of Holocaust survivors that Jews should welcome but not expect non-Jewish support and should be ready to “stand alone” if necessary.”If it is possible to recruit Gentiles, that’s good. But if we don’t protect ourselves, no one will protect us,” he told the group at his office.The prime minister faces regular protests calling on him to make a deal that would bring home the remaining captives.On Thursday, protesters set up oversized photographs of women hostages outside Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence. In Tel Aviv, they again blocked a highway.Criticism of the war has also intensified in the United States, Israel’s top military supplier. Demonstrations have spread to at least 30 American universities, with some protesters erecting encampments to oppose the rising death toll in Gaza.Israeli President Isaac Herzog slammed the student protests, claiming that US universities had been “contaminated by hatred and anti-Semitism.”President Joe Biden said the United States was “not an authoritarian nation where we silence people” but added that anti-Semitism had “no place” on US campuses.A mother’s tearsIn response to US pressure, Israel has allowed increased aid deliveries into Gaza in recent days, including through a reopened crossing.But UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said that “improvements in bringing more aid into Gaza” cannot be used “to prepare for or justify a full-blown military assault on Rafah”.At south Gaza’s largest hospital, the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, which was heavily damaged by fighting in February, foreign aid and borrowed equipment have helped to “almost completely” restore the emergency department, its director, Atef al-Hout, said.Witnesses and an AFP correspondent reported air strikes on Khan Yunis Thursday and shelling in the Rafah area, while militants and Israeli troops battled in Gaza City.In north Gaza, workers unloaded aid at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Alaa al-Nadi’s son lay motionless in the intensive care unit, his head almost completely swathed in bandages.Nadi, who was also wounded in the strike, said she feared the hospital’s power might go out, cutting the boy’s oxygen and killing him.”I call on the world to transfer my son for treatment abroad. He is in a very bad condition,” she said, breaking down in tears.
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UN says Gaza needs biggest post-war reconstruction effort since World War II amid truce talks
