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Netanyahu Weighs Risks of Rafah Assault as Hostage Dilemma Divides Israelis

Families of Israeli soldiers who were killed in the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, demonstrate outside the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv calling for the war to continue and for the Israeli army to keep on fighting inside Rafah in the south of the besieged Palestinian territory on May 7, 2024. (AFP)
Families of Israeli soldiers who were killed in the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, demonstrate outside the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv calling for the war to continue and for the Israeli army to keep on fighting inside Rafah in the south of the besieged Palestinian territory on May 7, 2024. (AFP)
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Netanyahu Weighs Risks of Rafah Assault as Hostage Dilemma Divides Israelis

Families of Israeli soldiers who were killed in the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, demonstrate outside the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv calling for the war to continue and for the Israeli army to keep on fighting inside Rafah in the south of the besieged Palestinian territory on May 7, 2024. (AFP)
Families of Israeli soldiers who were killed in the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, demonstrate outside the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv calling for the war to continue and for the Israeli army to keep on fighting inside Rafah in the south of the besieged Palestinian territory on May 7, 2024. (AFP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces competing pressures at home and abroad when he weighs how far to push the operation to defeat Hamas in Rafah that complicates hopes of bringing Israeli hostages home.

Street demonstrations against the government by families and supporters of some of the more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza have become a constant fixture, with protestors demanding a ceasefire deal with Hamas to get them back.

Others are demanding the government and the Israeli Defense Forces press ahead with the Rafah operation against the remaining Hamas formations holding out around the city which began this week with air strikes and battles on the outskirts.

"We applaud the Israeli government and the IDF for going into Rafah," said Mirit Hoffman, a spokesperson for Mothers of IDF Soldiers, a group representing families of serving military personnel, which wants an uncompromising line to pressure Hamas into surrender.

"We think that this is how negotiations are done in the Middle East."

The opposing pressures mirror divisions in Netanyahu's cabinet between centrist ministers concerned at alienating Washington, Israel's most vital ally and supplier of arms, and religious nationalist hardliners determined to clear Hamas out of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas handed Netanyahu a dilemma this week when it declared it had accepted a ceasefire proposal brokered by Egypt for a halt to fighting in return for an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli officials rejected the offer, accusing Hamas of altering the terms of the deal. But it did not break off negotiations and shuttle diplomacy continues, with CIA chief Bill Burns in Israel on Wednesday to meet Netanyahu.

Internationally, protests have spread against Israel's campaign in Gaza, which has so far killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and spread malnutrition and disease in the enclave.

Seven months into the war, surveys show opinion in Israel has become increasingly divided since Netanyahu first vowed to crush Hamas in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, took more than 250 hostage, and triggered the campaign in Gaza.

"I understand that it's necessary to defeat Hamas but I think that can wait, and the hostages cannot wait," said Elisheva Leibler, 52, from Jerusalem. "Every second they're there poses immediate danger to their lives."

For the moment, Netanyahu has kept the cabinet together, rejecting the latest Hamas proposal for a ceasefire but keeping the negotiations alive by dispatching mid-ranking officials to Cairo, where Egyptian mediators are overseeing the process.

But the risks he faces by holding out against a deal, as his hard-right partners wish, were highlighted on Tuesday when Washington paused a shipment of weapons to signal its opposition to the long-promised Rafah assault.

DIVIDED OPINION

Despite his image as a security hawk, Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister, has struggled with a widespread perception that he was to blame for the security failures that allowed Hamas to overwhelm Israel's defenses around Gaza.

That has fed a mood of distrust among many Israelis who otherwise support strong action against Hamas.

A survey published on Wednesday for Channel 13 suggested that 56% of Israelis thought Netanyahu's chief consideration was his own political survival against only 30% who thought it was freeing the hostages.

A survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found just over half the population believed a deal to rescue the hostages should be the top government priority, over the aim of destroying the remaining Hamas formations.

But a separate poll by the Jewish People's Policy Institute (JPPI) found 61% thought the military must operate in Rafah no matter what. The Channel 13 poll found 41% in favor of accepting the deal and 44% opposed.

"I don't trust Hamas at all," said 81-year-old David Taub, from Jerusalem. "The only solution is to conquer Rafah, and then maybe, we hope, we pray, the hostages will come back to us."

For the moment, Netanyahu depends on the two hardliners from the nationalist religious bloc, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, both of whom reject any suggestion of compromise.

Both have clashed repeatedly with Benny Gantz, the centrist former army general who joined the emergency wartime cabinet in the wake of Oct 7, and who is the leading contender to replace Netanyahu after new elections.

Gantz and his ally Gadi Eisenkot, another former army chief, are both sworn enemies of Hamas, but both have been alarmed at the deterioration in relations with the United States.

For the increasingly desperate hostage families, a mood of deepening exhaustion at the endless uncertainty has settled in, with hopes of a safe return overcoming any other consideration.

Niva Wenkert, mother of 22-year-old hostage Omer Wenkert, said she had no choice but to trust Israeli leaders but that not enough had been done.

"The hostages are still in Gaza, the military actions almost stopped and the feelings are very, very bad. I want Omer back."

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Features

Israeli Settler Outpost Becomes a Settlement within a Month

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, center, strides through the newly-legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP)
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, center, strides through the newly-legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP)
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Israeli Settler Outpost Becomes a Settlement within a Month

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, center, strides through the newly-legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP)
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, center, strides through the newly-legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP)

Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley.

Orthodox Jewish women wearing colorful head coverings and with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard.

The scene Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour into a settlement. Over the years they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding to the hope it would one day become theirs.

That moment is now, they say.

Smotrich goes on settlement spree

After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement's name means “stable” in Hebrew.

“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”

With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.

Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.

While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state.

Emboldened

Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.

The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told the AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.

“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”

“Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen."

Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on Dec. 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.

“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”

Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that Israel's government was in talks with the US to build a Palestinian children's hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the US Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.

The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the US Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began demonstrations at the site calling on Israel to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.

It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or ... security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. "They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”

The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating a makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings and exhibits.

Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.

“Once it is military installation, it is easier than to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.

Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”

Palestinians say the land is theirs

The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27% in 2025, according to Israel’s military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.

The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.

“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.

Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to pop up around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families," he said.

Features

Respiratory Virus Claims Lives in Gaza amid Limited Capacity for Testing

A Palestinian man carries the body of his three-month-old daughter on Tuesday after she died from the cold in Gaza City. (AFP)
A Palestinian man carries the body of his three-month-old daughter on Tuesday after she died from the cold in Gaza City. (AFP)
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Respiratory Virus Claims Lives in Gaza amid Limited Capacity for Testing

A Palestinian man carries the body of his three-month-old daughter on Tuesday after she died from the cold in Gaza City. (AFP)
A Palestinian man carries the body of his three-month-old daughter on Tuesday after she died from the cold in Gaza City. (AFP)

Gaza resident Yusra al-Hajjar, 32, went through harrowing moments after she was shocked by a sharp rise in the temperature of her five-month-old infant, Nidal, prompting her to rush him to a clinic at the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City as his condition worsened.

Initial medical examinations failed to determine the exact cause of the infant’s illness, forcing the medical team to resort to basic measures such as intravenous fluids and fever-reducing medication in an attempt to control the symptoms.

The treatment was temporarily successful, and the baby’s condition improved after several hours.

“We left the clinic in a better condition, but less than a day later, we brought him back after a new deterioration,” al-Hajjar told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“As of this morning, Tuesday, five days have passed since my baby fell ill. I am still trying basic methods, such as cooling his forehead with cold water and giving him some medication to reduce the fever and stop the vomiting and weakness, while doctors have been unable to determine the cause,” she added.

The infant’s case is not the only one. Residents of Gaza have been struggling in recent weeks with what medical officials describe as a widespread outbreak of identical symptoms, particularly among the elderly and children, according to Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex.

Abu Salmiya said that for nearly a month, new deaths have been recorded on an almost daily basis due to the spread of what he described as a dangerous and deadly virus.

He said the virus causes severe pneumonia, leading to fatalities primarily among vulnerable patients with weakened immune systems, and secondarily among individuals with stronger immunity, including some young people whose deaths were recorded in recent days.

No capacity for testing

Abu Salmiya said Gaza’s health system lacks even the most basic laboratory capabilities needed to identify the virus, suggesting it could be a new COVID variant spreading in the world.

Earlier on Tuesday, a seven-month-old infant, Shaza Abu Jarrad, died due to extreme cold and a lack of adequate shelter and heating, raising the number of child deaths from similar conditions to about 10.

Abu Salmiya said the current cold weather has fueled the spread of the virus, contributing to a high number of deaths amid the harsh living conditions in Gaza following the Israeli war.

He said there is a direct link between the war and weakened immunity among Gaza’s population, who have endured repeated bouts of hunger, alongside water contamination.

He added that this comes amid severe shortages of medicines and medical supplies, leaving health authorities unable to mount an effective and rapid response to the current health crisis.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, said in a post on X that despite the collapse of Gaza’s health system, it continues to provide primary health care to thousands of people every day, but faces an acute shortage of medicines.

UNRWA accused Israel of preventing its aid supplies stuck in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt from entering Gaza since March 2 last year, stressing the urgent need to allow its assistance into the territory.

It said harsh winter conditions are compounding the suffering of families in Gaza who have been exhausted by war and repeated displacement, calling for large-scale access for humanitarian aid.

Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense, warned of a rise in deaths, particularly among young children, due to the severe cold wave coinciding with the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in the enclave.

He said field and health conditions are extremely harsh, especially for infants, the sick, and the elderly, as most families live in dilapidated tents that offer little protection from the cold, rain, and other environmental conditions.

Features

Khartoum Markets Back to Life but 'Nothing Like Before'

Men walk along a street past destroyed high-rise building, as efforts to restore the city's infrastructure resumes after nearly three years of devastation caused by war, in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on January 17, 2025. (AFP)
Men walk along a street past destroyed high-rise building, as efforts to restore the city's infrastructure resumes after nearly three years of devastation caused by war, in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on January 17, 2025. (AFP)
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Khartoum Markets Back to Life but 'Nothing Like Before'

Men walk along a street past destroyed high-rise building, as efforts to restore the city's infrastructure resumes after nearly three years of devastation caused by war, in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on January 17, 2025. (AFP)
Men walk along a street past destroyed high-rise building, as efforts to restore the city's infrastructure resumes after nearly three years of devastation caused by war, in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on January 17, 2025. (AFP)

The hustle and bustle of buyers and sellers has returned to Khartoum's central market, but "it's nothing like before," fruit vendor Hashim Mohamed told AFP, streets away from where war first broke out nearly three years ago.

On April 15, 2023, central Khartoum awoke to battles between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who had been allies since 2021, when they ousted civilians from a short-lived transitional government.

Their war has since killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. In greater Khartoum alone, nearly 4 million people -- around half the population -- fled the city when the RSF took over.

Hashim Mohamed did not.

"I had to work discreetly, because there were regular attacks" on businesses, said the fruit seller, who has worked in the sprawling market for 50 years.

Like him, those who stayed in the city report living in constant fear of assaults and robberies from fighters roaming the streets.

Last March, army forces led an offensive through the capital, pushing paramilitary fighters out and revealing the vast looting and destruction left behind.

"The market's not what it used to be, but it's much better than when the RSF was here," said market vendor Adam Haddad, resting in the shade of an awning.

In the market's narrow, dusty alleyways, fruits and vegetables are piled high, on makeshift stalls or tarps spread on the ground.

- Two jobs to survive -

Khartoum, where entire neighborhoods were once under siege, is no longer threatened by the mass starvation that stalks battlefield cities and displacement camps elsewhere in Sudan.

But with the economy a shambles, a good living is still hard to provide.

"People complain about prices, they say it's too expensive. You can find everything, but the costs keep going up: supplies, labor, transportation," said Mohamed.

Sudan has known only triple-digit annual inflation for years. Figures for 2024 stood at 151 percent -- down from a 2021 peak of 358.

The currency has also collapsed, going from trading at 570 Sudanese pounds to the US dollar before the war to 3,500 in 2026, according to the black market rate.

One Sudanese teacher, who only a few years ago could provide comfortably for his two children, told AFP he could no longer pay his rent with a monthly salary of 250,000 Sudanese pounds ($71).

To feed his family, pay for school, and cover healthcare, he "works in the market or anywhere" on his days off.

"You have to have another job to pay for the bare minimum of basic needs," he said, asking for anonymity to protect his privacy.

For Adam Haddad, the road to recovery will be a long one.

"We don't have enough resources or workers or liquidity going through the market," he said, adding that reliable electricity was still a problem.

"The government is striving to restore everything, and God willing, in the near future, the power will return and Khartoum will become what it once was."