Netanyahu spurns Biden plea to call off Rafah assault in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spurned a plea from Joe Biden to call off a planned ground assault of Rafah, the last refuge in Gaza for more than a million displaced people, where Israel believes Hamas militants are holed up.

Netanyahu told lawmakers on Tuesday he had made it "supremely clear" to the U.S. president "that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there's no way to do that except by going in on the ground".

The two leaders spoke by phone on Monday. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington believed that storming Rafah would be a "mistake" and that Israel could achieve its military aims by other means.

U.S. and Israeli officials will likely meet early next week in Washington to discuss Israel's military operation in Rafah, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday, citing deep concern about reports of imminent famine in Gaza.

Jean-Pierre said Biden had asked Netanyahu to send a senior team of military, intelligence and humanitarian officials to Washington for comprehensive discussions in the coming days.

Washington has launched a new diplomatic push for a ceasefire in the nearly six-month-old war to free hostages and bring in food aid to ward off famine in the Palestinian enclave.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a trip to the Middle East in which he would meet senior leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to "discuss the right architecture for a lasting peace". Unusually, Blinken made no mention of a stop in Israel itself, and the Israeli foreign ministry said it had received no notification to prepare for one.

Late on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike on a major roundabout killed 30 people from groups that local clans had formed to secure the entry of aid trucks into Gaza City, Hamas media said. Hamas denounced the strike on groups protecting aid trucks as an effort to "spread chaos and security anarchy."

At the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike targeting a residential building with three floors killed at least 15 people, with some believed to be trapped under its rubble, Palestinian health officials said.

The Israel Defence Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the airstrikes.

In Rafah, dazed survivors walked through the ruins of a home on Tuesday morning, one of several buildings hit in overnight Israeli airstrikes that killed 14 people in the city, where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been pushed up against the southern border fence with Egypt.

At a nearby hospital morgue, relatives wailed beside corpses laid out on the cobbles. A woman peeled back a tiny bloodstained shroud to reveal the face of a small boy, rocking him back and forth in her arms.

"There’s U.S. support, European support and support of the whole world for Israel, they support them with weapons and planes," said one mourner, Ibrahim Hasouna. "They mock us and send four or five airdrops (of aid) just to save their faces."

The war was triggered when Hamas fighters crossed into Israel on a rampage on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Nearly 32,000 people have been confirmed killed in Israel's retaliatory onslaught, according to Palestinian health officials, with thousands more feared lost under the rubble.

The international hunger monitor IPC, relied on by the United Nations, said on Monday Gaza's food shortages had already far surpassed famine levels, and Gazans would soon be dying of hunger at famine-scale rates without a ceasefire.

Israel, which initially let in aid only via two checkpoints on Gaza's southern edge, denies blame for hunger in the enclave and says it is already opening new routes by land, sea and air.

It says the U.N. and other aid agencies should do more to bring in food and distribute it. The U.N. says that is impossible without better access and security, both of which it says are Israel's responsibility.

"The extent of Israel's continued restrictions on entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime," said U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence.

PEACE TALKS RESUME IN QATAR

Ceasefire talks are resuming this week in Qatar after Israel rejected a Hamas counter-proposal last week. An Israeli delegation headed by the country's spy chief travelled to Qatar on Monday, although an Israeli official said Israel believed any agreement would take at least two weeks to nail down.

Both sides have been discussing a six-week truce during which about 40 Israeli hostages would be freed in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees and aid would be rushed into the Gaza Strip.

But they have yet to narrow differences over what would follow the truce, with Israel saying it will negotiate only for a temporary pause in fighting, and Hamas saying it will not release hostages without a wider plan to end the war.

A Palestinian official close to the mediation talks told Reuters that the new round in Qatar was expected to be "very tough", accusing Israel of deliberate stalling.

Hamas said a senior police commander was killed in the Jabalia district of northern Gaza, along with his wife and children, in overnight airstrikes, the second senior police official killed in two days after another was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza City's Al Shifa hospital.

A third police chief was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in central Gaza's Al-Nuseirat later on Tuesday, Hamas media reported. Five people in all were killed in the attack, including children, Palestinian health officials said.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine's survival in danger, Pentagon chief warns

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday warned that Ukraine's survival was in danger and sought to convince allies that the United States was committed to Kyiv, even as Washington has essentially run out of money to keep arming Ukrainian forces.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to call a vote on a bill that would provide $60 billion more for Ukraine and the White House is scrambling to find ways to send assistance to Kyiv, which has been battling Russian forces for more than two years.

Austin is leading the monthly meeting known as the Ukraine defense contact group (UDCG), held at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, of about 50 allies that have supported Ukraine.

"Today, Ukraine's survival is in danger and America's security is at risk," Austin told a press conference after the meeting.

"I leave here today fully determined to keep U.S. security assistance and ammunition flowing. And that's a matter of survival and sovereignty for Ukraine and it's a matter of honor and security for America," he added.

Austin, who is traveling for the first time this year since prostate cancer treatment, did not say how Washington would support Ukraine without additional funding.

Officials say the lack of funding available is already having an impact on the ground in Ukraine, where Russian troops are advancing and Ukrainian forces are having to manage scarce resources.

"I think our allies are acutely aware of our funding situation and the Ukrainians more so than anyone because of the shortages that are resulting from us not being able to supply them," a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed to allies on Tuesday to supply more air defences, saying Russia had launched 130 missiles, more than 320 attack drones and almost 900 guided bombs in attacks this month alone.

AIR DEFENCE, UKRAINE'S PRIORITY

Speaking later in his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said air defence remained Ukraine's main concern and thanked participants for their efforts "so that this, our priority, is fulfilled in an appropriate manner".

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who attended the gathering, said on Telegram that participants "demonstrated their unity and resolve in helping Ukraine. Our forces are critically in need of ammunition. The ammo will be delivered!"

Last week, the Biden administration said it would send $300 million in military assistance to Ukraine, but added that it was an extraordinary move after unexpected savings from military contracts the Pentagon had made.

Officials have not ruled out that they could find additional savings, but they say that amount would not be enough to make up for the lack of Congressional action.

Experts say that Austin will face a skeptical audience in Europe.

"It's becoming harder and harder for U.S. leaders to travel to Europe, with the message that the United States is committed to Ukraine in the long-term," Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Europe Center in Washington, said.

"The message of this long-term financial, military, economic commitment flies in the face of the reality of what's happening on Capitol Hill."

At a joint press conference in Berlin on Friday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, whose ammunition-starved troops face their toughest battles since the early days of Russia's invasion two years ago.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced on Tuesday a 500 million euro ($543 million) aid package for Ukraine which includes 10,000 rounds of ammunition and said the United States was still a reliable partner.

"I have no doubt about the reliability of the Americans," Pistorius said. "There are particularities in the political systems, and we have to deal with that."

European support has become increasingly key with Biden unable to get a big Ukraine aid package through Congress, and much of his foreign policy energy is focused on the war in Gaza.

But U.S. officials say that the reality is that without the United States, European support for Ukraine will not be enough.

"There isn't a way that our allies can really combine forces to make up for the lack of U.S. support," the senior U.S. defense official said.

($1 = 0.9205 euros)

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

France preparing contingent of 2,000 troops to be sent to Ukraine — intelligence chief

The Russian side has information that France is preparing a military contingent of 2,000 troops to be sent to Ukraine, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin said.

"The current leadership of the country (France - TASS) does not care about the deaths of ordinary French people or about the concerns of the generals. According to information coming to the Russian SVR, a contingent to be sent to Ukraine is already being prepared. Initially, it will include around 2,000 troops," he said.

According to the Russian foreign intelligence chief, the French military "fears that such a large military unit cannot be transferred and stationed in Ukraine unnoticed."

"It will thus become a legitimate priority target for attacks by the Russian armed forces. This means that it will suffer the fate of all the French who have ever come to the Russian world with a sword," he stressed.

After a conference on Ukraine in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron did not unequivocally rule out potential sending Western land troops to the zone of the special military operation in Ukraine. He also vowed that Western states would "do what is needed" to prevent Russia’s victory in this conflict.

Reuters/Tass

  (Maestro with a Thousand Masks)  

                                    I

The last time we met
        Our laughter rang through the concert hall
The evening was young, with you readying up
        For a long expected show

Your crowd was large and young and old
        But their ageless longing
Rode the crest of the wind as you
        Swung and swayed in your purple moments

You sighted me from a distance
        Ploughed through the fold
To meet me in the threshold of
        Of a wide and busy door.

A warm embrace, then our customary question:
        “When shall we have the collabo?”*
A cryptic code over thirty years old
        Born when Songs of the Season

Made its first few outings
        On the tabloid platform
“A-niyee, those are good poems-
        We must aid their spread

With collaborative performance”. . . .
        The Generals’ iron grip undid our plan
But “collabo” survived with its conspiratorial abbreviation
        Now, alas, my Collabo Maestro has taken his last bow

                                    II

The Total Artist that you were/are
        That voice and the divinity of its honey
Its surprise-studded soprano
        Its clear command of reverence

The supple fluidity of your body
        When talkative drums sent
Your legs on errands and your hands
        Ruffled the rafters in their tender places

The smoothness of your motion
        The magic of your movement
When your maestro wonder burst the chart
        And Onilegogoro** roared into the clouds

That was when Highlife was high life
        And all Stars knew their niche
In the galaxy of celestial Lights
        Before the blinding blackout by Eating Chiefs

Then stage-centre
        In the measured melody of The Chattering
And the Song; Ovoramwe, regal victim
        Of imperial hubris; Elesin’s boundless bravura

And the deadly twilight of Kurumi’s*** uncanny courage….
        Light on, fade out, and black out
Your masks were many, the stage was your home
        The cyclorama loomed large behind your shadows

                                    III

Music and purposive mischief
        Talent and its tempting torture
That impatience with settled laws
        Which painted Liberty in lurid letters

You argued with the clock
        Queried old songs with new stanzas
Tutored ancient drums with daring steps
        As if your leg was the chosen stick

On their patient membrane.
        You chanted folklore into folklaw
Pressed idle Memory into busy banter
        Converted sleepy legends into urgent summons

Your eyes always on the young
        Who pampered ignorance into trendy fancy
Torturing native names into meaningless appellations
        Swearing in the temples of foreign gods

Songtime
        Storyland
How so valiant your striving to mend the leak
        To call on our Past to address our Future

Farewell, Olujimi Omo Solanke
        Tell the Langbodo forebears**** over there
Our feet are set on the increasingly steep climb
        Our eyes on the prize still beyond our gaze

—————-

* Three times Jimi and I tried to meet and plan the collaboration, but our effort was thwarted each time by disruptions caused by the military juntas that had Nigeria in their stranglehold in that period.

** A chartbuster highlife record by Roy Chicago in the sixties. Jimi Solanke was reputed to have authored  the lyrics.

***  Reference to four important plays that had Jimi Solanke as main feature: “The Chattering and the Song”, a stupendously lyrical play by Femi Osofian; “Ovoramwen Nogbaisi” and “Kurumi”  by Ola Rotimi; “Death and the King’s Horseman” by Wole Soyinka.

**** Langbodo forebears: the late D.O. Fagunwa and Wale Ogunyemi: the former’s fiction gave us Oke Langbodo, while the latter used it as both trope and title for a pan-Nigerian, pan-African epic drama.

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans. 

PT

A majority of people, 95%, intend to look for a new job this year, according to a January 2024 survey by jobsite Monster. And many anticipate it will be challenging. More than half, 68% say they think it will be difficult to find one given the state of the economy.

While finding work opportunities can be challenging, there are ways to conduct yourself that could make doing so even harder.

“There’s something called validation seeking behavior, aka desperation,” says Lindsay Mustain, a former Amazon recruiter and current CEO of career coaching company Talent Paradigm. She adds that “it’s that ‘pick me’ energy that actually repels the opportunity.”

Here’s how to avoid giving it off.

Don’t apply to a company over and over

First, avoid applying to jobs in the company over and over again, especially in a short period of time.

If Mustain sees that “you’ve applied 20 times in the last two years and we’ve never hired you once,” she says, that’s a red flag. She immediately thinks, “something’s wrong with that candidate for them to have not been hired by this point.”

Regardless of how much of a fit you might be for the job, a recruiter’s likely not going to take the time to investigate your candidacy further.

“This is how you can kind of get blacklisted,” she says. Try to limit your internal applications to a maximum of five roles that you closely align with in the company.

Don’t use LinkedIn’s ‘open to work’ banner

Another red flag for a recruiter: the “open to work” banner on LinkedIn.

Just by putting up that one signal on the site, “we already know that you need something,” says Mustain. It means that you might not be as picky when it comes to your job opportunities, that you might not be moving your career forward in a measured way that helps you build skills and get better.

“It reduces the appearance of being a high caliber candidate,” she says. Plus, it changes the dynamic in a conversation with a hiring manager. Now, they’re not trying to convince you of a great job opportunity because they want you at the company. Instead, you’re trying to convince them to consider you.

Nolan Church, CEO of talent marketplace Continuum and ex-Google recruiter, agrees. Using the banner “actually feels to a hiring manager like desperation,” he previously told CNBC Make It.

“It’s kind of like asking for a handout on the corner,” says Mustain.

Don’t show up ‘very wounded and hurt’ on social media

Finally, if you’re unemployed, don’t post your unemployment status on social media, especially if you’re inclined to do so from a place of hurt. Mustain gives the example of a post like the following:

“I just got laid off and I have two kids at home and I really need another job, like, as soon as possible. So if you could please introduce me to every person that you know that has a possible opening, I would be so grateful.”

Though sad and a cause for sympathy, people who post like statuses are “showing up very wounded and hurt,” she says. They’re “bleeding out on social media.” Ultimately, they’re showing a weakness in a similar way to people who include the “open to work” banner on their LinkedIn profiles. It’s clear they need something.

A post like that “repels people because they’re not coming from a place of strength,” says Mustain.

Instead, if you’ve been laid off and want to signal to the world that you’re looking for new opportunities, try framing the situation as a new beginning or a chance for growth and sharing concrete examples of your past contributions and successes. You can also share what you’ve learned and how your experiences have equipped you for future challenges. All of this “demonstrates adaptability and a forward-looking mindset to potential employers,” she says.

Remember, “you don’t need any job,” says Mustain. “You want a good job.”

CNBC

Nigeria’s total imports grew to N35.9tn in 2023, from N25.5tn recorded in 2022, according to data by the National Bureau of Statistics.

A breakdown of the data showed that in the first and second quarters of 2023, total imports were N6.4tn. It increased to N9tn in the third quarter and again to N14tn in the fourth quarter.

By volume, manufactured imports topped the chart with imports worth N18.3tn. Agric imports N2.2tn while imports of raw materials totalled N3tn.

On the other hand, Nigeria was able to churn out exports worth N35.9tn. However much of these were under the category of crude oil which constituted N29tn while exports of other oil products were N3.5tn.

Agricultural exports were N1.2tn while manufactured goods exported outside Nigeria totalled N778bn.

This means that Nigeria recorded a balance of trade of –N1tn in the agricultural sector and a staggering –N17.5tn in the manufacturing sector.

Speaking with our correspondent, Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Muda Yusuf blamed naira depreciation for the significant increase in exports on a year-on-year basis.

He said, “I think it is because of the naira depreciation. If you are importing something that was $1m when the exchange rate was N450, now you are importing products worth $1m and the exchange rate is N1,500.

“That is three times already if you multiply it in naira. So, in dollar terms, it is possible that the import has even reduced. We have to consider that.”

According to NBS data, the total non-oil export of Nigeria in 2019 (the highest in recent times) was just about $9.13bn.

While presenting a paper at an event organised by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Director-General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Segun Ajayi-Kadir said Nigeria has not done well in global export trade as it ranked 52nd among nations.

He added that the country has also not done well domestically in terms of the share of non-oil and manufactured exports to total exports.

He listed factors militating against exports including the high cost of local and imported raw materials, insecurity across the country, including industrial areas, dearth of skilled manpower.

Others include high cost of transportation, forex instability and deterioration in exchange rate, inadequate access to funds/high-interest rates on commercial bank loans

He said, “However, the discovery of crude oil brought a shift that made the country majorly depend on the oil sector to the neglect of other sectors.

“This made the economy susceptible to fluctuations in revenue, occasioned by the usual instability associated with the prices of crude oil in the international market.”

In January, the Executive Director of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Nonye Ayeni, while addressing the media on the performance report of the non-oil export sector for 2023, said the value of Nigeria’s non-oil export revenue recorded a marginal decrease to $4.5bn.

The drop represents a $300m or 6.3 per cent decline from the $4.8bn revenue accrued to government coffers in 2022 and $500m less than the $5bn target set by the council for the year.

She said, “In 2022, there was a $4.8bn in terms of value. And in 2023, there was a marginal decline to $4.5bn. But we got an increase in the volume of exports. In 2023, we had 6.68, million metric tons of manufactured, semi-processed, solid minerals to agricultural commodities.”

Explaining reasons for the decline, Nonye blamed the weak poor exchange rate, the surge in informal trade, political instability in neighbouring countries and export rejection amongst others.

Punch

The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has ordered Binance Holdings Limited to release to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, a comprehensive detail of all persons from Nigeria trading on its platform.

Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange platform that lists more than 350 digital currencies, which serve as alternative form of payment, using encryption algorithms.

The government had earlier asked Binance for information on its top 100 users in the country, as well as all transaction history for the past six months.

Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Olayemi Cardoso, had on February 27, disclosed that about $26 billion passed through Binance from unidentified sources.

In an abrupt move on March 8, the crypto firm discontinued all transactions in naira on its exchange platform, following reports that the government demanded $10bn as retribution for profiting from “its illegal transactions” in Nigeria.

However, in an ex-parte motion it filed before the court, the EFCC said it would need detailed data of Binance users in the country to aid its ongoing investigation on issues relating to money laundering and terrorism financing.

The ex-parte motion, marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/259/2024, was filed pursuant to Sections 6(b), (h), (I), 7(1), (a)(2), and 38 of the Economic and Financial Crimes Establishment Act, 2004 and Section 15 of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022 (as amended) and the inherent powers of the court.

Vanguard

MainOne, a West African digital infrastructure service provider, says there is stability on its network across the region.

In a statement on Monday, the service provider said it worked with regional partners last week and over the weekend to reroute traffic with restoration capacity.

“We worked with regional partners late last week and over the weekend to reroute traffic with restoration capacity and our observations are that we have stability on our network across the region this morning,” MainOne said.

These developments, it said, represent a significant milestone to ensure continued connectivity for the West African business community.

However, MainOne said repair is still ongoing and it is actively working with its maintenance partners, vessel owners and permitting authorities to expedite the restoration of the subsea cable.

It expressed optimism that the cable will be repaired as planned and services fully restored, so it can continue to operate with continued integrity of the submarine cable.

“We want to assure the West African business community and the public that the region remains open for business,” MainOne said.

On March 14, subsea cable providers were affected by major cuts to undersea submarine cables, disrupting internet traffic in major parts of the continent.

Speaking on the cause of the network outage, MainOne said findings showed the fault occurred due to an external incident that resulted in a cut on its submarine cable system in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the coast of West Africa.

The Cable

Gunmen have kidnapped around 100 people, including women and children, in two weekend attacks in Kaduna state, residents and police said on Monday.

Kidnappings by criminal gangs demanding ransoms have become an almost daily occurrence in Nigeria, especially in the north, with authorities seemingly powerless to stop them.

Kaduna police spokesperson Mansur Hassan confirmed the incident in Kajuru Station village on Sunday night but could not give a figure on those missing. He said security agents had been deployed to rescue the villagers.

Tanko Wada Sarkin, a village head, said 87 people were taken.

"We have so far recorded the return of five people back home who fled through the bush. This attack makes it five times that these bandits are attacking this community," he told Reuters by phone.

Residents said armed men dressed in army uniform arrived in the village undetected because they had parked their motorbikes away from the village.

Aruwa Ya'u, another resident, said he was captured but released by the gunmen because he struggled to walk due to poor health. He was receiving treatment at a local government clinic, he said.

Gunmen are known to force-march their victims deep into the bush, holding them for up to months while awaiting ransom payments.

The abductions come after an armed gang seized 286 students and staff from a school in early March in Kuriga in Kaduna state and gunmen seized 61 people on March 12 in Buda community.

In Dogon Noma, another community in Kajuru local government area, gunmen abducted 16 people from their homes in an attack on Saturday night, residents said.

Local resident Daniel Shamang said they had not heard anything from the abductors or the missing villagers.

Kidnappings at schools in Nigeria were first carried out by jihadist group Boko Haram, who seized more than 200 students from a girls' school in Chibok in Borno state a decade ago.

But the tactic has since been adopted by criminal gangs without any ideological affiliation seeking ransom payments.

The kidnappings are tearing apart families and communities who have to pool their savings to pay the ransoms, often forcing them to sell prized possessions like land, cattle and grain to secure the release of captured loved ones.

Reuters

Netanyahu agrees to send Israeli officials to Washington to discuss prospective Rafah operation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to discuss with Biden administration officials a prospective Rafah operation as each side is looking to make “clear to the other its perspective,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

The agreement to hold talks about Rafah came as Biden and Netanyahuspoke Monday, their first interaction in more than a month, as the divide has grown between allies over the food crisis in Gaza and Israel’s conduct during the war, according to the White House. Sullivan said the talks will happen in the coming days and are expected to involve military, intelligence and humanitarian experts.

The White House has been skeptical of Netanyahu’s plan to carry out an operation in the southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, as Israel looks to eliminate Hamas following the militant group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack.

Sullivan said Biden in the call once again urged Netanyahu not to carry out a Rafah operation. At the coming talks, he said U.S. officials will lay out “an alternative approach that would target key Hamas elements in Rafah and secure the Egypt-Gaza border without a major ground invasion.”

“The president has rejected, and did again today, the straw man that raising questions about Rafah is the same as raising questions about defeating Hamas,”Sullivan said. “That’s just nonsense. Our position is that Hamas should not be allowed a safe haven in Rafah or anywhere else, but a major ground operation there would be a mistake. It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza and further isolate Israel internationally.”

The call comes after Republicans in Washington and Israeli officials were quick to express outrage after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sharply criticized Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza and called for Israel to hold new elections. They accused the Democratic leader of breaking the unwritten rule against interfering in a close ally’s electoral politics.

Biden hasn’t endorsed Schumer’s call for election but said he thought he gave a “good speech” that reflected the concerns of many Americans. Netanyahu raised concerns about the calls by Schumer for new elections, Sullivan said.

Biden administration officials have warned that they would not support an operation in Rafah without the Israelis presenting a credible plan to ensure the safety of innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel has yet to present such a plan, according to White House officials.

Netanyahu in a statement after the call made no direct mention of the tension.

“We discussed the latest developments in the war, including Israel’s commitment to achieving all of the war’s goals: Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never (again) constitutes a threat to Israel — while providing the necessary humanitarian aid that will assist in achieving these goals,” Netanyahu said.

The Biden-Netanyahu call also came as a new report warned that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza, where 70% of the remaining population is experiencing catastrophic hunger, and that a further escalation of the war could push around half of Gaza’s population to the brink of starvation. The report came from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a partnership of more than a dozen governments, U.N. aid and other agencies that determines the severity of food crises.

Netanyahu lashed out against the American criticism on Sunday, describing calls for a new election as “wholly inappropriate.”

Netanyahu told Fox News Channel that Israel never would have called for a new U.S. election after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he denounced Schumer’s comments as inappropriate.

“We’re not a banana republic,” he said. “The people of Israel will choose when they will have elections, and who they’ll elect, and it’s not something that will be foisted on us.”

Even as they express frustration about aspects of the Israeli operations, the White House acknowledges that Israel has made significant progress in degrading Hamas. And Sullivan revealed on Monday that an Israeli operation last week killed Hamas’ third in command, Marwan Issa.

“The president told the prime minister again today that we share the goal of defeating Hamas, but we just believe you need a coherent and sustainable strategy to make that happen,” Sullivan said.

Biden after his State of the Union address earlier this month was caught on a hot mic telling a Democratic ally that he has told Netanyahu they would have a “come to Jesus” meeting over the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. His frustration with Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war was also on display in a recent MSNBC interview, in which he asserted Netanyahu was “hurting Israel.”

“He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas,” Biden said of Netanyahu in the MSNBC interview. “But he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken. He’s hurting ... in my view, he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”

The president announced during his State of the Union address that the U.S. military would help establish a temporary pier aimed at boosting the amount of aid getting into the territory. The U.S. military has also been air-dropping aid into Gaza.

The Biden administration resorted to the unusual workarounds after months of appealing to Israel, a top recipient of military aid, to step up access and protection for trucks bearing humanitarian goods for Gaza.

The five-month war was triggered after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack, rampaging through communities, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking around 250 hostages.

Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructivemilitary campaigns in recent history. The war has killed over 31,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and a quarter of the population faces starvation.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

China to boycott Ukraine peace talks without Russia – Politico

China will boycott the talks to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict unless Moscow will have a seat at the table, Politico magazine reported on Monday, citing officials familiar with the matter. 

According to Politico, the message was “amplified” during Chinese Eurasia envoy Li Hui’s European tour earlier this month. During his March 7 trip to Kiev, Li met with Andrey Yermak, chief of staff of President Vladimir Zelensky.

Ukraine will likely be discussed during German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to China next month. Chinese President Xi Jinping will then travel to Paris in early May and meet his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Politico said.

The South China Morning Post reported this month that Li told EU officials that a potential peace summit cannot turn into “a conference that produces a plan that is pushed down the Russians’ throat.” 

Unlike many Western countries, China has refused to blame Russia for the ongoing conflict and stressed that the fighting can only be stopped through diplomatic means. In 2023, Beijing unveiled a 12-point roadmap to a peace settlement, urging both sides to de-escalate. Kiev has since rejected the Chinese proposal.

Ukraine insists that a tangible peace can only be negotiated on Zelensky’s terms, which include the withdrawal of Russian forces from the “illegally occupied” territory of Ukraine. Moscow has rejected this demand as a non-starter, stressing that it will not surrender Crimea and four other former Ukrainian regions that joined Russia after holding referendums on the matter.

Meaningful negotiations between Moscow and Kiev effectively broke down in the spring of 2022, with both sides accusing each other of making unrealistic demands. Russian President Vladimir Putin subsequently said that Ukrainian negotiators had initially agreed to some of Russia’s terms, but then abruptly reneged on the deal. 

Kiev’s lead negotiator David Arakhamia revealed in November 2023 that his team’s main goal was to “buy time” for the Ukrainian military.

Switzerland has proposed to host a major peace summit sometime this year. However, no specific date has been yet set, and no list of potential participants has been revealed. 

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian shelling kills four family members in Russia's Belgorod, governor says

Four people were killed in Ukrainian shelling of the village of Nikolskoye in Russia's Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, the local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Monday.

Gladkov, writing on Telegram, also said that air defence units in his region had downed eight airborne objects late in the evening. There were no injuries but falling debris damaged roofs on industrial sites and homes.

In his account of the shelling deaths, Gladkov said that the victims - a couple, a grandmother and a boy of 17 - were killed when their house took a direct hit. He said a girl survived and was in intensive care.

Attacks on Belgorod have taken place frequently since 2022, but escalated in recent months, with 25 people killed in a single incident in late December. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Russian attacks.