Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu vows Israel can ‘stand alone’ as he defies US threat to curb arms over Rafah

The draft resolution has been put forward by the UAE in its capacity as the Arab Group’s chair for the month, and includes a call for the Palestinians to be given new “rights and privileges” within the UN. Palestine has been a UN non-member observer state since 2012.

Israelis are ready to fight with their “fingernails”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said in a thinly veiled rebuff to US President Joe Biden’s warning that arms supplies could be withheld over a planned operation in Gaza.

Israel‘s long-threatened move against Rafah, where it says thousands of Hamas fighters and potentially dozens of the hostages they seized in a 7 October attack are ensconced among more than a million war-displaced Palestinians, began this week with the evacuation of some civilians followed by limited incursions.

The Biden administration has said it cannot support a major Rafah invasion in the absence of what it would deem a credible plan to safeguard non-combatants. Israel has said victory in the seven-month-old conflict is impossible without taking Rafah.

The Netanyahu government had kept silent over reports that Washington was holding back a shipment of aerial bombs – until, on Wednesday, Mr Biden went public with the measure, saying it was part of a US warning to the Israelis not to “go into Rafah”.

“If we must stand alone, we shall stand alone,” Netanyahu said without referring specifically to the US announcement.

“If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails,” he said in a video statement. “But we have much more than our fingernails, and with that strength of spirit, with God’s help, together we shall be victorious.”

Below are some of the latest photos coming from Gaza as Israel prepares for another offensive in the southern region of Rafah.

Spain, Ireland and other European Union member countries plan to recognise a Palestinian state on 21 May, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said.

His comments come ahead of an expected United Nations vote on Friday on a Palestinian bid to become a full member.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in March that Spain and Ireland, along with Slovenia and Malta, had agreed to take the first steps towards recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, seeing a two-state solution as essential for lasting peace.

Asked on local Spanish radio station RNE if 21 May was when Spain, Ireland and other EU countries would recognise a Palestinian state, Mr Borrell said yes, mentioning Slovenia as well.

“This is a symbolic act of a political nature. More than a state, it recognises the will for that state to exist,” he said, adding that Belgium and other countries would probably follow.

The United Nations General Assembly is set to back a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member today by recognising it as qualified to join and sending the application back to the UN Security Council to “reconsider the matter favourably”.

Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE said on Thursday that Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and Malta had been waiting for the UN vote and were considering a joint recognition on 21 May.

Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said earlier this week his country would recognise Palestine’s statehood by mid June.

Israel has said plans for Palestinian recognition constitute a “prize for terrorism” that would reduce the chances of a negotiated resolution to the Gaza conflict.

Since 1988, 139 out of 193 UN member states have recognised Palestinian statehood.

The main United Nations aid agency for Palestinians closed its headquarters in East Jerusalem after local Israeli residents set fire to areas at the edge of the sprawling compound, the agency said.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNWRA, said in a post on the social media platform X that he had decided to close the compound until proper security was restored. He said Thursday’s incident was the second in less than a week.

“This is an outrageous development. Once again, the lives of UN staff were at a serious risk,” he said.

“It is the responsibility of the State of Israel as an occupying power to ensure that United Nations personnel and facilities are protected at all times,” he said.

UNRWA, set up to deal with the Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 war around the time of Israel‘s creation, has long been a target of Israeli hostility.

Since the start of the war with Gaza Israeli officials have called repeatedly for the agency to be shut down, accusing it of complicity with the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, a charge the United Nations strongly rejects.

The two additional members of Israel’s war cabinet to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned they, too, support an ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip despite widespread condemnation from the country’s allies.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said his country “cannot be subdued” in a thinly-veiled retort to the US President Joe Biden saying he would suspend weapons shipments to Israel should they proceed with an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

“I turn to Israel’s enemies as well as to our best of friends and say – the State of Israel cannot be subdued,” Mr Gallant said in a speech. “We will stand strong, we will achieve our goals – we will hit Hamas, we will hit (Lebanon’s) Hezbollah, and we will achieve security.”

Former chief of the general staff Benny Gantz, in a message on X, formerly Twitter, said it was Israel’s duty to “keep fighting”.

“Israel has a duty, in terms of national security and morality, to keep fighting in order to return our hostages and end the Hamas threat against southern Israel,” he said. “And the United States has a moral and strategic duty to extend to Israel the tools that are necessary for this mission.”

Mr Gantz, Mr Gallant and Mr Netanyahu, who has been vocal about his support for a Rafah offensive, are the three core members of Israel’s war cabinet, convened after the Hamas attack on 7 October last year that killed 1,200 people and led to around 250 being taken hostage.

Israel is preparing to conduct an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah as its closest allies, inlcuding the US and the UK, call for a ceasefire.

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