al jazeera

By Lyndal Rowland
    Diplomatic sources have told Al Jazeera that Hamas’s negotiating team is studying US President Trump’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza.
   Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he agreed to the plan in a news briefing with Trump at the White House, as Israeli forces continued to escalate attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 39 people on Monday.
   Palestinians in Gaza have said the plan raises many questions, including what a proposed international stabilisation force for the enclave might look like.
   The plan has been welcomed by several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Italy, France and the United Kingdom, as well as the Palestinian Authority.
   Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 66,055 people and wounded 168,346 since October 2023. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and about 200 were taken captive.

Netanyahu meets pro-Israel influencers in US, hopes TikTok sale ‘goes through’

    The Israeli Prime Minister has met with a group of pro-Israel influencers in New York, telling them that he hopes the “purchase” of TikTok “goes through”.

    “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media,” Netanyahu told the influencers.

    “The most important purchase that is going on right now is  … TikTok,” Netanyahu added. “TikTok, number one, number one, and I hope it goes through, because it can be consequential.”

    Billionaire supporters of Trump, including Larry Ellison and Lachlan Murdoch are reportedly involved in bids to put the Chinese video sharing app, which has been perceived as encouraging pro-Palestinian content, into US hands.

    Netanyahu also said that X is important, noting: “We have to talk to Elon [Musk]. He’s not an enemy. He’s a friend. We should talk to him.”

    The Israeli leader’s comments came as the Jewish Council for Public Affairs published a report on Monday finding that over 679,000 posts spreading anti-Semitism were shared on the X platform between February 2024 and January 2025.

Potential Gaza ‘board of peace’ to include Iraq war ‘architect’ Tony Blair: Analyst

    Al Jazeera spoke with Palestinian-American political analyst Omar Baddar earlier about the Trump plan for Gaza.

    Here’s more of what he had to say:

    “Certainly, Netanyahu’s coalition would not be happy with the prospect that Gaza is not going to be taken over. This is what his coalition has been talking about for a very long time,” Baddar told Al Jazeera.

    “So putting an end to those dreams is certainly going to be a tough sell,” Baddar said.

    “I think that Netanyahu inserted language in there that ensures indefinite Israeli dominance of Gaza because he knows that is going to make it very likely for Palestinians to actually reject that prospect,” he said.

    “When you are looking at the elements of who could govern Gaza, we are having an entire conversation about a so-called ‘board of peace’, that is going to include people like Tony Blair and Donald Trump. Those are people with records that are frankly nothing short of criminal towards the region,” he said.

    Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined the US in its attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein , was an “architect of the invasion of Iraq and the lies that it was based on, and the lives that were destroyed as a result”, Baddar said.

    And Trump has endorsed illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s illegal takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights, and the granting of Palestine’s Jerusalem over to Israel; “just one atrocity after another”, he said.

Israeli attack kills three members of the same family in southern Gaza

    A source at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza has told Al Jazeera that three members of the same family were killed in an Israeli air attack on a tent where displaced people were sleeping, in Khan Younis.

    Israeli forces have continued their attacks on the Gaza Strip overnight, with artillery shelling also reported in Gaza City and a bombing that injured five people in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

    We’ll bring you more soon.

Trump’s Gaza proposal contains ‘poison pill’ of continued occupation of Gaza territory

    Omar Baddar, a Palestinian-American political analyst based in Washington DC, said it was difficult to assess at this point the likely Hamas response to the proposed Trump plan for Gaza.

    There are some good points in the plan, such as language excluding the possibility of annexation of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of its population by Israel.

    However, there was still a “poison pill” in the proposed deal.

    “Which basically says that Israel gets to indefinitely occupy a so-called security perimeter inside Gaza with no timeline for withdrawal and, basically, Israel gets to decide on its own when it might feel like leaving, which might in fact never happen,” Baddar said.

    “Palestinians are being asked, once again, to live as a captive population under complete and total Israeli control and domination with no prospect for being a free people in their own country,” he said.

    “And that is simply a recipe for long-term failure. It is difficult to imagine what incentive Hamas has to accept that in the short term, despite what I am sure is enormous diplomatic pressure against them”.

US Congress members tell Secretary of State Rubio to protect Gaza aid flotilla

    US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has signed a letter along with 18 other members of Congress demanding the Trump administration ensure the safe passage of the Global Sumud flotilla.

    In a post on social media, Tlaib – who made history by being the first woman of Palestinian descent when first elected to the US Congress in 2019 – said the flotilla is bringing humanitarian aid to Palestinians starved to death by Israel in Gaza and it must be “fully protected” from attack.

    The flotilla has already come under attack on at least three occasions, the lawmakers said in their joint letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday.

    “The law is clear: any attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla or its civilian crew is a clear and blatant violation of international law,” the lawmakers tell Rubio.

    “The United States has an obligation to protect its citizens from foreign attack. We call on you to deter any further hostile actions against the flotilla and ensure the successful completion of its humanitarian mission,” they add.