Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming.
The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said. The ministers would require Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan, reports Reuters.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said, according to Reuters. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Palestinian Authority official said that the issue of whether the meeting in Ramallah would be able to go ahead was under discussion.
The move comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, due to be held in New York on 17-20 June to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French president Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognising a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity”.
Israel threatens Hamas with ’annihilation’ as Trump says Gaza ceasefire ‘very close’
Israel has said Hamas must accept a hostage deal in Gaza or “be annihilated”, as Donald Trump announced that a ceasefire agreement was “very close”.
It comes amid dire conditions on the ground, with the United Nations warning that Gaza’s entire population was at risk of famine.
Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported that on Friday, defence minister Israel Katz said Hamas must agree to a ceasefire proposal presented by US envoy Steve Witkoff or be destroyed, after the Palestinian militant group said the deal failed to satisfy its demands. However, Hamas said it was still considering the text.
“The Hamas murderers will now be forced to choose: accept the terms of the ‘Witkoff deal’ for the release of the hostages – or be annihilated,” said Katz.
Negotiations to end nearly 20 months of war in Gaza have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming operations in March after a short-lived truce.
In the US, the Trump told reporters “they’re very close to an agreement on Gaza”, adding: “We’ll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, food shortages in Gaza persist, with aid only trickling in after the partial lifting by Israel of a more than two-month blockade.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), called Gaza “the hungriest place on Earth”. He said:
It’s the only defined area – a country or defined territory within a country – where you have the entire population at risk of famine.
In other developments:
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Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), has described the difficulties faced by the UN in delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip as an “an operational straitjacket”. Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was “in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history”. Once truckloads entered Gaza, they were often “swarmed by desperate people”, he said.
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Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming. The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said.
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Israeli airstrikes have struck western Syria, the Israeli military and Syrian state media have said, and reportedly one civilian has been killed in the first such attack on the country in nearly a month. “A strike from Israeli occupation aircraft targeted sites close to the village of Zama in the Jableh countryside south of Latakia,” state television said.
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Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that Iran considers nuclear weapons “unacceptable”, reiterating the country’s longstanding position amid delicate negotiations with the United States. Iran has held five rounds of talks with the US in search of a new nuclear agreement to replace the deal with major powers Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
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The commander of Kurdish forces that control northeast Syria said on Friday that his group is in direct contact with Turkey and that he would be open to improving ties, including by meeting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.