Netanyahu | Pakistan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the country’s president on Sunday for a pardon in his long-running corruption trial, arguing that criminal proceedings were hindering his ability to govern and a pardon would be good for Israel. Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, denies the bribery, fraud, and breach of trust charges. His lawyers said in a letter to the president’s office that the prime minister still believes the legal proceedings would result in a complete acquittal. “My lawyers sent a request for pardon to the president of the country today. I expect that anyone who wishes for the good of the country [will] support this step,” Netanyahu said in a brief video statement released by his political party, the Likud. Neither the prime minister, who has been on trial for five years, nor his lawyers made any admission of guilt. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said Netanyahu should not be pardoned without admitting guilt, expressing remorse, and immediately retiring from political l...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called for Hamas to be expelled from the region, a day after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) endorsed United States President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan that offers the Palestinian group amnesty. Netanyahu publicly endorsed the plan during a White House visit in late September. However, his latest remarks appear to show that there are differences with the US on the path forward. Hamas has also objected to parts of the plan. Diplomats say privately that entrenched positions on both the Israeli and Hamas sides have made it difficult to advance the plan, which lacks specific timelines or enforcement mechanisms. Still, it has received strong international backing, including from the Arab and Muslim countries that worked on it. Netanyahu on Tuesday published a series of posts on X in response to the UN vote. In one post, he applauded Trump and in another wrote the Israeli government believes the plan would lead to peace and prosperity because it calls f...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday Israel would determine which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in Gaza to help secure a fragile ceasefire under US President Donald Trump’s plan. It remains unclear whether Arab and other states will be ready to commit troops, in part given the refusal of Hamas to disarm as called for by the plan, while Israel has voiced concerns about the make-up of the force. While the Trump administration has ruled out sending US soldiers into the Gaza Strip, it has been speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Azerbaijan to contribute to the multinational force. “We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate,” Netanyahu said. “This is, of course, acceptable to the United States as well, as its most senior representatives have expressed i...

With no majority in parliament and surrounded by allies outraged by his acceptance of a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have set his sights on Israel’s next elections. A political phoenix, Netanyahu is the country’s longest-serving prime minister, has been its dominant political figure for decades and heads one of the most right-wing coalitions in Israel’s history. But he does not hold an absolute parliamentary majority after an ultra-Orthodox party quit in July, protesting against the government’s failure to pass a law to exempt its community from military service. The summer parliamentary recess came at just the right time to shield the government, which now holds just 60 of 120 seats, from motions of no confidence. But the resumption of the Knesset’s work on October 20 heralded the return of transactional politics and potential threats for the government. Under pressure from US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas that came into effect on...

COPENHAGEN: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Saturday that Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has become a “problem”, adding she would try to put pressure on Israel over the Gaza conflict as her country currently holds the EU presidency. “Netanyahu is now a problem in himself,” Frederiksen said in an interview with the Jyllands-Posten daily, adding that the Israeli government was going “too far”. She also criticised Israel over plans to build a new settlement in the occupied West Bank. She described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as absolutely appalling and catastrophic. Frederiksen added that she wa­­nted to consider “political pressure, sanctions, whether against settlers, ministers, or even Israel as a whole”, referring to trade or research sanctions. Israeli strikes kill 39 more in Gaza City “We are not ruling anything out in advance. Just as with Russia, we are designing the sanctions to target where we believe they will have the greatest effect,” added Frederiksen, whose country is not...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday confirmed his country’s role in providing support to India during Operation Sindoor in May, when India attacked Pakistani sites under the guise of targeting “terrorists”. The nuclear-armed rivals exchanged artillery, drone and air strikes in May, after India, without evidence, blamed Pakistan for a deadly attack on tourists in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam. The four-day confrontation came to an end when US President Donald Trump announced a surprise ceasefire. In a post on X, Netanyahu announced that he met the Indian ambassador to Israel, JP Singh, in Jerusalem today, where the pair “discussed strengthening and expanding cooperation between Israel and India, particularly in the fields of security and economics”. “Afterward, I held a meeting with a group of senior journalists from India and answered their questions,” the Israeli leader wrote. According to Indian television channel NDTV, Netanyahu confirmed the use of Israeli weapons during India’s military o...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, presenting the US president with a letter he sent to the prize committee. The move comes as Israel continues its onslaught on Gaza, which has so far killed 57,523 Palestinians. Last year, the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court said he, along with ex-defence minister Yoav Gallant, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival”, including food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity. “He’s forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other,” Netanyahu said at a dinner with Trump at the White House. View this post on Instagram Trump has received multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations from supporters and loyal lawmakers over the years and has made no secret of his irritation at missing out on the...

Public pressure grows on Netanyahu for Gaza ceasefire, dividing his coalition as some ministers back the move

President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out at prosecutors in Israel over the corruption trial that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced, saying Washington, having given billions of dollars worth of aid to Israel, was not going to “stand for this”. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust - all of which he denies. The trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases. “It is INSANITY doing what the out-of-control prosecutors are doing to Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding that the judicial process was going to interfere with Netanyahu’s ability to conduct talks with Palestinian militants Hamas, and Iran. Trump’s second post over the course of a few days defending Netanyahu and calling for the cancellation of the trial went a step further to tie Israel’s legal action to US aid. “The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar [sic] a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We ...

For years, allies and adversaries alike have ridiculed Benjamin Netanyahu as the boy who cried wolf. The far-right hardliner has long been haunted by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb, decrying that Tehran is just “weeks away” from such a weapon for over three decades now. A poster boy for genocide, he may be, it takes a man of a certain skillset to be able to be taken seriously after being so wrong for so long. Despite his faulty calculus, Netanyahu never really let up. From infamously waving a cartoon sketch of an Iranian bomb at the UN in 2012 to privately lobbying Western leaders into a broader military entanglement with Ayetollahs, the Israeli premier has long prized a war with Iran as the crown jewel of his sordid legacy. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu infamously points to a cartoon sketch of a nuclear bomb at the UN in 2012. — Reuters So when he finally signed off on a series of “pre-emptive strikes” that looked to target Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and military brass in the early hours of Friday, ...

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it. Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab. The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks”. Knesset member and former defence minister Avigdor Liberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu’s direction, was “giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons”. Popular Forces outfit denies being ‘a tool of the occupation’ “What did Liberman leak? That security sources activated a clan in Gaza that opposes Hamas? What is bad about that?” Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday. Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestin...

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief and the younger brother of the Palestinian liberation group’s deceased leader, Yahya Sinwar, had been killed. Mohammad Sinwar had been the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza earlier this month and Netanyahu said on May […]