SOME "ARROGANT" WORLD LEADERS HAVE TO BE REMINDED "WHO ARE THE ACTUAL LEADERS OF THE WORLD TODAY."
Serge Pierre-Pierre
Israel does not need US permission for fresh Gaza strikes, insists Netanyahu
Jotam Confino
Sun, October 26, 2025 at 11:51 AM EDT·4 min read
The statement follows questions about Israel being a ‘client state’ of the US - Ronen Zvulun
Israel does not need permission to launch strikes on Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister said his country’s security policy was in its “own hands” after suggestions Israel was a “client state” of the United States.
“We are not willing to tolerate attacks against us, we respond at our discretion against attacks, as we saw in Lebanon and recently in Gaza,” said Mr Netanyahu.
The Israeli leader was speaking after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched an attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which killed a commander in the group’s elite Radwan special forces unit on Sunday.
On the same day, the IDF launched an air strike in the Nuseirat area in central Gaza, killing what Israel said was a member of Islamic Jihad who had planned to carry out an “imminent” attack against Israeli troops.
‘We are not asking anyone for approval for this’
Mr Netanyahu said that Israel had dropped 150 tonnes of munitions on Hamas following an attack that killed two Israeli soldiers in Rafah last Sunday, which threatened to derail the US-mandated ceasefire.
“Of course we also thwart dangers in their formation before they materialise, as we did just yesterday in the Gaza Strip. We are not asking anyone for approval for this,” he added.
Mr Netanyahu also insisted Israel would determine which countries were allowed to contribute to an international stabilisation force to be set up to enforce the disarmament of Hamas.
There have been reports that Turkey is likely to be excluded from the stabilisation force after objections from Israel.
Mr Netanyahu added: “This is of course also acceptable to the United States, as its most senior representatives have expressed in recent days. Israel is an independent state.
“We will defend ourselves on our own and we will continue to control our own destiny.”
The IDF launched an air strike in the Nuseirat area in central Gaza on Sunday - Jehad Alshrafi/AP
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu was forced to deny that Israel had become a “client state” of the US, accusations that JD Vance, the US vice-president, also denied.
Speaking on his first visit to Israel, Mr Vance said: “We don’t want a client state, and that’s not what Israel is. We want a partnership. We want an ally here.”
Marco Rubio, America’s top diplomat, was also dispatched to Israel this week amid concerns that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire could collapse.
Speaking as he travelled to Doha, Qatar, on Saturday, Mr Rubio said: “Every night will bring new challenges on how to keep it together. So we recognise that, but we also feel like we’ve made tremendous progress in the last 12 or 13 days.”
Marco Rubio was dispatched to Israel this week amid concerns that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire could collapse - FADEL SENNA/POOL
Mr Netanyahu also reiterated his rejection of claims that Israel is acting at the behest of the United States, which he previously dismissed as “hogwash”.
“When I was in Washington, it was said there that I control the American administration, that I dictate its security policy to it. Now, the opposite is being claimed – the American administration controls me and dictates Israel’s security policy,” he said.
“Neither of these is true... The relations between us are relations between partners, and this partnership, which has reached an all-time high, was also expressed in the operational co-operation in the second part of Operation Rising Lion,” he added, referring to Israel’s war against Iran in June.
It comes after Donald Trump issued another warning to Hamas over the release of the remaining 13 deceased hostages.
The US president wrote on his Truth Social network: “Hamas is going to have to start returning the bodies of the deceased hostages, including two Americans, quickly, or the other countries involved in this gret peace will take action...
“Let’s see what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely.”
Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s top negotiator abroad, confirmed to Al Jazeera that “there will be an entry into new areas in the Strip today to search for the bodies of hostages.”
An Egyptian team, equipped with an excavator and bulldozers, also entered Gaza to help locate the bodies.
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Netanyahu stresses Trump does not 'control him,' dictate Israel's security policy
REUTERS AND JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Sun, October 26, 2025 at 10:09 AM EDT·2 min read
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Start of the Government Meeting on Sunday October 26th, 2025. (photo credit: GPO)
Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected claims that the US dictates Israeli security policy, saying Israel is a sovereign state that will decide which forces it works with.
Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that as a sovereign state, Israel would determine its security policy and which foreign forces to work with.
Netanyahu said, "Over the past month, we have been witnessing ridiculous claims regarding therelationship between the United States and Israel. When I was in Washington, it was said there that I controlled the American administration, that I dictated its security policy to it. Now, the opposite is being claimed – the American administration controls me and dictates Israel's security policy."
"Neither of these is true. Israel is an independent country; the United States is an independent country. The relations between us are relations between partners," he continued.
"We do not seek anyone's approval for this. 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 at the outset of a cabinet meeting.
"This is, of course, acceptable to the United States as well, as its most senior representatives have expressed in recent days."
US President Donald Trump seen with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (illustrative) (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK/NIMNETH X, YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
Ally, not protectorate
Netanyahu's insistence that Israel will act independently from the US comes days after US Vice President JD Vance made a similar statement while visiting Israel.
"We want Israel as an ally, and for the US to have less interest in the Middle East," Vance said to Netanyahu while discussing his hopes for expanding the Abraham Accords.
"In the last year, we've had an unmatched alliance and a partnership with the United States," Netanyahu went on, saying that Vance had impressed him with his visit. "That is changing the Middle East, and it's also changing the world."
"We are not an American protectorate," Netanyahu emphasized. "Israel will have the final say regarding her security."
"We don't want a protectorate," Vance responded, noting that he is "optimistic that the ceasefire will hold."
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Netanyahu says Israel will decide which foreign troops acceptable
Reuters Videos
Mon, October 27, 2025 at 3:30 AM EDT
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Israel insists it calls shots in Gaza despite truce
Dave Clark with AFP team in Gaza
Sun, October 26, 2025 at 3:46 PM EDT·5 min read
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are still living hand-to-mouth in makeshift tents alongside their ruined homes in Gaza, more than two weeks since the start of a US-brokered ceasefire (Bashar TALEB) (Bashar TALEB/AFP/AFP)
Israel insisted on Sunday that it will maintain control of security inside Gaza despite signing up to a US-brokered ceasefire that foresees the deployment of an international security force.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers Israel would decide for itself where and when to strike its foes and which countries would be allowed to send troops to police the truce.
"Israel is an independent state. We will defend ourselves by our own means and we will continue to determine our fate," Netanyahu said. "We do not seek anyone's approval for this. We control our security."
AFP footage showed an Egyptian convoy in Gaza bringing rescuers and heavy machinery to speed up the search for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages Hamas says are lost in the rubble of the devastated Palestinian territory.
Low-loader lorries flying the Egyptian flag transported bulldozers and mechanical diggers into Gaza, accompanied by tipper trucks sounding their horns and flashing their lights, en route to an Egyptian aid committee based in Al-Zawayda.
Israel government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said Netanyahu had personally approved the arrival of the Egyptian team.
"Now, this is a technical team only, and none of these personnel are in the military," she said.
"The team are allowed entry beyond the IDF's (Israel Defense Forces') Yellow Line position into Gaza territory to conduct the search for our hostages."
Under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire, as Israeli forces withdraw after the end of two years of brutal fighting against Hamas, an international force, expected to be drawn from mainly Arab or Muslim countries, is supposed to secure Gaza.
But Israel opposes any role for its regional rival Turkey and Netanyahu, under fire from hardliners in his own coalition for even agreeing the ceasefire, took a stern line on Sunday as government ministers met in Jerusalem.
"We made clear with respect to international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us," he said, one day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wound up the latest in a parade of high-level visits by Washington officials.
Later, Bedrosian put it more starkly: "The prime minister has said it's going to be done the easy way or the hard way, and Israel will have overall security control of the Gaza Strip."
"Gaza will be demilitarised and Hamas will have no part in governing the Palestinian people."
- 'Child's dream is gone' -
Aid agencies complain that humanitarian convoys still do not have enough access to Gaza to alleviate the famine conditions in parts of the territory, and families there are still going hungry.
AFP journalists followed the family of 62-year-old grandmother Hiam Muqdad for a day in their Gaza City neighbourhood, where they live in a tent next to their ruined home and her barefoot grandchildren gather domestic waste and twigs to burn to heat water.
"When they said there was a truce, oh my God, a tear of joy and a tear of sadness fell from my eye," Muqdad told AFP. "The child's dream is gone. In the past they used to go to the park but today children play on the rubble."
Israel has withdrawn its forces within Gaza to the so-called "Yellow Line" but remains in control of more than half the territory, approves every UN aid convoy going through its borders and has carried out at least two strikes since the ceasefire.
To underline Israel's independence of action, Netanyahu said it had pummelled Gaza with 150 tonnes of munitions on October 19 after two of its soldiers were killed, and had conducted a strike on Saturday targeting an Islamic Jihad militant.
The United States and allies have set up a truce monitoring centre in southern Israel -- the Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) -- and dispatched a string of top officials from President Donald Trump's administration to promote the ceasefire.
The latest Israeli strike came just as Rubio was leaving Jerusalem, but Washington's top diplomat said he remained optimistic the ceasefire would broadly hold if Hamas agrees to disarm and hand over the rule of Gaza.
Rubio told reporters that Washington did not expect the Yellow Line to become Gaza's new border and that Israel would eventually pull back.
"I think, ultimately, the point of the stabilisation force is to move that line until it covers hopefully all of Gaza, meaning all of Gaza will be demilitarised," Rubio told reporters on his plane as he flew to Qatar.
The main Palestinian factions, including Hamas, have agreed to form a committee of technocrats to administer Gaza alongside the ceasefire and reconstruction effort.
But Hamas has resisted calls for its immediate disarmament and has launched a crackdown on rival Palestinian gangs and armed groups in Gaza.
- Hostage recovery -
In a statement on Sunday, Hamas's lead negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya said the militant group's weapons are "linked to the presence of the occupation and aggression".
He added: "If the occupation ends, these weapons will be transferred to the state."
Hamas has insisted it is serious about returning the remaining 13 hostage bodies.
They include 10 Israelis kidnapped during the group's attack on October 7, 2023 that triggered the conflict, one Israeli missing since 2014, a Thai and a Tanzanian worker.
Hamas has already returned the remaining 20 living hostages and 15 bodies of hostages.
But Hamas warns it will struggle to find the bodies of the others in the ruins of Gaza, where more than 68,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, according to figures from the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory deemed reliable by the UN.
Bedrosian dismissed this, telling reporters: "Hamas knows where our hostages are," and adding the group needed to make more of an effort to retrieve the bodies.
burs-dc/jd/csp/jw
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Rubio, Netanyahu discuss Gaza peace, return of hostage remains in call before Doha meeting
JERUSALEM POST STAFF AND REUTERS
Sat, October 25, 2025 at 5:05 PM EDT·2 min read
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at his office in Jerusalem, October 23, 2025. (photo credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)
The leaders discussed the return of the remaining hostages and plans for Hamas disarmament.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on the phone after Rubio concluded his visit to Israel on Saturday evening.
The pair discussed the Gaza ceasefire and how to demilitarize Hamas.
The leaders also discussed the return of the remaining hostages.
Earlier on Saturday, Hamas gave indications that it could return the bodies of two slain hostages. However, the Gaza terror group promised the same thing on Friday and did not do so.
Palestinians seek aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in the central Gaza Strip, August 4, 2025. (credit: REUTERS/STRINGER)
US to speak with Doha on input for UN resolution on Gaza peace force
Rubio said earlier on Saturday that the US is getting input on a possible UN resolution or international agreement to authorize a multinational force in Gaza and will discuss the issue in Qatar on Sunday.
"Many of the countries that have expressed an interest in participating at some level, whether it be monetary or personnel or both, are going to need that (a UN resolution or international agreement) because their domestic laws require it," Rubio told reporters traveling on his plane between Israel and Qatar en route to Asia.
"So we have a whole team working on that outline of it."
During Netanyahu and Rubio's meeting on Thursday, the pair discussed how to advance the US-backed Gaza deal.
"Now we face days of destiny. We want to advance peace, we still have security challenges, but I think that we can work together, and by working together, both address the challenges and seize the opportunities, and plenty of both," Netanyahu said.
"We have more work ahead of us, but we feel very positive about it. We've been making good progress," Rubio said.
"No one is under any illusions. We've already done the impossible once. And we intend to keep doing that. And we can."
Up next
Opinion
NY's 17th District deserves leaders with moral clarity on Israel-Gaza conflict | Opinion
Effie Phillips-Staley
Mon, October 27, 2025 at 8:03 AM EDT·5 min read
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was a much-needed injection of hope and joy into a two-year conflict defined by cruelty and suffering. And while there are dismaying signs the truce is fraying, there is clear momentum toward reaching a permanent resolution. But if there is to be any hope for a lasting peace, it must be built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect.That requires truth and accountability for the atrocities the world has witnessed over the past two years and beyond.
It means recognizing Hamas’s decades of terror against Israelis and Palestinians alike, including the horrific attacks of Oct. 7 and the political violence Hamas is directing at this very moment against its own people. It means demanding accountability from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government for the expansion of illegal settlements, for the imprisonment of Palestinians without due process, and for the killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza. And it means voting out United States officials who ignored or justified the slaughter of innocent Gazans.
One of those officials is Rep. Mike Lawler.
Why does Lawler defend Netanyahu?
The two-term congressman has been one of Netanyahu’s loudest defenders for a brutal war that may be the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Lawler has ignored the fact that at least one in 10 Gazans have been killed or wounded, and many more have gone missing. He has ignored congressional attempts to prevent American tax dollars from funding attacks on innocent civilians. Lawler has consistently failed to recognize the humanity of Palestinians or acknowledge the severity of their suffering.
A drone view shows the destruction in a residential neighborhood, after the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, October 21, 2025.
Fueled by AIPAC money and a Trump-era contempt for empathy, Lawler doubled-down on violence in Gaza so widespread and extreme that the world is now forced to confront a deeply painful moral litmus test: the question of genocide. Half of American voters, and nearly 40% of American Jews, see Israel’s actions as a genocide — a once unthinkable accusation that is currently being adjudicated by the International Criminal Court. Hamas’s brutal assault on innocent civilians in 2023, the worst act of violence against Jews since the Holocaust, was rightly condemned worldwide as a crime against humanity. I grieve with my Jewish neighbors and family for the 1,200 Israelis who were viciously murdered, and for the hostages who were tortured and killed. I rejoiced in the return of surviving hostages to their families, and I applaud the efforts across New York and the United States to protect Jewish communities from the rising scourge of anti-Semitism.
The divisions this war has caused among friends and families, and across communities and nations, are deeply painful. When I speak to American Jews who oppose this war, I hear the anguish of those who carry the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust bearing witness first to the shocking horror of Oct. 7, then the brutal reprisals in Gaza carried out in Israel’s name.
As a candidate for Congress, I have been asked daily for my response to the horrors of this war and the use of American tax dollars to pay for it. Because long-term peace requires justice, every American in a position of authority should expect and demand accountability from Netanyahu and his far-right coalition for the killing of the innocent, and it has and should be demanded of Hamas.
But Lawler does not.
On Newsmax, Lawler said “Benjamin Netanyahu, the IDF and Mossad need to finish the job." These comments came after 115 international aid groups warned of widespread starvation in Gaza, writing that the Netanyahu government’s “restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.” At a speech at the Center for a New Middle East, Lawler mocked the idea of a Palestinian state. and stated “the world today is in a much better place, as shocking as that may seem to some… than it was prior to Oct. 7.” On the same day as his comments, five people in Gaza died of starvation and 41 others were killed by the Israeli military, including some who were seeking aid. Two weeks later, the United Nations detailed how Gazan children were “killed while sleeping, playing, queuing for food and water, and seeking medical care.”
Opinion: Are we capable of empathy? Or is it dying? And who cares?
The Hudson Valley deserves leadership with moral clarity
The people of the Hudson Valley and our nation deserve leaders in Congress with the capacity to defend Israel’s sovereignty while condemning the brutality of its leader. New York’s 17th Congressional District deserves a representative with the moral clarity to recognize the humanity of Palestinians at their moment of greatest suffering, and one with the courage to uphold U.S. laws meant to prevent the use of our tax dollars to fuel such violence in the first place. And we need a representative who can call the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women and children what they are: vile and inhumane. Instead, we have Lawler.
If the United States is to retain its global credibility, our leaders must be capable of speaking complex truths. We must stand unwaveringly for the protection of Israel’s future and the rights of Palestinians to equality, self-determination and sovereign statehood. We must demand truth and reconciliation because long-term peace requires it, and because cycles of violence are fueled by lies, denial, and dehumanization. Only leaders willing to recognize and fight for our common humanity through impartial justice can succeed at paving the path to a lasting peace. Donald Trump is not one of those leaders, and neither is Mike Lawler.
Effie Phillips-Staley is a trustee in the village of Tarrytown and a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 17th district.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mike Lawler Israel Hamas War | Opinion
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