Israel is furious and is threatening to respond. <\/p>\n
It sees the UN conference – along with recognition of a Palestinian state by the UK, France, Canada, Australia and others – as a reward for Hamas after its attack on Israel and its hostage taking of 7 October 2023. <\/p>\n
Some Israeli ministers want the response to be an announcement of annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, forever ruling out a viable Palestinian state on the territory. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, including far-right figures whose avowed policy is to expel Palestinians and build Jewish settlements in their place, is intent on pulling the plug on a two-state solution.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump’s administration continues to back its Israeli ally, rejecting the Europeans’ move, punishing Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.<\/p>\n
It barred him from attending the conference in New York and he spoke via video link instead. <\/p>\n
The Palestine conference and the Trump administration’s reaction marks the deepest ever split between Washington and its European allies over how to solve the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n
But the Europeans believe they have been left with little choice given the situation on the ground. <\/p>\n
Israel is now deploying a third army division into Gaza City, with dozens of Palestinians being killed every day; Hamas continues to hold nearly 50 hostages, many of them dead; while the West Bank is in the grip of Israeli settlement expansion and settler violence. <\/p>\n
All this nearly two years on from the 7 October attacks, with few signs that further military pressure will force the surrender by Hamas that Israel seeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel is furious and is threatening to respond. It sees the UN conference – along with recognition of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-155149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}