Israel’s Gaza City plan is killing prospect of peace in Middle East, says Jordan

 

Israel’s Gaza City plan is killing prospect of peace in Middle East, says Jordan

 

Criticism adds to international outrage over Israel’s plans for new Gaza offensive and West Bank settlements

 

Peter Beaumont

Wed 20 Aug 2025 15.03 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/israel-is-killing-prospect-of-peace-in-the-middle-east-says-jordans-foreign-minister

 

Israel is “killing all prospects” for peace in the Middle East, Jordan’s foreign minister has said amid escalating international outrage over Israel’s plans for a new large-scale offensive in Gaza City and its intention to massively expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

 

Ayman Safadi made his remarks during a visit to Moscow on the same day that the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, approved a plan to conquer Gaza City, an urban area that is home to hundreds of thousands of people in the north of the Palestinian territory.

 

Echoing the sentiment, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said that the proposed new Gaza offensive would lead to “true disaster” and drag the region into “permanent war”.

 

Katz’s announcement, which will lead to the mobilisation of an extra 60,000 Israeli troops, was also condemned by Germany, historically one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe, which said it “rejects the escalation” of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

 

Germany said it found it “increasingly difficult to understand how these actions will lead to the freeing of all the hostages, or to a ceasefire”, the government spokesperson Steffen Meyer told reporters.

 

Katz announced that he had approved the plan to conquer Gaza City despite the decision earlier this week by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza to accept a ceasefire proposal which in most of its most significant details aligns with a proposal already previously agreed by Israel. Israel has yet to formally respond.

 

Separately on Wednesday, Israel announced that plans to build a large new illegal settlement block had been approved. The block would split the West Bank into two with the deliberate intention – according to far-right finance minster, Bezalel Smotrich – of killing off any prospect of the establishment of a Palestinian state.

 

Amid credible evidence that Israel’s policies in Gaza have led to conditions of mass starvation, and accusations of genocide, Israel has doubled down on its defiance of outraged international opinion that it is threatening to turn Israel into a pariah state, even as a growing number of countries have said they plan to recognise Palestinian statehood.

 

The new call-up of 60,000 reservists and extension of the service for an additional 20,000 Israeli troops took place days after hundreds of thousands in the country rallied for a ceasefire.

 

A growing campaign of exhausted reservists has accused the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home remaining hostages.

 

The families of the hostages and former army and intelligence chiefs have also expressed opposition to the expanded operation in Gaza City. Most of the families of the hostages want an immediate ceasefire and worry an expanded assault could imperil efforts to bring home the 50 hostages still in Gaza. Israel believes that 20 are still alive.

 

A military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said that troops would operate in parts of Gaza City where they have not yet been deployed and where Israel believes Hamas is still active.

 

Gaza City is both Hamas’s military and governing stronghold and one of the last places of refuge in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands are sheltering. Israeli troops will be targeting Hamas’s vast underground tunnel network there, the official added.

 

It remains unclear when the operation will begin, but it could be a matter of days and such a mobilisation of reservists is the largest in months.

 

Israel’s top planning committee approved plans for the so-called E1 settlement in an area of land east of Jerusalem that critics have said would undermine hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

 

Last week, Smotrich backed plans to build 3,400 homes on a contentious parcel of land that lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.

 

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned that constructing Israeli homes there would “put an end to” hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

Guy Yifrach, the mayor of Maale Adumim, said on Wednesday: “I am pleased to announce that just a short while ago, the civil administration approved the planning for the construction of the E1 neighbourhood.”

 

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.

 

Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli anti-settlement organisation Ir Amim, said: “Today’s approval demonstrates how determined Israel is in pursuing what Minister Smotrich has described as a strategic programme to bury the possibility of a Palestinian state and to effectively annexe the West Bank.

 

“This is a conscious Israeli choice to implement an apartheid regime,” he added, calling on the international community to take urgent and effective measures against the move.