Gunman kills three Israelis at Jordan-West Bank border; Starmer and Biden to meet in Washington

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden are set to discuss issues including the Israel-Hamas war during a meeting in Washington next week, as the two nations show fissures in their handling of the 11-month-old conflict.

About three months ago, US President Joe Biden said Israel and Hamas faced a “decisive moment” when he proposed a ceasefire deal to pause their devastating war in Gaza. His administration, despite repeated setbacks, is still pushing for an agreement and trying to end a deadlock as the war nears the one-year mark.

Three Israelis killed at Jordan-West Bank border station

A gunman killed three Israelis at a terminal on Jordan’s border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, the first such incident since the Gaza war began in October, straining ties between the Jewish state and the Hashemite kingdom.

Israel’s army said that the gunman accessed the Allenby Bridge crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, from the Jordanian side in a truck and fired shots before he was killed by Israeli guards. The victims were identified as forklift operators above the age of 50.

The crossing, which is used mainly by Palestinians and foreigners, was closed while Israeli security forces conducted searches given suspicions that the truck might have been rigged with explosives, the army said. Al Arabiya TV showed a backlog of trucks on the Jordanian side after the closing.

Jordan was investigating the incident, said Al Mamlaka TV.

As a precaution, Israel also shuttered the two terminals on its border with Jordan — the Jordan River/Sheikh Hussein crossing to the north, and the Yitzhak Rabin/Aqaba crossing to the south.

Read more: Iran’s conflict with Israel puts US ally Jordan on edge

Pro-Palestinian sentiment is widespread in Jordan, and the government in Amman has been a vocal critic of Israel’s 11-month-old war in Gaza, launched in response to a cross-border rampage by Hamas militants. Israel has alleged that Hamas’ Iranian sponsors are trying to foment violence in the West Bank with weapons smuggled through Jordan.

“A despicable terrorist murdered three of our civilians in cold blood,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet in televised remarks. “We are surrounded by a murderous ideology that is spearheaded up by Iran’s axis of evil.”

Hamas said in a statement that it welcomed the incident and described the shooter as heroic, adding that such attacks were a “confirmation of the Arab people’s rejection of the Occupation’s [Israel’s] crimes”.

Starmer and Biden to discuss war during meeting next week

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden are set to discuss issues including the Israel-Hamas war during a meeting in Washington next week, as the two nations show fissures in their handling of the 11-month-old conflict.

The announcement of Starmer’s visit to the White House came as the UK premier travelled to Dublin to improve ties with Ireland, following tense Brexit negotiations under the previous Conservative government.

Biden and Starmer planned to meet on 13 September, the White House said in a statement. It will be their second in-person meeting since the UK leader took office in July. High on the agenda were a hostage release and ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war, it added.

Britain earlier this month sparked a diplomatic row over a decision to suspend some arms licences to Israel, over concerns that the use of British components in Gaza risked violating international law. While the UK had previously communicated the move to allies, it signalled a divergence in tactics from the US, which is directly sending arms to Israel.

Starmer and Biden were also set to discuss support for Ukraine, the protection of international shipping from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, supply chains and climate issues, according to the White House. The prime minister’s visit will follow his efforts to rekindle relations with several European neighbours.

US still pushing Gaza ceasefire deal as Israel and Hamas dig in

About three months ago, US President Joe Biden said Israel and Hamas faced a “decisive moment” when he proposed a ceasefire deal to pause their devastating war in Gaza.

His administration, despite repeated setbacks, is still pushing for an agreement and trying to end a deadlock as the war nears the one-year mark.

The US will present Israel with a new proposal in the coming days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday, while Egypt and Qatar, which are coordinating with Washington, will share it with Hamas.

“And then it will be time, really, for the parties to decide — yes or no,” Blinken told reporters during a briefing in Haiti.

He said that 90% of the deal had been agreed upon, similar to his mid-July description of the talks as “inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line”.

His comments came only hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a gloomy tone, saying a deal was “not close”. Hamas “don’t agree to anything”, he said, adding that Israel had no choice but to keep its forces along the border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor. That’s become a key sticking point in recent weeks.

The negotiations have been characterised by overly optimistic rhetoric from US officials, including Biden and Blinken, while the prospects for an agreement remained dim, said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

“It’s more idealistic than anything else,” he said. “It’s starry-eyed. It’s pie in the sky.”

The recent death of six hostages seemed to show the Iran-backed group’s stance is hardening. That’s been evident from the most recent talks, according to two Middle East-based officials following them. Earlier, it was willing to make concessions, the officials said.

The killings of the hostages — Israel says they were shot in the head from close range — has caused Israel to dig in as well, leaving both sides now unwilling to budge, said the officials, who asked not to be identified given the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Before then, the talks were already tangled over the Philadelphi corridor and details such as how many hostages Hamas would release in the first phase of a deal and which Palestinians would be freed from Israeli jails.

A senior Biden administration official, briefing reporters on Wednesday, confirmed that the hostage killings had made the negotiations even tougher.

“I have red lines,” Netanyahu said in a Fox News interview. “They’ve become redder” after the killings.

“To go and make concessions after these murders? It’s a licence to kill hostages,” he said. “That’s what Hamas will understand: Kill hostages, get concessions.”

The group, designated a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union, is now led by Yahya Sinwar, its Gaza military head and architect of the 7 October massacre and kidnappings in southern Israel that started the war. He was appointed overall leader after its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran in July. Iran and Hamas blamed Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied being responsible.

A deal would ease regional tensions, particularly between Israel and Iran, as well as between Israel and Hezbollah, a Tehran-supported militant group that’s been firing on Israeli territory from Lebanon in solidarity with Hamas. It would also allow the US to bring back some of the military assets it’s deployed to the region, a posture that can’t be sustained indefinitely.

Those US resources, including two aircraft carrier groups, were sent primarily as deterrence against Tehran, which had threatened to strike Israel, and to stop a major assault by Hezbollah, the Middle East’s most powerful non-state actor.

The two carrier groups — the Roosevelt and Lincoln — were “considered to be a surge capability”, said Michael Eisenstadt, the director of The Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program. The navy aimed for deployments to only last six months, he said, and “after a while, you have diminishing returns”.

In a sign the US wasn’t wholly confident of getting Hamas and Israel to reach a deal, it was preparing for a possible collapse of the ceasefire talks and higher regional tension, General Charles Q. Brown, chairperson of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Financial Times in an interview. DM

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