The Times of Israel is liveblogging Thursday’s events as they happen.
White House says US ‘cautiously optimistic’ about Gaza hostage talks
WASHINGTON — The United States is “cautiously optimistic” about Gaza hostage-for-ceasefire talks, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby tells CNN, adding that gaps between the two sides can be narrowed.
“We are cautiously optimistic that things are moving in a good direction,” Kirby says when asked if a ceasefire deal was close.
“There are still gaps remaining between the two sides. We believe those gaps can be narrowed, and that’s what Brett McGurk and CIA Director Bill Burns are trying to do right now,” he adds.
First US Senate Democrat calls for Biden to drop out of race
WASHINGTON — Peter Welch becomes the first Democratic senator to publicly call on US President Joe Biden to ditch his reelection bid as concerns rise over his age and fitness.
“For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race,” the Vermont senator says in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
Schumer said privately signaling to donors he’s open to replacing Biden as candidate
WASHINGTON — Democratic US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has privately signaled to donors that he’s open to a Democratic presidential candidate other than President Joe Biden, Axios reports.
US Treasury chief cautions visiting FM against any further withholding of PA funds
WASHINGTON – During their meeting Wednesday in Washington, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged visiting Foreign Minister Israel Katz to ensure that Jerusalem regularly transfers funds belonging to the Palestinian Authority, after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich withheld tax revenues from Ramallah for three months.
“Yellen emphasized the need for Israel to maintain economic stability in the West Bank by regularly transferring clearance revenues to the PA and ensure correspondent banking relations between Israeli and Palestinian banks remain uninterrupted,” says a readout from the US Treasury Department.
Earlier this month, Smotrich agreed to partially release the tax revenues from the past three months and sign a waiver extending indemnity to Israeli banks so they can continue corresponding with Palestinian ones for another four months, though the US had been urging him to sign an extension for at least one year and commit to all future tax revenue transfers.
Smotrich agreed to take those steps after the Israeli cabinet passed a series of sanctions against the PA and measures to expand settlements in the West Bank.
During the meeting with Katz, Yellen also indicated the US would continue using the executive order that President Joe Biden signed in February to sanction violent settlers amid Israel’s failure to crack down on regular attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Katz sought the meeting with Yellen to urge the US to further expand its sanction regime against Iran, an Israeli official says.
“Yellen outlined Treasury actions to disrupt Iran and its proxies including Hezbollah and Hamas,” the US readout says.
“Yellen welcomed additional information sharing with Israel and noted that ongoing collaboration to combat terrorist financing has yielded fruitful results with respect to countering Iranian financial and military support to Hamas, Hezbollah and its other regional partners and proxies,” the US readout adds, stressing that the treasury secretary “reaffirmed [her office’s] strong commitment to Israel’s security.”
Haredi leader to yeshiva students: Don’t go to IDF draft offices or answer summons
Rabbi Dov Lando, a top leader of Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, declares that yeshiva students should “not show up at [IDF] draft offices at all.”
Lando’s order leads the front page of today’s edition of Yated Ne’eman, which is affiliated with the non-Hasidic Degel Hatorah faction of United Torah Judaism, a key coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The situation at the moment is that the courts have declared war against the Torah world, and it is they who opened a front and came to change an arrangement that has existed for years, ordering the army to start the process of actually recruiting yeshiva members,” the rabbi writes, referring to the recent High Court ruling.
He adds that “because the army’s hands are bound in iron chains by the judges, and any compliance with the courts’ edicts amounts to surrender in their war on God and his Torah, yeshiva members are therefore instructed to not show up at draft offices at all or answer any summons.”
Lando concludes by saying he’s signing the order “with worry and apprehension.”
PA pays 80% of employees salaries after Israel releases funds — official
The Palestinian Authority was able to pay its employees 80 percent of their salaries this month after Israel partially released hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenues it had been withholding since April, a PA official tells The Times of Israel.
Palestinian public sector employees were receiving roughly half of their salaries for at least the past three months, as Israel’s withholding of tax revenues brought the PA to the brink of financial collapse.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich agreed to release the funds after Israel’s security cabinet approved a series of sanctions against the PA and measures to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The PA official says the partial release of the tax revenues provides some financial breathing room to Ramallah for the first time since the outbreak of the war when Israel first began withholding tax revenues and denying entry permits to some 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel and the settlements.
However, the PA official stresses that Israel is still withholding roughly half of the monthly tax revenue transfers, which prevents Ramallah from paying its employees their full salaries employees.
Moreover, the PA fears that it could find itself in the same dire position it was in several weeks ago if Smotrich chooses to again hold the tax revenue transfers “for ransom” in subsequent months, the official says, urging the Biden administration to pressure Israel to commit to permanently transferring the funds in full.
The tax revenues make up 70% of the PA’s annual income.