Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

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This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

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He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

Five Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza – including a reporter who feared he was going to be assassinated.

Anas al Sharif died alongside four of his colleagues from the network: Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had recently expressed “grave” concerns about al Sharif’s safety, and claimed he was “being targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign”.

Israel Defence Forces confirmed the strike – and alleged al Sharif was a “terrorist” who “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

It claimed he was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops”.

Last month, the reporter had said he lived with “the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment” because his coverage of Israel’s operations “harms them and damages their image in the world”.

As of 5 August, at least 186 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza – but foreign reporters have been barred from covering the war independently since the latest conflict began in 2023.

The Hamas-run government has described Israel’s killing of these five Al Jazeera journalists as “brutal and heinous”.

A statement added: “The assassination was premeditated and deliberate, following a deliberate, direct targeting of the journalists’ tent near al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

“The targeting of journalists and media institutions by Israeli aircraft is a full-fledged war crime aimed at silencing the truth and obliterating the traces of genocidal crimes.”

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Following Anas al Sharif’s death, a post described as his “last will and testament” was posted on X.

It read: “If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.”

The 28-year-old added that he laments being able to fulfil his dream of seeing his son and daughter grow up – and alleged he had witnessed children “crushed by thousands of tonnes of Israeli bombs and missiles”.

“Do not forget Gaza … and do not forget me in your prayers for forgiveness and acceptance,” he wrote.

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The CPJ reported that his father was killed by an Israeli airstrike on their family home in December 2023 after the journalist received telephone threats from Israeli army officers instructing him to cease coverage.

Israel shut down the Al Jazeera television network in the country in May last year.

For Ukraine – its exhausted, brave soldiers, its thousands of bereaved families mourning their dead, and its beleaguered president – it is exactly what they feared it would be. 

They fear the compromise they will be forced to make will be messy, costly, unfair and ultimately beneficial to the invading tyrant who brought death and destruction to their sovereign land.

Six weeks ago, I spoke to President Zelenskyy in London.

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I put it to him in our Sky News interview that Presidents Trump and Putin were heading towards making a deal between themselves, a grand bargain, in which Ukraine was but one piece on the chessboard.

Zelenskyy smiled as if to acknowledge the reality ahead.

He paused and then he said this: “We are not going to be a card in talks between great nations, and we will never accept that… I definitely do not want to see global deals between America and Russia.

“We don’t need it. We are a separate story, a victim of Russian aggression and we will not reward it.”

It was a response that betrayed his greatest fear – that this will become essentially a Trump negotiation in which Zelenskyy and Ukraine will be told “take it or leave it”.

And, by the way, if you “leave it”, then it will be painful.

Harsh realities

It’s the prospect that now confronts Zelenskyy as Trump and Putin plough ahead on a course that has clear attractions for both of them.

Of course, Zelenskyy is right to say there can be no deal without Ukraine. But there are harsh realities at play here.

Trump wants a deal on Ukraine – any deal – that he can chalk up as a win. He wants it badly and he wants it now.

It’s the impediment to a broader strategic deal with Putin and he wants it out of the way. It’s what he does, and it’s the way he does it. And President Putin knows it.

He knows Trump, he sees an opportunity in Trump, and he can’t get across Russia to Alaska fast enough. He will be back at global diplomacy’s top table.

Always a deal to be done

Make no mistake, when Trump says he just wants to stop the killing, he means it. Such wanton loss of young lives offends him. He keeps saying it.

He sees war, by and large, as an unnecessary waste of life and of money. Deals are there to be done. There’s always a deal.

Sadly for Ukraine, in this case, it is unlikely to be a fair deal.

How can any deal be “fair” when you are the victim of outrageous brutality and heinous crimes.

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But it may well be the deal they have to take unless they want to fight an increasingly one-sided war with much less help from Trump and America.

A senior UK diplomat told me if things turn out as feared, it should not be called a land-for-peace deal. It should be called annexation “because that’s what it is”.

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But here’s the rub.

Peace, calm, the end of the nightly terror of war has much to recommend it. In short, a bad peace can often seem better than no peace. But, ultimately, rewarded dictators always come back for more.

If Ukraine has to accept a bad peace, then it will want clear security guarantees to make sure it cannot happen again.

It is the very least they deserve.

There is much at stake in Alaska.