By Paul Adams in Jerusalem, Anthony Zucher in Tel Aviv & Graeme Baker BBC News


Israel has rebuffed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza.

Mr Blinken said he had discussed the idea with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials during their talks in Tel Aviv.

But in a TV statement minutes later, Mr Netanyahu said Israel rejected “a temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of our hostages”.

He said that Israel was “continuing with all our force” against Hamas.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    28 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Mr Blinken said he had discussed the idea with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials during their talks in Tel Aviv.

    The US diplomatic effort came as Israel pressed its offensive against Hamas, with commanders saying that their forces had encircled Gaza City and were engaged in a “complex urban fight”.

    In his visit to the country, Mr Blinken offered a message of continued US support and sought assurances that Israel would take “concrete steps” to protect Palestinian civilians.

    Mr Blinken, on his second trip to the region in a month, said the US had provided Israel advice on how to minimise civilian deaths while still trying to “finish” Hamas.

    In comments made at a news conference beside the Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Mr Blinken said the US stood “strongly with Israel it has the right and obligation to defend itself and to ensure the events of 7 October never happen again.”

    Mr Herzog said Israel was going to great lengths to warn Gazans of airstrikes, as he held up a pamphlet that he said was being dropped in the Strip telling civilians to leave the war zone in the north.


    The original article contains 677 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Jeena
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      -68 months ago

      More often than not I see one comment on a post and am looking forward to read it only to discover it’s a bot comment which I’m never interested in reading. If I’d be interested in TLDR’s of articles I’d just install some browser extension for it.

      At least I’d hope that comments marked as made by bots would not count into the comment count.