BlackMask Breaking News

Israel said it will invade Rafah by March 10 if Hamas does not release the remaining hostages held inside Gaza. Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, said the terror group has until Ramadan before Israeli forces are ordered into the southern city where more than a million refugees are sheltering.

“To those saying the price [of an offensive] is too high, I say this very clearly: Hamas has a choice – they can surrender, release the hostages, and the citizens of Gaza will be able to celebrate the holy holiday of Ramadan,” Mr Gantz said.

There has been widespread concern from Western allies, aid agencies and humanitarian groups over Israel’s impending offensive into Rafah. There are estimated to be more than 1.4 million Gazans who have fled to the densely populated city next to the border with Egypt. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said his government is considering a plan to relocate the refugees but has not published any details yet. On Sunday, in response to concerns from allies – including Joe Biden, the US president – over an assault on Rafah, he said: “Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us: ‘Lose the war’.” Israel insists that the city on the Egypt border is the last remaining stronghold in Gaza of Hamas, and is harbouring the terror group’s leaders and architects of the October 7 attacks on Israel. Mr Gantz, an opposition leader who was invited into a “unity” cabinet at the start of the war, said: “The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, to include the Rafah area,” Gantz said. Around 130 hostages remain in Gaza, a fourth of whom are believed to be dead. Mr Gantz added that an offensive would be carried out in a coordinated manner and in conversation with Americans and Egyptians to facilitate an evacuation and “minimise the civilian casualties as much as possible”. On Monday, Josep Borrell, the European Union foreign policy chief, warned it would be “impossible” to avoid civilian casualties in an invasion of Rafah. The Hamas-controlled health ministry says 30,000 people have been killed so far in the Gaza war. Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said the people of Rafah “can’t just disappear in the sky”. Mr Biden has phoned Mr Netanyahu twice to warn him against launching a military operation in Rafah without a credible plan to ensure the safety of civilians. Last week, Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned that Israel should “stop and think” before taking any further action in Rafah. He told reporters: “We think it is impossible to see how you can fight a war amongst these people. There’s nowhere for them to go.” It comes as Israel formally opposed international efforts to create a two-state solution. The government said the international community was trying to “unilaterally” impose the creation of a Palestinian state to bring about peace in the Middle East. Israel is also facing criticism over its policy in the West Bank, where the war in Gaza has emboldened illegal settler groups. On Monday, Spain, whose government has been a harsh critic of Israel’s war, said it will impose sanctions on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank unilaterally if its European Union partners fail to reach an agreement on the issue. Jose Manuel Albares, the foreign minister, said Spain will push for the approval of such sanctions during a meeting of EU’s foreign ministers held in Brussels. “If there’s no agreement, Spain will proceed individually with these sanctions against the violent settlers,” Albares told reporters before the meeting. On Monday, Michael Martin, Ireland’s foreign minister, said he hoped the EU countries would unanimously approve these sanctions. Last week, French authorities banned 28 Israeli settlers from entering the country, accusing them of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. UN figures show that daily settler attacks have more than doubled since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the ensuing assault on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.  NN: Ramadan is the holiest month on the Islamic calendar. Israel is serious. Time will tell if Hamas is understanding that they are approaching a Zen moment. Remember before the tanks roll in  over a million civilians need to roll out. Hard to see the evacuation time line. This could get real ugly real fast.

Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz has warned that unless Hamas frees all hostages held in Gaza by 10 March an offensive will be launched in Rafah. It is the first time Israel has said when its troops might enter Gaza’s overcrowded southern city.

Global opposition is growing to such an attack in Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.

Earlier, the UN public health agency said a key Gaza hospital had ceased to function following an Israeli raid. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) entered the complex on Thursday, saying intelligence indicated hostages taken by Hamas were being held there. The IDF has described its operation in Nasser as “precise and limited”, accusing Hamas of “cynically using hospitals for terror”.

Speaking on Sunday, Mr Gantz, a former defence minister, said: “The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, to include the Rafah area”.

Ramadan – the Islamic holy month of fasting – this year begins on 10 March. Mr Gantz added that Israel would act in “a co-ordinated manner, facilitating the evacuation of civilians in dialogue with our American and Egyptian partners to minimise civilian casualties”. The Israeli war cabinet consists of the country’s top security officials. It was formed several days after Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October, killing at least 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages. Hamas is still holding about 130 hostages in Gaza, Israel believes. Mr Gantz’s reference to Egypt may serve to heighten speculation that Israel expects some Palestinians to cross out of the Gaza Strip and seek shelter on the Egyptian side of the border, where the authorities appear to be building a large walled enclosure for this purpose, says the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams. But Israeli officials have yet to give any details of an evacuation plan, he adds. With exactly three weeks to go before the start of Ramadan, reports from Rafah say that a few people are leaving, heading west towards the coast, but that most are still waiting, unsure what to do. Despite international pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to launch a ground assault on Rafah to eliminate Hamas gunmen there. In response to the 7 October attack by Hamas, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip. More than 28,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and more than 68,000 wounded since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The ministry says at least 127 Palestinians have been killed and 205 others injured in the past 24 hours. Despite the continued fighting in Gaza, efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have been taking place in Cairo in recent days – although Qatari mediators said progress was “not very promising”. Mr Netanyahu said he sent negotiators following a request from US President Joe Biden, but added they did not return for further discussions because Hamas’s demands were “delusional”. NN: Hamas got one thing right, It successfully calculated that Israel believed they wanted peace and prosperity for its people. From that point on they have made two serious mistakes, Hamas believed that as in the past Israel would do anything to  get the hostages back. WRONG. Second mistake  they beloved Israel would not have the stomach for door to tunnel fighting and massive human shield casualties, If Hamas  waits to long their will be nothing to bargain with.

Netanyahu committed to total victory

Israel has destroyed 18 of 24 Hamas military battalions and has killed or wounded more than half of the militant group’s fighters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday. Anything short of “total victory” would mean thousands of Israelis forced from their communities along the Gaza border could not return to their homes, he said. Eventually the militants would attack again and Iran, Hezbollah and others would “celebrate” while destroying the region, Netanyahu said. Israel has estimated Hamas had about 40,000 fighters at the start of the war.”We are on the way to total victory and I want to tell you that we are committed to it and will not give up on it,” Netanyahu told company commanders at the Armored Corps Memorial at Latrun, 15 miles west of Jerusalem. “We will not stop the war without achieving this goal of total victory.” Netanyahu spoke at his Likud party’s weekly faction meeting, emphasizing that cease-fire talks were continuing but that a deal is not near. Israel, he says, wants a deal similar to the one that resulted in the release of more than 100 hostages in November. But no deal for the remaining hostages will be tied to a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, he said. “Hamas has demands that we will not agree to,” Netanyahu said.

https://youtu.be/MKR5-JcLa4o

Crude oil futures Friday posted a weekly gain as simmering tensions in the Middle East overshadowed stubborn inflation in the U.S. and a murky demand outlook for the year. The West Texas Intermediate contract for March gained $1.16, or 1.49%, to settle at $79.19 a barrel. April Brent futures added 61 cents a barrel to settle at $83.47. U.S. crude gained about 3% for the week, settling at its highest price since Nov. 6. The global benchmark rose 1.5% for the week, settling at the highest level since Jan. 26.

“This is geopolitics with flashing lights, it points right to specs taking advantage of the situation,” Bob Yawger, managing director and energy futures strategist of Mizuho America, said of speculative traders. “They’re rolling the dice expecting something will happen.”

Tensions are rising on the border between Israel and Lebanon, once again raising fears that the war in Gaza could spread elsewhere in the Middle East. Israel bombed southern Lebanon Wednesday in retaliation for rocket attacks in northern Israel. Hezbollah, the powerful militia allied with Iran, has vowed to strike back against Israel. Israel is also vowing to press on with its offensive in Gaza to the southern city of Rafah, raising tensions with Egypt, which shares a border with the city. The oil market this week largely shrugged off stubborn inflation in the U.S. as well as a murky demand outlook for the year. Wholesale prices rose more than expected in January, according to a Labor Department report Friday. Consumer prices were also higher than anticipated last month, according to data released Tuesday. Stubborn inflation is reducing expectations that the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates soon. Lower rates typically stimulate economic growth, which in turn fuels crude demand.  Manish Raj, managing director at Velandera Energy Partners, said traders were taking Friday’s wholesale price data with a grain of salt after those who traded off hot consumer prices earlier in the week got burnt. “Oil is just waddling up since nobody wants to be short into the weekend when the tailwinds favor oil prices,” Raj said. Oil prices rallied Thursday after the market largely dismissed a weak global demand forecast for 2024 from the International Energy Agency.  The IEA forecast that worldwide crude oil demand growth would slow by half this year’s pace, to 1.2 million barrels per day this year, compared to 2.3 million bpd in 2023. Supply is expected to exceed demand, with production outside OPEC rising by 1.7 million bpd, according to IEA. But OPEC on Tuesday predicted a much tighter market this year, with demand growing by 2.2 million bpd, outpacing production growth outside the cartel of what it said would total 1.2 million bpd. “There is and has been a yawning chasm in demand estimates,” Tamas Varga, an analyst with oil broker PVM, wrote Friday in a note. “It is always tricky and challenging to predict the medium- to long-term prospects but the difference of opinions in global oil consumption for this year and the individual quarters, even for the current one, is clearly puzzling.” NN:  I see this pop in oil as a blip on the radar screen. And as previously noted this Rafa siege is the last hurrah. Not that rooting out Hamas will be completed. It will end because the screams of human rights violations will become unbearable, And  oil that is now peeking will crash.

Seasonally adjusted advance estimates of retail and food services sales in the United States observed a monthly decline of 0.8% to come in at $700.3 billion in January, the Census Bureau said in its preliminary report published on Thursday. The figure stood lower than analysts predicted for the reported period. On an annual basis, retail and food services sales rose by 0.6% from January 2023. Meanwhile, January’s retail trade sales dropped by 1.1% month-on-month or 0.2% year-on-year. On an annual level, nonstore retailers surged by 6.4%, and food services and drinking places climbed by 6.3%.

OPEC’s crude oil production slumped by 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) in January as the latest voluntary output cuts kicked in, but not all those who had pledged reductions delivered on their promises.   As OPEC’s crude oil production from all 12 members fell by 350,000 bpd to 26.342 million bpd in January, the country with the biggest contribution to the cuts was Libya, one of the three OPEC members exempted from the cuts alongside Iran and Venezuela, according to the secondary sources in OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for February published today. Libya’s oil production fell by 162,000 bpd in January from December, as the African producer was forced to shut down its largest oilfield, Sharara, in the first days of the New Year, temporarily taking some 300,000 bpd off the market. Force majeure on Sharara output was lifted on January 21.  Of the OPEC members who pledged voluntary cuts for the first quarter of 2024, Saudi Arabia stuck to its production goal of pumping around 9 million bpd until the end of March 2024, as part of its unilateral extra cut of 1 million bpd that began in July 2023.   Kuwait and Algeria more or less delivered on their pledges, with Kuwait cutting oil production by 109,000 bpd versus a pledge to reduce output by 135,000 bpd, and Algeria reducing production by 46,000 bpd compared to a 51,000 bpd cut pledged at the end of November. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has promised a cut of 163,000 bpd, but its new quota as of January 2024 is 200,000 bpd higher to 3.219 million bpd. It looks like the UAE is sticking to the cut as its output in January was 2.927 million bpd, only 31,000 bpd higher than in December, when its quota was lower.   The OPEC member that under-delivered most notably was Iraq, the second-biggest producer in the cartel. Iraq cut its oil production by 98,000 bpd to 4.194 million bpd in January, per OPEC’s secondary sources in the report. This compares with a pledged cut of 223,000 bpd. Earlier this week, Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said Iraq is committed to its voluntary cut in the OPEC+ agreement and would produce no more than 4 million bpd of crude.