Are Trump and Netanyahu showing signs of division?
Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 60 people, including almost two dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory. The strikes came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was "no way" he would halt Israel's offensive in the Palestinian enclave before Hamas is defeated.
At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in the strikes around Jabaliya in northern Gaza, according to local hospitals and Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. At least 10 other people were killed in the city of Khan Younis, the European Hospital reported. A CBS News cameraman saw multiple bodies on a street in the southern Gazan city.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted a Hamas stronghold underneath a hospital.
A Palestinian man carries a wounded child after the European Hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was damaged by apparent Israeli airstrikes, May 13, 2025.
Hatem Khaled/REUTERS
That attack came just a day after the Trump administration, bypassing Israel, struck a deal with Hamas – long designated a terrorist group by Israel and the U.S. – to secure the release of the last living American hostage who had been held in Gaza, Edan Alexander. It was a gesture that some thought could lay the groundwork for a ceasefire, but Netanyahu has made it clear he will not halt Israel's war in Gaza, even if Hamas releases its hostages, until his stated objectives are met, dimming hopes for a truce.
A statement issued by the Israeli leader's office on Wednesday stressed that Netanyahu remained "determined to complete all of Israel's war goals: the release of all our hostages, the military and governmental defeat of Hamas, and a promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel."
Netanyahu under mounting pressure from all sides
As CBS News correspondent Debora Patta reported, for the families of the 58 people still held captive in Gaza — as many as 23 of whom Israeli officials believe could still be alive, the joy of Alexander's release quickly turned to rage as the bombing resumed and intensified following the handover.
At the latest of the regular demonstrations in Israel's capital, many accused Netanyahu on Tuesday of deliberately prolonging the war sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.
As President Trump visits the region this week, former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told CBS News that Netanyahu has been left watching from the sidelines.
"Staggeringly, he [Trump] is not coming here," Pinkas said, referring to the U.S. leader's itinerary, which includes stops this week in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. "This is a very visible, very in-your-face kind of move by Trump."
Pinkas said Netanyahu would need to have a ceasefire deal in the works to remain on Mr. Trump's good side, and he warned that, "Israel cannot wage the war against the judgment and wishes of the United States government. That's plain and simple."
Asked if Netanyahu could feasibly resist the mounting pressure from Trump to end the war, Pinkas said: "Not really. He's got no ammunition left in his political magazine.
For the moment, Mr. Trump's pressure on Netanyahu is only diplomatic, with no public discussion of any additional measures, such as limiting supplies of U.S. weapons, as happened briefly under the Biden administration.
And for now, Netanyahu has intensified the war, and he has continued to maintain a controversial blockade on all humanitarian supplies, fuel and other essential goods entering the enclave since March.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in the 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed almost 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.
Israel's offensive has obliterated vast swathes of Gaza's urban landscape and displaced 90% of the population, often multiple times.
France's Macron calls Netanyahu tactics in Gaza "a disgrace"
International food security experts warned earlier this week that famine could break out in the Gaza Strip if Israel doesn't lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.
French President Emmanuel Macron strongly denounced Netanyahu's decision to block aid from entering Gaza as "a disgrace" that has caused a major humanitarian crisis.
"I say it forcefully, what Benjamin Netanyahu's government is doing today is unacceptable," Macron said Tuesday evening on TF1 national television. "There's no medicine. We can't get the wounded out. Doctors can't get in. What he's doing is a disgrace. It's a disgrace."
Children clammer for food as charities distribute hot meals to Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, May 14, 2025, amid a months-long blockade of the territory by Israel.
Mahmoud ssa/Anadolu/Getty
Macron, who visited injured Palestinians in El Arish hospital in Egypt last month, called for the reopening of the Gaza border to humanitarian convoys. "Then, yes, we must fight to demilitarize Hamas, free the hostages and build a political solution," he said.
Netanyahu, in the statement issued by his office on Wednesday, lashed out at the French leader, claiming he had "once again chosen to stand by a murderous Islamist terrorist organization and echo its false propaganda, while accusing Israel of blood libels."
"Instead of supporting the Western democratic camp that is fighting the Islamist terrorist organizations and calling for the release of the hostages, Macron is once again demanding that Israel surrender and reward terrorism," the statement said.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living at "catastrophic" levels of hunger, while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Israel has dismissed international warnings that potential famine looms, but it has banned all food, shelter, medicine and any other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of airstrikes and ground operations.
Gaza's population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive, because Israel's 19-month-old military campaign has destroyed most food production capacity inside the territory.
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