GAZA CITY, Palestine 

The head of the media office in Gaza on Monday denied any contact from Egypt on the opening of the Rafah border crossing.

“We have not received any communication or confirmation from the Egyptian side regarding the intention to open the Rafah border today. Everything being circulated, especially in Israeli media, is unsubstantiated,” Salama Marouf said.

There have also been reports in Western media on a five-hour cease-fire in the southern Gaza Strip to facilitate the evacuation of civilians to Egypt, but without any official confirmation.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday, said “Rafah will be reopened” to get the assistance in and to get it to people who need it.

Israeli forces have launched a sustained military push against the Gaza Strip, a response to a military offensive by the Palestinian group Hamas in Israeli territories.

The conflict began when Hamas on Oct. 7 initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, a multi-pronged surprise attack including a barrage of rocket launches and infiltrations into Israel via land, sea, and air.

Hamas said the offensive was in retaliation for the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli settlers’ growing violence against Palestinians.

The Israeli military then launched Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas targets within the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s response has extended into cutting water and electricity supplies to Gaza, further worsening the living conditions in an area that has endured a crippling siege since 2007, as well as ordering over 1 million Gazans in the northern strip to evacuate to the south.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala

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Russian President Vladimir Putin could stare down renewed Western support for Ukraine in the wake of days of bloodshed in Israel and Gaza, one expert has told Newsweek, as the death toll following the weekend’s violence rises.

“The recent escalation in the Middle East will only encourage Western countries for a more radical approach when it comes to supporting their allies,” Oleksandr Kraiev, an expert on U.S. foreign policy with the Ukrainian think tank Prism, told Newsweek.

“It is not about ‘less weapons, more peace.’ It is about providing tools for safeguarding peace,” Kraiev said. “So Israel may play into Ukrainian hands.”

Shortly after Palestinian militants fighting for Hamas launched coordinated land, sea, and air attacks on Israel early on Saturday and Israel started waves of air strikes on Gaza, the United States threw its weight behind Israel.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington would “offer all appropriate means of support” to Israel after the “horrific and ongoing attacks,” adding that the U.S. “unequivocally condemned this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the United Kingdom was “unequivocally” supporting Israel. London is “poised” to support Israel militarily should it request such assistance.

Unveiling a new military aid package in mid-September, Biden said U.S. support for Ukraine was focused on Kyiv’s “long-term security” and making sure that Ukraine is “capable of deterring future threats against sovereignty, territorial integrity and freedom.”

“Because that’s what this is all about—the future, the future of freedom,” Biden said. “America can never, will never walk away from that.”

Kyiv is heavily reliant on Western aid, notably from the U.S., to sustain its grinding war effort against Russian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine. But some in Kyiv may have been feeling anxiety after the U.S. only narrowly avoided a government shutdown in late September by stripping away aid for Ukraine.

On Saturday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) suggested that the Kremlin was already using the Hamas attacks as a weapon to divert Western attention from Ukraine and erode the appetite in the West to send military aid to Kyiv.

Moscow was hoping to “target Western audiences to drive a wedge in military support for Ukraine,” the ISW said over the weekend.

Russia’s most prominent propaganda voices see Hamas’ attacks on Israel as “something that may affect the U.S.,” and “any such disturbance is good news for Russia,” Kraiev said. However, there is growing concern among Ukrainian experts about the idea of “Israel-style guarantees,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Sochi, on October 6, 2023. Putin could stare down renewed Western support for Ukraine in the wake of bloodshed in Israel and Gaza, an expert told Newsweek. Contributor/Getty Images

Ukraine has long petitioned NATO member states for fully-fledged membership to the alliance, which has been promised to Kyiv at an unspecified point further down the line. But NATO is unlikely to admit Ukraine as a member until the war with Russia is over, as its membership would obligate the alliance to join the full-scale war against Moscow under Article 5 of the alliance’s treaty.

The idea of “Israel-style security guarantees” has been banded about for months, which would effectively mean robust military and security support and training without the binding Article 5.

“Current developments show that there is still a big lag between the actual assault and the support arriving from the partner states,” Kraiev said. This has spurred Ukraine to feel more certain than ever that “only full-fledged NATO membership can be a decisive guarantee for Ukrainian security in the future, not only political and resource support of ‘Israel scenario.'”

Russia is already wielding Palestinian militant attacks on Israel as a weapon to try to erode Western backing for Kyiv and distract the West’s attention from Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a new assessment.

“The Kremlin is already and will likely continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several information operations intended to reduce US and Western support and attention to Ukraine,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said on Saturday.

On Saturday, Palestinian movement Hamas launched its most deadly attacks on Israel in years, firing rockets from Gaza as its fighters waged a land, air and sea assault. Israel then carried out strikes on Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, declaring Israel was now “at war.”

U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington would “offer all appropriate means of support” to Israel after the “horrific and ongoing attacks,” adding that the U.S. “unequivocally condemned this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza.”

But the Kremlin has spread information that largely blames Western countries for “neglecting conflicts in the Middle East in favor of supporting Ukraine,” the ISW argued in its latest assessment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin talks at the Grand Kremlin Palace, October 6, 2023, in Sochi, Russia. Russia is already wielding Palestinian militant attacks on Israel as a weapon to decrease Western backing and attention on Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a new assessment. Contributor/Getty Images

Following the outbreak of large-scale violence in southern Israel and Gaza, former Russian president and current deputy chair of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, said that the U.S. had been “helping the neo-Nazis” rather than focusing on finding a Palestinian-Israeli settlement. The Kremlin has said its full-scale invasion of Ukraine is a “special military operation” to “denazify” the government in Kyiv. This has been rejected by Ukraine and the international community.

“What can stop America’s manic passion for sparking conflicts everywhere on the planet?” Medvedev, who is known for his bellicose and anti-Western rhetoric, wrote in a post to Telegram on Saturday.

In a separate statement, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, appeared to blame “the West” for blocking peace-making efforts between Russia, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations for the outbreak of renewed violence in the Middle East.

These suggestions from the Kremlin “target Western audiences to drive a wedge in military support for Ukraine,” the ISW argued.

Within Ukraine, these narratives “seek to demoralize Ukrainian society by claiming Ukraine will lose international support,” the think tank continued, adding they also serve to “reassure Russian domestic audiences that the international society will ignore Ukraine’s war effort.”

The surge in violence has claimed the lives of hundreds of fighters and civilians on both sides, with the tallies expected to rise in the coming days.

“Hamas has started a brutal and evil war,” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday morning. “We will be victorious in this war despite an unbearable price.”

Hamas spokesperson Khaled Qadomi told Al Jazeera that the movement wanted the “international community to stop atrocities in Gaza, against Palestinian people, our holy sites like Al-Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem].”

“All these things are the reason behind starting this battle,” he said.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said on Sunday that Israel would continue action against Hamas’ “barbaric” attacks in the next few days.

“This is our 9/11,” he said in a video shared to the Israeli military’s social media. “We’re going to respond very, very severely to this,” he said.

Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas, said on Sunday that the movement’s fighters “continue to engage in fierce and heroic clashes, fighting on multiple fronts, inflicting casualties on the enemy.”

CAIRO—Egypt is coming under intense pressure to allow refugees to cross the border and escape an Israeli bombing campaign and expected ground invasion.

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