No progress in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, says Hamas official

A senior official of the militant Islamist group Hamas, Osama Hamdan, said on Saturday there has been no progress in ceasefire talks with Israel over the Gaza war. (Reuters/File)

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Updated 29 June 2024

Reuters

June 29, 2024 20:27

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No progress in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, says Hamas official

The Palestinian group is still ready to “deal positively” with any ceasefire proposal that ends the war, Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut
Hamdan also blamed the United States for applying pressure on Hamas to accept Israel’s conditions

Updated 29 June 2024

Reuters

June 29, 2024 20:27

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CAIRO: A senior official of the militant Islamist group Hamas, Osama Hamdan, said on Saturday there has been no progress in ceasefire talks with Israel over the Gaza war.
The Palestinian group is still ready to “deal positively” with any ceasefire proposal that ends the war, Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut.
Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire, with both sides blaming each other for the impasse. Hamas says any deal must end the war and bring full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is eradicated.
Hamdan also blamed the United States for applying pressure on Hamas to accept Israel’s conditions.
“Once again, Hamas is ready to deal positively with any proposal that secures a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal from Gaza Strip and a serious swap deal,” said Hamdan, referring to a potential swap of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
When Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7 they killed around 1,200 people and seized more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli offensive in retaliation has so far killed nearly 38,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and has left the heavily built-up coastal enclave in ruins.
The Gaza health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but officials say most of the dead are civilians. Israel has lost more than 300 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.
Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes across the enclave had so far killed at least 35 people and wounded others on Saturday.
The Israeli military on Saturday announced the death of two soldiers killed in combat in northern Gaza, as Israeli forces pressed on with an offensive in the Shejaia neighborhood in Gaza City.
Residents said tanks advanced deeper into several districts including the area around the local market and there was heavy fire from the air and the ground.
The armed wing of Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad reported fierce fighting, saying fighters fired anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs against the forces operating there.
The Israeli military said dozens of Palestinian gunmen were killed over the past two days in close quarters combat and airstrikes in Shejaia, after forces encircled what it described as a civilian area converted by Hamas into a militant compound.
“In the area, the troops located observation posts, weapons, enemy drones and a long-range rocket launcher near the schools,” the military said in a statement.
Hamas has denied assertions that it operates in civilian areas such as schools and hospitals.
More than eight months into Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza, militants continued to stage attacks on Israeli forces, operating in areas that the Israeli army said it had gained control over months ago.
Israeli leaders have said in the past week that the intense phase of the war is approaching its end, and that the next stage of the offensive will mainly be smaller-scale operations meant to stop Hamas from reassembling.
Meanwhile Israeli forces operating in several districts in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, killed several Palestinians and forced families living in the far western edge of the city along the coastal areas to head northwards, according to Palestinian medical officials and residents.
Israel has said its military operations in Rafah are aimed at eradicating the last armed battalions of Hamas.

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Topics: War on Gaza Hamas Israel Ceasefire Osama Hamdan

Hezbollah supporters protest banning Iranian plane from landing in Beirut

Updated 14 February 2025

AFP

February 13, 2025 20:27

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Hezbollah supporters protest banning Iranian plane from landing in Beirut

Young men set tires on fire, leading to scuffles between angry protesters and soldiers
The Lebanese army had been deployed at Beirut International Airport

Updated 14 February 2025

AFP

February 13, 2025 20:27

BEIRUT: Supporters of Iran-backed Hezbollah group blocked the Beirut airport road and burned tires on Thursday to protest a decision barring two Iranian planes from landing in the Lebanese capital, state media and an airport official said.
“Young men set tires on fire in front of the airport entrance, raising banners supporting Hezbollah’s former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah,” Lebanon’s National News Agency said.
Some of the young men raised Hezbollah’s yellow flag and held pictures of Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli strike in September, as well as Iran’s slain Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, AFP footage showed.
The Lebanese army had been deployed there, the NNA said, with videos online showing scuffles between angry protesters and soldiers.
An official at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport told AFP that the Public Works and Transport ministry had asked the facility to inform Mahan Air that Lebanon could not welcome two of its Beirut-bound flights.
One flight was scheduled for Thursday and another for Friday, said the official who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“The two flights were rescheduled to next week,” he added, without saying why.
Earlier in the day, video footage circulated online showing a Lebanese man stranded at a Tehran airport calling on his peers to block the Beirut airport road.
“We have been waiting here since this morning. We are Lebanese... no one can control us,” the man said, calling on Hezbollah-allied parliament speaker Nabih Berri to secure the return of Lebanese travelers.
A November 27 ceasefire agreement ended more than a year of Israel-Hezbollah hostilities including about two months of all-out war, but both sides regularly accuse the other violations.
Saeed Chalandri, CEO of Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, said “today’s flight to Beirut was scheduled... but the destination (country) did not issue the necessary permission,” in an interview with Mehr news agency.
A day earlier, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said Iran’s Quds Force and Hezbollah “have been exploiting... over the past few weeks the Beirut International Airport through civilian flights, to smuggle funds dedicated to arming” the group.
He added that the Israeli army was sending information to the committee tasked with ensuring ceasefire violations are identified and dealt with in order “to thwart” such attempts, though some had been successful.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of using Lebanon’s only airport to transfer weapons from Iran.
Hezbollah and Lebanese officials have denied the claims, with authorities reinforcing surveillance and inspections at the facility.
In January, an Iranian plane carrying a diplomatic delegation was subjected to inspection, sparking outrage from Hezbollah and its supporters and praise by its detractors.

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Topics: Lebanon Iran Hezbollah

France says EU working toward ‘rapid’ easing of Syria sanctions

Updated 13 February 2025

AFP

February 13, 2025 23:35

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France says EU working toward ‘rapid’ easing of Syria sanctions

Paris conference focused on protecting Syria from destabilizing foreign interference, coordinating aid efforts

Updated 13 February 2025

AFP

February 13, 2025 23:35

PARIS: France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Thursday that the EU was working toward swiftly easing Syria sanctions as Paris hosted a conference on the transition in the war-torn country after President Bashar Assad’s fall.

Opposition fighters toppled Assad in December after a lightning offensive.

The new authorities, headed by interim leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, have sought to reassure the international community that they have broken with their jihadist past and will respect the rights of minorities.

They have been lobbying the West to ease sanctions imposed against Assad to allow the country to rebuild its economy after five decades of his family’s rule and almost 14 years of civil war.

“We are working with my European counterparts toward a rapid lifting of sectorial economic sanctions,” Barrot said, after EU foreign ministers agreed last month to ease them, starting with key sectors such as energy.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani is in Paris for the conference, in his first such official visit to Europe for talks after he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.

The French presidency said earlier that the United States, Germany, Britain, the European Union and the United Nations were also to be represented, as were several Gulf nations and Syria’s northern neighbor Turkiye.

French President Emmanuel Macron is due to address attendees.

There has been concern among Western governments over the direction the new Syrian leadership will take in particular on religious freedom, women’s rights and the status of the Kurdish minority in the northeast of Syria.

Shaibani on Wednesday said a new government would take over next month from the interim cabinet, vowing that it would represent all Syrians in their diversity.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, ahead of the Paris meeting, emphasized the need for “all actors” in Syria to be included.

“It is essential that women be represented,” she said.

Several diplomatic sources had said the conference also aimed to focus on protecting Syria from destabilizing foreign interference and coordinating aid efforts.

Turkish-backed factions launched attacks against Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria at around the same time as the offensive that overthrew Assad, and have since seized strategic areas.

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Topics: Fall of Assad France EU

Syria’s new leaders zero in on Assad’s business barons

Updated 13 February 2025

Reuters

February 13, 2025 23:30

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Syria’s new leaders zero in on Assad’s business barons

Updated 13 February 2025

Reuters

February 13, 2025 23:30

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new rulers are combing through the billion-dollar corporate empires of ousted President Bashar Assad’s allies, and have held talks with some of these tycoons, in what they say is a campaign to root out corruption and illegal activity.

After seizing power in December, the new administration that now runs Syria pledged to reconstruct the country after 13 years of brutal civil war and abandon a highly-centralized and corrupt economic system where Assad’s cronies held sway.

To do so, the executive led by new President Ahmed Al-Sharaa has set up a committee tasked with dissecting the sprawling corporate interests of high-profile Assad-linked tycoons including Samer Foz and Mohammad Hamsho, three sources told Reuters. Days after taking Damascus, the new administration issued orders aimed at freezing companies and bank accounts of Assad-linked businesses and individuals, and later specifically included those on US sanctions lists, according to correspondence between the Syrian Central Bank and commercial banks reviewed by Reuters.

Hamsho and Foz, targeted by US sanctions since 2011 and 2019 respectively, returned to Syria from abroad and met with senior HTS figures in Damascus in January, according to a government official and two Syrians with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The two men, who are reviled by many ordinary Syrians for their close ties to Assad, pledged to cooperate with the new leadership’s fact-finding efforts, the three sources said.

Accused by the US Treasury of getting rich off Syria’s war, Foz’s sprawling Aman Holding conglomerate has interests in pharma, sugar refining, trading and transport.

Hamsho’s interests, grouped under the Hamsho International Group, are similarly wide-ranging, from petrochemicals and metal products to television production.

Hamsho, whom the US Treasury has accused of being a front for Assad and his brother Maher, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Foz could not be reached. The establishment of the committee, whose members are not public, and the conversations between Syria’s new government and two of the Assad government’s closest tycoons who control large parts of Syria’s economy have not been previously reported.

The new Syrian government’s approach toward powerful Assad-linked businesses, yet to be fully clarified, will be key in determining the fate of the economy as the administration struggles to convince Washington and its allies to remove sanctions, Syrian analysts and businessmen say.

Trade Minister Maher Khalil Al-Hasan and Syrian investment chief Ayman Hamawiye both confirmed to Reuters the government had been in contact with some Assad-linked businessmen, but did not identify them or provide further details.

Khaldoun Zoubi, a long-term partner of Foz, confirmed his associate had held talks with Syrian authorities but did not confirm if he had been in the country.

“Foz told them he is ready to cooperate with the new administration and provide all the support to the Syrian people and the new state,” Zoubi said from the gilded lobby of the Four Seasons hotel in central Damascus, which Foz’s group majority owns. “He is ready to do anything asked of him.”

The two Syrian sources said Foz, who holds a Turkish citizenship, had left Damascus after the talks. Reuters could not ascertain Hamsho’s whereabouts.

The US has sanctioned Foz, Hamsho and others with a prominent economic role, including Yasser Ibrahim, Assad’s most trusted adviser.

Syrian analysts say around a dozen men make up the close ring of business barons tied to the former regime. HTS-appointed government officials consider all of them to be persons of interest.

Syrian authorities have ordered companies and factories belonging or linked to the tycoons to keep working, under supervision of HTS authorities, while the committee investigates their various businesses.

“Our policy is to allow for their employees to continue working and supplying goods to the market while freezing their money movements now,” Trade Minister Hasan told Reuters in an interview early in January. “It’s a huge file. (Assad’s business allies) have the economy of a state in their hands. You can’t just tell them to leave,” he added, explaining the new government could not avoid engaging with the tycoons.

Hamsho International Group is among those put under HTS supervision, according to the sources with direct knowledge.

A Reuters visit in late January showed little work was being carried out at its modern multi-story headquarters in Damascus, where some offices had been looted in the wake of Assad’s fall.

Staff have been instructed to cooperate fully with the new Syrian administration, members of whom regularly visit the company seeking information, said one employee, who asked not to be identified by name.

Some economists say the country’s dire economic situation required major domestic corporations to continue to operate regardless of who they may be affiliated with.

The UN says 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line. While basic goods shortages have eased after strict trade controls dissolved in the aftermath of Assad’s fall, many Syrians still struggle to afford them.

“Syrian authorities need to be wary of a harsh crackdown on former regime cronies because this could create significant shortages (of goods),” said Karam Shaar, director of a Syria-focused economic consultancy bearing his name.

Assad’s rapid fall, culminating with his Dec. 8 escape to Russia, left many Syrian oligarchs with no time to dispose of or move their local assets that have since been frozen, giving Syria’s new rulers strong leverage in dealing with the tycoons, according to two prominent businessmen and the government official.

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Topics: Fall of Assad

Vatican says Palestinians must ‘stay on their land’

Updated 13 February 2025

AFP

February 13, 2025 19:20

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Vatican says Palestinians must ‘stay on their land’

Secretary of State Pietro Parolin: ‘This is one of the fundamental points of the Holy See: no deportations’
Parolin: ‘The solution in our opinion is that of two states because this also means giving hope to the population’

Updated 13 February 2025

AFP

February 13, 2025 19:20

VATICAN CITY: A top Vatican official on Thursday rejected US President Donald Trump’s proposal to move Palestinians from Gaza, saying “the Palestinian population must remain on its land.”
“This is one of the fundamental points of the Holy See: no deportations,” Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said on the sidelines of an Italy-Vatican meeting, according to the ANSA news agency.
Moving Palestinians out would cause regional tensions and “makes no sense” as neighboring countries such as Jordan are opposed, he continued.
“The solution in our opinion is that of two states because this also means giving hope to the population,” he said.
Trump has proposed taking over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and moving its more than two million residents to Jordan or Egypt. Experts say the idea would violate international law but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called it “revolutionary.”
Pope Francis this week criticized Trump’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented migrants in the United States — drawing a sharp response.
In a letter to US bishops, the head of the Catholic Church called the deportations a “major crisis” and said sending back people who had fled their own countries in distress “damages the dignity” of the migrants.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, responded: “I wish he’d stick to the Catholic Church and fix that and leave border enforcement to us.”

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Topics: Vatican Palestinians Pietro Parolin

Israel asserts presence in five strategically significant high points in southern Lebanon

Updated 13 February 2025

NAJIA HOUSSARI

February 13, 2025 17:44

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Israel asserts presence in five strategically significant high points in southern Lebanon

Lebanon rejects any extension of Israeli forces’ presence in the border areas
Egyptian foreign minister: Resolution 1701 must be implemented by all parties

Updated 13 February 2025

NAJIA HOUSSARI

February 13, 2025 17:44

BEIRUT: Ahead of the scheduled Friday meeting of the five-member committee overseeing the implementation of the ceasefire agreement in southern Lebanon, Israel preemptively announced its decision to maintain a military presence in five strategic points overlooking the southern sectors.

The Israeli announcement — through both its officials and Israeli media — came four days before the extended deadline for withdrawing its forces, which have advanced into Lebanese territory.

On Wednesday night, Israeli warplanes conducted low-altitude flights, breaking the sound barrier over Beirut and several other regions, including the Bekaa Valley.

The maneuver came only hours after Lebanon rejected any extension of Israeli forces’ presence in the border areas, which they had advanced into since Oct. 1.

Political analysts interpreted the aerial incursion as “an act of intimidation designed to pressure Lebanon into accepting the situation.”

Lebanon has rejected any extension of the Israeli occupation of its territory. On Thursday, President Joseph Aoun reaffirmed that “Lebanon is intensifying diplomatic efforts to ensure Israel’s withdrawal by February 18.”

He said that the country was actively engaging with influential global powers, particularly the US and France, to secure a sustainable resolution.

During his meeting with Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji in the newly formed government, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty underscored the need to enforce the ceasefire agreement in southern Lebanon and demanded the immediate, full withdrawal of Israeli forces. He also stressed the importance of enforcing Resolution 1701, ensuring that all parties complied without exception.

On Thursday, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer announced that Israel would retain control over five strategic high points inside Lebanon following the expiry of the ceasefire next Tuesday. He emphasized that while the Israeli army would redeploy, it would maintain its presence in these key positions until Lebanon met its commitments under the agreement.

“Lebanon’s obligations do not entail removing Hezbollah from the border, but rather disarming it,” Dermer told Bloomberg.

While the Israeli minister did not specify how long the Israeli army would remain in the strategic high points, he said: “The army will not withdraw in the near future.”

On Wednesday, Ori Gordin, the chief of the Israeli army’s Northern Command, made a call “to solidify Israel’s presence in these positions under American cover and with international support.”

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority quoted senior officials in the Security Cabinet of Israel as saying that “the US has granted Israeli forces permission to remain in several locations in Lebanon long-term beyond Feb. 18.”

Israeli media reported that “the Israeli army has received US approval to establish observation points to monitor Hezbollah’s activities, while the US side rejected postponing the Israeli withdrawal from the villages where it is still carrying out incursions.”

These Israeli positions coincided with a round of talks conducted by US Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, representative of the US in the committee monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, with Israeli officials on Thursday. As a result, the committee’s meeting in Ras Naqoura was postponed to Friday after originally being scheduled for Thursday.

Lebanon has rejected a joint US-French proposal to take control of these five strategic positions along the border, insisting instead that UN peacekeeping forces — UNIFIL — assume control of these points in coordination with the Lebanese army.

The disputed hills, which the Israeli military refuses to evacuate, include Jabal Blat, Labouneh, Aziziyah, Awida and Hamames. All these positions are strategically located but uninhabited.

According to local media reports in Beirut, Israeli forces have begun constructing prefabricated structures with guard posts along the Markaba-Houla road, adjacent to an existing UNIFIL position near the border.

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Topics: Lebanon Israel Nabih Berri Joseph Aoun Nawaf Salam Youssef Rajji Badr Abdelatty

No progress in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, says Hamas official

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No progress in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, says Hamas official

No progress in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, says Hamas official

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