Netanyahu, Biden meet for tense Gaza ceasefire talks

President Joe Biden, right, talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 25, 2024. (AP)

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Updated 25 July 2024

AFP

July 25, 2024 17:45

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Netanyahu, Biden meet for tense Gaza ceasefire talks

Relations between Biden, Netanyahu strained over Israel’s conduct in war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks
Israeli PM to meet Republican contender Donald Trump on Friday in Florida

Updated 25 July 2024

AFP

July 25, 2024 17:45

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WASHINGTON DC: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he was ready to work with Joe Biden for the rest of his presidency, as the two leaders met for the first time at the White House for talks on a Gaza ceasefire.
“I want to thank you for the 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said after they shook hands in the historic setting of the Oval Office.
“And I look forward to discussing with you today and working with you in the months ahead.”
Biden stunned the world Sunday when he announced that he was bowing out of the US presidential election, with Vice President Kamala Harris now set to be the Democratic Party’s candidate.
Netanyahu will also meet Harris separately at the White House, in a reflection of the new political reality that will see Biden as a lame duck president for his remaining six months in office.
The Harris meeting comes amid speculation that if she wins in November it could herald a tougher approach on Israel’s war in Gaza.
Relations between Biden and Netanyahu are tense over Israel’s conduct in the war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, but the US president has continued strong military and political support.
They have met just three times during his presidency, once in September last year in New York, and then when Biden traveled to Israel after the attacks and hugged Netanyahu on the airport tarmac at Tel Aviv.
The meetings come after Netanyahu vowed “total victory” against Hamas in a fiery speech Wednesday to the US Congress.
Biden and Netanyahu will later meet the families of US hostages held in Gaza.
The White House was surrounded by metal barriers and a heavy police presence, after rowdy protests broke out near the Capitol following Netanyahu’s speech.
Harris on Thursday condemned the “despicable” and “unpatriotic” burning of an American flag by protesters, after attempts by Donald Trump’s Republicans to paint Democrats as pro-Hamas.
In a primetime speech explaining his decision on Sunday to bow out of the US presidential election, Biden made clear that resolving the conflict would remain a top priority.
“I’m going to keep working to end the war on Gaza, bring home all the hostages to bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” the US president said.
A senior US administration official said Wednesday that negotiations on a Gaza deal were in the “closing stages” and that Biden would try to close some “final gaps” with Netanyahu.
Harris has previously been more outspoken about Israel’s conduct of the war, prompting speculation she will shift her policy as presidential nominee.
The US official said there was “no daylight between the president and vice president,” who will meet Netanyahu at 4:30 p.m. (2030 GMT).
Netanyahu will meet Republican contender Donald Trump on Friday at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
The ex-president on Thursday morning urged Israel to quickly “finish up” its war in Gaza, warning its global image was being tarnished.
Biden has offered Israel steadfast support since October 7.
But the US president has been increasingly critical of Israel over the Palestinian death toll in its offensive in Gaza, and criticized restrictions on the amount of aid getting through to the territory, much of which has been reduced to rubble.
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 39 who the military says are dead.
More than 39,100 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
According to the Israeli military 327 soldiers have been killed in the Gaza military campaign since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.

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Topics: War on Gaza Israel Palestine US Gaza Hamas Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu US President Joe Biden

Red Cross says determining fate of Syria’s missing ‘huge challenge’

Updated 10 sec ago

AFP

January 05, 2025 10:38

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Red Cross says determining fate of Syria’s missing ‘huge challenge’

The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of Syria’s civil war
Red Cross working with the caretaker authorities, NGOs and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data to give families answers

Updated 10 sec ago

AFP

January 05, 2025 10:38

DAMASCUS: Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said.
“Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge,” ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric said in an interview.
The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started in 2011 when president Bashar Assad’s forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.
Many are believed to have been buried in mass graves after being tortured in Syria’s jails during a war that has killed more than half a million people.
Thousands have been released since Islamist-led militants ousted Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of relatives and friends who went missing.
Spoljaric said the ICRC was working with the caretaker authorities, non-governmental organizations and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data to give families answers as soon as possible.
But “the task is enormous,” she said in the interview late Saturday.
“It will take years to get clarity and to be able to inform everybody concerned. And there will be cases we will never (be able) to identify,” she added.
“Until recently, we’ve been following up on 35,000 cases, and since we established a new hotline in December, we are adding another 8,000 requests,” Spoljaric said.
“But that is just potentially a portion of the numbers.”
Spoljaric said the ICRC was offering the new authorities to “work with us to build the necessary institution and institutional capacities to manage the available data and to protect and gather what... needs to be collected.”
Human Rights Watch last month urged the new Syrian authorities to “secure, collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records... that will be vital in future criminal trials.”
The rights group also called for cooperation with the ICRC, which could “provide critical expertise” to help safeguard the records and clarify the fate of missing people.
Spoljaric said: “We cannot exclude that data is going to be lost. But we need to work quickly to preserve what exists and to store it centrally to be able to follow up on the individual cases.”
More than half a century of brutal rule by the Assad family came to a sudden end in early December after a rapid militant offensive swept across Syria and took the capital Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.

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Syria monitor says fighting between pro-Turkiye, Kurdish forces kills 101

Updated 26 min 37 sec ago

AFP

January 05, 2025 09:48

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Syria monitor says fighting between pro-Turkiye, Kurdish forces kills 101

Updated 26 min 37 sec ago

AFP

January 05, 2025 09:48

BEIRUT: More than 100 combatants were killed over the last two days in northern Syria in fighting between Turkish-backed groups and Syrian Kurdish forces, a war monitor said on Sunday.
Since Friday evening, clashes in several villages around the city of Manbij have left 101 dead, including 85 members of pro-Turkish groups and 16 from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In a statement, the SDF said it had repelled “all the attacks from Turkiye’s mercenaries supported by Turkish drones and aviation.”
Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria resumed their fight with the SDF at the same time Islamist-led rebels were launching an offensive on November 27 that overthrew Syrian president Bashar Assad just 11 days later.
They succeeded in capturing the cities of Manbij and Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province from the SDF.
The fighting has continued since, with heavy casualties.
According to Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Observatory, the Turkish-backed groups aim to take the cities of Kobani and Tabqa, before moving on to Raqqa.
The SDF controls vast areas of Syria’s northeast and parts of Deir Ezzor province in the east where the Kurds created an autonomous administration following the withdrawal of government forces during the civil war that began in 2011.
The group, which receives US backing, took control of much of its current territory, including Raqqa, after capturing it from the jihadists of the Daesh group.
Ankara considers the SDF an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in southeastern Turkiye and is banned as a terrorist organization by the government.
The Turkish military regularly launches strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and neighboring Iraq, accusing them of being PKK-linked.
Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new leader and the head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), has previously said the SDF would be integrated into the country’s future army.
HTS led the coalition of rebel groups that overthrew Assad last month.

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Topics: Fall of Assad Turkiye

Syrian foreign minister in Doha to meet senior Qatari officials

Updated 3 min 28 sec ago

Reuters

January 05, 2025 09:03

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Syrian foreign minister in Doha to meet senior Qatari officials

The Syrian minister’s visit to Qatar is his second foreign trip less than a month since former President Bashar Assad was ousted

Updated 3 min 28 sec ago

Reuters

January 05, 2025 09:03

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, appointed by the country’s new rulers, arrived in Qatar on Sunday to meet senior Qatari officials, a Qatari official said.
The officials include Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al-Khulaifi.
Syrian official news agency SANA confirmed the arrival of the Syrian delegation, which includes the country’s Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra and head of intelligence Anas Khattab.
The Syrian minister’s visit to Qatar is his second foreign trip less than a month since former President Bashar Assad was ousted by militants on Dec. 8.
Al-Shibani is expected to also visit the United Arab Emirates and Jordan this week to “support stability, security, economic recovery and build distinguished partnerships,” according to his account on X.
He embarked on his first foreign trip to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, where Saudi officials discussed how best to support Syria’s political transition.

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Topics: Fall of Assad Syria Qatar

Israel-Hamas talks resume in Qatar as violence shows no let-up

Updated 05 January 2025

AFP

January 05, 2025 06:49

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Israel-Hamas talks resume in Qatar as violence shows no let-up

Israel’s defense chief says indirect negotiations with Hamas seek release of hostages
Ninety-six Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 Israeli military says are dead

Updated 05 January 2025

AFP

January 05, 2025 06:49

GAZA STRIP: Israel confirmed on Saturday that negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal had resumed in Qatar, as rescuers said more than 30 people had been killed in fresh bombardment of the territory.

The civil defense agency said a dawn air strike on the home of the Al-Ghoula family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.

AFP images from the neighborhood of Shujaiya showed residents combing through smoking rubble. Bodies including those of small children were lined up on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.

As the violence raged, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that indirect negotiations with Hamas had resumed in Qatar for the release of hostages seized in the October 2023 attacks.

The minister told relatives of one of the hostages, woman soldier Liri Albag, that “efforts are under way to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday (Friday) for negotiations in Qatar,” his office said.

Katz said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given “detailed instructions for the continued negotiations.”

He was speaking after Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, released a video of Albag in captivity in Gaza.

In the undated, three-and-half-minute recording that AFP has not been able to verify, the 19-year-old conscript called in Hebrew for the Israeli government to secure her release.

In response, her family issued an appeal to Netanyahu, saying: “It’s time to take decisions as if it were your own children there.”

A total of 96 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the latest video was “firm and incontestable proof of the urgency of bringing the hostages home.”

Hamas had said late on Friday that the negotiations were poised to resume.

The militant group, whose October 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, said they would “focus on ensuring the agreement leads to a complete cessation of hostilities (and) the withdrawal of occupation forces.”

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged in months of effort that have failed to end nearly 15 months of war.

In December, Qatar expressed optimism that “momentum” was returning to the talks following the US election of Donald Trump, who takes office in 16 days.

But Hamas and Israel then accused each other of setting new conditions and obstacles.

As the clock ticks down to the handover of power in Washington, the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden notified Congress of an $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a source familiar with the plan said on Saturday.

“The department has informally notified Congress of an $8 billion proposed sale of munitions to support Israel’s long-term security by resupplying stocks of critical munitions and air defense capabilities,” the official said.

The United States is Israel’s largest military supplier.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Ghoula home in Gaza City “was completely destroyed” by the dawn strike.

“It was a two-story building and several people are still under the rubble,” he said, adding Israeli drones had “also fired on ambulance staff.”

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment.

“A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,” said neighbor Ahmed Mussa.

“It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.”

Elsewhere, the civil defense agency said an Israeli strike killed five security officers tasked with accompanying aid convoys as they drove through the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The Israeli army said the five had been “implicated in terrorist activities” and were not escorting aid trucks at the time of the strike.

Rescuers said strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed 10 other people.

AFP images showed Palestine Red Crescent paramedics in Gaza City moving the body of one of their colleagues, his green jacket laid over the blanket that covered his corpse.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a total of 136 people had been killed over the previous 48 hours.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen in the latest of a series of attacks.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been firing missiles and drones at Israel — as well as at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — in what they say is a solidarity campaign with Palestinians during the war in Gaza.

The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,717 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

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Israel-Hamas talks resume in Qatar as violence shows no let-up

Updated 13 min 53 sec ago

AFP

AP

January 05, 2025 04:07

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Israel-Hamas talks resume in Qatar as violence shows no let-up

Israel's defense chief says direct negotiations with Hamas seeks release of hostages
A total of 96 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead

Updated 13 min 53 sec ago

AFP AP

January 05, 2025 04:07

GAZA STRIP: Israel confirmed on Saturday that negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal had resumed in Qatar, as rescuers said more than 30 people had been killed in fresh bombardment of the territory.

The civil defense agency said a dawn air strike on the home of the Al-Ghoula family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.

AFP images from the neighborhood of Shujaiya showed residents combing through smoking rubble. Bodies including those of small children were lined up on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.

The Israeli military claims that it had struck more than 100 “terror targets” in Gaza over the past two days, while rescuers in the Palestinian territory reported dozens of people killed in Israeli strikes.