Jordan’s foreign minister holds talks in Iran amid regional tensions
Safadi will also deliver a message to Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian on regional developments and bilateral relations
Safadi would be the first senior Jordanian official to pay an official visit to Iran in over 20 years
Updated 04 August 2024
Arab News
AMMAN: Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi made a rare visit to Iran on Sunday for talks with his Iranian counterpart Ali Bagheri-Kani on regional developments, state news agency Petra reported.
Safadi delivered a message on behalf of King Abdullah II to Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian regarding the situation in the region and bilateral relations.
Earlier the official news agency in Iran, IRNA, said that Safadi would “exchange views with Iranian officials on regional and international issues” during his visit to Tehran.
The royal court in Amman also said that King Abdullah had received a phone call from French President Emmanuel Macron “which covered the dangerous situation in the region.”
The king appealed “further international efforts to reach comprehensive calm and prevent a regional expansion of the conflict,” a statement said.
Regional tensions have spiked following the assassination of Haniyeh on Wednesday, which came a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander from the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Hamas and Iran have both accused Israel of carrying out the assassination of Haniyeh and have pledged to retaliate. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the death nor denied it.
Safadi would be the first senior Jordanian official to pay an official visit to Iran in over 20 years.
The last time a senior Jordanian official traveled to Iran on an official visit was in 2004 when then-Prime Minister Faisal Al-Fayez went to Tehran.
Iran has held talks with multiple Arab countries including Jordan, Egypt, Oman and Qatar among others since Haniyeh’s killing.
Tehran repeatedly reaffirmed its “inherent right” to take action against Israel.
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UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
The report detailed a raft of violations of international law since Oct. 7
Updated 4 sec ago
AFP
GENEVA: The UN on Friday condemned the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify. In a fresh report, slammed by Israel, the United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip. Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide,” it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent “atrocity crimes” and ensure accountability. “Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said. “Conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease.” It pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.” Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva “categorically” rejected the report, decrying “the inherent obsession of OHCHR with the demonization of Israel.” “Gaza is now a rubble-strewn landscape,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office’s activities in the Palestinian territories, said via video-link from Amman. “Within this dystopia of destruction and devastation, those alive are left injured, displaced and starving.” Friday’s report also found that Hamas and other armed groups had committed widespread violations that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including seizing hostages, killings, torture and sexual violence. Those violations, it said, were especially committed in connection with the October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The report also tackled the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians among the nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza so far, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory. UN agencies have been relying on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza due to lack of access. This has sparked harsh criticism from Israel but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable. The rights office said it had now managed to verify around 10,000 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war. “We have so far found close to 70 percent to be children and women,” Sunghay said, highlighting the stringent verification methodology that requires at least three separate sources. He said the findings indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.” He said 4,700 of the verified fatalities were children and 2,461 were women.
The rights office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing. Children between the ages of five and nine made up the largest group of victims, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman, it said. Israel says its operations in Gaza target militants and are in line with international law. But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely Gaza’s demographic makeup rather than that of combatants. This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life.” UN rights chief Volker Turk called on all countries to work to halt the violations and to ensure accountability, including through universal jurisdiction. “It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies,” he said. “The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid.”
After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group
Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office
Updated 49 min 8 sec ago
Reuters
WASHINGTON/DOHA: The US has told Qatar that the presence of Hamas in Doha is no longer acceptable in the weeks since the Palestinian militant group rejected the latest proposal to achieve a ceasefire and a hostage deal, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Qatar then made the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. Washington has been in touch with Qatar over when to close the political office of Hamas, and it told Doha that now was the time following the group’s rejection of the recent proposal.
Three Hamas officials denied Qatar had told Hamas leaders they were no longer welcome in the country.
Qatar, alongside the US and Egypt, has played a major role in rounds of so-far fruitless talks to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages the militant group is holding in the enclave.
The latest round of Doha talks in mid-October failed to reach a ceasefire, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal.
The spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for confirmation or comment.
Last year, a senior US official said Qatar had told Washington it was open to
reconsidering the presence of Hamas
in the country once the Gaza war was over.
This came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
told leaders
in Qatar and elsewhere in the region that there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas after the group led the Oct. 7 attacks on Southern Israel.
Qatar, an influential Gulf state designated as major non-NATO ally by Washington, has hosted Hamas’ political leaders since 2012 as part of an agreement with the US Doha has come under criticism from within the US and Israel over its ties to Hamas since Oct. 7.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has said repeatedly over the last year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group and that as long as the channel remained useful Qatar would allow the Hamas office to remain open.
Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office.
US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart
Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day
The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza“
Updated 09 November 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed Lebanon and Gaza on Friday in his first call with his new Israeli counterpart Israel Katz, the Pentagon said.
Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day, after his predecessor’s shock dismissal by the prime minister over a breakdown in trust during the war in Gaza — a conflict that began with a devastating Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Austin “held an introductory call today with the new Israeli minister of defense, Israel Katz, and congratulated him on his recent appointment,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a statement.
He told Katz that Washington is committed to a deal that allows Lebanese and Israeli citizens displaced by more than a year of cross-border violence to return to their homes, as well as to the return of hostages seized by Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ryder said.
The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza,” after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel in a letter earlier this month that it needed to allow more aid into the small war-wracked coastal territory.
Palestinian leader tells Trump ready to work for Gaza peace
Updated 09 November 2024
AFP
RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas expressed readiness to work toward a “just and comprehensive peace” in Gaza during a phone call with US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday, his office said.
Trump’s victory came with the Middle East in turmoil after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, triggered by the unprecedented attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Congratulating Trump on his victory, Abbas expressed “readiness to work with President Trump to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on international legitimacy,” his office said in a statement.
It said that Trump also assured Abbas that he will work to end the war.
“President Trump stressed that he will work to stop the war, and his readiness to work with president Abbas and the concerned parties in the region and the world to make peace in the region.”
While Trump struck a note of peace during his campaign, he also touted his status as Israel’s strongest ally, even going so far as to promise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel had issued no evacuation warning ahead of the strikes
Updated 08 November 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: The Lebanese health ministry said at least three people were killed and 30 others wounded on Friday in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Tyre.
The official National News Agency said the strikes targeted three buildings in the city and caused heavy damage to neighboring apartment blocks.
It said Israel had issued no evacuation warning ahead of the strikes.
Israel has been at war with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah since late September, when it broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border, even as the Gaza war continues.
Hezbollah began low intensity strikes on Israel in support of Hamas following its Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the Gaza war.
