Hamas still to give response on Gaza truce plan: Qatar
Hamas still to give response on Gaza truce plan: Qatar/node/2525441/middle-east
Hamas still to give response on Gaza truce plan: Qatar
1 / 2
Majed Alansari, spokesperson of Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (X: @MofaQatar_EN)
2 / 2
Palestinians watch smoke billowing after an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on June 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Hamas still to give response on Gaza truce plan: Qatar
Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, has been engaged in months of negotiations over details for a ceasefire in Gaza
Seeking to restart talks, US President Joe Biden said last week Israel was offering a new three-stage roadmap
Earlier on Thursday, a senior Hamas official cast doubt on Biden's proposal as "just words said ... in a speech"
Updated 07 June 2024
AFP
DOHA: Hamas has not given its response on a tabled plan for a ceasefire with Israel in Gaza and an exchange of hostages and prisoners, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman said Thursday.
"Mediators have not yet received a response from the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) regarding the latest proposal," Majed al-Ansari told Qatar's state news agency.
Hamas had "indicated that it is still studying the proposal", Ansari added, explaining mediation efforts were ongoing.
Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, has been engaged in months of negotiations over details for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But except for a seven-day pause beginning in November, which led to the release of more than 100 hostages, there has been no break in the fighting.
Seeking to restart talks, US President Joe Biden said last week Israel was offering a new three-stage roadmap.
Egypt on Thursday said it had received encouraging signals from Hamas over a potential deal with Israel, according to state-linked Al-Qahera News, citing a high-level source.
The comments came a day after meetings began between Hamas representatives, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egypt's intelligence chief Abbas Kamel in Doha.
But Beirut-based senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Thursday cast doubt on the substance of the framework described by the US president.
"There is no proposal -- they are just words said by Biden in a speech," he said.
"So far, the Americans have not presented anything documented or written that commits them to what Biden said in his speech," he added.
Also on Thursday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held talks in Cairo with Biden's top Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk.
Tunisian court sentences opposition leaders to jail terms of 13 to 66 years
The opposition says the charges were fabricated and the trial a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule
Updated 12 sec ago
Reuters
TUNIS: A Tunisian court handed jail terms of 13 to 66 years to opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers on charges of conspiring against state security, the state news agency TAP reported on Saturday, citing a judicial official. The opposition says the charges were fabricated and the trial a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule. Rights groups say Saied has had full control over the judiciary since he dissolved parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree. He dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council in 2022. The state news agency did not provide further details about the sentences. Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, were being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad since being charged. Some of the opposition defendants — including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi, Ridha BelHajj and Khyam Turki — have been in custody since being detained in 2023. “In my entire life, I have never witnessed a trial like this. It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous and shameful,” said lawyer Ahmed Souab, who represents the defendants, on Friday before the ruling was handed down. Authorities say the defendants, who include former officials and former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilize the country and overthrow Saied. “This authoritarian regime has nothing to offer Tunisians except more repression,” the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Hamma Hammami, said. Saied rejects accusations that he is a dictator and says he is fighting chaos and corruption that is rampant among the political elite.
Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief
Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar and met with Christian religious leaders
They were toured around by Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government
Updated 19 April 2025
AP
DAMASCUS, Syria: Two Republican members of the US Congress were in the Syrian capital Friday on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit, the first by US legislators since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Also Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in his first visit since Assad’s fall and since the beginning of the Syrian uprising-turned-civil-war in 2011.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar, the site of a historic synagogue that was heavily damaged and looted in the civil war, and the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma, where they met with Christian religious leaders. They also were set to meet Al-Sharaa and other government officials.
The Trump administration has yet to officially recognize the current Syrian government, led by Al-Sharaa, an Islamist former insurgent who led a lightning offensive that toppled Assad. Washington has not yet lifted harsh sanctions that were imposed during Assad’s rule.
Mills, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Associated Press that it was “very important to come here to be able to see it for myself, to be with various governmental bodies, to look at the needs of the Syrian people, to look at the needs for the nation for stability.”
Mills said he expected discussions with Al-Sharaa to include the issue of sanctions, as well as the government’s priorities and the need for the transitional administration to move toward a “democratically elected society.”
“Ultimately, it’s going to be the president’s decision” to lift sanctions or not, he said, although “Congress can advise.”
The Congress members came at the invitation of the Syrian American Alliance for Peace and Prosperity, a nonprofit based in Indiana that describes its mission as fostering “a sustainable political, economic, and social partnership between the people of Syria and the United States.”
Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government, joined the congressional team on a visit to Bab Touma, which she said was “very important” to Syrians.
US Congressman Cory Mills, Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, and others walk on a street during a visit to Bab Touma, a geographic landmark of Christianity, in the Old city of Damascus on April 18, 2025. (Reuters photo)
The US State Department, meanwhile, issued a statement Friday reiterating its warning against US citizens visiting Syria. The statement said the State Department “is tracking credible information related to potential imminent attacks, including locations frequented by tourists.”
Palestinian leader visits as Israeli troops remain in Syria
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said that Abbas’s visit, his first since 2007, was “aimed at strengthening Palestinian-Syrian relations and discussing pressing regional developments.”
Abbas and Al-Sharaa discussed the ongoing war in Gaza and international efforts to move forward long-stalled efforts to reach a two-state solution to the to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “agreed to form joint committees aimed at enhancing bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors,” it said.
Syria has a population of about 450,000 Palestinian refugees. The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was once widely considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before it was largely destroyed in the war.
Accompanied by unidentified members of the delegation, US congressman Cory Mills, second from right, walks in the Old City of Damascus on April 18, 2025. (AP Photo)
Palestinian refugees in Syria have never been given citizenship, ostensibly to preserve their right to go back to the homes they fled or were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. But in contrast to neighboring Lebanon, where Palestinians are banned from owning property or working in many professions, in Syria, Palestinians historically had all the rights of citizens except the right to vote and run for office.
Syria does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. While the new Syrian authorities have said publicly that they are not interested in entering a conflict with Israel, the Israeli government regards the Islamist former insurgents now in power in Damascus with suspicion.
Israeli forces seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria after the rebels toppled Assad and have launched an extensive series of airstrikes on military facilities in Syria. Israeli officials have said that they will not allow the new Syrian military south of Damascus.
Abbas’ arrival in Damascus was delayed after Israeli authorities denied permission for a helicopter to land in Ramallah that was supposed to arrive from Jordan to take the Palestinian president, said a Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. Israeli officials did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce
Updated 19 April 2025
Reuters AFP
GAZA: Hamas on Friday rejected Israel’s latest attempt to renegotiate the Gaza ceasefire as at least 43 more Palestinians died in airstrikes.
Among the victims were 10 members of the Baraka family killed in an attack on their home near Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said its troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, and in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.
Last month Israel ended a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting, and it has since seized about a third of the enclave. A new Israeli offer to renew the truce for 45 days included demands that Hamas release 10 Israeli hostages and lay down its arms. The militants dismissed the proposal on Friday as imposing “impossible conditions.”
“Partial agreements are used by Benjamin Netanyahu as a cover for his political agenda ... we will not be complicit in this policy,” a Hamas spokesman said on Friday.
Hamas sought “a comprehensive deal involving a single-package prisoner exchange in return for halting the war, a withdrawal of the occupation from the Gaza Strip, and the commencement of reconstruction,” the spokesman said.
Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the original January ceasefire deal but there has been little sign the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.
Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case
“It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous,” lawyer Ahmed Souab said
Updated 18 April 2025
Reuters
TUNIS: A Tunisian court is set to issue a ruling in the conspiracy case against prominent opponents, as lawyers protested and described the trial as a farce, while others called the proceedings a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule.
Rights groups say the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council.
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad since being charged.
Some of the opposition defendants — including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi, Ridha BelHajj and Khyam Turki — have been in custody since being detained in 2023.
Following the judge’s decision to clear the courtroom in preparation for deliberation and the issuance of rulings, dozens of lawyers protested, raising slogans calling for freedom and justice.
“In my entire life, I have never witnessed a trial like this. It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous and shameful,” Lawyer Ahmed Souab told reporters.
Journalists and civil society groups were barred from attending the trial.
Some of the country’s most prominent opposition politicians — including Nejib Chebbi, the leader of the main National Salvation Front opposition coalition — face a range of conspiracy charges in the trial that started in March and has been postponed twice.
“The authorities want to criminalize the opposition. I wouldn’t be surprised if heavy sentences are issued tonight,” Chebbi told reporters before going into the court.
Authorities say the defendants, who also include business people and former officials including the former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilize the country and overthrow Saied.
Activists and families of the defendants shouted “free the prisoners,” “stop the farce” and other slogans.
“This authoritarian regime has nothing to offer Tunisians except more repression,” the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Hamma Hammami, said.
Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound rifts over brutal war
Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war
Updated 18 April 2025
AP
TEL AVIV: When nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed an open letter last week calling for an end to the war in Gaza, the military responded immediately, saying it would dismiss any active reservist who signed the document.
But in the days since, thousands of retired and reservist soldiers across the military have signed similar letters of support.
The growing campaign, which accuses the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home the remaining hostages, has laid bare the deep division and disillusionment over Israel’s fighting in Gaza.
By spilling over into the military, it has threatened national unity and raised questions about the army’s ability to continue fighting at full force.
It also resembles the bitter divisions that erupted in early 2023 over the government’s attempts to overhaul Israel’s legal system, which many say weakened the country and encouraged Hamas’ attack later that year that triggered the war.
“It’s crystal clear that the renewal of the war is for political reasons and not for security reasons,” said Guy Poran, a retired pilot who was one of the initiators of the air force letter.
The catalyst for the letters was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision on March 18 to return to war instead of sticking to a ceasefire that had facilitated the release of some hostages.
In their letters, the protesters have stopped short of refusing to serve. And the vast majority of the 10,000 soldiers who have signed are retired in any case.
Nonetheless, Poran said their decision to identify themselves as ex-pilots was deliberate — given the respect among Israel’s Jewish majority for the military, especially for fighter pilots and other prestigious units.
Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war.
“We are aware of the relative importance and the weight of the brand of Israeli Air Force pilots and felt that it is exactly the kind of case where we should use this title in order to influence society,” said Poran.
