Hamas says it creates broad prospects for a ceasefire deal in Gaza

Update Hamas says it creates broad prospects for a ceasefire deal in Gaza
The United Nations Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution supporting a ceasefire plan in Gaza, as Washington leads an intense diplomatic campaign to push Hamas to accept the proposal. (File/AFP)
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Updated 12 June 2024
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Hamas says it creates broad prospects for a ceasefire deal in Gaza

Hamas says it creates broad prospects for a ceasefire deal in Gaza
  • Hamas submitted its formal response on Tuesday to a proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden on May 31
  • Group says answer “responsible, serious and positive” and “opens up a wide pathway” for an accord

JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Hamas on Wednesday said its “positive” response to a US ceasefire plan for the eight-month-old war in the Gaza Strip opened a “wide pathway” to reach an agreement, but the outlook was uncertain as neither the Palestinian group nor Israel publicly committed to a deal.
Hamas submitted its formal response on Tuesday to a proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden on May 31. Israel said the response was tantamount to a rejection while a Hamas official said the Palestinian group merely reiterated longstanding demands not met by the current plan.
Egypt and Qatar said they had received Hamas’ response but did not disclose the contents.
Early on Wednesday, Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, said in a statement the group’s answer was “responsible, serious and positive” and “opens up a wide pathway” for an accord.
Another Hamas official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters on Tuesday the response reaffirmed the movement’s stance that a ceasefire must lead to a permanent end to hostilities in Gaza, withdrawal of Israeli forces, reconstruction of the Palestinian enclave and release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
“We reiterated our previous stance. I believe there are no big gaps. The ball is now in the Israeli courtyard,” the official said.
The United States has said Israel accepted its proposal, but Israel has not publicly stated this. As Israel has continued assaults in central and southern Gaza that are among the bloodiest of the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel would not commit to an end of its campaign in Gaza before Hamas is eliminated.
An Israeli official said on Tuesday the country had received Hamas’ answer via the mediators and that Hamas “changed all of the main and most meaningful parameters.”
The Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hamas “has rejected the proposal for a hostage release that was presented by President Biden.”
Earlier a non-Israeli official briefed on the matter, who declined to be identified, said Hamas proposed a new timeline for a permanent ceasefire with Israel and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, including Rafah.
The UN Security Council on Monday voted in favor of a US resolution supporting the proposal outlined by Biden. Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Tuesday that Hamas accepted the Security Council resolution and was ready to negotiate over the details of a ceasefire.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Tel Aviv to meet Israeli officials on Tuesday, described the comments by Hamas as a “hopeful sign” but said they were not conclusive.
More important “is the word coming from Gaza and from the Hamas leadership in Gaza. That’s what counts, and that’s what we don’t have yet,” Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv.

CEASEFIRE PLAN

Biden’s proposal envisages a ceasefire and phased release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians jailed in Israel, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war. This would be a three-phase plan starting with an initial six-week ceasefire with an Israeli military withdrawal from populated areas of Gaza and the release of some hostages while “a permanent end to hostilities” is negotiated through mediators. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Israeli official’s remarks on Tuesday. Earlier US officials said they were reviewing Hamas’ response, as did Qatar and Egypt.
For months, negotiators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been trying to mediate a ceasefire in the enclave of 2.3 million people.
Separately, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said in a report to the Security Council that Israel’s army and security forces as well as Palestinian militants Hamas and Islamic Jihad killed and maimed children in 2023.
Israel is retaliating against Hamas, which rules Gaza, over an Oct. 7 attack by its militants.
More than 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage by Hamas during the raids, according to Israeli tallies. More than 100 hostages are believed to remain captive in Gaza.
Israel launched an air, ground and sea assault on the Palestinian territory, killing more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis due to widespread hunger, scarcity of essentials, infrastructure destruction and continuing displacement of civilians.
The US military resumed bringing humanitarian aid into the enclave via a floating pier on Tuesday after a two-day halt due to bad weather, three US officials said.
The pier was out of operation for 10 days for repairs, and briefly re-opened on Saturday. The UN still is not moving aid from the pier to warehouses while it reviews security.


Baghdad’s first skatepark offers boarders rare respite

Baghdad’s first skatepark offers boarders rare respite
Updated 13 February 2025
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Baghdad’s first skatepark offers boarders rare respite

Baghdad’s first skatepark offers boarders rare respite
  • The new skatepark at the sports ministry in a Baghdad suburb provides a welcome means of escape for young people in a country that has endured decades of conflict and crisis

BAGHDAD: Rukaya Al-Zubaidi placed a cautious foot on a skateboard and then struggled to find her balance as others glided back and forth at Baghdad’s first park dedicated to the sport.
“It’s only my second time skating, but I want to keep going, especially now we have the space for it here in Baghdad,” the 22-year-old said as loud music mixed with laughter from fellow boarders.
After negotiating with authorities for five years, three organizations from Italy, Iraq and Belgium have now opened Baghdad’s first skatepark.
It is not the first in the country, however: that honor went to the northern city of Sulaimaniyah.
The new skatepark at the sports ministry in a Baghdad suburb provides a welcome means of escape for young people in a country that has endured decades of conflict and crisis.
It also offers a rare respite from the gaze of conservative Iraqi society.
Zubaidi, wearing a pink sweater, watched fellow enthusiasts, both professional and amateur, as they rolled on colorful boards in the open-air park.
“When my friends first told me about skateboarding, I was scared,” she said — not just of falling but also because of what people might say and because her parents might not approve.
“But when I tried it, it just filled me with a beautiful energy,” she added.
The skatepark project “is about inclusivity and community, about having a place for everyone,” said Ishtar Obaid of Iraq’s Forsah association.
Forsah, which means “opportunity,” was one of the three organizations that spearheaded the project.

It provides a space “where people from different backgrounds” come together, and “that’s the beauty of sport,” said Obaid, who also advises Iraq’s Olympic committee.
Her organization plans to run skateboarding classes for children and trainers.
“It is a new chapter for sports in Iraq,” Obaid said.
When the authorities approved the project in late 2024, the associations including Make Life Skate Life, a Belgian-US charity that has set up skateparks in northern Iraq, Libya and India, built the new facility in just one month.
Kjell Van Hansewyck of Make Life Skate Life said it was a “real struggle” to find a location for the skatepark.
He described Baghdad as “a crowded city with a lot of pollution and traffic jams,” and lacking “public land and facilities for children.”
The Iraqi capital is bustling with dozens of infrastructure and construction projects. Towering cranes and machinery dominate its streets, as new tunnels and bridges are being built.
“It is like one big work site,” Van Hansewyck said.
When authorities said they could provide space at the sports ministry, the groups could hardly turn down the offer, despite this meaning skaters would have to pass through security checkpoints.
Van Hansewyck said the skatepark is “not visible from the streets,” which makes it difficult for people who want to check it out.
But he is confident that passionate skaters will still promote the park and do everything possible to make it a major attraction.

Mohammad Al-Qadi, 19, bought his first skateboard in 2019, the year he also joined a wave of nationwide anti-government protests.
Baghdad was the vibrant epicenter of the movement. Protesters also organized cultural and sports events before the demonstrations were crushed in a brutal crackdown that saw more than 600 people killed.
Since then, Qadi had only been able to skate on Baghdad’s busy streets.
“When we took to the streets with our skateboards, people would call us bad boys,” he said.
In conservative Iraq, skateboarding is widely viewed as an alternative sport adopted by rebellious youths — leading many to shun it for fear of ruining their reputations.
Qadi said this perception may have slightly improved, but until now local skaters still had nowhere to go.
“When I feel pressured by my studies or in my personal life, I turn to skateboarding, which has never let me down,” he said.
The new skatepark offers an “opportunity” for a break and a rethink, Qadi added.
Hussein Ali, 18, has been skating for five years and said he hoped Iraq will eventually have a national team to compete in championships.
Skateboarding was one of five sports that made an Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 games.
For some in Iraq, skateboarding provides a sense of normality in a country where violence had long been a fact of life.
For Ali, it is also a way to meet new people.
“When you see someone else skating you simply reach out, and just like that, you become friends.”


Why is Gaza truce under threat?

Why is Gaza truce under threat?
Updated 13 February 2025
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Why is Gaza truce under threat?

Why is Gaza truce under threat?
  • The warring parties have already completed five exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but have in recent days have entered into a blame game over the implementation of the deal
  • US President Trump’s forceful backing of ally Israel has put the ceasefire under strain, and particularly his proposal to take over the Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM: A little over three weeks since it came into effect, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that halted the Gaza war has become increasingly fragile.
Under the truce, the warring parties have already completed five exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but have in recent days have entered into a blame game over the implementation of the deal.
US President Donald Trump’s forceful backing of ally Israel has put the ceasefire under strain, and particularly his proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and remove its Palestinian inhabitants.
The truce is currently in its first phase. The next ones have not yet been finalized.
Here are the positions of the key actors who could decide the future of the truce:
For days now, Hamas has accused Israel of not respecting the agreement, saying that the amount and type of aid entering Gaza was insufficent.
Israeli authorities have denied the claims.
In several statements, the Palestinian militants have said they had not received machinery requested to clear the rubble in Gaza, and complained about obstacles to evacuating wounded people to Egypt under the terms of the agreement.
On Wednesday, Hamas said that as a result of the Israeli violations it would postpone indefinitely the next hostage release, which was due to take place on February 15.
Hugh Lovatt, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP that the announcement from Hamas may be an attempt to force a decision on the next phases of the truce.
“Hamas’s aim is to break the deadlock in the negotiations on the second phase of the agreement,” he said, adding that the Palestinian movement has been trying to obtain guarantees that the ceasefire will hold and the war will come of a permanent end.
It’s a “Hail Mary pass,” said Lovatt, “because they fear that Israel will take advantage of Trump’s support to impose new conditions and delay the implementation of the agreement.”
The ongoing first phase of the ceasefire is for 42 days. During this period, negotiations for the second phase were meant to start but that has not happened yet.
On Wednesday, a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo to discuss the disputes over the agreement with Egyptian negotiators.
But a Hamas spokesman warned that the group would not bow down to the “language of threats” from the United States and Israel.
Trump on Monday said “all hell” would break out in Gaza if Hamas did not free all Israeli hostages held in the territory by Saturday noon.
Under the terms of the truce, not all hostages were meant to be freed during the first phase.
The president’s threat came soon after he announced a plan for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and move its almost 2.4 million residents to Jordan or Egypt.
The proposal has provoked widespread international condemnation, and experts have said it would violate international law.
Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that Trump’s statements had “underscored the US backing of Israel.”
“Trump and Netanyahu have both emphasized the importance of releasing hostages,” Freeman said.
He said that despite making threats, he did not believe that either Trump of Israel’s leaders wanted the war to resume.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Hamas cannot be allowed to use the ceasefire to “rebuild itself and recover strength.”
Echoing statements from the US president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would resume “intense fighting” in Gaza if Hamas did not return hostages by Saturday.
Netanyahu did not specify whether he expected all the hostages to be freed, or a smaller batch due for release under the terms of the deal.
“It’s in his best interest to do it gradually,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
According to her, Netanyahu was deliberately being ambiguous and was “buying time” to extend the first stage of the truce and delay talks about the post-war future of the Gaza Strip.
But Netanyahu also faces domestic “public pressure” to secure the release of the remaining hostages, including through indirect negotiations with Hamas, said Zonszein.
“It could be a determining factor that when the three hostages came out last Saturday, they looked really, really bad,” she said of the three Israelis freed on Saturday.
They appeared emaciated, spurring concern among Israelis for the fate of those still in captivity.
Despite their disputes, Zonszein said that the sides have not “given up on anything yet.”
“They’re just playing power games.”


Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life

Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life
Updated 13 February 2025
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Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life

Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life

BOGOTA: The wife of Elkana Bohbot, a Colombian-Israeli man being held hostage by Hamas, said Wednesday she had received proof he was alive and denounced the “terrible” conditions in which he was being held.
In an interview with Colombia’s Blu Radio, Rebecca Gonzalez said that she received news of her husband from Ohad Ben Ami, one of the three hostages released by Hamas last weekend.
The three, whose emaciated appearance caused widespread shock, were released under the fifth exchange of prisoners since Israel and Hamas agreed a truce in their 15-month war on January 19.
“He (Ben Ami) brought me proof of life from my husband. I received a message, I even received a song in which he asks me to be strong,” Gonzalez, who is Colombian, said.
“He is alive, and we need to get him out of there immediately,” she pleaded.
Relating Ben Ami’s account of his captivity, which left him in a “severe nutritional state” according to doctors, Gonzalez said: “They are in tunnels, they are not allowed to see the light, they are not allowed to go out for air.”
She said her husband was living on a piece of bread a day, “very little water” and was “mistreated physically and psychologically.”
Bohbot, who hails from the town of Mevasseret Tzion near Jerusalem and has a young son, was one of the producers of the Supernova music festival, which Hamas gunmen stormed during their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
His childhood friends and fellow rave organizers Michael and Osher Vaknin were killed in the attack.
A Hamas video from October 7 posted online showed Bohbot, now aged 36, bound and injured in the face, being held by the Palestinian armed group.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro gave him Colombian nationality a month after the attacks.
The Hamas attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The group also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has reduced most of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 48,222 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The United Nations considers the ministry’s figures reliable.


UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank

UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank
Updated 13 February 2025
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UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank

UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank
  • UNICEF condemns all acts of violence against children and calls for the immediate cessation of armed activity across the occupied West Bank

UNITED NATIONS, United States: Violence against children has surged in recent months in the occupied West Bank, where Israel is conducting a sweeping military operation, UNICEF warned Wednesday as it called for an end to hostilities.
UNICEF’s regional director Edouard Beigbeder said 13 Palestinian children were killed in the West bank since the start of the year alone, including seven killed following the launch of a large-scale operation by Israel in the north of the territory on January 19.
The casualties include a two-and-a-half-year-old child, whose pregnant mother was also injured in the shooting, according to the United Nations children’s agency.
“UNICEF condemns all acts of violence against children and calls for the immediate cessation of armed activity across the occupied West Bank,” Beigbeder said in a statement.
“All civilians, including every child without exception, must be protected.”
He added that the rising use “of explosive weapons, airstrikes and demolitions in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas Governorates — including in refugee camps and other densely populated areas — has left essential infrastructure severely damaged, disrupting water and electricity supplies.”
In total, 195 Palestinian children and three Israeli children have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza.
That constitutes a 200 percent increase in the number of Palestinian children killed in the territory over the past 16 months, compared to the same period prior.
According to UN humanitarian agency OCHA, 224 children (218 boys and six girls) were killed between January 2023 and January 2025 in the West Bank by Israeli forces or Israeli settlers, which represents nearly half of the 468 children killed in total in the territory since 2005, when OCHA began documenting these victims.
More than 2,500 Palestinian children were also injured in the West Bank between January 2023 and December 2024, according to the agency.


Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says

Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says
Updated 13 February 2025
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Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says

Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says
  • The war in Sudan has drawn in multiple competing regional and global influences, in part due to its ample Red Sea coastline, as well as gold resources

CAIRO: An agreement signed years ago for the creation of a Russian naval base in Sudan remains on the table following talks in Moscow, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Yusef Sharif said in an interview with Russia Today on Wednesday.
Such a deal has been discussed for years since an agreement was signed under former President Omar Al-Bashir. The army generals who overthrew him in 2019 said later the plan was under review, and a base has never materialized.
“In our meeting we did not negotiate the deal ... there was a deal signed and there is no disagreement,” he said, saying that as before all that remains is the issue of ratification.
“There are no obstacles, we are in complete agreement,” Sharif had said earlier when asked about the deal, following talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
He did not provide any additional details on the plan.
Russia has cultivated ties with both sides in Sudan’s almost two-year-long civil war, and Russian officials have visited the army’s wartime capital of Port Sudan in recent months.
Last year, a top Sudanese general said Russia had asked for a fueling station on the Red Sea in exchange for weapons and ammunition.
Sharif said such a station presented no threat to any other country or to Sudan’s sovereignty, drawing on the example of nearby Djibouti, which hosts several foreign bases.
Such a station would be beneficial to Russia, particularly after the fall of Syria’s Assad regime put in question key bases there.
The war in Sudan has drawn in multiple competing regional and global influences, in part due to its ample Red Sea coastline, as well as gold resources.