DEAD SEA, Jordan: Arab leaders arriving in Jordan for a summit on Wednesday are seeking common ground to reaffirm their commitment to a Palestinian state, a longstanding goal that US President Donald Trump last month put into doubt.
The Dead Sea meeting is expected to have a bigger turnout than recent Arab summits, Jordanian officials said, and security forces cast a high profile in the capital Amman with armored vehicles standing at traffic junctions as leaders flew in.
While they are highly unlikely to bridge rifts over the regional role of Iran or intractable wars in Syria and Yemen, Arab leaders remain united in supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We are concerned that there should be an Arab consensus on the Palestinian file so that this reflects clearly in the discussions of Arab states and their leaders with the new American administration,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki told Reuters.
Before taking office in January, Trump promised to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — something adamantly opposed by Arabs as tantamount, in their view, to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.
The Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem — which Israel captured in a 1967 war and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally — as the capital of a future state encompassing the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen since 2014.
Trump also, indicated he was open to a one-state solution to the conflict during a White House news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month.
That would be deeply problematic for both sides, as it would mean either two systems for two peoples — something Palestinians would see as apartheid and endless occupation — or equal rights for all, which would compromise Israel’s Jewish character.
The Arab monarchs and presidents attending Wednesday’s summit will meet at the Dead Sea, only a few kilometers from the West Bank and with Israeli settlements visible to the naked eye.
The US is sending a representative to the summit, Al-Maliki said. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdallah are both scheduled to meet Trump soon.
A draft resolution on Jerusalem and seen by Reuters will require all Arab states to respond to any move by any country to move its embassy there, without specifying the US.
“The Palestinian issue is the central issue. It is the root cause of conflict in the region and its resolution is the key to peace and stability. We hope we will be able to again relaunch efforts that would get serious negotiations restarted again,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.
“We meet in a difficult Arab era dominated by crisis and conflicts that deprive our region of the security and stability they need to attain our people’s rights,” Safadi said in a meeting with fellow foreign ministers before the summit.
A Jordanian official told Reuters that the final statement from the summit was expected to include a condemnation of Iran for what it called meddling in internal Arab affairs, and to call on it to refrain from using force or threats. Iran denies any such interference.
A summit meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation included a similar line in its final statement last year.
“There could actually be a product of the Arab summit — a unified attitude toward Washington’s policy in Palestine. They might disagree on all other issues, but I think this is the unifying one,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security expert.
Arab leaders seek common ground on Palestinian state
Arab leaders seek common ground on Palestinian state
Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell
DAMASCUS: Syrian Arab Republic authorities have arrested an alleged Daesh commander accused of planning a foiled attack targeting a Shiite Muslim shrine near Damascus, state media reported Saturday.
Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said state news agency SANA, citing an unidentified intelligence official and using an Arabic acronym for Daesh.
He was “behind the planning of a number of operations,” SANA reported, adding that “the cell that was thwarted in its plan to attack the Sayyida Zeinab shrine” was working under his direction.
Last month, Syrian authorities said they foiled an Daesh attempt to blow up the shrine, Syria’s most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, located south of Damascus.
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell.
It was the first time the new Damascus authorities said they had foiled an Daesh attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday that the man arrested is “an Iraqi national who was one of the second-tier commanders in Daesh and spent his recent years” in the Badia desert region.
Iran-backed guards used to be deployed at the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, but fled in December shortly before Sunni Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, toppling president Bashar Assad.
Over the years, Shiite shrines have been a frequent target of attacks by Sunni extremists of the Daesh group, both in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Daesh seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of Syria’s civil war, declaring a cross-border “caliphate” in 2014.
US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria territorially defeated its proto-state in 2019, but the militants have maintained a presence in the country’s vast desert.
‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza
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- All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border
- They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel
TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.
“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.
“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.
Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”
They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.
In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.
Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”
“Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.
“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”
So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.
In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.
In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.”
“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.
Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media
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- Moscow welcomed the freeing of Alexander Trufanov and expresses its gratitude to Hamas
MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Saturday said it was grateful to Palestinian militant group Hamas for freeing a Russian-Israeli hostage from Gaza in another prisoner exchange with Israel.
“Moscow welcomes the freeing of Alexander Trufanov (identified by Israel as Sasha Trupanov) and expresses its gratitude to the Hamas leadership for taking this decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south
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- An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike targeting the outskirts of Ainata, said NNA
BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said an Israeli drone struck the country’s south on Saturday, without reporting casualties, days before a deadline in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike” targeting the outskirts of the town of Ainata, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that “nobody was hurt” and that “drones and surveillance aircraft are still flying over the area at low altitude.”
Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange
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- Exchange of hostages and prisoners maintains ceasefire, with buses carrying freed Palestinians arriving to cheering crowds in Ramallah, Gaza
- The swap takes place after negotiations, with both sides focusing on the next phase to return the remaining hostages and end the war
KHAN YOUNIS: Hamas released Israeli hostages Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel Chen and Sasha (Alexander) Troufanov in Gaza on Saturday and Israel freed some 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange, after mediators helped avert a collapse of the fragile ceasefire.
The three Israelis were led onto a stage with Palestinian Hamas militants armed with automatic rifles standing on each side of them at the site in Khan Younis, live footage showed, before they were taken back into Israel by Israeli forces.
Shortly afterwards, buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners and detainees departed Israel’s Ofer jail in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The first bus arrived in Ramallah to a cheering crowd, some waving Palestinian flags.
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“We didn’t expect to be freed, but God is great, God set us free,” said Musa Nawarwa, 70, from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, who was serving two life terms for killings of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
Buses carrying some of the hundreds of Palestinian freed prisoners and detainees, some flashing victory signs as they hung from the windows, arrived later at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
A few were returning to an enclave they have not seen for years, before it was blasted into rubble by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in 15 months of war. But most were rounded up after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The ceasefire’s second phase would usher in negotiations to return the remaining living hostages among the 251 seized that day, and complete an Israeli military withdrawal before a final end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.
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Argentina-born Iair Horn, 46, was taken captive together with his younger brother Eitan. Horn appeared to have lost considerable weight in captivity.
“Now, we can breathe a little. Our Iair is home after surviving hell in Gaza. Now, we need to bring Eitan back so our family can truly breathe,” Horn’s family said in a statement.
The swap of the three Israelis for the 369 Palestinians allayed growing alarm that the ceasefire agreement could unravel before the end of the 42-day first stage of the truce pact in effect since January 19.
In what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, people broke into cheers and tears after hearing the Red Cross was on its way to deliver the three to Israeli military forces.
Dekel Chen, a US-Israeli, Troufanov, a Russian Israeli, and Horn along with his brother Eitan were seized in Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities near Gaza’s border that were overrun by Hamas gunmen on October 7, 2023.
Some of the dozens of masked Islamist Hamas fighters deployed at the handover site carried rifles seized from the Israeli military during the October attack, Hamas sources said.
On the handover stage in Khan Younis, the hostages were made to give short statements in Hebrew and militants presented Horn with an hourglass and photo of another Israeli hostage still in Gaza and his mother, reading “time is running out (for the hostages still in Gaza).”
Troufanov was abducted with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend — all of whom were released during a brief November 2023 pause in hostilities. His father was killed in the attack on Nir Oz, one of the worst-hit communities, where one in four people either died or were taken hostage.
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On October 7, Dekel Chen, 36, left his pregnant wife and two little daughters in the family safe room to go out and fight gunmen rampaging through the kibbutz.
He embraced his tearful wife Avital tightly and said “perfect” with a big smile when she told him the name of their baby daughter, who he has not yet seen, was Shahar Mazal, Hebrew for “dawn” and “luck,” in a video released by the military.
Nineteen Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released so far, with 73 still in captivity, around half of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Prospects for the ceasefire surviving have been shaken by US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be resettled permanently out of Gaza, and for the tiny enclave to be turned over to the US to be redeveloped as a seaside resort. That idea has been rejected out of hand by Palestinian groups, Arab states and Western allies of Washington.