BETHLEHEM: Donald Trump makes the short trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem Tuesday to meet Mahmud Abbas, who hopes to convince the unpredictable US president to remain committed to an independent Palestinian state.
His talks in Bethlehem with the Palestinian president come after Trump on Monday made a heavily symbolic visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Later Tuesday, Trump will return to Jerusalem to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and give a speech at the Israel Museum before wrapping up his two-day stop.
Trump's visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories is part of his first trip abroad as president, and follows an initial leg in Saudi Arabia, where he urged Islamic leaders to confront extremism.
He has spoken of reviving long-stalled peace efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians, but few specifics have emerged of how he intends to do so.
Before dinner at Netanyahu's residence on Monday, Trump avoided delving into details.
"I've heard it's one of the toughest deals of all, but I have a feeling that we're going to get there eventually, I hope," he said.
Earlier Monday, Trump also lashed out at Iran, Israel's arch-enemy, saying it should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons and criticising Tehran for supporting "terrorists" -- a reference to militant groups it backs in the region.
He said Iran should have thanked the United States for the 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers because it led to sanctions being lifted.
"Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they now feel emboldened," Trump said.
In Tehran on Monday, Iran's newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani ridiculed US strategy in the Middle East, dismissing Trump's summit with Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia as "just a show".
Security will be tight for Trump's journey to Bethlehem, a 20-minute drive from Jerusalem but located across Israel's controversial separation wall.
The wall is part of a project begun in 2002 during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that is to extend some 700 kilometres (450 miles) once completed.
It is a stark symbol for Palestinians of Israel's 50-year occupation of the West Bank, and in Bethlehem the wall has been covered with graffiti and street art.
Trump is to meet Abbas at the presidential palace in Bethlehem, which holds deep significance as the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.
A banner hung in the city said "the city of peace welcomes the man of peace" along with photos of Abbas and Trump.
Hossam Zomlot, an aide to Abbas, said that "if President Trump wants to mediate and leads us to a historic agreement, a major agreement, we are ready to be his partners".
Their talks come with hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails on hunger strike since April 17, and activists were hoping to display banners in Bethlehem to drawn Trump's attention to it.
On Monday, Palestinians also held a general strike in support of the prisoners.
Clashes broke out near a checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah involving several hundred stone-throwing youths and Israeli soldiers who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas, leaving at least one wounded.
On Monday night in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave run by Abbas's rivals Hamas, the Islamist movement organised a demonstration to denounce its labelling as a "terrorist" group by many Western governments, including the United States.
Trump and Abbas met earlier this month at the White House.
Trump initially sparked deep concern among Palestinians when he backed away from the long US commitment to a two-state solution to the conflict.
Meeting Netanyahu in Washington in February, he said he would support a single state if it led to peace, delighting Israeli right-wingers who want to see most of the West Bank annexed.
During his election campaign, Trump also advocated breaking with decades of precedent and moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, alarming Palestinians.
He has since said the move was still being looked at.
At the same time, he urged Israel to hold back on settlement building in the West Bank, a longstanding concern of Palestinians and much of the world.
The most high-profile moment of Trump's stay in Jerusalem was his visit to the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism.
He became the first sitting US president to visit the site in the Israeli-annexed east of the city.
He was not accompanied by any Israeli leaders during the visit.
Allowing them to do so could have led to accusations that Washington was implicitly recognising Israel's unilateral claim of sovereignty over the site, which would break with years of US and international precedent.
The status of Jerusalem is ultra-sensitive and has been among the most difficult issues in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since April 2014.
Israel occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, in the Six-Day War of 1967.
It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community and claims the entire city as its capital.
The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
After Israel and the Palestinian territories, Trump will head to the Vatican, and to Brussels and Italy for NATO and G7 meetings.
Trump heads for Bethlehem to see Palestinian leader
Trump heads for Bethlehem to see Palestinian leader
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
Shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank kills 3
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory
JERUSALEM: A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people and wounded seven others on Monday, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said those killed included two women in their 60s and a man in his 40s.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory. The identities of the attackers and those killed were not immediately known. The military said it was looking for the attackers, who fled.
Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 835 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in scores of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is raging with no end in sight, though there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are enduring a cold, rainy winter in tent camps along the windy coast. At least seven infants have died of hypothermia because of the harsh conditions, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance.
