JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said Israel will retain security control over the Palestinians as part of any future peace deal, deepening Palestinian fears that Israel and the Trump administration are colluding on a proposal that will fall far short of their dreams of independence.
Netanyahu’s statement exposed a deepening rift that has emerged between the US and Israel on one hand, and the Palestinians and the Europeans on the other, ahead of an expected peace push by the Trump administration. Those disagreements could complicate things for the US team.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has distanced himself somewhat from the two-state solution — the outcome favored by the international community, including Trump’s predecessors, for the past two decades.
Instead, he has said he would support Palestinian independence only if Israel agrees. The European Union, meanwhile, along with the rest of the international community, remains committed to the two-state solution.
These differences were evident at a meeting Wednesday between Netanyahu and the German foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel.
In an awkward exchange, Gabriel said his country is “very much in favor” of the two-state solution.
“I was very thankful to hear that of course also the government of Israel wants to have two states, but (with secure) borders,” he said.
Netanyahu broke in with a clarification.
He said Israel’s “first condition,” would be to control security west of the Jordan River, an area that includes all of the West Bank, the heartland of the Palestinians’ hoped-for state.
“Whether or not it is defined as a state when we have the military control is another matter,” he said. “I’d rather not discuss labels, but substance.”
That suggests Israel would prefer something most observers would more likely define as autonomy than independence — an arrangement that would have few if any equivalents in the world.
The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, areas captured by Israel in 1967, for their state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but it has settled over 600,000 people in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it increasingly difficult to partition the land.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians would not accept the presence of “one Israeli soldier” on sovereign Palestinian lands.
“Either there will be full Palestinian sovereignty or there will be no security, no peace and no stability,” he said.
Advocates of the two-state solution, including Israel’s opposition parties, have long argued that the establishment of a Palestinian state is essential for Israel’s own survival. Without a Palestinian state, they say that the number of Jews and Arabs under Israeli control will be roughly equal.
Israel would then have to choose between granting millions of Palestinians citizenship, threatening the country’s status as a Jewish-majority democracy, or turning into an apartheid-like state where Jews and Palestinians have different sets of rights.
It is far from certain that Netanyahu’s envisioned solution would ease international concerns over Israel’s half-century occupation over the Palestinians.
The Palestinians have long been suspicious of Trump’s Mideast team, led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, due to their deep connections to Israel and years of support to the West Bank settlement movement.
Those suspicions deepened after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last month. The Palestinians accused Trump of siding with Israel and said they would no longer accept the US as a mediator.
Palestinian officials now claim that Trump’s team is working with Israel on a plan that would give them a mini-state in roughly half of the West Bank, with Israel retaining overall security control, as well as control over Jerusalem and its holy sites. Final borders and the fate of Israel’s dozens of settlements would be decided later. The officials say a third country with close ties to the US recently presented details of the proposal.
When they tried to negotiate improvements, they say they were told it was a “take it or leave it” plan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified diplomatic issue.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Officials have said recently that the White House is still working on its proposal, and have refused to say when it might be unveiled.
On Wednesday, European officials urged the administration not to go it alone.
“Any framework for negotiations must be multilateral and must involve all players,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in Brussels. “Nothing without the United States, nothing with the United States alone.”
At an academic conference in Tel Aviv, Gabriel, the German foreign minister, expressed grave concern for Israel’s future, saying the government’s ambivalence toward a Palestinian state showed a lack of direction and suggesting that Trump’s unflinching support wasn’t necessarily in Israel’s best interest.
Gabriel said that in Europe “there is clearly growing frustration with Israel’s actions,” and asked Israelis: “How do you want Israel’s future to look like? Are you prepared to pay the price of perpetual occupation?“
Israel vows to retain West Bank control in any peace deal
Israel vows to retain West Bank control in any peace deal
Search for Red Sea sinking survivors enters third day
CAIRO: The search operation for seven people still missing from a dive boat that capsized and sank off Egypt’s east coast entered a third day on Wednesday, the governor of the Red Sea province said.
The country released video footage on Wednesday morning of the latest tourists rescued from the vessel aboard which at least four people, including one Slovak tourist, died.
The governor’s office said the search operation was continuing for seven people still missing after the “Sea Story” was struck by a wave and capsized in the middle of the night on Monday.
The vessel had set off the day before from Port Ghalib, near Marsa Alam in the southeast, on a multi-day diving trip with 31 tourists — mostly Europeans, along with Chinese and US nationals — and a 13-member crew.
A total of 33 people have been rescued, including tourists seen in the video stepping off a speedboat, wrapped in blankets, at a marina near Marsa Alam. “We were shaking with cold,” one unidentified man said in the footage.
The tourists who appeared in the video had spent at least 24 hours inside a cabin of the overturned vessel before rescuers found them on Tuesday morning, according to a government source close to the rescue operations. Two survivors — one identified by authorities on camera as an Egyptian — were rolled out on stretchers, one of them conscious and speaking.
A Belgian tourist sobbed when she was greeted by Marsa Alam Mayor General Hazem Khalil.
Red Sea Governor Amr Hanafi said the boat capsized “suddenly and quickly within five-seven minutes” after being struck by a strong wave in the middle of the night, leaving some passengers unable to escape their cabins.
Former ICC chief prosecutor tells of ‘threats to family’ during Israel-Palestine war crimes probe
- Fatou Bensouda says she was subjected to ‘thug-style tactics’ while working on cases related to Israel and Palestine, and the war in Afghanistan
- A newspaper investigation previously alleged she was threatened by the head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad
LONDON: The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has told how she received “direct threats” to herself and her family while working there.
Fatou Bensouda’s comments about her experiences came six months after a newspaper report alleged that the head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad had threatened her in an attempt to get her to drop an investigation into accusations of war crimes in occupied Palestinian territories.
Appearing at a legal event in London on Tuesday, Bensouda did not mention any specific threats but said she was subjected to “unacceptable, thug-style tactics” while doing her job.
She said that while working on some of the court’s toughest cases, including those related to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the war in Afghanistan, she received “direct threats to my person and family and some of my closest professional advisors.”
Bensouda was the ICC’s chief prosecutor from 2012 until 2021. The Guardian newspaper reported in May that Israel’s foreign intelligence services put pressure on Bensouda after she opened a preliminary investigation in 2015 into the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
The newspaper, sighting several Israeli sources, alleged that Yossi Cohen, the director of Mossad at the time, threatened Bensouda during a series of secret meetings and warned her not to proceed with a case related to alleged Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities denied the allegations of threats and intimidation, and Bensouda opened a full criminal investigation into Israel’s actions in 2021, shortly before she left her post.
Last week, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the military chief of Hamas, Mohammed Deif, accusing them of crimes against humanity.
The warrants were requested six months ago by Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, as part of an extension of the investigation that his predecessor initiated. Khan accelerated the case after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza.
During her lecture at the Bar Council on Wednesday, Bensouda, who is now Gambia’s high commissioner to the UK, said the arrest warrants issued last week focused exclusively on the events of Oct. 7 and those that followed, and did not include aspects of the wider conflict between Israel and Palestine that formed the basis of the investigation she initiated.
She said her initial probe focused on whether Hamas, other Palestinian armed groups or the Israeli military had committed war crimes in relation to hostilities that took place during 2014, and its scope included illegal Israeli settlements and the displacement of populations into the occupied West Bank.
“It will be important to ensure that the full extent of criminality in the context of this devastating … conflict is fully investigated and accountability is finally had for the benefit of its many victims on all sides of the conflict,” she said.
During her time as chief prosecutor, Bensouda also came under pressure from the US. Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on her in 2020 after the ICC began investigating allegations of US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The sanctions were lifted by President Joe Biden. However, last week he described the ICC decision to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu as “outrageous” and said there was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
Neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC. However, the 124 states that have signed up to it are obliged to act on warrants it issues if the accused visit their countries.
Hezbollah faces long recovery, officials believe thousands of fighters killed
- One source said the Iran-backed group may have lost up to 4,000 people
- Hassan Fadallah, a senior Hezbollah politician, told Reuters the priority will be “the people”
BEIRUT: With the bodies of its fighters still strewn on the battlefield, Hezbollah must bury its dead and provide succour to its supporters who bore the brunt of Israel’s offensive, as the first steps on a long and costly road to recovery, four senior officials said.
Hezbollah believes the number of its fighters killed during 14 months of hostilities could reach several thousand, with the vast majority killed since Israel went on the offensive in September, three sources familiar with its operations say, citing previously unreported internal estimates.
One source said the Iran-backed group may have lost up to 4,000 people — well over 10 times the number killed in its month-long 2006 war with Israel. So far, Lebanese authorities have said some 3,800 people were killed in the current hostilities, without distinguishing fighters from civilians.
Hezbollah emerges shaken from top to bottom, its leadership still reeling from the killing of its former leader Hassan Nasrallah and its supporters made homeless en masse by the carpet bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs and the destruction of entire villages in the south.
With a ceasefire taking hold on Wednesday, Hezbollah’s agenda includes working to re-establish its organizational structure fully, probing security breaches that helped Israel land so many painful blows, and a full review of the last year including its mistakes in underestimating Israel’s technological capabilities, three other sources familiar with the group’s thinking said.
For this story Reuters spoke to a dozen people who together provided details of some of the challenges facing Hezbollah as it seeks to pick itself up after the war. Most asked not to be named to speak about sensitive matters.
Hassan Fadallah, a senior Hezbollah politician, told Reuters the priority will be “the people.”
“To shelter them, to remove the rubble, to bid farewell to the martyrs and, in the next phase, to rebuild,” he said.
Israel’s campaign has focused largely on Hezbollah’s Shiite Muslim heartlands, where its supporters were badly hit. They include people still nursing casualties from Israel’s attack on its mobile communications devices in September.
“I have a brother who was martyred, a brother-in-law who was wounded in the pager attacks, and my neighbors and relatives are all either martyrs, wounded or missing,” said Hawraa, a woman from south Lebanon with family members who fight for Hezbollah.
“We want to collect our martyrs and bury them ... we want to rebuild our homes,” said Hawraa, who stayed in her village until she was forced to flee by the Israeli assault in September. She declined to use her full name, citing safety fears. The Israeli offensive displaced more than 1 million people, the bulk of them from areas where Hezbollah has sway.
A senior Lebanese official familiar with Hezbollah thinking said the group’s focus would be squarely on securing their return and rebuilding their homes: “Hezbollah is like a wounded man. Does a wounded man get up and fight? A wounded man needs to tend to his wounds.”
The official expected Hezbollah to carry out a wide-ranging policy review after the war, dealing with all major issues: Israel, its weapons, and the internal politics of Lebanon, where its weapons have long been a point of conflict. Iran, which established Hezbollah in 1982, has promised to help with reconstruction. The costs are immense: The World Bank estimates $2.8 billion in damage to housing alone in Lebanon, with 99,000 homes partially or fully destroyed.
The senior Lebanese official said Tehran has a variety of ways to get funds to Hezbollah, without giving details.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally, is urging wealthy Lebanese Shiites in the diaspora to send funds to help the displaced, two Lebanese officials said.
The officials also expected significant donations to come from Shiite religious foundations across the region.
Hezbollah did not immediately respond to a detailed request for comment for this story. Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
’THE RESISTANCE’ WILL CONTINUE Hezbollah has indicated it intends to keep its arms, dashing hopes of Lebanese adversaries who predicted the pressures generated by the war would finally lead it to hand them to the state. Hezbollah officials have said the resistance — widely understood to mean its armed status — will continue.
Hezbollah opened fire in support of Palestinian ally Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023. Israel went on the offensive against the group in September, declaring the aim of securing the return home of 60,000 people evacuated from homes in the north.
Despite the resulting devastation, Hezbollah’s Fadlallah said the resistance put up by its fighters in south Lebanon and the group’s intensified rocket salvoes toward the end of the conflict showed Israel had failed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says its campaign has set back Hezbollah decades, eliminated its top leaders, destroyed most of its rockets, neutralized thousands of fighters, and obliterated its infrastructure near the border. A senior US official said Hezbollah was “extremely weak” at this moment, both militarily and politically. A Western diplomat echoed that assessment, saying Israel had the upper hand and had almost dictated the terms of its withdrawal. The ceasefire terms agreed by Israel and Lebanon require Hezbollah to have no military presence in an area between the Israeli border and the Litani River, which meets the Mediterranean Sea some 30 km (20 miles) from the frontier.
Hezbollah, which approved the deal, has not declared how it intends to help implement those terms, including whether it actively hands its arms to Lebanese troops who are deploying into the south, or leaves the weapons for soldiers to find.
Israel complains Hezbollah, which is deeply rooted in south Lebanon, never implemented the same terms when they were agreed to end a previous war in 2006 war. Israel says the group was preparing for a large-scale assault into northern Israel, pointing to its military build-up at the frontier.
Andreas Krieg of King’s College in London said Hezbollah had retained considerable capability.
The performance of its “core infantry fighters in southern Lebanon and rocket attacks deep into Israeli territory in recent days showed the group was still very, very capable,” he said.
“But Hezbollah will be very much bogged down in the effort of rebuilding the infrastructure and also, most importantly, securing the funds to do so,” he said.
’REPAYING THE DEBT’
Hezbollah has been handing out cash to people affected by the hostilities since they began, paying $200 a month to civilians who stayed in frontline villages, and offering more as people were forced to flee the areas, according to recipients.
Since the start of the escalation in September, Hezbollah has been paying around $300 a month to help displaced families.
The group has made no secret of the military and financial support it gets from Iran, which shipped huge sums of cash to in 2006 to aid the homeless and help rebuild.
Hezbollah supporters say more will be on the way. One, citing conversations with a local Hezbollah official, said the group would cover a year of rent for the homeless in addition to furniture costs.
Addressing the Lebanese people in an October sermon, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said “the destruction will be replaced... repaying the debt to the wounded, bleeding Lebanon is our duty....”
The World Bank, in a preliminary estimate, put the cost in damage and losses to Lebanon at $8.5 billion, a bill that cannot be footed by the government, still suffering the consequences of a catastrophic financial collapse five years ago.
Gulf states Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia helped pay the $5 billion reconstruction bill in 2006, the last time Hezbollah and Israel went to war. But there has been no sign that these Sunni-led Arab states are ready to do so again. Hezbollah conducted a lot of reconstruction work after the 2006 war, financed by Iran and using its construction wing. The project was directed by Hashem Safieddine, a Hezbollah leader killed by Israel 11 days after Nasrallah, in a sign of the bigger challenges it will face this time round.
“For Hezbollah the priority is to guarantee the loyalty of the Shi’ite community. The destruction has been enormous and it will impact the organization,” said Mohanand Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
57 dead in army-miltant clashes in northern Syria: monitor
- Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
- The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants
BEIRUT: Militants launched a surprise attack on the Syrian army in the northern province of Aleppo on Wednesday, sparking clashes in which 57 combatants were killed, a war monitor said.
Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham” (HTS), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, referring to a militant group led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch which controls a chunk of northwestern Syria.
The Observatory said “26 members of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and allied factions” were killed, as well as “31 members of the regime forces.”
The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants in the area for the first time in years, the Britain-based Observatory said.
The Syrian conflict broke out after President Bashar Assad repressed anti-government protests in 2011. It has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Displaced residents return to South Lebanon, Israeli army breaches ceasefire twice
- Najib Mikati says Lebanese army developing operational plan for the South
- Nabih Berri: We are entering a new phase, and the moment of truth for the unity of Lebanon has arrived
BEIRUT: As soon as the ceasefire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army took effect at 4 a.m. on Wednesday — after hours of airstrikes targeting Beirut, its southern suburbs, the Bekaa, the South, and even Akkar in the far north — returning residents quickly transformed the tragic scene into one of “victory.”
Roads leading from Beirut to the South and Bekaa were crowded with hundreds of vehicles loaded with families and their belongings heading back to their villages.
People disregarded army warnings to stay away from damaged buildings or those reduced to rubble, citing fears of unexploded missiles. Upon reaching their neighborhoods, whose features had drastically changed, residents climbed the ruins, entered partially destroyed homes, or stood among what remained of their homes, a scene that vividly depicted the pain of war.
The harsh images of destruction and the tears of women over their lost homes were met by the younger generation filled with a determination to speak of “victory.” Celebratory gunfire filled the air, and Hezbollah flags and images of its former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah were raised atop the rubble of the buildings.
Neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which had turned into ghost towns for two months, came back to life with the sound of honking car horns.
Hezbollah organized a tour for journalists in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the smell of fires and the dust of explosives still emanated from the flattened buildings.
Traffic jams and chaos ensued as Ministry of Public Works bulldozers cleared rubble littered with people’s belongings, memories, children’s books, and toys from the middle of streets.
The road to the South was packed with thousands of cars, with many passengers waving Lebanese flags, declaring they were “returning to their villages, and if their homes are destroyed, they will stay with neighbors.”
Although many of those returning avoided routes damaged by Israeli airstrikes, life in some villages looked likely to be extremely challenging because of the lack of essentials such as water, electricity and operational shops.
The return did not include those border towns into which the Israeli army had advanced and destroyed homes. Reports indicated that civil defense teams were retrieving the bodies of party members killed in battles that no one had previously been able to recover.
Despite the destruction in frontline villages, some youths from the border area approached them. In Aita Al-Shaab, they burned the Israeli flag, while others challenged Israeli tanks stationed in villages such as Kfarkela, Khiam and Odaisseh. They took photos in front of the tanks, flashing victory signs, while photojournalists moved in to capture the moment. Israeli soldiers fired five artillery shells and warning shots in response, to push them away from the area, the first breach of the ceasefire agreement.
A second was reported by Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel, which stated that “Israeli drones flew over the skies of Marjayoun and Khardali.”
The Israeli army acknowledged opening fire on those it described as “suspects in several areas of southern Lebanon” and affirmed that it would “respond with fire to any breaches of the agreement.”
In Khiam, photographer Mohammed Al-Zaatari suffered gunshot wounds to his leg in the town when the Israeli army opened fire.
The Lebanese army subsequently closed all access to Khiam due to the presence of the Israeli army in the area.
Some of the returnees to Nabatieh departed at dawn from Akkar, the region to which they had fled in the far north. Ahmad and his companions said: “We set out before the ceasefire took effect and arrived in the Zahrani area as the agreement came into force. The scene of destruction in Nabatieh is alarming, yet it was anticipated.”
On the way to the Baalbek-Hermel region, residents celebrated the ceasefire in their own way by slaughtering sheep in Tamnine El Faouqa.
The Israeli army focused its attacks on the city of Baalbek and surrounding villages just before the ceasefire was scheduled to take effect. Airstrikes, which targeted civilians, hit occupied and unoccupied residential buildings, with some attacks involving phosphorus bombs.
Fifty civilians were killed in the Baalbek-Hermel region during the ceasefire, including a 16-day-old infant named as Jaafar Ali, alongside 10 members of his family.
The Talais family lost 11 members, including children, was killed. In the city of Baalbek, four members of the Wahbi family were also killed their lives.
The recent Israeli airstrikes targeted the last land crossings connecting Lebanon to Syria in the north, particularly the official Al-Arida Border Crossing, disrupting work in the area.
Minister of Public Works Ali Hamieh said during his inspection of the Masnaa Border Crossing that “Al-Arida Border Crossing will be opened within 48 hours.”
Amid these developments, images of Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s coordination and liaison unit head, circulated on social media, showing him in good health. This was his first appearance after an assassination attempt a month ago in Beirut, resulting in the deaths and injuries of dozens of civilians.
The Council of Ministers convened under the chairmanship of Najib Mikati to discuss the state’s arrangements for the ceasefire phase and its implementation.
Mikati described the ceasefire as “a new day that we hope will bring peace and stability.”
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said: “We are entering a new phase, and the moment of truth for the unity of Lebanon has arrived.”
Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said that Hezbollah has “a program related to reconstruction, but this is a shared responsibility.”
