TEL AVIV, Israel: Israel’s intelligence minister said Tuesday that Syria cannot be allowed to obtain chemical weapons, after a report emerged that Israel targeted the country’s chemical weapons facilities.
In an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Elazar Stern would not directly comment on the report in the Washington Post that said that Israel struck Syria on two occasions — once this year and once last year — in a bid to block attempts to rebuild its chemical weapons stockpile. But Stern, a retired military general, hinted that Israel could not accept such weapons in the hands of its enemy to the north.
“We have a neighbor who has already proved that it doesn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons even against its own people,” he said. “(Syrian President Bashar) Assad must not have chemical weapons.”
Israeli officials have declined to comment on the Washington Post report.
Military affairs commentators in Israel, who often are briefed by top defense officials, said the timing of the report was not a coincidence and comes as negotiators are meeting with Iran in Vienna to try to revive a 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran has close ties with Syria and has sent troops to back the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s decade-long civil war.
“It was a signal to all of the actors, Iran and the United States, that Israel is serious about acting against the development of non-conventional weapons by its enemies,” wrote Yossi Yehoshua in the Yediot Ahronot daily.
Israel has long opposed the 2015 nuclear deal between global powers and Iran, which granted Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
Instead, it has called for an accord with even tighter safeguards on Iran’s nuclear program and addresses other Iranian military behavior, such as its missile program and support for anti-Israel militant groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel also supports a “credible” military threat against Iran as leverage.
Israel believes Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon — a charge Iran denies.
One of the strikes cited by the Washington Post, on June 8, was reported by Syrian state media as an Israeli aerial attack near the Syrian capital Damascus and in the central province of Homs, that prompted a response from Syrian national air defenses. There was no mention in official media of what was targeted in the strikes, although loud explosions were heard in Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that closely monitors the war in Syria, reported Israeli planes struck military targets in the countryside of Homs and Damascus. It said the targeted sites included a scientific research center in the vicinity of the village of Khirbet Al-Tineh, northwest of Homs, in addition to an ammunition depot likely to belong to Hezbollah, south of Homs. The strikes killed 11 soldiers, including a colonel, it said.
Unconfirmed reports published by pro-Assad media at the time identified the colonel as a leading chemist at the Scientific Studies and Research Center, Gen. Ayham Sueleiman Ismail.
The center is a government agency described by the Syrians as a facility for the advancement of scientific research in the country but has been long described by Syria watchers as an outfit for the development of chemical, biological and other weapons.
Israel is believed to have struck facilities associated with the SSRC on numerous occasions in the past.
Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013, pressed by Russia after a deadly chemical weapons attack that the West blamed on Damascus. By August 2014, the Assad government declared that the destruction of its chemical weapons was completed, but its initial declaration of chemical stockpiles and production sites to the OPCW has remained in dispute. OPCW investigators have blamed three chemical attacks in 2017 on President Bashar Assad’s government.
Earlier this year, the UN’s disarmament chief, Izumi Nakamitsu, told the Security Council that Damascus’ declaration of its chemical stockpiles and chemical weapons production sites nearly eight years ago remains incomplete.
Israeli official says Syria must not have chemical weapons
https://arab.news/c8b63
Israeli official says Syria must not have chemical weapons
- Stern, a retired military general, hinted that Israel could not accept such weapons in the hands of its enemy to the north
- Israeli officials have declined to comment on the Washington Post report
Harris will travel to Asia, Mideast and Europe during her final week in office
The next stop is Bahrain, where Harris will visit the headquarters of the US 5th Fleet
WASHINGTON: Vice President Kamala Harris plans to close out her term with an around-the-world trip making stops in Singapore, Bahrain and Germany, her office said.
The trip, which is scheduled to last from Jan. 13 to Jan. 17, will be a final opportunity for Harris to address US foreign policy challenges before Donald Trump takes office. Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is expected to join the vice president.
Although she has not disclosed her next steps after losing the presidential election, the expansive travel suggests that Harris might want to continue playing a role on the global stage. There’s also speculation that Harris could run for governor of her home state of California.
Dean Lieberman, Harris’ deputy national security adviser, said in a written statement that “the vice president felt it important to spend some of her final days in office thanking and engaging directly with US servicemembers deployed overseas, which as she has said, has been one of her greatest privileges as vice president.”
There are US troops based at all three of Harris’ stops.
Harris plans to visit Changi Naval Base in Singapore and meet with leaders of the city-state. Singapore’s location in the Indo-Pacific region makes it a key partner for addressing issues involving China, including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
The next stop is Bahrain, where Harris will visit the headquarters of the US 5th Fleet. The fleet has been engaged in efforts to protect Israel from Iranian attacks and regional shipping activity from the Houthis in Yemen.
Harris’ final stop will be Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, home to a deployment of US Air Force fighter jets. She plans to talk about the importance of NATO in deterring Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
Harris has previously visited Germany and Singapore. Bahrain will be the 22nd country she’s visited during her term.
“The vice president continues to believe in a strong US global leadership role because it benefits the security and prosperity of the American people, and she will reaffirm this throughout her trip,” Lieberman said.
Israeli forces kill 31 Palestinians in Gaza onslaught, 3 in West Bank
- Qatar confirms ‘technical meetings’ on ceasefire ongoing
CAIRO, DOHA: The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday that 31 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 45,885 as the war entered its 16th month.
The ministry also said that at least 109,196 people had been wounded in the war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group’s Oct, 7, 2023 attack.
Separately, Israeli forces killed at least three Palestinians in stepped-up operations across the occupied West Bank following the killing of three Israelis near a Jewish settlement. The Palestinian Health Ministry said an 18-year-old was killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike in Tamun, a town northeast of Nablus city, while a 40-year-old was shot dead in the nearby village of Taluza.
FASTFACT
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 45,885 Palestinians and wounded 109,196 since Oct. 7, 2023.
The Israeli military said that after a clash with militants in the Tamun area, its war planes struck and killed two fighters. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA also reported a second Palestinian killed in a strike in Tamun.
The Israeli military said a third militant was killed in a firefight in Taluza and several were arrested in various incidents. Hamas’s armed Al-Qassam Brigades confirmed the man killed in Taluza was one of its fighters.
WAFA meanwhile reported revenge attacks by Jewish settlers, who it said had set fire to a vehicle overnight and attacked a Palestinian village.
It said the Israeli military was setting up more checkpoints and road closures, and conducting increased incursions and raids.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities renewed a closure order for Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the West Bank.
Israeli soldiers posted the extension order on the entrance of the building housing Al Jazeera’s offices in central Ramallah.
The extension applies from Dec. 22 and lasts 45 days. In September, Israeli forces raided the Ramallah office and issued an initial 45-day closure order.
Talks aimed at cementing a truce in Gaza are ongoing, with “technical meetings” taking place between the parties, mediator Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said.
“The technical meetings are still happening between both sides,” ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said, referring to meetings with lower-level officials on the details of an agreement. “There are no principal meetings taking place at the moment.”
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the US have been engaged in months of talks between Israel and Hamas that have failed to end the devastating conflict in Gaza.
Ansari said there were “a lot of issues that are being discussed” in the ongoing meetings, but refused to go into details “to protect the integrity of the negotiations.”
Hamas said at the end of last week that indirect negotiations in Doha had resumed, while Israel said it had authorized negotiators to continue the talks in the Qatari capital.
A previous round of mediation in December ended with both sides blaming the other for the impasse.
Trump Middle East envoy predicts ‘good things’ to announce on Gaza hostages before inauguration
- “Well, I think we’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha,” Witkoff said
- “I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president“
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Tuesday he hopes to have good things to report about hostages held by Hamas in Gaza by the time Trump is sworn in as US president on Jan. 20.
“Well, I think we’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha,” Witkoff said at a Trump press conference in Palm Beach, Florida.
Doha has been hosting negotiations on a ceasefire in the Gaza war that would include freeing hostages that Hamas abducted in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Doha is capital of the Gulf state of Qatar, which along with Egypt and the US has been mediating negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
Witkoff said that if he did not travel back to Doha on Tuesday night, he would head there on Wednesday night.
“I think that we’ve had some really great progress, and I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president,” Witkoff said.
Trump, a Republican who will succeed Democratic President Joe Biden, repeated his threat that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release the hostages by the time he takes office.
“It will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” he said.
Hamas-led Islamist militants killed 1,200 people and captured more than 250, including Israeli-American dual nationals, during their Oct. 7 attack, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 100 hostages have been freed through negotiations or Israeli military rescue operations. Of the 101 still held in Gaza, roughly half are believed to be alive.
Israel’s subsequent campaign against Hamas has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian health officials, displaced nearly all of the population in Hamas-ruled Gaza and reduced much of its territory to rubble.
Gaza clan leaders urge Palestinian Authority to govern coastal enclave
- Community leaders demand a stop to ongoing forced Israeli displacement of Palestinians from northern Gaza
- Confirm the Palestine Liberation Organization is the sole representative of the Palestinian people
LONDON: Clan leaders in Gaza City and northern Gaza called for the Palestinian Authority to govern the coastal enclave in a rare public statement this week.
Prominent clan leaders in the Gaza Strip have requested President Mahmoud Abbas take charge of Gaza’s affairs, which have been affected by Israel’s war in the enclave and clashes between Hamas fighters and Israeli forces since October 2023.
Some signatories include Yahya Ayub Al-Kafarnah, chief of Gaza’s northern clans; Zakaria Jahshan, coordinator of the Christian denominations; and Mohammed Al-Masry, former mayor of Beit Lahia municipality, along with many other community leaders, dignitaries, and Mukhtars.
They urged the PA to lead the Gaza Strip, connect it to the West Bank geographically, and stop the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians from northern Gaza by Israel.
They confirmed that the Palestine Liberation Organization, which neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad are a part of, will continue to be the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people.
The community leaders urged the PA to exercise pressure on Arab and Western countries to “force the Israeli government to stop its war of genocide ... and secure an immediate ceasefire,” the WAFA press agency reported.
Mediated and indirect talks between Hamas and Israel to secure an exchange of captives and a truce have been ongoing for months, but without success.
At least 45,000 Palestinians have died during the war in Gaza, and around 11,000 are missing under the rubble of bombed or damaged buildings, with 100,000 people having left the enclave.
The Gaza Strip’s population had decreased by 6 percent in 2024, according to recent data by the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.
UAE FM discusses humanitarian crisis in Gaza with Israeli counterpart
- Sheikh Abdullah emphasized the need for concerted efforts to reach a permanent ceasefire and prevent the expansion of conflict in the region
DUBAI: The UAE’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan received his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Emirates News Agency reported.
The meeting addressed the latest developments in the region, particularly the escalating humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, WAM said.
Discussions also covered regional and international efforts aimed at achieving a sustainable ceasefire in the enclave.
Sheikh Abdullah emphasized the need for concerted efforts to reach a permanent ceasefire and prevent the expansion of conflict in the region. He said that the priority is to end tension and violence, protect civilian lives, and make every effort to facilitate the flow of urgent humanitarian aid.
The foreign minister said the Middle East was experiencing unprecedented tension and instability, and requires international efforts to end extremism, tension, and escalating violence.
He reiterated the UAE’s support for the mediation efforts of Qatar, Egypt, and the US to broker a prisoner exchange agreement that could lead to a permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages, and the safe and sustainable delivery of adequate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
Sheikh Abdullah reaffirmed the UAE’s unwavering commitment to supporting the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, highlighting the country’s longstanding solidarity with Palestinians over the decades.
