KHAN YOUNIS: Hamas was expected to swap more of its hostages Saturday for prisoners held by Israel on the second day of a ceasefire that has allowed critical humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and given civilians their first respite after seven weeks of war.
On the first day of the four-day ceasefire, Hamas released 24 of the about 240 hostages taken during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war, and Israel freed 39 Palestinians from prison. Those freed from captivity in Gaza were 13 Israelis, 10 Thai nationals and citizen of the Philippines.
During the four days, Hamas is to release at least 50 Israeli hostages, and Israel 150 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has said the truce can be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed — something United States President Joe Biden said he hoped would come to pass.
The start of the truce Friday morning brought the first quiet for 2.3 million Palestinians reeling and desperate from relentless Israeli bombardment that has killed thousands, driven three-quarters of the population from their homes and leveled residential areas. Rocketfire from Gaza militants into Israel went silent as well.
The United Nations said the pause enabled it to scale up the delivery of food, water, and medicine to the largest volume since the resumption of humanitarian aid convoys on Oct. 21. It was also able to deliver 129,000 liters (34,078 gallons) of fuel — just over 10 percent of the daily pre-war volume — as well as cooking gas, a first time since the war began.
In the southern city of Khan Yunis on Saturday, a long line of people with gas cans and other containers waited outside a filling station hoping to get some of the newly delivered fuel.
For the first time in over a month, aid reached northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive. A UN convoy delivered flour to two facilities sheltering people displaced by fighting.
The UN said it and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were also able to evacuate 40 patients and family members from a hospital in Gaza City, where much of the fighting has taken place, to a hospital in Khan Yunis.
The relief brought by the ceasefire has been tempered, however, for both sides — among Israelis by the fact that not all hostages will be freed and among Palestinians by the brevity of the pause. The short truce leaves Gaza mired in humanitarian crisis and under the threat that fighting could soon resume.
Israel has vowed to resume its massive offensive once the truce ends. That has clouded hopes that the deal could eventually help wind down the conflict, which has fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East.
First hostages freed
After nightfall Friday, a line of ambulances emerged from Gaza through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt carrying the freed hostages. The freed Israelis included nine women and four children 9 and under.
The released hostages were taken to three Israeli hospitals for observation. The Schneider Children’s Medical Center said it was treating eight Israelis — four children and four women — and that all appeared to be in good physical condition. The center said they were also receiving psychological treatment, adding that “these are sensitive moments” for the families.
At a plaza dubbed “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv, a crowd of Israelis celebrated at the news.
Yael Adar spotted her mother, 85-year-old Yaffa Adar, in a TV newscast of the release and was cheered to see her walking. “That was a huge concern, what would happen to her health during these almost two months,” she told Israel’s Channel 12.
But Yael’s 38-year-old son, Tamir Adar, remained in captivity. Both were kidnapped on Oct. 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz. “Everyone needs to come back. It’s happiness locked up in grief.”
The hostages included multiple generations. Nine-year-old Ohad Munder-Zichri was freed along with his mother, Keren Munder, and grandmother, Ruti Munder. The fourth-grader was abducted during a holiday visit to his grandparents at the kibbutz where about 80 people — nearly a quarter of all residents of the small community — are believed to have been taken from.
The plight of the hostages has raised anger among some families that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to bring them home.
Hours later, 24 Palestinian women and 15 teenage boys held in Israeli prisons in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem were freed. In the West Bank town of Beitunia, hundreds of Palestinians poured out of their homes to celebrate, honking horns and setting off fireworks that lit up the night sky.
The teenagers had been jailed for minor offenses like throwing stones. The women included several convicted of trying to stab Israeli soldiers, and others who had been arrested at checkpoints in the West Bank.
“As a Palestinian, my heart is broken for my brothers in Gaza, so I can’t really celebrate,” said Abdulqader Khatib, a UN worker whose 17-year-old son, Iyas, was freed. “But I am a father. And deep inside, I am very happy.”
Iyas had been taken into “administrative detention” in 2022 without charges or trial and based on secret evidence. Israel often holds detainees for months without charges. Most of those who are tried are put before military courts that almost never acquit defendants and often don’t follow due process, human rights groups say.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, Israel is currently holding 7,200 Palestinians, including about 2,000 arrested since the start of the war.
A longer peace?
The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages, including babies, women and older adults, as well as soldiers.
Majed Al-Ansari, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, said the hope is that momentum from the deal will lead to an end to the violence. Qatar served as a mediator along with the US and Egypt.
But hours before it came into effect, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops that their respite would be short and that the war would resume with intensity for at least two more months.
Netanyahu has also vowed to continue the war to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities, end its 16-year rule in Gaza and return all the hostages.
The Israeli offensive has killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza government. Women and minors have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead, though the latest number was not broken down. The figure does not include updated numbers from hospitals in the north, where communications have broken down.
The ministry says some 6,000 people have been reported missing, feared buried under rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its death tolls.
Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, without presenting evidence for its count.
Gaza ceasefire enters second day with more hostages to be exchanged and critical supplies delivered
https://arab.news/z36ps
Gaza ceasefire enters second day with more hostages to be exchanged and critical supplies delivered
- During the four-day truce, Hamas is to release at least 50 Israeli hostages, and Israel 150 Palestinian prisoners
- The UN said the pause enabled it to scale up the delivery of food, water, and medicine to the largest volume
Syrian Kurdish groups on the back foot as power balance shifts
- Syrian Kurds established autonomy early in civil war, Turkiye views their main group as national security threat
- Syrian Kurdish leader asks Trump to prevent Turkish incursion
Part of a stateless ethnic group straddling Iraq, Iran, Turkiye, Armenia and Syria, Kurds have so far been among the few winners of the Syrian conflict, controlling nearly a quarter of the country and leading a powerful armed group that is a key US ally in countering Islamic State.
But the power balance has tilted against them since the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) swept into Damascus this month, toppling President Bashar Assad, two analysts and a senior Western diplomat told Reuters.
The seismic change in Syria is expected to yield deeper Turkish sway just as a change of US administration is raising questions over how long Washington will keep backing the country’s Kurdish-led forces.
For Turkiye, the Kurdish factions represent a national security threat. Ankara views them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by Turkiye, the United States and other powers.
The Syrian Kurdish groups “are in deep, deep trouble,” said Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, a US-based think tank.
“The balance has shifted fundamentally in Syria to the advantage of Turkiye-backed or Turkiye-aligned factions, and Turkiye seems determined to exploit this to the fullest.”
The shift has been reflected in renewed fighting for control of the north, where Turkiye-backed armed groups known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) have made military advances against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Fanar Al-Kait, a senior official in the Kurdish-led regional administration, told Reuters that the ouster of Assad, whose Arab nationalist Baath Party oppressed Kurds for decades, presented a chance to stitch the fragmented country back together.
He said the administration is ready for dialogue with Turkiye, but the conflict in the north showed Ankara had “very bad intentions.”
“This will certainly push the region toward ... a new conflict,” he added.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he expected foreign states would withdraw support for Kurdish fighters following Assad’s toppling, as Ankara seeks to isolate the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish militia that spearheaded the SDF alliance.
Responding to questions from Reuters, a Turkish official said the root cause of the conflict is “not Turkiye’s view toward the region; it is that the PKK/YPG is a terrorist organization.”
“The PKK/YPG elements must lay down their arms and leave Syria,” the official said.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, in a Reuters interview on Thursday, acknowledged the presence of PKK fighters in Syria for the first time, saying they had helped battle Islamic State and would return home in the event a total ceasefire was agreed with Turkiye. He denied any organizational ties with the PKK.
Feminism and Islamism
Meanwhile, in Damascus, the new leadership is showing warmth toward Ankara and indicating it wants to bring all Syria back under central authority — a potential challenge to the decentralization Kurds favor.
While Turkiye provides direct backing to the SNA, it along with other states deems HTS a terrorist group because of its Al-Qaeda past.
Despite this, Ankara is believed to have significant sway over the group. A senior Western diplomat said: “The Turks can clearly influence them more than anyone else.”
HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa told a Turkish newspaper that Assad’s ouster was “not only the victory of the Syrian people, but also the Turkish people.”
The Turkish official said HTS was not and never had been under Ankara’s control, calling it a structure “we were communicating with due to circumstances” and adding many Western states were also doing so.
Syrian Kurdish groups led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the affiliated YPG militia took control of much of the north after the uprising against Assad began in 2011. They established their own administration, while insisting their aim was autonomy, not independence.
Their politics, emphasising socialism and feminism, differ starkly from HTS’ Islamism.
Their area grew as US-led forces partnered with the SDF in the campaign against Islamic State, capturing Arab-majority areas.
The Turkiye-backed SNA groups stepped up their campaign against the SDF as Assad was being toppled, seizing the city of Manbij on Dec. 9
Washington brokered a ceasefire, but the SDF has said Turkiye and its allies have not abided by it, and a Turkish defense ministry official said there was no such deal.
US support for the SDF has been a point of tension with its NATO ally, Turkiye. Washington views the SDF as a key partner in countering Islamic State, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned will try to use this period to re-establish capabilities in Syria. The SDF is still guarding tens of thousands of detainees linked to the militant group.
Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said last weekend that Turkiye saw no sign of a Daesh resurgence in Syria. On Friday, Turkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, told his German counterpart during talks in Ankara that alternatives needed to be found for the management of camps and prisons where the detainees are being held.
Separately, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf said on Friday that Washington was working with Ankara and the SDF to find “a managed transition in terms of SDF’s role in that part of the country.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has said that US troops will stay on in Syria, but President-elect Donald Trump could remove them when he takes office on Jan. 20.
Letter to Trump
During his first administration, Trump attempted to pull out of Syria but faced pressure at home and from US allies.
In a Dec. 17 letter to Trump, reviewed by Reuters, top Syrian Kurdish official Ilham Ahmed said Turkiye was preparing to invade the northeast before he takes office.
Turkiye’s plan “threatens to undo years of progress in securing stability and fighting terrorism,” she wrote. “We believe you have the power to prevent this catastrophe.”
Asked for comment, Trump-Vance transition spokesman Brian Hughes said: “We continue to monitor the situation in Syria. President Trump is committed to diminishing threats to peace and stability in the Middle East and to protecting Americans here at home.”
Trump said on Dec. 16 that Turkiye will “hold the key” to what happens in Syria but has not announced his plans for US forces stationed there.
“The Kurds are in an unenviable position,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “Once Damascus consolidates its power, it will move on the region. The US can’t remain there forever.”
HTS leader Sharaa told British broadcaster the BBC that Kurds were “part of our people” and “there should be no division of Syria,” adding arms should be entirely in the state’s hands.
Sharaa acknowledged one of Turkiye’s main concerns — the presence of non-Syrian Kurdish fighters in Syria — and said: “We do not accept that Syrian lands threaten and destabilize Turkiye or other places.”
He pledged to work through dialogue and negotiations to find “a peaceful formula to solve the problem,” saying he believed initial contacts had been established “between the Kurds in northeastern Syria or the SDF organization.”
Kait, the Kurdish official, said his administration wanted “a democratic Syria, a decentralized Syria, a Syria that represents all Syrians of all sects, religions and ethnicities,” describing these as red lines. The SDF would be “a nucleus of the coming Syrian army,” he added.
SDF commander Abdi, in his Reuters interview, confirmed that contact had been established with HTS to avoid clashes between their forces but said Ankara would try to drive a wedge between Damascus and the Kurdish-led administration.
Still, he said there was strong support from international parties, including the US-led coalition, for the SDF joining “the new political phase” in Damascus, calling it “a great opportunity.”
“We are preparing, after a total ceasefire between us and between Turkiye and the affiliated factions, to join this phase,” he said.
Winter is hitting Gaza and many Palestinians have little protection from the cold
- Nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month Israeli offensive
- The UN warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.
There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.
Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.
“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.
With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.
When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.
The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.
UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.
Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.
The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.
“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.
The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry’s count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.
Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.
For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza’s markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.
“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”
On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.
Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.
“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”
American pilots in ‘friendly fire’ incident as US military hits Houthi targets in Sanaa
- Houthis have targeted international shipping in Red Sea to impose Israel’s naval blockade
- The group that controls large parts of Yemen hit Tel Aviv with a missile strike, injuring 16 people
DUBAI: Two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said Sunday. Both pilots were recovered alive, with one suffering minor injuries in the incident.
The incident came as the US military conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, though the US military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was at the time.
“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman,” Central Command said in a statement.
The command said on X, shortly after midnight local time: “CENTCOM forces conducted the deliberate strikes to disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against U.S. Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden,”
The video released by the US military showed a jet taking off from a carrier.
“During the operation, CENTCOM forces also shot down multiple Houthi one way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) and an anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) over the Red Sea.”
Videos on social media showed people fleeing large explosions in the capital, but Arab News could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage.
The command said that US air and naval assets were used in the operation, including F/A-18s, adding the “strike reflects CENTCOM's ongoing commitment to protect U.S. and coalition personnel, regional partners, and international shipping.”
The Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, seized the capital in 2014 and have been conducting drone and missile attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea in an effort to impose a naval blockade on Israel, who, for more than a year, has been carrying out a devastating war against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier on Saturday, a Houthi missile hit Tel Aviv, injuring 16 people.
Syrian soldiers distance themselves from Assad in return for promised amnesty
- Lt. Col. Walid Abd Rabbo, who works with the new Interior Ministry, said the army has been dissolved and the interim government has not decided yet on whether those “whose hands are not tainted in blood” can apply to join the military again
DAMASCUS, Syria: Hundreds of former Syrian soldiers on Saturday reported to the country’s new rulers for the first time since Bashar Assad was ousted to answer questions about whether they may have been involved in crimes against civilians in exchange for a promised amnesty and return to civilian life.
The former soldiers trooped to what used to be the head office in Damascus of Assad’s Baath party that had ruled Syria for six decades. They were met with interrogators, former insurgents who stormed Damascus on Dec. 8, and given a list of questions and a registration number. They were free to leave.
Some members of the defunct military and security services waiting outside the building told The Associated Press that they had joined Assad’s forces because it meant a stable monthly income and free medical care.
The fall of Assad took many by surprise as tens of thousands of soldiers and members of security services failed to stop the advancing insurgents. Now in control of the country, and Assad in exile in Russia, the new authorities are investigating atrocities by Assad’s forces, mass graves and an array of prisons run by the military, intelligence and security agencies notorious for systematic torture, mass executions and brutal conditions.
Lt. Col. Walid Abd Rabbo, who works with the new Interior Ministry, said the army has been dissolved and the interim government has not decided yet on whether those “whose hands are not tainted in blood” can apply to join the military again. The new leaders have vowed to punish those responsible for crimes against Syrians under Assad.
Several locations for the interrogation and registration of former soldiers were opened in other parts of Syria in recent days.
“Today I am coming for the reconciliation and don’t know what will happen next,” said Abdul-Rahman Ali, 43, who last served in the northern city of Aleppo until it was captured by insurgents in early December.
“We received orders to leave everything and withdraw,” he said. “I dropped my weapon and put on civilian clothes,” he said, adding that he walked 14 hours until he reached the central town of Salamiyeh, from where he took a bus to Damascus.
Ali, who was making 700,000 pounds ($45) a month in Assad’s army, said he would serve his country again.
Inside the building, men stood in short lines in front of four rooms where interrogators asked each a list of questions on a paper.
“I see regret in their eyes,” an interrogator told AP as he questioned a soldier who now works at a shawarma restaurant in the Damascus suburb of Harasta. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to media.
The interrogator asked the soldier where his rifle is and the man responded that he left it at the base where he served. He then asked for and was handed the soldier’s military ID.
“He has become a civilian,” the interrogator said, adding that the authorities will carry out their own investigation before questioning the same soldier again within weeks to make sure there are no changes in the answers that he gave on Saturday.
The interrogator said after nearly two hours that he had quizzed 20 soldiers and the numbers are expected to increase in the coming days.
Israel accuses Pope of ‘double standards’, after Gaza criticism
JERUSALEM: Israel accused Pope Francis of “double standards” Saturday after he condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as “cruelty” following an air strike that killed seven children from one family.
“The Pope’s remarks are particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism — a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7,” an Israeli foreign ministry statement said.
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people.”
Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency had reported that an Israeli air strike killed 10 members of a family on Friday in the northern part of the Palestinian territory, including seven children.
“Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised. Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he told members of the government of the Holy See.
“I want to say it because it touches my heart.”
The Israeli statement said: “Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them,” a reference to the Palestinian Hamas militants who attacked Israel and took hostages on October 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war.
“Unfortunately, the Pope has chosen to ignore all of this,” the Israeli ministry said.
