TEL AVIV: The families of hostages held in Gaza called on Israel Saturday to stop fighting and make a deal to secure their release after the army admitted “mistakenly” killing three captives in the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli army has said the three hostages killed by troops on Friday were carrying a white flag and had cried for help in Hebrew.
The news of their killing has sparked protests in Israel, and the relatives of the remaining hostages are terrified their loved ones could be next.
“We only receive dead bodies. We want you to stop the fight and start negotiations,” Noam Perry, daughter of hostage Haim Perry, said at an event in Tel Aviv organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“We feel like we’re in a Russian roulette game (finding out) who will be next in line to be told the death of their loved one,” said Ruby Chen, father of 19-year-old soldier Itai, who is among the captives.
“They explained to us first that the ground operation would bring back the abductees,” he said.
“It doesn’t work. Because since then, abductees have been seen returning, but not so much alive. It’s time to change this assumption,” he said.
Around 250 people were taken hostage during Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, Israel launched a massive offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement that has left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins.
The territory’s Hamas government says the war has killed at least 18,800 people, mostly women and children.
‘Stop the fight and start negotiations,’ Israel hostage families say
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‘Stop the fight and start negotiations,’ Israel hostage families say
- “We only receive dead bodies. We want you to stop the fight and start negotiations,” Noam Perry, daughter of hostage Haim Perry said
Syrians return to ruined homes in city that became Hezbollah hub
- Qusayr had been used by rebels as a transit point for weapons and fighters from Lebanon, and was strategically vital for the Syrian government because it is close to a major road linking Damascus to the coast
AL-QUSAYR, Syria: Residents of Qusayr in central Syria are finally returning home after the departure of Hezbollah fighters, who helped Bashar Assad’s forces seize the city a decade ago and left with his fall.
Many of the houses are now in ruins, after years under the control of the Lebanese armed group, a key Assad ally which had set up a military base and training camp there.
“Most areas in the city of Qusayr were off-limits to us,” said 22-year-old resident Ali Khleif.
“Even the local residents who owned shops and establishments there were prohibited from entering.”
Syria’s military retook Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, in June 2013 after a blistering assault led by Hezbollah fighters.
Qusayr had been used by rebels as a transit point for weapons and fighters from Lebanon, and was strategically vital for the Syrian government because it is close to a major road linking Damascus to the coast.
Hezbollah used the buildings “as warehouses for weapons and ammunition,” said Khleif.
“After the liberation, the residents returned to their shops and land” and have reclaimed them, he said.
“We will begin rebuilding them.”
Hezbollah acknowledged in 2013 that it was fighting in Syria in support of Damascus, two years after war erupted when Assad brutally repressed a pro-democracy uprising.
Now in Qusayr, former Hezbollah posts have been ransacked.
Images of the group’s former chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in September in a huge Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, have been slashed up and destroyed.
The 2013 battle for Qusayr forced thousands to flee, including many Lebanese residents of the area, which maintains close ties to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley across the border.
Hezbollah fighters abandoned the area with the fall of Assad last week, after Islamist-led rebels pressed a lightning offensive, taking the capital on December 8.
Lawyer Ayman Soweid, 30, said that “during Hezbollah’s occupation of Qusayr, our city was regarded as a land bridge for transporting weapons, specifically from Syria and Iran, via Iraq, passing through us to Lebanon.”
Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit the Qusayr area.
Israel, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since 2011, mainly targeting the army and Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah, has rarely commented on individual raids but has repeatedly said it would not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.
Elsewhere in Qusayr, Samar Harfouch, 38, was surveying piles of rubble.
She said she had returned on Saturday only to find her home destroyed.
“This is my home, and these are the homes of my husband’s brothers — three homes,” she told AFP, also indicating more relatives’ homes nearby.
“All destroyed,” she said.
“Twelve homes reduced to rubble.”
Trump and Netanyahu discuss Gaza hostages and Syria, Israeli PM says
- A bid by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce that would also include a hostage deal has gained momentum in recent weeks
JERUSALEM/WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President-elect Donald Trump about developments in Syria and a recent push to secure the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, he said on Sunday.
Netanyahu said he spoke with Trump on Saturday night about the issue, which will loom large as one of the main foreign challenges facing Trump when he takes office if it is not resolved before he is sworn in on Jan. 20.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250, including Israeli-American dual nationals, during their Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, according to Israeli tallies. More than 100 hostages have been freed through negotiations or Israeli military rescue operations. Of the 100 still held in Gaza, roughly half are believed to be alive.
Israel’s response has killed almost 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, warned last week during a visit to the region that it would “not be a pretty day” if the hostages held in Gaza were not released before Trump’s inauguration.
Trump said earlier this month there would be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if the hostages were not released before he came into office.
A Trump spokesperson on Sunday declined to give further details about the call.
A bid by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce that would also include a hostage deal has gained momentum in recent weeks.
Netanyahu said he had spoken with Trump about efforts to secure a hostage release. “We discussed the need to complete Israel’s victory and we spoke at length about the efforts we are making to free our hostages,” he said.
President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration is working hard to achieve a deal. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who was in the region last week, said on Thursday he believed a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release may be close, and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told Reuters there was momentum in the process.
Netanyahu said he and Trump had also discussed the situation in Syria following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles in the days since Assad’s ouster and moved troops into a demilitarised zone inside Syria.
“We have no interest in a conflict with Syria,” Netanyahu said in a statement. Israeli actions in Syria were intended to “thwart the potential threats from Syria and to prevent the takeover of terrorist elements near our border,” he said.
Back in Damascus, rebel leader confident of post-Assad unity
- Since toppling Assad, HTS and the transitional government have insisted that the rights of all Syrians will be protected
DAMASCUS: Syrian rebel leader Riad Al-Asaad told AFP on Sunday he was confident that the myriad of factions which helped topple Bashar Assad after years of war will now unite as one force.
Asaad, a former colonel, defected from the Syrian air force in July 2011, early in the Assad government’s crackdown of democracy protests that spiralled into civil war.
He went on to found the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the main opposition factions during the 13-year war, and lost a leg in March 2013 in a bomb attack on his car in eastern Syria.
The longtime ruler was overthrown last week following a lightning offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which has since appointed an interim government.
The FSA’s Asaad said he had been working closely with HTS and was sure that the new government would seek to unite the various rebel factions.
“It is natural that the revolution has gone through several struggles” that produced different factions sometimes with opposing ideologies, Asaad told AFP at a hotel in Damascus.
“But the truth is that what we have been striving for from the beginning” is “to have one single body,” akin to a supreme military council, to lead the forces opposed to Assad and “to achieve victory,” he said.
Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, but it has sought to moderate its rhetoric in recent years.
Since toppling Assad, HTS and the transitional government have insisted that the rights of all Syrians will be protected.
Some other factions that have taken up arms against the Assad government represent religious and ethnic minorities, like the Kurds in northern Syria, or ideologies like secular nationalism.
Foreign powers have given varying degrees of support to their favorite factions, including Turkiye which was quick to reopen its embassy in Damascus after the HTS takeover.
Assad’s rule, in turn, was backed by Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
Asaad no longer commands the FSA, which in itself has become an umbrella for several groups, but he remains a leading figure and is proud to have returned to Damascus.
He said that together with the new HTS-backed authorities, he was working to unite armed factions under a revamped defense ministry, in the hopes that such a move would prevent in-fighting and reprisals.
“Our goal is forgiveness and reconciliation, but there must be transitional justice so that there is no revenge,” he said, demanding that members of the ousted government face justice for crimes committed under Assad’s iron-fisted rule.
Asaad also urged the international community to back the new authorities.
As the FSA had sought foreign backing during the war, in a bid to make it as short as possible, Asaad said that “today, we ask again to stand with the Syrian people... so that it is truly Syria for all the Syrian people.”
The new Syria Asaad envisions would have “good relations with all the world’s countries,” he said.
But Russia, Assad’s key backer which still has an air base and a port is western Syria, should mend its ways, he added.
Moscow must “reconsider its calculations,” Asaad said.
“It was an enemy of the Syrian people. We hope that it will abandon this hostility and be a friend.”
Algeria summons French ambassador over accusations of interference: media
- Le Soir d’Algerie said French diplomats and agents had organized a series of meetings with people showing a “declared and permanent hostility toward Algerian institutions”
ALGIERS: Algeria’s foreign ministry has summoned the French ambassador to reprimand him for what it said were efforts to destabilize the country, several Algerian media outlets reported on Sunday.
The ambassador, Stephane Romatet, was “informed of the firm disapproval of the highest Algerian authorities in the face of the numerous French provocations and hostile acts,” the government-owned daily El Moudjahid reported.
According to Le Soir d’Algerie, the Algerian officials “made a point of clearly identifying the origin of these malicious acts, the French DGSE” intelligence service.
El Moudjahid said the French spy services were seeking to recruit “former terrorists” to “destabilize” the North African country.
Le Soir d’Algerie said French diplomats and agents had organized a series of meetings with people showing a “declared and permanent hostility toward Algerian institutions.”
The heightened tensions between Algiers and Paris come while French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal has been in detention for nearly a month in Algeria, accused of “attacking territorial integrity.”
According to Paris-based newspaper Le Monde, his November 16 arrest in Algiers could be due to his statements on a far-right French media outlet where he repeated Morocco’s claims that its territory had been truncated in favor of Algeria under French colonial rule.
Algeria had already withdrawn its ambassador to France over the summer after the French government supported a Moroccan plan for the Western Sahara that allows the contested region some autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
Algeria has historically supported the region’s Polisario separatist movement.
Once a leading force, Assad’s Baath party wiped off Mideast politics: analysts
- The Baath had evolved into authoritarianism under Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez Assad, and later his son Bashar, in Syria
CAIRO: The Baath party, once a powerful symbol of Arab nationalism, has become a fading relic of authoritarian rule in the Middle East after the fall of Syria’s Bashar Assad, analysts told AFP on Sunday.
The party has suspended its activities in Syria after Islamist-led rebel forces toppled Assad’s government last week, 20 years after its rival twin branch in Iraq was banned, marking the final collapse of a movement that once held sweeping power in both countries.
With Assad gone, “the Baath in Syria... is bound to fully decline,” said Nikolaos van Dam, an expert on the party and author of a book about its history, “The Struggle for Power in Syria.”
Van Dam said he does not believe “they will ever have an opportunity for a comeback.”
The Arab Socialist Baath Party, officially, was founded in Damascus on April 7, 1947, seeking to merge socialist ideals and Arab nationalism.
In its early years, the party recognized the important cultural role of religion for Muslims, who make up the majority in most Middle Eastern countries, while advocating a secular state that could unify the fragmented Arab world across sectarian divides.
But in both Syria and Iraq, whose populations are multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian, the Baath party had become a vehicle for minority rule.
In Iraq, Sunni Muslims ruled over a Shiite majority, while Alawites — the Assad family — ruled over Syria’s Sunni majority.
Sami Moubayed, a Damascus-based historian and writer, said that both the Iraqi and Syrian branches failed to live up to their slogan of “Unity, Freedom and Socialism.”
“There was never unity, let alone freedom,” he said.
“Their socialism amounted to disastrous nationalizations,” added Moubayed, author of “The Makers of Modern Syria: The Rise and Fall of Syrian Democracy 1918-1958.”
The Baath had evolved into authoritarianism under Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez Assad, and later his son Bashar, in Syria.
“Arab nationalism, particularly secular Arab nationalism, has lost much of its appeal... and thereby also the role of the Baath Party as an Arab nationalist party,” said van Dam.
“State nationalism has gradually become more important than pan-Arab nationalism.”
In Syria, a military junta dominated by Alawite, Druze and Christian officers seized power in 1963, adopting Marxist-inspired policies.
The party’s founders, Michel Aflaq, a Christian, and Saleh Bitar, a Sunni, were sidelined and then fled to Iraq.
Hafez Assad, an air force commander, emerged as the dominant figure in 1970, consolidating control over the party and leading Syria in a reign marked brutal repression.
In 2000, his son Bashar took power.
In neighboring Iraq, the Baath party solidified its grip in 1968 through a military coup led by General Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr.
In 1970, Saddam Hussein assumed control, ruling with an iron fist until his overthrow by a US-led coalition in 2003.
“Both parties only led their countries to failure,” said Moubayed.
“What victory can they claim?“
Under the Baath rule, Syria’s military lost territory to Israel in a 1967 war and suffered painful blows in another conflict six years later.
The Iraqi Baath party failed against Iran in the 1980-1988 war, initiated an invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and collapsed under the US-led coalition intervention in 2003.
Despite their shared Baathist roots, the Syrian and Iraqi branches were bitter rivals.
Syria supported Iran during its war with Iraq in the 1980s, reflecting a persistent sectarian divide as Hafez Assad aligned with Tehran’s Shiite leadership, sidelining Sunni Saddam.
Yet both Baath regimes relied on similar methods of coercion against their domestic opponents.
And both shared another striking similarity.
“The Baathist rulers of both Iraq and Syria became the party,” said van Dam.
The parties had their own institutions, “in Iraq better organized than in Syria, but they were fully subservient to their respective presidents,” he said.
Moubayed said that although the Baath’s decline was inevitable, that may not be the case for the ideals the party had claimed to champion.
“There may one day be a revival of Arab nationalism,” he said.
“But it is certain that it will not come from the Baath.”
