Hamas and Israel exchange recriminations over stalled Gaza talks

Hamas said Saturday it had submitted its response to Egyptian and Qatari mediators on a proposed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip, insisting on a “permanent ceasefire.” (Reuters)
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Updated 14 April 2024
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Hamas and Israel exchange recriminations over stalled Gaza talks

  • Without explicitly rejecting the draft deal, Hamas reiterated its long-standing demands for a permanent ceasefire

JERUSALEM: Israel and Hamas have accused each other of undermining negotiations for a truce in Gaza and a hostage release deal, although the talks have not collapsed.

On Saturday, while Hamas-backer Iran was preparing to launch hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for a deadly Damascus strike, the Palestinian militant group announced that it had delivered its response to the latest ceasefire proposal.

Without explicitly rejecting the draft deal, Hamas reiterated its long-standing demands for a permanent ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, which Israeli officials have repeatedly opposed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instead reiterated his determination to launch a ground invasion of Rafah, the last city in Gaza yet to face such a fate and which Israel insists is Hamas’s last major holdout.

On Saturday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of being the “only obstacle” to a deal that would free the hostages still held by Gaza militants.

“The cabinet and the security forces are united in their opposition to these unfounded demands,” he said, adding that Hamas “has refused any deal and any compromise proposal.”

On Sunday, Israel’s Mossad spy agency said in a statement released by Netanyahu’s office that Hamas had rejected the proposal, and said it “proves” that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar “does not want a humanitarian deal and the return of the hostages.”

Sinwar was “continuing to exploit the tension with Iran,” Mossad said, and was aiming for “a general escalation in the region.”

The comments came just hours before Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel, the vast majority of which intercepted according to Israel.

Mossad said Israel would “continue to work to achieve the objectives of the war against Hamas with all its might, and will turn every stone to bring back the hostages from Gaza.”

Despite the apparent gulf between the two sides, the talks, mediated by Egypt, the United States and Qatar, are ongoing in the Egyptian capital.

“The negotiations are not at a standstill” but the mediators will have to go back to the drawing board, said Hasni Abidi of CERMAM, a Geneva-based think tank specializing in the Mediterranean and the Arab world.

A framework being circulated in Cairo would halt fighting for six weeks and see the exchange of about 40 hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as well as more aid deliveries into the besieged Gaza Strip.

A Hamas source told AFP that, ultimately, later stages of the ceasefire would see all hostages released, Israel withdrawing all its forces from Gaza, the lifting of the siege and the reconstruction of the territory.

However, so far every attempt to negotiate a durable ceasefire in the six-month-long war has failed.

In November, a seven-day truce enabled the exchange of 80 hostages for 240 Palestinian prisoners, as well as 25 captives freed outside of the truce mechanism.

The war broke out with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory attack, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 33,729 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Palestinian militants also took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli army says are dead.

Israel withdrew most of its troops from the Gaza Strip on the six-month anniversary of the war, leaving only a single brigade in central Gaza, while continuing to launch air strikes and bombardments.

Netanyahu has repeated his determination to launch a ground invasion of Rafah, where around 1.5 million Gazans are sheltering from the war, despite opposition from Israel’s top ally the United States.

He also faces increasing pressure from the Israeli public and the families of the hostages, with mass weekly demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem demanding an end to his government and the return of the captives.


Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog

Updated 26 November 2024
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Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog

  • The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry

THE HAGUE: The world’s chemical watchdog said Monday that it was “seriously concerned” by large gaps in Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons stockpile, as large quantities of potentially banned warfare agents might be involved.
Syria agreed in 2013 to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, shortly after an alleged chemical gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.
“Despite more than a decade of intensive work, the Syrian Arab Republic chemical weapons dossier still cannot be closed,” the watchdog’s director-general Fernando Arias told delegates at the OPCW’s annual meeting.
The Hague-based global watchdog has previously accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of continued attacks on civilians with chemical weapons during the Middle Eastern country’s brutal civil war.
“Since 2014, the (OPCW) Secretariat has reported a total of 26 outstanding issues of which seven have been fulfilled,” in relation to chemical weapon stockpiles in Syria, Arias said.
“The substance of the remaining 19 outstanding issues is of serious concern as it involves large quantities of potentially undeclared or unverified chemical warfare agents and chemical munitions,” he told delegates.
Syria’s OPCW voting rights were suspended in 2021, an unprecedented rebuke, following poison gas attacks on civilians in 2017.
Last year the watchdog blamed Syria for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on a case that sparked tensions between Damascus and the West.
Damascus has denied the allegations and insisted it has handed over its stockpiles.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.


Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon

Updated 26 November 2024
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Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon

  • The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries

DAMASUS: Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the Lebanese border on Monday, with the defense ministry reporting two civilians injured in the attacks.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since its conflict with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into full-scale war in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the bridges of Al-Jubaniyeh, Al-Daf, Arjoun, and the Al-Nizariyeh Gate in the Qusayr area,” state television said, with official news agency SANA reporting damage in the attacks.
The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries.
The attacks “injured two civilians and caused material losses,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, based in Britain, said the attacks had “killed two Syrians working with Hezbollah and injured five others,” giving a preliminary toll.
Earlier, the monitor with a network of sources in Syria had said the “Israeli strikes targeted” an official land border crossing in the Qusayr area and six bridges on the Orontes River near the border with Lebanon.
Since September, Israel has bombed land crossings between Lebanon and Syria, putting them out of service. It accuses Hezbollah of using the routes, key for people fleeing the war in Lebanon, to transfer weapons from Syria.

 

 


Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case

Updated 26 November 2024
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Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case

  • A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.
 

 


11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor

Updated 26 November 2024
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11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor

  • Seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in the attack and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria.

BEIRUT: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Monday 11 people including civilians were killed in attacks by a Kurdish-led force on positions of Turkiye-backed militants in north Syria.
“A woman, her two children and a man were killed... in the bombing of a military position... used by Ankara-backed factions for human smuggling operations to Turkiye,” the Britain-based monitor said.
It said seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in that incident and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control swathes of northeast Syria.
SDF special forces infiltrated a Turkiye-backed group’s military position and killed three militants, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The SDF also booby-trapped a military position as they withdrew, in an attack that killed another four pro-Turkiye militants but also four civilians including a woman and her two children, the Observatory said.
On Sunday, 15 Ankara-backed Syrian militants were killed after the SDF infiltrated their territory, the monitor reported earlier.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish troops and allied armed factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.


Sudan women facing ‘epidemic of sexual violence’: UN

Updated 25 November 2024
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Sudan women facing ‘epidemic of sexual violence’: UN

PORT SUDAN: The United Nations humanitarian chief raised the alarm on Monday over an “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in war-torn Sudan, saying the world “must do better.”
“I feel ashamed that we have not been able to protect you, and I feel ashamed for my fellow men for what they have done,” Tom Fletcher, who heads the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on his first visit to Port Sudan.
The Red Sea city has become Sudan’s de facto capital since April 2023, when Khartoum was engulfed by war between the regular military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced more than 11 million people and created what the UN says is the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.
Nearly 26 million people — around half the population — face the threat of mass starvation, as both warring sides have been accused of using hunger as a weapon of war.
During his visit, Fletcher met army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and discussed efforts to “increase the delivery of aid across borders and across conflict lines.”
Aid workers and humanitarian agencies say Burhan’s army-aligned government has enforced severe bureaucratic hurdles to their work.
At an event in a Port Sudan school to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Fletcher said the world “must do better” by the women of Sudan, who have been exposed to systematic sexual violence.
The UN’s independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan last month documented escalating sexual violence, including “rape, sexual exploitation and abduction for sexual purposes as well as allegations of enforced marriages and human trafficking.”
“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the fact-finding mission.
“The situation faced by vulnerable civilians, in particular women and girls of all ages, is deeply alarming and needs urgent address,” he added.