RAMAT TRUMP, Golan Heights: Israeli residents of “Trump Heights” are welcoming the election of their namesake, hoping Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency will breathe new life into this tiny, remote settlement in the central Golan Heights.
During his first term, Trump became the first and only foreign leader to recognize Israel’s control of the Golan, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel thanked him by rebranding this outpost after him.
But a large-scale influx of new residents never materialized after that 2019 ceremony, and just a couple dozen families live in Trump Heights, or “Ramat Trump” in Hebrew. Job opportunities are limited, and Israel’s more than yearlong war against Hezbollah militants in nearby Lebanon has added to the sense of isolation.
Trump’s election has inspired hope in the community that it will attract more members and also more funding for security improvements.
“Maybe it can raise more awareness and maybe some support to help here and help our kids here,” said Yarden Freimann, Trump Heights’ community manager.
Ori Kallner, head of the Golan’s regional council, showed off dozens of plots of land, replete with new asphalt roads, lampposts and utility lines, that residents have prepared for future housing developments.
“President Trump’s return to the White House definitely puts the town in the headlines,” he said.
Hanging on while war rages nearby
Kallner stood next to a metal statue of an eagle and a menorah, symbolizing the United States and Israel, as Israeli warplanes flew overhead. Two explosions from rockets fired from Lebanon punched the hills nearby, and just across the border in Lebanon, plumes of smoke rose into the air from Israeli airstrikes.
An enormous sign with the settlement’s name in Hebrew and English gleamed in the sun, while two large sunbaked metal flags of Israel and the United States were faded almost beyond recognition.
Surrounded by ashen ruins of villages fled by Syrians in the 1967 war, the town is perched above the Hula Valley, where Israel has amassed tanks, artillery and troops for its fight in Lebanon. Most towns in the valley have been evacuated. Trump Heights sends its kids to a makeshift daycare in a nearby settlement after the government shuttered all schools in the region in the wake of the Oct. 1 invasion of Lebanon.
“We find ourselves hanging by our fingernails to be in our own community, not be evacuated, and on the other hand, we cannot work, we cannot send our kids to any kind of an education system,” said Freimann.
Trump Heights is only about 12 kilometers from Lebanon and Syria. Alerts for incoming fire gives residents about 30 seconds’ head start to get to a bomb shelter.
Trump broke with other leaders on the Golan Heights
Israel annexed the Golan, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, in 1981 in a move that is not internationally recognized.
That changed in March 2019 when Trump, without notice, tweeted that the US would “fully recognize” Israel’s control of the territory. His announcement drew widespread condemnation from the international community, which considers the Golan to be occupied Syrian territory and Israel’s settlements to be illegal. The Biden administration left the decision intact, but the US remains the lone country to recognize the Israeli annexation.
Kallner said he hopes Trump will now persuade European countries to recognize Israeli sovereignty there.
According to Israeli figures, the Golan is home to about 50,000 people — roughly half of them Jewish Israelis and the other half Arab Druze, many of whom still consider themselves Syrians under occupation.
Israel has encouraged and promoted settlements in the Golan, and the Druze residents operate farms and a tourism and restaurant sector popular with Israelis. But the area has struggled to develop because of its remoteness, several hours from Israel’s economic center in Tel Aviv.
That economic hardship has only worsened during the war as the hospitality sector cratered. On July 28, a rocket killed 12 Druze children on a soccer field in the city of Majdal Shams, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away. Israel invaded Lebanon months later.
In June 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led an inauguration ceremony for Trump Heights. The US ambassador at the time, David Friedman, noted that the ceremony came days after Trump’s birthday and said: “I can’t think of a more appropriate and a more beautiful birthday present.”
As president, Trump was close with Netanyahu
The Golan recognition was among a series of diplomatic gifts that Trump delivered to Israel during his first term. They included recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the American embassy to the contested city, and a series of diplomatic agreements with Arab countries known as the Abraham Accords.
He has vowed to bring peace to the tumultuous region during his second term, but has not said how.
Netanyahu enjoyed a close relationship with Trump during his first term but ran afoul of the former president when he congratulated Joe Biden on his 2020 victory. The Israeli prime minister announced Tuesday that he was one of the first foreign leaders to call the president-elect and congratulate him on his victory. An official in his office, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications, said aides were upbeat and giddy.
“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” the Israeli leader said in a statement. “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”
At Trump Heights, Kallner was optimistic too: “The Golan community is strong and resilient, and people that want to come and live here are from the same material. I believe we will overcome these challenging times and won’t stop growing.”
Residents of Israeli settlement ‘Trump Heights’ welcome Donald’s return to US presidency
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Residents of Israeli settlement ‘Trump Heights’ welcome Donald’s return to US presidency
- During his first term, Donald Trump became the first and only foreign leader to recognize Israel’s control of the Golan Heights
- Trump’s election has inspired hope in the community that it will attract more members and also more funding for security improvements
A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change
- In Damascus, Abir Homsi said she is optimistic about a future for her country that would include peace, security and freedom of expression and would bring Syrian communities previously divided by battle lines back together
DAMASCUS: In Damascus, the streets were buzzing with excitement Tuesday as Syrians welcomed in a new year that seemed to many to bring a promise of a brighter future after the unexpected fall of Bashar Assad’s government weeks earlier.
While Syrians in the capital looked forward to a new beginning after the ousting of Assad, the mood was more somber along Beirut’s Mediterranean promenade, where residents shared cautious hopes for the new year, reflecting on a country still reeling from war and ongoing crises.
War-weary Palestinians in Gaza who lost their homes and loved ones in 2024 saw little hope that 2025 would bring an end to their suffering.
The last year was a dramatic one in the Middle East, bringing calamity to some and hope to others. Across the region, it felt foolish to many to attempt to predict what the next year might bring.
In Damascus, Abir Homsi said she is optimistic about a future for her country that would include peace, security and freedom of expression and would bring Syrian communities previously divided by battle lines back together.
“We will return to how we once were, when people loved each other, celebrated together whether it is Ramadan or Christmas or any other holiday — no restricted areas for anyone,” she said.
But for many, the new year and new reality carried with it reminders of the painful years that came before.
Abdulrahman Al-Habib, from the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, had come to Damascus in hopes of finding relatives who disappeared after being arrested under Assad’s rule. He was at the capital’s Marjeh Square, where relatives of the missing have taken to posting photos of their loved ones in search of any clue to their whereabouts.
“We hope that in the new year, our status will be better ... and peace will prevail in the whole Arab world,” he said.
In Lebanon, a tenuous ceasefire brought a halt to fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group a little over a month ago. The country battered by years of economic collapse, political instability and a series of calamities since 2019, continues to grapple with uncertainty, but the truce has brought at least a temporary return to normal life.
Some families flocked to the Mzaar Ski Resort in the mountains northeast of Beirut on Tuesday to enjoy the day in the snow even though the resort had not officially opened.
“What happened and what’s still happening in the region, especially in Lebanon recently, has been very painful,” said Youssef Haddad, who came to ski with his family. “We have great hope that everything will get better.”
On Beirut’s seaside corniche, Mohammad Mohammad from the village of Marwahin in southern Lebanon was strolling with his three children.
“I hope peace and love prevail next year, but it feels like more (challenges) await us,” he said.
Mohammad was among the tens of thousands displaced during more than a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Now living in Jadra, a town that was also bombarded during the conflict, he awaits the end of a 60-day period, after which the Israeli army is required to withdraw under the conditions of a French and US-brokered ceasefire.
“Our village was completely destroyed,” Mohammad said. His family would spend a quiet evening at home, he said. This year “was very hard on us. I hope 2025 is better than all the years that passed.”
In Gaza, where the war between Hamas and Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, brought massive destruction and displaced most of the enclave’s population, few saw cause for optimism in the new year.
“The year 2024 was one of the worst years for all Palestinian people. It was a year of hunger, displacement, suffering and poverty,” said Nour Abu Obaid, a displaced woman from northern Gaza.
Obaid, whose 10-year-old child was killed in a strike in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, said she didn’t expect anything good in 2025. “The world is dead,” she said. “We do not expect anything, we expect the worst.”
The war was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others.
Ismail Salih, who lost his home and livelihood, expressed hopes for an end to the war in 2025 so that Gaza’s people can start rebuilding their lives.
The year that passed “was all war and all destruction,” he said. “Our homes are gone, our trees are gone, our livelihood is lost.”
In the coming year, Salih said he hopes that Palestinians can “live like the rest of the people of the world, in security, reassurance and peace.”
Two migrants die off Tunisia, 17 others rescued: National Guard
- Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe. Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing
TUNIS: Two Tunisian migrants, one of them a five-year-old child, died after their makeshift boat broke down off the country's northern coast, with 17 others rescued, the National Guard has said.
One body was found aboard the vessel, while the dead child was recovered from the water, the National Guard said in a statement Monday.
It said maritime units had responded to a distress call Sunday "about a damaged vessel out at sea that began taking on water", rescuing 17 out of 19 passengers.
"Five were rescued while fighting for their lives after they jumped off the boat," it added.
Four people linked to organising the crossing attempt were arrested, the statement said.
Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe. Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing.
Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.
The crossing has seen a spate of recent shipwrecks, exacerbated by bad weather.
On December 18, at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off the city of Sfax, with five others missing.
On December 12, the coastguard rescued 27 African migrants near Jebeniana, north of Sfax, but 15 were reported dead or missing.
In late October, 15 unidentified bodies were recovered off Mahdia, another key departure point.
And in September, 36 migrants -- 20 Tunisians and 16 Egyptians -- were rescued from a stranded boat near Nabeul.
Since the beginning of the year, the Tunisian human rights group FTDES has counted "between 600 and 700" migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia. More than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.
Tunisia is grappling with a number of economic woes, marked by high inflation, unemployment, and sluggish growth.
France says it struck Daesh positions in Syria
- Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said French armed forces "remain engaged in battling terrorism in the Levant"
PARIS: French aircraft have bombed Daesh positions in Syria, Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Tuesday, in its first such strike on the country’s soil since the fall of Bashar Assad.
“Our armed forces remain engaged in battling terrorism in the Levant,” Lecornu wrote on X while on a New Year visit to French UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
“On Sunday, French air assets carried out targeted strikes against Daesh on Syrian soil,” he added.
The defense ministry told AFP that France’s Rafale fighter jets and US-made Reaper drones “dropped a total of seven bombs on two military targets belonging to Daesh in central Syria.”
France has belonged to the Inherent Resolve international coalition against Daesh since 2014 for Iraq and 2015 for Syria.
French troops involved in the operations are based in the region, including in the UAE.
As Assad’s fall to a shock offensive by Syrian rebels led by a radical Sunni group rapidly reshapes the country, observers fear space could be left for Daesh to regather its strength.
The group has survived in both Iraq and Syria despite the destruction of its so-called caliphate that lasted from 2014-19.
Washington said in mid-December that it had doubled American troop numbers fighting jihadists in Syria, to around 2,000.
Its Central Command (Centcom) — responsible for the Middle East — said it wanted to ensure that IS “does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”
Around 2,500 US troops are also deployed in Iraq, according to Washington.
Syria’s de facto leader meets minority Christians
- Since seizing power, Syria’s new leadership has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed, although some incidents have sparked protests
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa met with senior Christian clerics on Tuesday, amid calls on the Islamist chief to guarantee minority rights after seizing power earlier this month.
“The leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, meets a delegation from the Christian community in Damascus,” Syria’s General Command said in a statement on Telegram.
The statement included pictures of the meeting with Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican clerics.
Earlier Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called for an inclusive political transition in Syria that guarantees the rights of the country’s diverse communities.
He expressed hope that “Syrians could take back control of their own destiny.”
But for this to happen, the country needs “a political transition in Syria that includes all communities in their diversity, that upholds the most basic rights and fundamental freedoms,” Barrot told AFPTV during a visit to Lebanon with Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu.
Barrot and Lecornu also met Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun and visited UN peacekeepers patrolling the southern border, where a fragile truce ended intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in late November.
Since seizing power, Syria’s new leadership has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed, although some incidents have sparked protests.
On December 25, thousands protested in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country’s north.
A day earlier, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus to protest the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria.
Before the civil war erupted in 2011, Syria was home to about one million Christians, according to analyst Fabrice Balanche, who says their number has dwindled to about 300,000.
Earlier, a Syrian official told AFP that Sharaa held “positive” talks with delegates of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Monday.
The talks were Sharaa’s first with Kurdish commanders since his Islamist-led rebels overthrew longtime strongman Bashar Assad in early December and come as the SDF is locked in fighting with Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria.
The US-backed SDF spearheaded the military campaign that ousted Daesh group jihadists from their last territory in Syria in 2019.
But Turkiye, which has long had ties with Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group, accuses the main component of the SDF of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a four-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
On Sunday, Sharaa told Al Arabiya television that Kurdish-led forces should be integrated into the new national army.
“Weapons must be in the hands of the state alone. Whoever is armed and qualified to join the defense ministry, we will welcome them,” he said.
Amid ceasefire push, Palestinians released from Israeli jails bear mental, physical scars
- An Israeli rights group said at least 56 Palestinians had died in custody during the war, compared to just one or two annually in the years preceding the conflict
CAIRO/JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH: Once muscular and strong, Palestinian bodybuilder Moazaz Obaiyat’s nine-month spell in Israeli custody left him unable to walk unaided upon his release in July. Then, in an October pre-dawn raid on his home, soldiers detained him again.
Before being re-arrested, the 37-year-old father of five was diagnosed with severe PTSD by Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, related to his time at Israel’s remote Ktz’iot prison, according to medical notes seen by Reuters from the hospital, a public clinic in the occupied West Bank.
The notes said Obaiyat was subjected to “physical and psychological violence and torture” in prison and described symptoms including severe anxiety, withdrawal from his family and avoidance of discussion of traumatic events and current affairs.
Alleged abuses and psychological harm to Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and camps are in renewed focus amid stepped-up efforts in December by international mediators to secure a ceasefire that could see the release of thousands of inmates detained during the Gaza war and before, in return for Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.
In the event of the release of detainees in any future deal, many “will require long-term medical care to recover from the physical and psychological abuse they have endured,” said Qadoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, a government body in the West Bank. Fares said he was aware of Obaiyat’s case.
For this story, four Palestinian men shared their experiences. They were detained by Israel since the war’s outbreak after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. All were held for months, accused of affiliating with an illegal organization, and released without being formally charged or convicted of any crime.
All described lasting psychological scars they attributed to abuses including beatings, sleep and food deprivation and prolonged restraint in stress positions during their time inside.
Their accounts are consistent with multiple investigations by human rights groups that reported grave abuses of Palestinians in Israeli detention. An investigation published by the UN human rights office in August described substantiated reports of widespread “torture, sexual assault and rape, amid atrocious inhumane conditions” in prisons since the war began.
The White House has called the reports of torture, rape and abuse in Israel’s prisons “deeply concerning.”
The Israeli military said it was investigating several cases of alleged abuse of Gazan detainees by military personnel but “categorically” rejected allegations of systematic abuse within its detention facilities.
The Israel Prison Service, which falls under hard-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the country’s internal security service said they were not in a position to comment on individual cases.
Tal Steiner, executive director of the Israeli rights group Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said the symptoms the men recounted were common and can echo through victims’ lifetimes, often shattering their families.
“Torture in Israeli prisons has exploded since Oct. 7. It will have and already has had a devastating effect on Palestinian society,” said Steiner. Speaking from his hospital bed in July, a severely emaciated Obaiyat called the treatment of himself and fellow prisoners “disgusting,” showing scars on his wasted legs and describing isolation, hunger, handcuffs and abuse with metal rods, without giving details.
Photos of Obaiyat taken before his incarceration show a powerfully built man.
On Dec. 19, Israel’s High Court ordered the state to answer a petition brought by rights groups about the lack of adequate food for Palestinian prisoners.
Obaiyat is currently being held in a small detention center in Etzion, south of Bethlehem, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group.
He is being held for six months under “administrative detention,” a form of incarceration without charge or trial, and the official reason for his arrest is unknown, the group said. Israel’s military, internal security service and prison service did not respond to questions about his specific case.
PCATI said at least 56 Palestinians had died in custody during the war, compared to just one or two annually in the years preceding the conflict.
