Middle East: Israel sending delegation for Gaza truce talks
"The changes that Hamas is seeking to make in the Qatari proposal were conveyed to us last night and are unacceptable to Israel," said Netanyahu's office in a statement.
But a negotiation team will still fly to Qatar to "continue the efforts to secure the return of our hostages based on the Qatari proposal that Israel agreed to."
Hamas has not publicly detailed its responses to the US-sponsored proposal, which was transmitted by mediators from Qatar and Egypt, but said on Friday it responded in a "positive spirit."
US President Donald Trump has renewed efforts to bring an end to nearly 21 months of war in Gaza. He will host Netanyahu in Washington on Monday.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
10 hours ago
- Observer
Gaza truce negotiations to resume in Doha
GAZA: Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas resumed in Doha for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal, ahead of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. Netanyahu had earlier announced he was sending a team to Qatar, a key mediator in the conflict, though he said Hamas's response to a draft US-backed ceasefire deal contained "unacceptable" demands. Under mounting pressure to end the war, now approaching its 22nd month, Netanyahu is scheduled to meet on Monday with US President Donald Trump, who has been making a renewed push to end the fighting. A Palestinian official familiar with the talks and close to Hamas said international mediators had informed the group that "a new round of indirect negotiations... will begin in Doha today". The talks would focus on conditions for a possible ceasefire, including hostage and prisoner releases, and Hamas would also seek the reopening of Gaza's Rafah crossing to evacuate the wounded, the official said. Hamas's delegation, led by its top negotiator Khalil al Hayya, was in Doha, the official said. Israel's public broadcaster said the country's delegation had left for the Qatari capital in the early afternoon. In Tel Aviv on Saturday, protesters gathered for a weekly rally demanding the return of hostages held in Gaza since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, which triggered the war. Macabit Mayer, the aunt of captives Gali and Ziv Berman, called for a deal "that saves everyone". Two Palestinian sources close to the discussions said the proposal included a 60-day truce, during which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and several bodies in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel. However, they said, the group was also demanding certain conditions for Israel's withdrawal, guarantees against a resumption of fighting during negotiations, and the return of the UN-led aid distribution system. On the ground, Gaza's civil defence agency said 14 people were killed by Israeli forces on Sunday. The agency said 10 were killed in a pre-dawn strike on Gaza City's Sheikh Radawn neighbourhood, where images showed Palestinians searching through the rubble for survivors with their bare hands. Meanwhile, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the landscape has been transformed after Israeli army bulldozers ploughed through its two refugee camps in what the military called a hunt for Palestinian gunmen. The army gave thousands of displaced residents just a few hours to retrieve belongings from their homes before demolishing buildings and clearing wide avenues through the rubble. Now residents fear the clearances will erase not just buildings, but their own status as refugees from lands inhabited by generations of their ancestors in what is now Israel. The "right of return" to those lands, claimed by Palestinian refugees ever since the creation of Israel in 1948, remains one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The army said it would demolish 104 more buildings in the Tulkarem camp this week in the latest stage of an operation that it launched in January during a truce in the Gaza war, billing it as an intensive crackdown on several camps that are strongholds of Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israel. It began with a raid on the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a longtime stronghold of Palestinian gunmen, and quickly spread to other cities, including Tulkarem, displacing at least 40,000 people, according to UN figures. In Tulkarem, the Israeli army's bulldozers ploughed through the dense patchwork of narrow alleyways that had grown as Palestinian refugees settled in the area over the years. Three wide arteries of concrete now streak the side of Tulkarem camp, allowing easy access for the army. Piles of cinder blocks and concrete line the roadside like snowbanks after a plough's passage. — AFP
Observer
10 hours ago
- Observer
Donald Trump, our foundering father
I called my brother, Kevin, to ask if he would spend Independence Day with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and me. Monticello has a new tour focusing on the relationship of Jefferson and Adams, which culminated in an exchange of 158 letters in their last 14 years of life. Historian David McCullough deemed this attempt of the fiery Bostonian and reticent Virginian to overcome their political feuds and understand each other 'one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history.' My favourite anecdote about Adams and Jefferson, who both loved Shakespeare and used the Bard's psychological insights as inspiration when they conjured the country, concerned their visit to Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Our family trip to Monticello on Wednesday was suggested by Jane Kamensky, a very cool historian of the American Revolution and the president and CEO of Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. She thought that my Trump-supporting brother and I might appreciate the new tour, 'Founding Friends, Founding Foes,' as inspiration for 'a thoughtful dialogue across the divide.' Kevin laughed when I told him about the invitation. 'I'm amused,' he said, 'that we are the example of modern-day comity and civility.' Americans are at one another's throats, living in a world of insults, coarseness and cruelty — a world where Donald Trump and JD Vance excel. At Monticello, we talked to Ken Burns, who was giving a preview of his upcoming PBS documentary on the American Revolution. He is finishing it in the nick of time, given Trump's attempts to slash PBS' federal funding. 'The Revolution — no pictures, no newsreels, and more violent than we could possibly imagine,' the film-maker told us. 'The Revolution was not just a quarrel between Englishmen over Indian land and taxes and representation, but a struggle that would involve more than two dozen nations, Europeans as well as Native Americans, that also somehow came to be about the noblest aspirations of humankind.' A year from now is the 250th birthday party for the country. In retrospect, the odds seem impossible. When the patriot militias engaged at sunrise at Lexington Green in April 1775, Burns noted, 'the chances of the success of the operation were zero.' Then, somehow, eight years later, 'we created something new in the world. We were the original anticolonial movement. We turned the world upside down.' Adams and Jefferson constantly talked about virtue and what virtues would help mold our anti-monarchical society. Trump, who plays at being a king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge. (The popular president of the University of Virginia, the school here founded by Jefferson, just announced that he would resign because of Trump's anti-diversity, equity and inclusion pressure campaign.) As Trump rammed through his horrible bill, a humongous wealth transfer, he scoffed at those who suggested there was no virtue in hurting the most vulnerable to make the obscenely rich richer. He keeps insisting that no one will lose Medicaid benefits, but Republicans are cutting more than $1 trillion from the programme, so a lot of people are going to suffer. The Declaration of Independence aspired to equality, while Trump's bill deepens our inequality. I asked Burns if it was possible now to persuade anyone across the aisle of anything, or is everyone just howling into the storm? 'The best arguments in the world won't change a single person's point of view,' he said. 'The only thing that can do that is a good story. Good stories are a kind of benevolent Trojan horse. You let them in, and they add complication, allowing you to understand that sometimes a thing and its opposite are true at the same time.' Reading the Adams-Jefferson letters, I felt that these founders were able to resurrect their relationship the same way I'm able to preserve mine with my siblings. We approach politics carefully, without venom or overblown expectations of changing one another's minds. We look for slivers of common ground: None of us thought Joe Biden should cling to office when he was clearly declining. 'Lord! Lord!' Adams exclaimed with exasperation. 'What can I do, with So much Greek?' Burns said that his half-century of making documentaries about America's wars and pastimes has taught him to embrace contradictions. 'The binaries that we set up are the biggest trap, whether they come from the left or the right,' he said. 'When you see somebody making a 'them', you have to be careful. That's antithetical to what the Declaration is saying. I hope that what we do on the Fourth of July is try to put the 'us' into the US.' Maureen Dowd The writer is an American columnist for The New York Times and an author
Observer
11 hours ago
- Observer
Musk announces 'America Party' in further break from Trump
WASHINGTON: The dispute between Republican President Donald Trump and his main campaign financier Elon Musk took another fractious turn when the space and automotive billionaire announced the formation of a new political party, saying Trump's "big, beautiful" tax bill would bankrupt America. A day after asking his followers on his X platform whether a new US political party should be created, Musk declared in a post on Saturday that "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom." "By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!" he wrote. The announcement from Musk comes after Trump signed his self-styled "big, beautiful" tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk fiercely opposed. Musk, who became the word's richest man thanks to his Tesla car company and his SpaceX satellite firm, spent hundreds of millions on Trump's re-election and led the Department of Government Efficiency from the start of the president's second term aimed at slashing government spending. The first sign of investor dissatisfaction with Musk's announcement followed later in the day. Investment firm Azoria Partners will postpone the listing of a Tesla exchange-traded fund, Azoria CEO James Fishback said in a post on X. Fishback is asking Tesla's board to clarify Musk's political ambitions and said the new party undermines the confidence shareholders had that he would be focusing more on the company after leaving government service in May. Musk said previously that he would start a new political party and spend money to unseat lawmakers who supported the bill. Trump earlier this week threatened to cut off the billions of dollars in subsidies that Musk's companies receive from the federal government. Republicans have expressed concern that Musk's on-again, off-again feud with Trump could hurt their chances to protect their majority in the 2026 midterm congressional elections. Asked on X what was the one thing that made him go from loving Trump to attacking him, Musk said: "Increasing the deficit from an already insane $2T under Biden to $2.5T. This will bankrupt the country." There was no immediate comment from Trump or the White House on Musk's announcement. The feud with Trump, often described as one between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful, has led to several precipitous falls in Tesla's share price. Despite Musk's deep pockets, breaking the Republican-Democratic duopoly will be a tall order, given that it has dominated American political life for more than 160 years, while Trump's approval ratings in polls in his second term have generally held firm above 40 per cent, despite often divisive policies. — Reuters
