‘Utmost priority' for Trump: End war in Gaza and free hostages
Trump has said he believes there is a 'good chance' of an agreement this week for a ceasefire in the devastated Palestinian territory, hot on the heels of a truce in the war between Israel and Iran.
His special envoy Steve Witkoff will head to Qatar later this week where Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas are holding indirect talks, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told a briefing
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Daily Tribune
9 hours ago
- Daily Tribune
EU aims to reach trade deal with US in 'coming days'
AFP | The European Union wants to strike a deal with the United States "in the coming days" to avoid sweeping tariffs, a spokesman said Wednesday. If the EU does not clinch an agreement with the United States, higher tariffs will return and risk unleashing a bitter trade war. US President Donald Trump's sweeping levies were due to snap back into force on July 9 but he extended the deadline this week to August 1. "The United States has moved its deadline for finalising deals with partner countries to the first of August. However, we aim to reach a deal before then, potentially even in the coming days," EU trade spokesman Olof Gill said. "We have shown our readiness to reach an agreement in principle," Gill said, adding: "Reaching a deal now depends on the willingness to find an outcome that is acceptable to both sides." This type of accord would likely be thin on detail, meaning more negotiations would be needed to flesh it out. EU diplomats say the European Commission, in charge of trade policy for the 27-country bloc, could continue talks until August 1. The EU expects Trump to keep a 10-percent baseline tariff on EU goods with exemptions for critical sectors like airplanes, spirits and cosmetics, European diplomats told AFP this week. Talks at all levels continue between the two sides. EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic spoke to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Tuesday, and will speak by phone to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer later Wednesday, Gill told reporters. Although the EU wants a deal, the spokesman said the commission was ready "for all scenarios". The EU has prepared counter-tariffs on US goods worth around 100 billion euros ($117 billion) if negotiations do not lead to a deal.
Gulf Insider
15 hours ago
- Gulf Insider
Syria's Sharaa Met With Top Israeli Officials
A Syrian newspaper as well as several Israeli media sources are reporting that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who previously went by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and is the founder of Syrian al-Qaeda, has met with Israel's National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. While the reports remain unconfirmed by Damascus, The Jerusalem Post says that this was not 'the first such meeting' to take place, citing a Syrian source. But Israel quickly denied the reports: 'Israel issued a statement denying the claim, noting that Hanegbi is in Washington as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's delegation visiting the US.' The sources are calling the alleged meeting 'a significant step in the Syrian‑Israeli negotiations' as part of potentially moving closer to achieving normalization base on the Abraham Accords. This could also be part of publicly known efforts to advance 'quiet' talk with Israel in order to reach a security status quo. At the moment Israel's military still occupies a large portion of southern Syria, going well beyond the Golan Heights. Israel's YNet writes that 'The expected agreement could include security guarantees, a pledge to counter terrorist activity, measures to curb Iranian influence, and a restriction of terror operatives near the border.' 'According to foreign reports, Israel has already used Syrian airspace to strike Iranian targets—suggesting informal coordination between the two nations, even if not official,' the outlet adds. Damascus has continued to claim busting up 'Iranian terror' cells in various parts of the country. It is not expected to prioritize counter-ISIS operations given that many of the Sharaa/HTS government's own members are ISIS or former ISIS. The prior Assad government had lone been Israel's most formidable regional enemy, given it possessed Russian anti-aircraft systems and hosted Iranian forces. Israel, for its part, was part of the West's covert war to oust Assad. The timing of these reported Sharaa meetings with top Israeli officials is interesting given that it was only on Monday that the US formally lifted the longtime terror designation against his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Meanwhile, an interesting new revelation on Monday… JUST IN: TRUMP SAYS NETANYAHU WANTED SANCTIONS LIFTED OFF SYRIA'We took the sanctions off [Syria] because we want to give them a chance … and I would love to be able to — at the right time — take those sanctions off [Iran], give them a chance at rebuilding, because I'd like… — Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) July 8, 2025 As we highlighted, the fact that Sharaa was a formally designated terrorist didn't stop President Trump from meeting with him during his Saudi visit months ago. Trump even praised him as a 'young, attractive guy' who has a 'real shot at doing a good job' Sadly, the message from the White House seems to be that Syria should prioritize ending the long-running state of conflict with Israel, but there's been barely a peep about the massacres being conducted against Syria's ancient Christian, Alawite, and Druze populations. Also read: Syria Wants Lebanon's Tripoli In Swap For Israel-Held Golan Heights
Gulf Insider
15 hours ago
- Gulf Insider
Israel Defense Minister Plan For 'Concentration Camp'
With Gaza ceasefire negotiations under way and President Trump raising hopes of a deal being reached by week's end, Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday revealed that the IDF will create what it calls a 'humanitarian city' in the wasteland that is Rafah, and then forcibly concentrate Gaza's entire population of nearly 2 million people inside it. Though the Israeli government and its advocates will likely to condemn already-widespread usage of the term 'concentration camp' to describe this undertaking — likely claiming it's somehow antisemitic given the parallels to Nazi Germany — it's unambiguously applicable under the Merriam-Webster definition of the term: concentration camp (noun) a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard In the first phase, the IDF plans to round up 600,000 displaced Palestinians who are living in the coastal Mawasi area and move them to Rafah, a city in southernmost Gaza that borders Egypt and Israel. Eventually, every Gaza resident will be moved. After security screening, Palestinians will be ushered inside the camp, with IDF guards ensuring that none are able to leave, Katz said. While the Israeli military will secure the perimeter, the Netanyahu government is looking for some type of international organization(s) to take charge of the interior, to include overseeing the distribution of aid, an enterprise currently managed by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with the IDF dishing out mass killings of Palestinians approaching the aid points; more than 600 are reported dead around the aid stations since late May. Whistleblowing soldiers have told reporters that lethal weapons are being used against unarmed people as brute-force crowd control. Katz's announcement contradicts what the IDF Chief of Staff's office told Israel's High Court on the very same day. In response to a petition filed by IDF reserve soldiers asking the court to determine if Israel was violating international law by forcibly displacing Palestinians with perhaps the ultimate goal of expelling them, the Chief of Staff's office said there was no plan to move masses of Gaza residents or to concentrate them somewhere in the territory. However, that assurance is itself seemingly contradicted by the operations order for 'Gideon's Chariots,' the IDF's latest operation launched in May, which says one objective is 'managing and mobilizing the civilian population,' Haaretz reports. On Monday, Katz also reiterated Israel's intention to subsequently facilitate Palestinians' departures to other countries, telling reporters that Israel will implement 'the emigration plan, which will happen.' Separately, however, an official told Haaretz that Israel's overtures to various countries have all been refused. While Israel's champions commonly claim such refusals prove that Palestinians are dangerously undesirable people, Middle East governments are intensely wary of being perceived by their own populations as facilitating ethnic cleansing by Israel, for fear of domestic backlash up to and including insurrections. For somewhat similar reasons, Israel is likely to struggle to find what Katz called 'international partners' to run the interior of the Rafah concentration camp. Human-rights-oriented groups and foreign governments will recoil at an invitation to serve as a key component of a scheme that most objective observers would characterize as a war crime. Given that, we could see the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation fill the void, which would only compound the controversy. Meeting with President Trump at the White House on Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of mass Palestinian emigration, and characterized the idea as voluntary in nature: 'If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. We're working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say, that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future. I think we're getting close to finding several countries.' Trump echoed Netanyahu's optimism, saying, 'We've had great cooperation from … surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So something good will happen.' Though the implementation phase is apparently now imminent, the idea of corralling all of Gaza's population into Rafah and then moving them out has been circulating since the very beginning of Israel's response to the Hamas invasion of Oct 7 2023. A Ministry of Intelligence policy paper dated Oct 10 2023 and obtained by +972 Magazine that same month recommended herding Gaza's entire 2.2 million residents south and then forcing them into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. More recently, as Dave DeCamp notes at , Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich outlined a forcible displacement scheme in candid and grim terms that belie Netanyahu's characterization of coming emigration as 'voluntary.' In May, he boasted to attendees of a West Bank settlement conference that Palestinians will have no choice but to abandon a land rendered uninhabitable by the IDF: 'Within a few months…Gaza will be totally destroyed. The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.' Where, exactly, will those 'other places' be? Also read: Israel Bombs Ports, Power Plant In Yemen After Month-Long Pause
