Hamas ready to start ceasefire talks 'immediately'
"The movement is ready to engage immediately and seriously in a cycle of negotiations on the mechanism to put in place" the terms of a draft truce proposal received from mediators, the group said in a statement.
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Khaleej Times
an hour ago
- Khaleej Times
Gaza truce talks to resume in Doha before Netanyahu heads to US
Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are set to resume on Sunday in Doha for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal, ahead of a visit by 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 group's delegation, led by its top negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, had already arrived in the Qatari capital, the official told AFP. On Friday, Hamas had said it was ready "to engage immediately and seriously" in negotiations. Netanyahu, who confirmed Israeli negotiators were also en route, said that "the changes that Hamas is seeking to make in the Qatari proposal... are unacceptable to Israel". Hamas has not publicly disclosed its response to the US-backed proposal, relayed by mediators from Qatar and Egypt. 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". 'Enough' Two Palestinian sources close to the discussions told AFP 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 AFP images showed Palestinians searching through the rubble for survivors with their bare hands. Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency. Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it could not comment on specific strikes without precise coordinates. Sheikh Radawn resident Osama al-Hanawi told AFP: "The rest of the family is still under the rubble." "We are losing young people, families and children every day, and this must stop now. Enough blood has been shed." Since the Hamas attack sparked a massive Israeli offensive with the aim of destroying the group, mediators have brokered two temporary halts in fighting, during which hostages were freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody. Of the 251 hostages taken by Palestinian militants during the October 2023 attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. Recent efforts to broker a new truce have repeatedly failed, with the primary point of contention being Israel's rejection of Hamas's demand for a lasting ceasefire. 'Dying for flour' The war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip. Karima al-Ras, from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, said "we hope that a truce will be announced" to allow in more aid. "People are dying for flour," she said. A US- and Israel-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, took the lead in food distribution in the territory in late May, when Israel partially lifted a more than two-month blockade on aid deliveries. UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives. UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Friday that more than 500 people have been killed waiting to access food from GHF distribution points. The Hamas attack of October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 57,418 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Anti-Hamas gang leader Abu Shabab admits joining forces with Israeli army in Gaza
The leader of a well-armed Bedouin clan defying Hamas's control of the Gaza Strip has confirmed it is co-ordinating with the Israeli army in Rafah. Yasser Abu Shabab gave an interview to the Israeli public broadcaster's Arabic-language radio station Makan, in which he said the objective of his Popular Forces group is to face up to "injustice and corruption". He said of his group: "As long as the goal is support and assistance [from the Israeli military] and nothing more, when we go on a mission we inform them – nothing beyond that – and we carry out the military operations. "There will be sacrifices and blood ... we are entering this project to free the people from their [Hamas's] injustice. We will not back down on this, no matter what the blood is." The Popular Forces operates in the east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah in an area controlled by Israeli forces, as they battle Hamas in the territory. Asked about the prospect of a ceasefire, Mr Abu Shabab said his group would continue their operations against Hamas even if a truce were reached. "If a truce happens, we will proceed with our work, no matter the cost or blood," he said. "We do not oblige ourselves to a truce ... this is their [Hamas] affair with the Israeli army." The Hamas -run Interior Ministry in Gaza has ordered Mr Abu Shabab to surrender and face trial, accusing him of treason. A ministry statement said the decision was taken by what it called a "Revolutionary Court". It gave Mr Abu Shabab 10 days to surrender and urged Palestinians to inform Hamas security officials of his whereabouts. The Abu Shabab group described the Hamas court's order as a "sitcom that doesn't frighten us, nor does it frighten any free man who loves his homeland and its dignity", in a post on the Facebook page that usually carried its announcements. Hamas has accused Mr Abu Shabab and his gang of looting UN aid lorries, with Israel backing. The European Council on Foreign Relations think tank describes Mr Abu Shabab as the leader of a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted Israel was supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel was supplying a gang with arms. Knesset member and former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman had said the government, at Mr Netanyahu's direction, was "giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons". "What did Lieberman leak?" Mr Netanyahu said at the time. "That on the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas.
Middle East Eye
2 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
'There is real fear': How Israel's attack on Iran enabled an assault on press freedoms
Journalists working in Israel are facing harassment, violence and ever-tightening restrictions on their ability to report as a result of military censorship powers reinforced by tough new restrictions imposed during last month's war with Iran. Palestinian journalists in Israel say they have borne the brunt of the latest crackdown on press freedoms, with some describing being attacked by police or hostile mobs as they worked. Israel's military censor has sweeping powers, requiring both domestic and international media organisations to seek its approval on stories related to matters of national security. Earlier this year, +972 magazine reported that Israel had seen an "unprecedented spike" in the use of military censorship powers in 2024, citing data collected annually by the magazine since 2011. It said the censor last year banned the publication of 1,635 articles and censored a further 6,265, intervening in an average of 21 news stories per day, and in about 38 percent of more than 20,000 stories submitted for review. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Haggai Mattar, the executive director of +972, told Middle East Eye: "There is nothing like this in other countries that define themselves as liberal and democratic." Israel this year dropped from 101st to 112th in the annual World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), with RSF warning that journalists had faced "intensified repression" since the start of the war on Gaza. Israel's war on Gaza 'worst ever conflict' for journalists: Report Read More » RSF also accused Israel of "annihilating journalism" in Palestine, which it said had become "the world's most dangerous state for journalists", citing the killing of almost 200 journalists in Gaza by Israeli forces. Last month, the censor's office issued a flurry of new guidelines further limiting journalists' ability to report, most notably restrictions requiring media organisations to seek written authorisation to report from missile impact sites and potentially criminalising journalists who did not abide by the new rules. These restrictions were condemned by the Union of Journalists in Israel, which represents both Israeli and Palestinian journalists accredited inside Israel, as "the latest nail in the coffin of press freedom in Israel". International press freedom organisations also expressed alarm. Anthony Bellanger, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, said: "This wave of assaults and censorship against Palestinian Israeli and foreign journalists in Israel is deeply alarming. Journalists must be allowed to report freely and safely." Broadcasts taken off air Razi Tatour, a Palestinian journalist from the Galilee region who holds an Israeli press card, told MEE he had faced days of harassment while trying to report on the Iranian attacks for Jordan's Alghad TV news network. In one incident, he had gone with a television crew to a residential building damaged by an air strike near Tel Aviv, accompanying journalists from Kan, Israel's national broadcasting corporation. Initially, the crew were allowed access, alongside their Israeli press colleagues. But when a police officer heard him speaking Arabic, Tatour said, the mood quickly changed. "He immediately attacked me, trying to cover the camera and trying to scare me. Then they told us to leave." Tatour and his crew left the area. They set up their equipment nearby and started broadcasting live. Tatour was then approached by more police officers who asked him who he was working for. "I told them I was on air and that I had a press card. But they refused to listen and called in forces to cut the cable and take us off air." The police officers had also called them "terrorists", Tatour said, which he feared risked inciting crowds gathered at the scene. Their equipment was confiscated and only returned to them four hours later. The next day, Tatour was broadcasting again from a hotel room overlooking the northern city of Haifa when police burst in. "They stormed the room and stopped the broadcast," he said. "They claimed we were filming in an illegal place and that we had bypassed the military censor and were providing information to the enemy." Tatour said he and a number of others working for Arab news organisations were detained for around three hours, and their equipment was again confiscated. 'Freedom of the press is no longer constitutionally guaranteed as a right but is rather conditional on national identity and discipline' - Anton Shalhat, chair of I'lam Media Center "They accused me of working with Hezbollah, that the footage had reached websites affiliated with Hezbollah. They threatened to arrest me, but there was no arrest." The next morning, Tatour received a phone call summoning him to the police station in Haifa. "In the end, there was nothing. They explained the censor's instructions and said we were prohibited from covering Haifa. To this day, our cameras are still being held." Tatour told MEE he believed his experiences were part of a systematic policy on the part of the Israeli government to intimidate journalists. "Civil society organisations, human rights groups and journalists' unions may support us legally and in court, but they cannot really protect us. That's the reality," he said. "There is fear, real fear, among journalistic crews, and that fear is intentional. We were made an example of. It was an attempt to intimidate all the other journalists in the country." In other cases, journalists have complained of being prevented by police from reaching the sites of rocket and missile strikes. Following a ballistic missile strike on the town of Rishon Lezion, near Tel Aviv, which killed two people and injured dozens more, journalists from Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya network, as well as Turkish and Egyptian networks, said they had been refused access when attempting to visit the area. Creating an 'internal enemy' Anton Shalhat, the chair of I'lam Media Center, which supports Palestinian journalists working in Israel, told MEE that at least 30 Palestinian journalists had reported facing disruption while trying to report during the days of Iranian air strikes targeting Israeli towns and cities. These included being subjected to physical assaults, threats and intimidation, and the confiscation of equipment, Shalhat said. While police were responsible for many of these incidents, Shalhat said that journalists had also reported being threatened and assaulted by mobs emboldened by a permissive environment "that allows for violations of the law as long as the target is an Arab journalist". The ability to work as a journalist in Israel, he added, was now linked to "ethnic affiliation and presumed loyalty". "Freedom of the press is no longer constitutionally guaranteed as a right but is rather conditional on national identity and discipline," he said. Some Israeli journalists observe that harassment of colleagues working for Arab media organisations has also increased since the government banned Qatar-based Al Jazeera from reporting inside Israel in May last year. "After closing Al Jazeera, they needed to create an internal enemy," said Oren Ziv, a photographer and reporter for Local Call, a Hebrew-language news site. British Jewish journalists call for Israel to allow media access to Gaza Read More » "In my opinion, the harassment of Arab journalists is not related to censorship or security, but to the exploitation of censorship." Ziv said photographers had been put in danger by an assault on press freedoms led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi. "They gave a licence to every citizen, every guard, every police officer and every volunteer in the police to harass and bully photographers," he said. "Not only Arab and Palestinian photographers who work in the field but also foreign photographers and even Israeli photographers." Ziv added that a climate of fear and the growing weight of reporting restrictions meant that many journalists and photographers were now more inclined to self-censor their work. "You have these very confusing guidelines; you need to check before you release photos and check what others are doing, and of course, it is discouraging." In some cases, he said, even when Israeli photographers had been given permission to take photos, they had been unable to do so because of police harassment. "They say: 'You are leftists and you serve Iran. Don't take photos here.' There is a broader move that everyone is an enemy and everyone needs to be silenced, and it doesn't matter who you are. "But without a doubt, the Arab journalists and photographers are the first to pay the price."
