Hamas tells Gaza mediators to implement Biden truce plan instead of ‘more negotiations’

DAMASCUS: Moves by the US administration to cut foreign aid funding risk destabilizing two camps in northeastern Syria holding tens of thousands of people accused of affiliation with the Daesh, aid officials, local authorities and diplomats say.
The seven sources said Washington’s funding freezes and staff changes had already disrupted some aid distribution and services in Al-Hol and Roj, which host people who fled cities where Daesh was making its last stand between 2017-2019.
They are “closed camps,” meaning residents were not detained or charged as Daesh extremists but cannot independently leave the camps because of suspicions that they are affiliated with or support the group.
Aid workers and camp officials — led by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led force that helps run a semi-autonomous zone in northeastern Syria — have long called for the repatriation of camp residents, among them thousands of foreigners including Westerners.
But the rapid changes to US funding streams have prompted contingency plans for the spread of disease, riots, or Daesh attempts to retrieve residents they see as unlawfully detained, two senior humanitarian sources and a Roj resident said, requesting anonymity.
The humanitarian workers were not authorized to speak to the media, and the Roj camp resident had an unauthorized phone used to talk to Reuters.
“If there’s no unfreezing then everything except the camp guards stop. We’re expecting mass rioting and breakout attempts.
Kurdish authorities in the northeast said last month they expected breakout attempts at detention centers holding Daesh fighters and have refused to hand control of them to the new transitional government in Damascus.
The anticipated violence adds to the complex security challenges in Syria, where Islamist rebels installed the transitional government after toppling Bashar Assad and are holding talks with authorities in the northeast to bring all security forces under Damascus’s control.
Sheikhmous Ahmed, head of camps and displaced persons in the autonomous administration of northeast Syria, said US-funded organizations had been crucial in “covering the existing gaps” in basic service provision in the camps.
But if funding halts altogether, Daesh affiliates “can benefit from these existing gaps and lack of support,” he said.
At least one of the organizations operating in the two camps, aid contractor Blumont, has received waivers allowing it to keep operating, said a Blumont official and Al-Hol director Jihan Hanan. The waiver would last the 90 days.
The organization has had to shutter other USAID-funded humanitarian and management services at about 100 unofficial “collective centers” for other displaced people, the Blumont official said.

TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.
“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.
“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.
Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”
They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.
In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.
Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”
“Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.
“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”
So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.
In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.
In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.”
“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.