Biden says Netanyahu not doing enough on hostage deal ahead of key meeting

Biden says Netanyahu not doing enough on hostage deal ahead of key meeting
People pay their respects on the street on the day of the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of six Israeli hostages whose body was recovered from Hamas captivity in Gaza, in Jerusalem September 2, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 02 September 2024
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Biden says Netanyahu not doing enough on hostage deal ahead of key meeting

Biden says Netanyahu not doing enough on hostage deal ahead of key meeting
  • Asked by reporters at the White House if he thought Netanyahu was doing enough on the issue, Biden responded: “No”

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Monday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for the release of hostages taken by Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Asked by reporters at the White House — where Biden was arriving for a meeting with US negotiators — if he thought the Israeli leader was doing enough on the issue, the president responded: “No.”
Biden’s meeting with the negotiators on the hostage-release deal comes after the deaths on Saturday of six captives in Gaza, including an American citizen.
The president said negotiators were “very close” to a final proposal to be presented to Israel and Hamas.
Biden’s schedule was revised to make time for the White House meeting, which was also to be attended by Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running to succeed him in November’s presidential election.
A White House statement said he and Harris would meet “with the US hostage deal negotiating team following the murder of American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages by Hamas on Saturday, and discuss efforts to drive toward a deal that secures the release of the remaining hostages.”
The United States, along with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar, has spent months pushing for a hostage-prisoner exchange and ceasefire in the war in Gaza.
Militants seized 251 hostages during the October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war, 97 of whom remain in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Scores of hostages were released during a one-week truce in November.
A Israeli court on Monday ordered a halt to a strike called by the country’s largest union aimed at ramping up pressure on Netanyahu’s government to secure the release of the remaining captives.
Hostage relatives and advocates have accused Netanyahu’s administration of not doing enough to bring the captives back alive, and have called for an immediate ceasefire.
In addition to the taking of hostages, Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
More than 40,786 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Most of the dead are women and children according to UN human rights office.


Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza

Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza
Updated 7 sec ago
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Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza

Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza
  • Gaza needs $6.5 billion in temporary housing aid, PA official says
  • Hamas requests 200,000 tents, 60,000 caravans for displaced Gazans

CAIRO/RAMALLAH: With fighting in Gaza paused, Palestinians are appealing for billions of dollars in emergency aid — from heavy machinery to clear rubble to tents and caravans to house people made homeless by Israeli bombardment.
One official from the Palestinian Authority estimated immediate funding needs of $6.5 billion for temporary housing for Gaza’s population of more than two million, even before the huge task of long-term reconstruction begins.
US special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff estimated last week that rebuilding could take 10-15 years. But before that, Gazans will have to live somewhere.
Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that has moved quickly to reassert control of Gaza after a temporary ceasefire began last month, says Gaza has immediate needs for 200,000 tents and 60,000 caravans.
In addition, it says there is an urgent need for heavy digging equipment to begin clearing millions of tons of rubble left by the war, both to clear the ground for housing and to recover more than 10,000 bodies estimated to be buried there.
Two Egyptian sources said heavy machinery was waiting at the border crossing and would be sent into Gaza starting Tuesday.
World Food Programme official Antoine Renard said Gaza’s food imports had surged since the ceasefire and were already at two or three times monthly levels before the truce began.

'Dual use' goods face impediments
But he said there were still impediments to importing medical and shelter equipment, which would be vital to sustain the population but which Israel considers to have potential “dual use” – civilian or military.
“This is a reminder to you that many of the items that are dual use need also to enter into Gaza like medical and also tents,” he told reporters in Geneva.
More than half a million people who fled northern Gaza have returned home, many with nothing more than what they could carry with them on foot. They were confronted by an unrecognizable wasteland of rubble where their houses once stood.
“I came back to Gaza City to find my house in ruins, with no place else to stay, no tents, no caravans, and not even a place we can rent as most of the city was destroyed,” said Gaza businessman Imad Turk, whose house and wood factory in Gaza City were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the war.
“We don’t know when the reconstruction will begin, we don’t know if the truce will hold, we don’t want to be forgotten by the world,” Turk told Reuters via a chat app.
Countries from Egypt and Qatar to Jordan, Turkiye and China have expressed readiness to help, but Palestinian officials blame Israel for delays. Egypt and Qatar both helped broker the ceasefire that has, for now, stopped the fighting.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli military to a request for comment.


Palestinian presidency accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Bank

Palestinian presidency accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Bank
Updated 03 February 2025
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Palestinian presidency accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Bank

Palestinian presidency accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Bank

RAMALLAH: The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Monday denounced as “ethnic cleansing” an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank and urged the United States to intervene.
In a statement, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the presidency “condemned the occupation authorities’ expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing.”


English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid

English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid
Updated 03 February 2025
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English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid

English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid
  • Lord Hermer detailed ways Palestinians could sue weapons firms in UK courts
  • Handbook, titled ‘Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation,’ was published in 2011

LONDON: The attorney general for England and Wales contributed to a handbook on combating Israeli apartheid during his time as a lawyer working in private practice, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Lord Hermer wrote a chapter in the book on ways that Palestinian victims could use British courts to sue weapons firms that sold arms to Israel.

Lawyers in the UK were in a “much better position” to take action on the matter than those in the US, he wrote in the book “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation,” published in 2011.

Lord Hermer, now legal chief to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, was working at Doughty Street Chambers as a lawyer at the time.

The book’s introduction says: “It is our hope that this book will prove useful in the fight against Israeli war crimes, occupation and apartheid.” It compiles commentary and contributions from pro-Palestinian lawyers and academics.

In the book, Lord Hermer criticizes British “export licences for weapons used by Israel in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

He provides a list of “proactive steps that the UK could take” to punish firms that sell weapons to Israel that could be used to violate human rights law.

Last year, Lord Hermer played a key role in the UK government’s decision to suspend 30 arms export licenses to Israel.

He also called on the government to abide by the International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lord Hermer’s chapter in the book explains how a Palestinian could use English courts to sue Israeli arms firm Elbit.

“If the company that was producing the drones or the missiles has a factory here, that’s sufficient (to bring legal action),” he said.

In a transcript attached to the chapter, detailing a question-and-answer session, Lord Hermer argued that the British legal system was more favorable to Palestinians than that of the US.

“There’s a much better position here than in the US. In the states, a whole host of important human rights cases have been closed down simply because they touch upon issues of foreign relations,” he said.


Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday

Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday
Updated 03 February 2025
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Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday

Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday

ISTANBUL: Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa will visit Turkiye on Tuesday on his second international visit since the toppling of Bashar Assad in December, the Turkish presidency said.
Sharaa “will pay a visit to Ankara on Tuesday at the invitation of our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” Fahrettin Altun, head of communications at the presidency, said on X.


Car bomb explosion near Syrian Arab Republic’s Manbij kills 15

Car bomb explosion near Syrian Arab Republic’s Manbij kills 15
Updated 03 February 2025
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Car bomb explosion near Syrian Arab Republic’s Manbij kills 15

Car bomb explosion near Syrian Arab Republic’s Manbij kills 15

DAMASCUS: A car bomb on Monday killed 15 people, mostly women farm workers, in the northern Syrian city of Manbij where Kurdish forces are battling Turkiye-backed groups, state media reported.

Citing White Helmet rescuers, SANA news agency said there had been a “massacre” on a local road, with “the explosion of a car bomb near a vehicle transporting agricultural workers” killing 14 women and one man.

The attack also wounded 15 women, some critically, SANA said, adding the toll could rise.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

It was the second such attack in recent days in war-ravaged Syrian Arab Republic, where Islamist-led rebels toppled autocratic president Bashar Assad in December.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported nine people, including an unspecified number of pro-Turkiye fighters, killed Saturday “when a car bomb exploded near a military position” in Manbij.

Turkiye-backed forces in Syria’s north launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in November, capturing several Kurdish-held enclaves in the north despite US efforts to broker a ceasefire.

With US support, the SDF spearheaded the military campaign that ousted the Daesh group from Syrian Arab Republic in 2019.

But Turkiye accuses the main component of the group – the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – of being affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Both Turkiye and the United States have designated the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil, a terrorist group.

Syrian Arab Republic’s new rulers have called on the SDF to hand over their weapons, rejecting demands for any kind of Kurdish self-rule.

Assad ruled Syrian Arab Republic with an iron fist and his bloody crackdown down on anti-government protests in 2011 sparked a war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.