Gaza hostage talks ‘closest’ to deal since start of war: Qatar

Family members, friends and supporters of hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel, hold images of those taken during a protest calling for their release outside the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem (AFP)
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Updated 21 November 2023
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Gaza hostage talks ‘closest’ to deal since start of war: Qatar

  • Qatar has helped broker talks aiming to free some of the 240 hostages in return for a temporary ceasefire
  • Israel has launched a relentless retaliatory bombing campaign and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing more than 13,300 people

DOHA: Negotiations to free hostages seized in Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel are at their “closest point” to a deal and have reached the “final stage,” mediator Qatar said Tuesday.
“We are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said, adding negotiations have reached a “critical and final stage.”
Qatar has helped broker talks aiming to free some of the 240 hostages in return for a temporary cease-fire, a mediation effort that has so far led to the release of four hostages.
“We are very optimistic, very hopeful,” Al-Ansari told a briefing.
“But we are also very keen for this mediation to succeed in reaching a humanitarian truce,” he said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks, which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Israel has launched a relentless retaliatory bombing campaign and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing more than 13,300 people, two-thirds of them women or children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The United States said Saturday it was still working to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas after the Washington Post reported there was a tentative agreement to free women and children hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting.
Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said all parties would halt combat operations for at least five days while some hostages were to be released in batches.
The White House quickly responded on Saturday evening with a message on X, formerly Twitter, to deny any major breakthrough.
“We have seen a lot of the leaks or the statements here and there but we would prefer to keep our statements until we have a final decision on the agreement,” Al-Ansari said.

Here is what we know:

Early Tuesday, Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a brief statement posted online: “We are close to reaching a deal on a truce.” Hamas and Islamic Jihad sources said details of the agreement would be announced officially by Qatar and other mediators. “We are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said later Tuesday, adding negotiations were at a “critical and final stage.”

Two sources close to the tentative deal have said that between 50 and 100 civilian hostages would be released, but no military personnel.

In exchange, Israel would release from its prisons 300 Palestinians, among them women and children.

The transfer would span several days, with 10 hostages and 30 Palestinians prisoners released each day.

But the same sources said Israel had insisted that captive soldiers should also be released if they are related to a civilian abductee freed by the militants — despite Hamas objections.

“Qatar and Egypt are currently working with the US administration to resolve that issue,” the sources said, adding that only then would a date for a truce be announced.

According to the same sources, the deal includes a “complete cease-fire” on the ground for five days, with Israel allowed to fly sorties over northern Gaza for 18 hours a day.

The deal also provides for between 100 and 300 trucks of food and medical aid, as well as fuel, to enter Gaza, the sources said.


Israeli settlers sanctioned by UK spotted at illegal West Bank outpost

Tents are set up by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Bruqin, outside the walls of an illegal settlement of the sam
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Israeli settlers sanctioned by UK spotted at illegal West Bank outpost

  • Neria Ben Pazi, Zohar Sabah visited site near Palestinian village of Mughayyir Al-Deir
  • Israeli human rights group B’Tselem slams ‘total impunity for soldiers and settlers’

LONDON: Two Israeli settlers sanctioned by the UK this week have taken part in efforts to displace Palestinian families from the West Bank village of Mughayyir Al-Deir.

Neria Ben Pazi and Zohar Sabah were both spotted visiting an illegal outpost set up on Sunday near the community of around 150 Bedouins, The Guardian reported.

Ben Pazi’s organization Neria’s Farm was sanctioned on Tuesday after the UK suspended talks with the Israeli government on a free trade agreement over its blockade of Gaza and the extremist language of several of the country’s ministers. 

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned the actions of the Israeli government and suggestions its military would “purify Gaza,” saying it “has a responsibility to intervene and halt these aggressive actions.”

Ben Pazi was sanctioned in 2024 for his role in displacing other Bedouin families in the West Bank.

According to the US State Department, “Ben Pazi has expelled Palestinian shepherds from hundreds of acres of land. In August 2023, settlers including Ben Pazi attacked Palestinians near the village of Wadi as-Seeq,” The Guardian reported.

His violence in the area even led to Israel’s regional military commander, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, banning Ben Pazi from entering the West Bank in 2023.

Sabah was sanctioned by the UK for “threatening, perpetrating, promoting and supporting acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian individuals.”

This included his role in an attack on a Palestinian school, which injured teachers and pupils and hospitalized the principal.

The settler outpost in question, less than 100 meters from Palestinian homes at Mughayyir Al-Deir, was also visited by Zvi Sukkot, an MP with the Religious Zionist Party, who caused outrage last week when he told Israel’s Channel 12: “Everyone has got used to the idea that we can kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody in the world cares.”

Ahmad Sulaiman, a 58-year-old father of 11 children who lives close to the settler outpost, said intimidation had started against his community.

“I haven’t slept since they came, and the children are terrified,” he told The Guardian. “The settlers told me: ‘This is our home.’” He added: “There is nothing I can do. They have guns and other weapons.”

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says around 1,200 Palestinians have been forced from their homes in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.

Yonatan Mizrachi, co-director of Settlement Watch, said the boldness of settlers despite international sanctions “shows the settlers’ lack of fear, and the understanding that they can do what they like.”

B’Tselem spokesperson Shai Parnes said: “Israeli policy to take as much land as possible hasn’t changed. But what has been changing under this current government is the total impunity for soldiers and settlers.”


Iran and the US holding a fifth round of nuclear negotiations in Rome with enrichment a key issue

Updated 23 May 2025
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Iran and the US holding a fifth round of nuclear negotiations in Rome with enrichment a key issue

  • US officials up to President Donald Trump insist Iran cannot continue to enrich uranium at all in any deal that could see sanctions lifted
  • Talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions

ROME: Iran and the United States prepared for a fifth round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program Friday in Rome, with enrichment emerging as the key issue.

US officials up to President Donald Trump insist Iran cannot continue to enrich uranium at all in any deal that could see sanctions lifted on Tehran’s struggling economy. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi early Friday insisted online that no enrichment would mean “we do NOT have a deal.”

“Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science,” Araghchi wrote on the social platform X. “Time to decide.”

The US will be again represented in the talks by Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Michael Anton, the State Department’s policy planning director. While authorities haven’t offered a location for the talks, another round in Italy’s capital took place at the Omani Embassy there. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi is mediating the negotiations as the sultanate on the Arabian Peninsula has been a trusted interlocutor by both Tehran and Washington in the talks.

Enrichment remains key in negotiations

The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic, closing in on half a century of enmity.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

“Iran almost certainly is not producing nuclear weapons, but Iran has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, if it chooses to do so,” a new report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency said. “These actions reduce the time required to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for a first nuclear device to probably less than one week.”

However, it likely still would take Iran months to make a working bomb, experts say.

Enrichment remains the key point of contention. Witkoff at one point suggested Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67 percent, then later began saying all Iranian enrichment must stop. That position on the American side has hardened over time.

Asked about the negotiations, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said “we believe that we are going to succeed” in the talks and on Washington’s push for no enrichment.

“The Iranians are at that table, so they also understand what our position is, and they continue to go,” Bruce said Thursday.

One idea floated so far that might allow Iran to stop enrichment in the Islamic Republic but maintain a supply of uranium could be a consortium in the Mideast backed by regional countries and the US There also are multiple countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency offering low-enriched uranium that can be used for peaceful purposes by countries.

However, Iran’s Foreign Ministry has maintained enrichment must continue within the country’s borders and a similar fuel-swap proposal failed to gain traction in negotiations in 2010.

Meanwhile, Israel has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities on their own if it feels threatened, further complicating tensions in the Mideast already spiked by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Araghchi warned Thursday that Iran would take “special measures” to defend its nuclear facilities if Israel continues to threaten them, while also warning the US it would view it as being complicit in any Israeli attack. Authorities allowed a group of Iranian students to form a human chain Thursday at its underground enrichment site at Fordo, an area with incredibly tight security built into a mountain to defend against possible airstrikes.

Talks come as US pressure on Iran increases

Yet despite the tough talk from Iran, the Islamic Republic needs a deal. Its internal politics are inflamed over the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, with women still ignoring the law on the streets of Tehran. Rumors also persist over the government potentially increasing the cost of subsidized gasoline in the country, which has sparked nationwide protests in the past.

Iran’s rial currency plunged to over 1 million to a US dollar in April. The currency has improved with the talks, however, something Tehran hopes will continue as a further collapse in the rial could spark further economic unrest.

Meanwhile, its self-described “Axis of Resistance” sits in tatters after Iran’s regional allies in the region have faced repeated attacks by Israel during its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government during a rebel advance in December also stripped Iran of a key ally.

The Trump administration also has continued to levy new sanctions on Iran, including this week, which saw the US specifically target any sale of sodium perchlorate to the Islamic Republic. Iran reportedly received that chemical in shipments from China at its Shahid Rajaei port near Bandar Abbas. A major, unexplained explosion there killed dozens and wounded over 1,000 others in April during one round of the talks.


Gaza civil defense says 16 killed in Israel strikes

Updated 23 May 2025
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Gaza civil defense says 16 killed in Israel strikes

GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed 16 people on Friday across the territory, where Israel has ramped up its military offensive in recent days.
The toll from “Israeli strikes in various areas of the Gaza Strip since midnight totals 16 dead,” agency official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP.


US and regional countries team up to resolve the issue of Daesh prisoners in Syria

Updated 23 May 2025
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US and regional countries team up to resolve the issue of Daesh prisoners in Syria

  • President Trump asked the Syrian government to “assume responsibility” Daesh prisoners
  • Some 9,000 Daesh prisoners are being held by the US-backed SDF in northeast Syria

ISTANBUL: Turkiye, the United States, Syria and Iraq have formed a working group to try to resolve the issue of Daesh group prisoners held in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in comments published Thursday.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, control large parts of northeast Syria bordering Turkiye and Iraq and oversee more than a dozen prison camps holding thousands of suspected Daesh — also known as Islamic State or IS — fighters and their families.
US President Donald Trump asked the Syrian government to “assume responsibility” for some 9,000 Daesh prisoners when he met Syrian President President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia on May 14.
Erdogan said a committee had been formed to work out what to do with the prisoners, particularly women and children held at refugee camps such as Al-Hol in northern Syria. His comments on the presidential website were released as he returned from a trip to Hungary.
“Iraq needs to focus on the issue of the camps,” Erdogan said. “The vast majority of women and children in the Al Hol camp in particular belong to Iraq and Syria. They should do what is necessary for them.”
In 2014, Daesh declared a caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria and attracted tens of thousands of supporters from around the world. The extremists were defeated by a US-led coalition in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019. Tens of thousands of people linked to the group were taken to Al-Hol camp close to the Iraqi border.
It is anticipated that the government in Damascus will take control of the prison camps, a move Erdogan said would make it easier to integrate the Kurdish forces in Syria.
Kurdish fighters in Syria have ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which on May 12 agreed to dissolve and lay down its weapons following a four-decade insurgency against Turkiye.
 


Turkiye to provide Syria with 2 billion cubic meters of gas annually

Updated 23 May 2025
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Turkiye to provide Syria with 2 billion cubic meters of gas annually

  • Deal signed to activate gas pipeline connecting Syria with Turkiye
  • Turkiye will also start supplying 500 megawatts of electricity to Syria by yearend

DAMASCUS: Turkiye will provide 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Syria each year, Turkish energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Thursday.
In a joint news conference with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus, Bayraktar said that Turkiye’s gas exports to Syria will contribute to an additional 1,300 megawatts of electricity production in the country.
Ankara, which supported rebel forces in neighboring Syria throughout the 13-year civil war that ended this month with the ousting of Bashar Assad, is now positioning itself to play a major role in Syria’s reconstruction.
Turkiye will also provide an additional 1,000 megawatts of electricity to neighboring Syria for its short term needs, he added.
Syrian Energy Minister Mohammed Al-Bashir said they agreed to activate a gas pipeline that connects Syria with Turkiye, with gas flows expected in June.
“This will significantly boost electricity generation, which will positively impact the Syrian people’s electricity needs,” Al-Bashir said.
The two minister discussed completing a 400-kilovolt line that links the countries, contributing to importing around 500 megawatts of electricity into Syria, to be ready by the end of the year or shortly thereafter, he added.
Cooperation also includes opening the door for Turkish companies to invest in mining, phosphate, electricity generation and electricity distribution in Syria.
“There is very intensive work underway regarding the discovery of new natural resources, whether gas or oil, on land or at sea,” Bayraktar said. (Reporting by Riham Alkousaa in Damascus and Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Louise Heavens)