SANAA: Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militia, which has disrupted global shipping to display its support for Palestinians in the Gaza conflict, is now offering a place for students suspended from US universities after staging anti-Israeli protests.
Students have rallied or set up tents at dozens of campuses in the United States in recent days to protest against Israel’s war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
Demonstrators have called on President Joe Biden, who has supported Israel’s right to defend itself, to do more to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and demanded schools divest from companies that support Israel’s government.
Many of the schools, including Ivy League Columbia University in New York City, have called in police to quell the protests.
“We are serious about welcoming students that have been suspended from US universities for supporting Palestinians,” an official at Sanaa University, which is run by the Houthis, told Reuters. “We are fighting this battle with Palestine in every way we can.”
Sanaa University had issued a statement applauding the “humanitarian” position of the students in the United States and said they could continue their studies in Yemen.
“The board of the university condemns what academics and students of US and European universities are being subjected to, suppression of freedom of expression,” the board of the university said in a statement, which included an email address for any students wanting to take up their offer.
The US and Britain returned the Houthi militia to a list of terrorist groups this year as their attacks on vessels in and around the Red Sea hurt global economies.
The Houthi’s offer of an education for US students sparked a wave of sarcasm by ordinary Yemenis on social media. One social media user posted a photograph of two Westerners chewing Yemen’s widely-used narcotic leaf Qat. He described the scene as American students during their fifth year at Sanaa University.

BEIRUT: Hamas said Thursday that it was sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks, in a new sign of progress in attempts by international mediators to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the militant group to end the war in Gaza.

After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage, with Egyptian and American mediators reporting signs of compromise in recent days. But chances for the deal remain entangled with the key question of whether Israel will accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.
The stakes in the ceasefire negotiations were made clear in a new UN report that said if the Israel-Hamas war stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.
The proposal that US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages, but also negotiations over a “permanent calm” that includes some sort of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to an Egyptian official. Hamas is seeking guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end to the war.
Hamas officials have sent mixed signals about the proposal in recent days. But on Thursday, its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a statement that he had spoken to Egypt’s intelligence chief and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal.”
The statement said that Hamas negotiators would travel to Cairo “to complete the ongoing discussions with the aim of working forward for an agreement.” Haniyeh said he had also spoken to the prime minister of Qatar, another key mediator in the process.
The brokers are hopeful that the deal will bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, caused widespread destruction and plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. They also hope a deal will avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter after fleeing battle zones elsewhere in the territory.
If Israel does agree to end the war in return for a full hostage release, it would be a major turnaround. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack stunned Israel, its leaders have vowed not to stop their bombardment and ground offensives until the militant group is destroyed. They also say Israel must keep a military presence in Gaza and security control after the war to ensure Hamas doesn’t rebuild.
Publicly at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that is the only acceptable endgame.
He has vowed that even if a ceasefire is reached, Israel will eventually attack Rafah, which he says is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. He repeated his determination to do so in talks Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on a regional tour to push the deal through.
The agreement’s immediate fate hinges on whether Hamas will accept uncertainty over the final phases to bring the initial six-week pause in fighting — and at least postpone what it is feared would be a devastating assault on Rafah.
Egypt has been privately assuring Hamas that the deal will mean a total end to the war. But the Egyptian official said Hamas says the text’s language is too vague and wants it to specify a complete Israeli pullout from all of Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations.
On Wednesday evening, however, the news looked less positive as Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official, expressed skepticism, saying the group’s initial position was “negative.” Speaking to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, he said that talks were still ongoing but would stop if Israel invades Rafah.
Blinken hiked up pressure on Hamas to accept, saying Israel had made “very important” compromises.
“There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there,” Blinken said Wednesday before leaving for the US
An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, killed at least five people, including a child, in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. The bodies were seen and counted by Associated Press journalists at a hospital.
The war broke out on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants broke into southern Israel and killed over 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, taking around 250 others hostage, some released during a ceasefire on November.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the UN More than 80 percent of the population has been driven from their homes.
The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed” and poverty is rising sharply among Palestinians, according to the report released Thursday by the United Nations Development Program and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
It said that in 2024, the entire Palestinian economy — including both Gaza and the West Bank -– has so far contracted 25.8 percent. If the war continues, the loss will reach a “staggering” 29 percent by July, it said. The West Bank economy has been hit by Israel’s decision to cancel the work permits for tens of thousands of laborers who depended on jobs inside Israel.
“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. He warned of a “serious development crisis that jeopardizes the future of generations to come.”