Syria’s national dialogue conference is in flux amid pressure for a political transition

Hassan al-Daghim, spokesperson for the preparatory committee for Syria's national dialogue conference, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Damascus, Syria, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP)
Hassan al-Daghim, spokesperson for the preparatory committee for Syria's national dialogue conference, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Damascus, Syria, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 22 February 2025
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Syria’s national dialogue conference is in flux amid pressure for a political transition

Syria’s national dialogue conference is in flux amid pressure for a political transition
  • Al-Daghim said the decisions taken in the meeting of former rebel factions in January dealt with “security issues that concern the life of every citizen” and “these sensitive issues could not be postponed” to wait for an inclusive process

DAMASCUS, Syria: An official with the committee preparing a national dialogue conference in Syria to help chart the country’s future said Friday that it has not been decided whether the conference will take place before or after a new government is formed.

The date of the conference has not been set and the timing “is up for discussion by the citizens,” Hassan Al-Daghim, spokesperson for the committee, told The Associated Press in an interview in Damascus on Friday.

“If the transitional government is formed before the national dialogue conference, this is normal,” he said. On the other hand, he said, “the caretaker government may be extended until the end of the national dialogue.”

The conference will focus on drafting a constitution, the economy, transitional justice, institutional reform and how the authorities deal with Syrians, Al-Daghim said. The outcome of the national dialogue will be non-binding recommendations to the country’s new leaders.

“However, these recommendations are not only in the sense of advice and formalities,” Al-Daghim said. “They are recommendations that the president of the republic is waiting for in order to build on them.”

After former President Bashir Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive in December, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, the main former rebel group now in control of Syria, set up an interim administration comprising mainly of members of its “salvation government” that had ruled in northwestern Syria.

They said at the time that a new government would be formed through an inclusive process by March. In January, former HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa was named Syria’s interim president after a meeting of most of the country’s former rebel factions. The groups agreed to dissolve the country’s constitution, the former national army, security service and official political parties.

The armed groups present at the meetings also agreed to dissolve themselves and for their members to be absorbed into the new national army and security forces. Notably absent was the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which holds sway in northeastern Syria.

There has been international pressure for Al-Sharaa to follow through on promises of an inclusive political transition. UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said this week that formation of a “new inclusive government” by March 1 could help determine whether Western sanctions are lifted as the country rebuilds.

Al-Daghim said the decisions taken in the meeting of former rebel factions in January dealt with “security issues that concern the life of every citizen” and “these sensitive issues could not be postponed” to wait for an inclusive process.

In recent weeks, the preparatory committee has been holding meetings in different parts of Syria to get input ahead of the main conference. Al-Daghim said that in those meetings, the committee had heard a broad consensus on the need for “transitional justice and unity of the country.”

“There was a great rejection of the issue of quotas, cantons, federalization or anything like this,” he said.

But he said there was “disagreement on the order of priorities.” In the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, for instance, many were concerned about the low salaries paid to government workers, while in Idlib and suburbs of Damascus that saw vast destruction during nearly 14 years of civil war, reconstruction was the priority.

The number of participants to be invited to the national conference has not yet been determined and may range from 400 to 1,000, Al-Daghim said, and could include religious leaders, academics, artists, politicians and members of civil society, including some of the millions of Syrians displaced outside the country.

The committee has said that the dialogue would include members of all of Syria’s communities but that people affiliated with Assad’s government and armed groups that refuse to dissolve and join the national army — chief among them the SDF — would not be invited.

Al-Daghim said Syria’s Kurds would be part of the conference even if the SDF is not.

“The Kurds are a component of the people and founders of the Syrian state,” he said. “They are Syrians wherever they are.”

 


Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill

Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill
Updated 9 min 23 sec ago
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Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill

Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill
  • Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that a bill to exempt yeshiva students was a key promise in their agreement to join the coalition in late 2022

JERUSALEM: One of Israel's ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism, said it was quitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition due to a long-running dispute over failure to draft a bill to exempt yeshiva students from military service.

Six of the remaining seven members of UTJ, which is comprised of the Degel Hatorah and Agudat Yisrael factions, wrote letters of resignation. Yitzhak Goldknopf, chairman of UTJ, had resigned a month ago.

That would leave Netanyahu with a razor thin majority of 61 seats in the 120 seat Knesset, or parliament.

It was not clear whether Shas, another ultra-Orthodox party, would follow suit.

Degel Hatorah said in a statement that after conferring with its head rabbis, "and following repeated violations by the government to its commitments to ensure the status of holy yeshiva students who diligently engage in their studies ... (its MKs) have announced their resignation from the coalition and the government."

Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that a bill to exempt yeshiva students was a key promise in their agreement to join the coalition in late 2022.

A spokesperson for Goldknopf confirmed that in all, seven UTJ Knesset members are leaving the government.

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have long threatened to leave the coalition over the conscription bill.

Some religious parties in Netanyahu's coalition are seeking exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students from military service that is mandatory in Israel, while other lawmakers want to scrap any such exemptions altogether.

The ultra-Orthodox have long been exempt from military service, which applies to most other young Israelis, but last year the Supreme Court ordered the defence ministry to end that practice and start conscripting seminary students.

Netanyahu had been pushing hard to resolve a deadlock in his coalition over a new military conscription bill, which has led to the present crisis.

The exemption, in place for decades and which over the years has spared an increasingly large number of people, has become a heated topic in Israel with the military still embroiled in a war in Gaza. 

 


More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say
Updated 15 July 2025
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More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say
  • As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May

BENGHAZI: More than 100 migrants, including five women, have been freed from captivity after being held for ransom by a gang in eastern Libya, the country’s attorney general said on Monday.

“A criminal group involved in organizing the smuggling of migrants, depriving them of their freedom, trafficking them, and torturing them to force their families to pay ransoms for their release,” a statement from the attorney general said.

Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via the dangerous route across the desert and over the Mediterranean following the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

Many migrants desperate to make the crossing have fallen into the hands of traffickers. The freed migrants had been held in Ajdabiya, some 160 km (100 miles) from Libya’s second city Benghazi.

Five suspected traffickers from Libya, Sudan and Egypt, have been arrested, officials said.

The attorney general and Ajdabiya security directorate posted pictures of the migrants on their Facebook pages which they said had been retrieved from the suspects’ mobile phones.

They showed migrants with hands and legs cuffed with signs that they had been beaten.

In February, at least 28 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in the desert north of Kufra city. Officials said a gang had subjected the migrants to torture and inhumane treatment.

That followed another 19 bodies being found in a mass grave in the Jikharra area, also in southeastern Libya, a security directorate said, blaming a known smuggling network.

As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May.

Last week, the EU migration commissioner and ministers from Italy, Malta and Greece met with the internationally recognized prime minister of the national unity government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and discussed the migration crisis. 

 


Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks
Updated 15 July 2025
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Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks
  • Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP
  • US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Stuttering Gaza ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with meditators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas, as more than 20 people were killed across the Palestinian territory.

The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of hostages and a 60-day ceasefire after 21 months of fighting.

An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, telling AFP: “Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza.”

“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.

Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who wants to see the Palestinian militant group destroyed — of being the main obstacle.

“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.

In Gaza, the civil defense agency said at least 22 people were killed Monday in the latest Israeli strikes in and around Gaza City and in Khan Yunis in the south.

An Israeli military statement said troops had destroyed “buildings and terrorist infrastructure” used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas.

The Al-Quds Brigades — the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas — released footage on Monday that it said showed its fighters firing missiles at an Israeli army command and control center near Shujaiya.

The military later on Monday said three soldiers — aged 19, 20 and 21 — “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip” and died in hospital on Monday. Another from the same battalion was severely injured.

US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week.”

Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.

“Egyptian, Qatari and American mediators continue their efforts that make Israel present a modified withdrawal map that would be acceptable,” they added.

On Saturday, the same source said Hamas rejected Israeli proposals to keep troops in more than 40 percent of Gaza, as well as plans to move Palestinians into an enclave on the border with Egypt.

A senior Israeli political official countered by accusing Hamas of inflexibility and trying to deliberately scupper the talks by “clinging to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement.”

Netanyahu has said he would be ready to enter talks for a more lasting ceasefire once a deal for a temporary truce is agreed, but only when Hamas lays down its arms.

He is under pressure to wrap up the war, with military casualties rising and with public frustration mounting at both the continued captivity of the hostages taken on October 7 and a perceived lack of progress in the conflict.

Politically, Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition is holding, for now, but he denies being beholden to a minority of far-right ministers in prolonging an increasingly unpopular conflict.

He also faces a backlash over the feasibility, cost and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch in southern Gaza to house Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.

Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert have described as a “concentration camp.”

“If they (Palestinians) will be deported there into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper late on Sunday.

Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

A total of 251 hostages were taken that day, of whom 49 are still being held, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s military reprisals have killed 58,386 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

 


Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor
Updated 15 July 2025
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Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor
  • Over 4 million refugees have fled Sudan’s more than two-year civil war to seven neighboring countries where shelter conditions are widely viewed as inadequate due to chronic funding shortages

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 48 civilians in an attack on a village in the center of the war-torn country, a monitoring group reported Monday.

The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the two-year conflict between the regular army and the RSF, reported civilians were killed en masse Sunday when paramilitary fighters stormed the village of Um Garfa in North Kordofan state, razing houses and looting property.

 

 


Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says
Updated 15 July 2025
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Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says
  • An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan

BAGHDAD: Two drones fell in the Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement on Monday.

Khurmala oilfield is located near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.

The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement that no casualties were reported and only material damage was recorded.

An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan, it added.