CIA chief Bill Burns will meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency in Warsaw on Monday to discuss a potential new deal to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, two US officials told Reuters.
The two spoke on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, Axios News reported that the assembly would be held and would bring two American and Israeli officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on Saturday to see that new negotiations were underway over hostages held by Hamas after a source said the Israeli intelligence chief had met with the prime minister of Qatar, which is mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A person familiar with the matter said Mossad leader David Barnea met with Al Thani in Europe on Friday night.
Amnesty International on Wednesday called for an urgent investigation into Israel’s “enforced disappearance” of Palestinians detained in Gaza, following reports of deaths in army detention centres.
Hundreds of Palestinians are being held in detention centres in southern Israel, after being detained in army operations in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war against Hamas on 7 October.
“The Israeli army will urgently need to reveal the fate and whereabouts of all those it has detained since 7 October,” Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement, AFP reported.
“Israeli forces will have to explain the reasons for the detainees’ arrest and do their best to provide information to the families of the detainees, especially in light of the telecommunications cuts that have cut off social media in Gaza. “
Amnesty has called for an investigation into the “inhumane remedies and forced disappearances” of detainees in Gaza.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it is investigating the deaths of detainees in Gaza.
It did not provide details regarding how many detainees had died or the circumstances of their deaths.
On Tuesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “several of them have died” in detention centers.
The report states that the prisoners died at the Sde Teiman base, near the city of Beersheba.
Inmates at the facility are “blindfolded and handcuffed for most of the day and the facility’s lights are on all night,” according to the report.
Concerns for the fate of detainees from Gaza heightened last week after Israeli television showed scores of stripped Palestinian men sitting on a Gaza street in military custody.
One clip showed a soldier’s arm in the foreground, suggesting it had been filmed through a soldier.
In another video, a group of blindfolded men are seen sitting with their hands tied behind their backs as Israeli infantrymen look on.
Earlier this month, they announced that more than “500 terrorists” had been arrested in Gaza.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, began after the organization carried out a bloody attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The ensuing Israeli army crusade in Gaza has killed at least 20,000 people, most of them young people and women, according to the Hamas government.
Israel on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of huge areas of the main southern Gaza city, the UN said.
The U. N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israel had released maps showing new spaces covering about 20 percent of the town of Khan Yunis that had been marked for evacuation.
Before the fighting began, the domain was home to more than 110,000 people, OCHA said.
The domain also includes 32 shelters that have housed more than 140,000 internally displaced people, the vast majority of whom were displaced in the past from the north, he added, AFP reported.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that “land, air and naval operations were carried out against dozens of terrorists and against terrorist infrastructure” at the army’s command and centers in Khan Younis.
The ensuing Israeli army crusade in Gaza has killed at least 20,000 people, most of them young people and women, according to the Hamas government.
The U. N. envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, is in a race hoping to make a breakthrough in the Yemeni crisis.
Yemeni sources said the Envoy received the draft peace map to be signed between the Yemeni parties under the auspices of the UN, adding that he made several trips to Oman to meet with the Houthi delegation before returning to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that this was the same peace map discussed during the last Ramadan and replaced by both sides. They said it would possibly have peaked after its delivery to the UN envoy.
They said the problems were now in the hands of the U. N. envoy.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Iranian-backed Houthi group, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has threatened the United States with a fate similar to that it faced in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Earlier, the United States announced the formation of a foreign coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea from the group’s increasing attacks.
The Houthi organization has insisted on attacking foreign ships in the Red Sea despite warnings and targeting ships to and from Israel only for the Palestinian cause.
The group’s attacks have led to the collective reluctance of foreign shipping corporations to use routes through the Red Sea and head toward the Cape of Good Hope, amid fears of delays in origin chains and prices higher than shipping and insurance prices.
Houthi downplayed the importance of the US-led coalition, adding that “if that is what America wants, then it will face a harsher situation than that it faced in Afghanistan and Vietnam.”
Referring to the group’s drones that oppose U. S. missiles, he said Washington would suffer a loss knowing that $2,000 drones would target its $2 million missile.
The Houthi leader warned Washington that opposes his group, saying that U. S. battleships, interests and sea lanes would be tantamount to any attack.
– International condemnation
In addition, the U. S. government, EU High Representative Josep Borrell, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and an organization representing 44 allies and spouse countries issued a statement on the recent Houthi attacks.
The signatories of the statement said they condemned the Houthis’ interference in navigational rights and freedoms in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula in the Red Sea.
They noted that numerous attacks from Houthi-controlled territories in Yemen, in addition to the Dec. 3 attacks on three advertising ships in the southern Red Sea, linked to 14 countries, threaten foreign industry and maritime security.
He said the capture of the Galaxy Leader by the Houthis on Nov. 19 and the detention of the 25 members of its foreign team, who were unjustly detained, “are appalling. “
“Such behavior also threatens the movement of food, fuel, humanitarian aid and other goods to destinations and other people around the world. “
Saudi-listed ACWA Power has signed a framework agreement with Egypt, following an MoU that was signed in 7th of December 2022, to outline the development of the first phase of the green hydrogen project.
The plans covers a capacity of 600,000 tonnes-per-year of green ammonia, with an investment in excess of $4bn, with the intention of scaling up to a second phase with a potential capacity of 2 million tonnes-per-year, ACWA power said in a press release.
The agreement was signed between ACWA Power and The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (TSFE), the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone), the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC), and the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA).
The framework agreement provides for the advancement of the first phase of a green ammonia project with a capacity of 600,000 tonnes per year powered by wind and solar plants, with the aim of executing a larger green hydrogen project in the country that could recently have a capacity of up to two million tonnes per year of green hydrogen.
Hopes rose Wednesday that Israel and Hamas may be inching toward another truce and hostage release deal in the Gaza war, following secret talks and as the head of the Palestinian militant group visited Egypt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday afternoon told relatives of some of the 129 remaining prisoners held in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attacks that his intelligence leader is making efforts to “free our hostages. “
“I have just twice sent the head of Mossad to Europe to announce a procedure to free our hostages,” the minister told them. “I will spare no effort on this issue and it is our duty to bring them all back. “
Mossad Director David Barnea held a “positive meeting” in Warsaw this week with CIA leader Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a person close to the talks told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Talks were ongoing “with the aim of reaching an agreement around the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza in exchange for a truce and the potential release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons,” said the source.
Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh traveled to Egypt, a key mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, on Wednesday for talks with intelligence leader Abbas Kamel.
A source close to Hamas, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the negotiations would focus on ending the war and “preparing an agreement for the release of prisoners (and) ending the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. ” .
President Isaac Herzog also said that Israel “stands ready for an additional humanitarian pause and additional humanitarian assistance to enable the release of the hostages. “
Another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, released a video featuring two hostages, escalating tensions over Israel.
The bloodiest war in Gaza’s history began when Hamas attacked on October 7, killing about 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and kidnapping about 250, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel launched a military campaign that Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says has killed 19,667 people, mostly women and children, while also cutting off most water, food and power supplies.
Qatar last month helped broker a first week-long truce in which 80 Israeli hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The source close to Hamas said Egyptian negotiations would be based on proposals that included a week-long truce that would allow the release of 40 Israeli hostages, as well as women, young people and non-combatants.
Haniyeh, before leaving Qatar, met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, but no details of their meeting were released.
“What did those other people do?
Fighting raged unabated Wednesday in Gaza, where the Israeli army reported close quarter combat and more than 300 strikes over the past day, while the death toll among its own forces rose to 134 inside Gaza.
According to the statement, “land, air and naval operations were carried out against dozens of terrorists and against terrorist infrastructure,” adding rocket launch sites and command and army centers in Khan Younis.
Hamas sources said at least 11 people were killed overnight in Israeli strikes.
In Khan Younis, residents searched by hand through the rubble of a building completely flattened by bombardment.
The space “is full of people, why did they bomb it? What is the reason?” said a distraught young resident, Amr Sheikh-Deeb.
“We have managed to evacuate some bodies, but where are the others?What did those other people do?”
Three bodies lay on the floor of Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, where the wounded, including children, were being treated.
One man, Abed Abu Aisha, arrived with his son crying, covered in blood and dust.
“A missile hit our house, warning,” he said.
“Some of them have been pulled out of the rubble, but others are still buried. I don’t know the exact number of victims, but I do know the total number of injured relatives. “
The UN Security Council will vote later on Wednesday on a solution that calls for a pause in the conflict, diplomatic resources told AFP, after two previous votes were delayed due to disputes over wording.
The latest edition of the report calls for the “suspension” of hostilities, the resources said.
The U. S. vetoed an earlier ceasefire resolution, drawing condemnation from aid teams who called for more action for civilians caught up in the conflict.
‘On the edge’
The UN estimates that 1. 9 million of Gaza’s 2. 4 million citizens have been forced to flee their homes, with many of them taking refuge in tents due to severe shortages and the cruelty of winter.
“In the midst of large-scale displacement and active hostilities, the humanitarian reaction formula is on the brink,” said Tor Wennesland, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.
Israel, which declared a general siege of Gaza at the start of the war, has since allowed aid trucks to pass through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and, as of this week, its own Kerem Shalom crossing.
The UN’s World Food Progam said Wednesday it had delivered food through the crossing in a first direct aid convoy from Jordan.
An Israeli army agency, COGAT, said it had also begun laying a pipeline from Egypt to transport drinking water from a cellular desalination plant as part of a mission through the United Arab Emirates.
But aid teams warned that humanitarian goods fell far short of pressing needs, with the U. N. children’s firm saying “child deaths from the disease could exceed those killed in the bombings. “
The Gaza war has sparked fears of regional escalation and seen Israel trade deadly cross-border fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, where Israel said its aircraft hit more targets Wednesday.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias, meanwhile, have repeatedly fired missiles and drones at vessels passing through the Red Sea that they say are linked to Israel, in a show of support for Palestinians.
The United States this week started to build a multinational naval task force to protect the waterway leading to the Suez Canal, through which more than 10 percent of global trade transits.
Israel and Cyprus agreed on Wednesday to seek tactics to identify a maritime aid room to Gaza, a move Israel called an “important step” toward economic withdrawal from the enclave it overran from Hamas militants.
Israel’s foreign minister was in Cyprus for negotiations on the corridor, proposed through Nicosia in early November. It will be subject to a coordinated security inspection through Israel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.
Cyprus, the European Union member state closest to the Middle East, has set out to host and operate long-term aid services in the Gaza Strip once the devastating war between Israel and Hamas ends.
If the plan comes to fruition, it will be the first time an Israeli naval blockade on Gaza has been eased since it was imposed through Israel in 2007, after Hamas seized Palestinian territory.
“International aid, if well managed, will make the region more stable and prosperous,” Cohen said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart, Constantinos Kombos.
The announcement comes as Israel faces mounting pressure from its allies to halt an army attack that devastated much of the coastal enclave in retaliation for a cross-border massacre by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Until then, Israel had allowed very limited industry in a deficient and isolated Gaza, and a limited number of permits to allow Gazans to work in Israel for much higher wages.
The overall goal, Cohen said, is to create a “fast track” for humanitarian aid to be delivered through a maritime corridor. The two countries’ technical groups will talk more about this factor on Wednesday and Thursday, he said.
“Our goal is to reach agreement on all the main points as temporarily as possible,” Cohen said.
The two ministers visited the port of Larnaca, about 370 kilometers northwest of Gaza, which will serve as a security checkpoint at the Cypriot end of the sea route.
Gaza lacks port facilities but Britain has offered amphibious vessels able to access the enclave’s coastline without the need for special infrastructure.
Israel calls its long-running blockade of Gaza a precaution against Hamas and Palestinian militants’ access to firearms across the sea, and applies it to all shipments.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said ships delivering aid through the corridor would be exempt from the blockade.
Russia and the Arab League on Wednesday called for a UN ceasefire solution to the war between Israel and Hamas at the Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum in Marrakech, Morocco.
The forum, which focused on diplomatic and economic relations, was marked by clashes in the Gaza Strip.
“We hope that the Security Council will raise its voice for a mature resolution (calling for a ceasefire),” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during the meeting. “We have agreed to continue coordination within the United Nations.”
The UN Security Council will vote on Wednesday on a solution that calls for a pause in the clashes between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, diplomatic sources told AFP.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 19,600 people, most of them children, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
On October 7, Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel from Gaza, killing an additional 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Chaired by Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, the assembly took position in the presence of Mr. Lavrov and diplomats from the 22-member Arab League.
“We hope that the Security Council will adopt this solution and that there will be no veto by a permanent member, including the United States,” said Hossam Zaki, the League’s deputy secretary general.
“The Arab hope is that the U. S. understands that patience is running out in the face of Israeli practices. “
Speaking via videoconference, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called for an “immediate ceasefire,” adding that “anyone who opposes an immediate ceasefire in Gaza has the blood of innocents on their hands”.
“The occupation is the heart of the problem and the origin of the cause,” Aboul Gheit said, advocating for a two-state solution and calling for the “creation as quickly as possible of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders”.
Lavrov also said that it is “urgent to create a Palestinian state” and even “speed up the process,” as “some resources claim that our Western partners are seeking to expand hidden plans to separate the West Bank from Gaza. “
On December 8, the US vetoed a ceasefire resolution.
Wednesday’s vote on a new solution comes after two votes were delayed on Monday as members argued over the wording, sources told AFP.
The latest edition of the report calls for the “suspension” of the conflict, the resources said.
The United Nations Security Council was set to vote Wednesday on a long-delayed solution that called for a pause in the war between Israel and Hamas, after members squabbled over wording as aid efforts in the Gaza Strip were on the brink of collapse.
The humanitarian scenario in Gaza was deteriorating, and a senior U. N. official said Israel’s moves to allow aid were “far from meeting” developing needs.
Council members struggled for days to find common ground for the resolution, whose vote was continually rejected on Tuesday, after being postponed on Monday.
An official calendar document says the 15-member committee will finally vote on Wednesday.
Israel, subsidized by its best friend Washington, a permanent member of the Security Council with veto power, opposed the use of the term “ceasefire. “
Richard Gowan, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that “everyone is basically stuck waiting to see what the U. S. decides to do. “
“It looks like even US diplomats do not know how this saga will end,” he added, after several United States diplomats gave non-committal answers when asked what would happen and why the vote had been delayed through Tuesday.
U. S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it needed to “preempt a solution that has not yet been approved. “
This week’s back-and-forth comes after a previous stalemate this month, when the United States, despite unprecedented pressure from U. N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, blocked approval of a Security Council solution to the war.
He called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues its deadly moves in retaliation for the unprecedented Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
‘Human catastrophe’
Last week, the General Assembly adopted the same non-binding solution by 153 votes to 10, with 23 abstentions, from 193 Member States.
Thanks to this overwhelming support, the Arab countries announced a new agreement in the Security Council.
A draft text prepared through the United Arab Emirates, received via AFP on Sunday, calls for “an urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities to allow unimpeded humanitarian entry into the Gaza Strip. “
The latest edition warned, however, via AFP, of a modified text that seemed to try to salvage a compromise.
He was less blunt, calling for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow unhindered humanitarian access, and urgent steps towards a lasting cessation of hostilities. “
United Nations official Tor Wennesland said Tuesday that Israel’s “limited” steps to allow aid into Gaza “are positive, but fall far short of what is needed to address the human catastrophe on the ground.”
After the attack on October 7, which Israeli authorities say left around 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says the Israeli army’s reaction has killed 19,667 people, most of them children.
Well-informed Jordanian resources said army operations on the northern border have eased within hours as smuggling militias have retreated to Syria.
While official resources have neither shown nor denied incursions carried out through Syrian territory by the Jordanian Air Force to target drug production facilities, major smugglers and militias still active along the border, leaks to the media have reported that they showed airstrikes hitting targets in southern Syria.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, the resources showed that continued infiltration attempts across the border have prompted the Jordanian Armed Forces to intensify their military operations, with smugglers active at night to take advantage of weather conditions and dense fog.
The sources stressed that information was made available about the connection of smuggling gangs coming from inside Syria with local groups, within the framework of drug trade. They also expected the coming hours to witness qualitative operations and raids on a number of locations suspected of sheltering local smugglers in possession of drugs and weapons.
Asharq Al-Awsat learned from security resources that the drug smuggling operations – carried out through militias affiliated with Iranian factions and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and others through pro-Syrian factions – were intended to be “simultaneous” to confuse border guards.
But after monitoring and surveillance, the army was able to deal with the terrorist plot.
Amman has continually expressed frustration over Syria’s failure to meet its military and security obligations on the border, emphasizing that the domain has unilaterally protected.
At dawn on Monday, border guards, in coordination with the Counter-Narcotics Administration and army security services, clashed with armed teams attempting to illegally cross the border from Syrian territory into Jordan.
The clashes lasted 14 hours and resulted in the deaths and injuries of several smugglers, the arrest of nine others and the seizure of huge quantities of drugs, weapons and rockets.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Jordanian Armed Forces, Yousef Al-Huneiti, affirmed “the use of all the capabilities and resources to prevent infiltration and smuggling operations and confront them with force.”
His remarks came on Monday during a stopover in the Eastern Military Region, where a qualitative operation was carried out that led to the seizure of huge quantities of drugs and weapons, and the arrest of an organization of smugglers arriving from Syrian territory into Jordan.