Category: 2. Middle East

The White House said Thursday Israel had “signed off” on a new Gaza ceasefire proposal submitted to Hamas, but the Palestinian militant group said the deal failed to satisfy its demands.

Negotiations to end more than 19 months of war have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming operations in Gaza in March after a brief truce.

The White House said President Donald Trump and US envoy Steve Witkoff had “submitted a ceasefire proposal to Hamas that Israel backed”.

“Israel…

US President Donald Trump will soon declare Syria a state that doesn’t sponsor terrorism, US envoy to Syria Thomas Barrack said today.

Barrack, who arrived in Damascus today, said Trump’s goal is to empower Syria’s current government.

Earlier this month, the US president ordered the lifting of sanctions on Syria.

The US envoy met with Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the state news agency SANA said, without giving details about the content of the…

Cities and towns across the West Bank witnessed a wide-scale escalation by Israeli occupation forces overnight and into this morning. The escalation involved simultaneous raids, house searches, and arrests, accompanied by armed clashes and injuries among Palestinians, the Palestinian Information Centre reported.

Local sources reported that occupation forces blew up the home of martyr Jaafar Muna in the city of Nablus after surrounding it and evacuating the…

Protesters in Israel yesterday stormed the headquarters of the ruling Likud Party in Tel Aviv in protest against the delay in agreeing a captive release deal.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, dozens of Israeli demonstrators broke into Metzudat Ze’ev, which houses the headquarters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, and chained themselves outside his office in protest, to mark 600 days since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

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The United States’ new envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, called for a non-aggression agreement between Syria and Israel in remarks to Saudi channel Al Arabiya on Thursday.

Syria and Israel have technically been at war since 1948, with Israel taking the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.

Since the ouster in December of former president Bashar al-Assad, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes and multiple incursions into Syria.

Barrack, who inaugurated the US ambassador’s residence in…

“You can’t call it ‘intolerable’, yet do nothing,” more than 300 stars, celebrities and public figures say in a letter to UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, urging him to end Britains’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“The world is watching and history will not forget. The children of Gaza cannot wait another minute,” they continue, asking the prime minister: “what will you choose? Complicity in war crimes, or the…

The Israeli occupation government has approved 22 new Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said today, Reuters reported.

Far-right Smotrich, an advocate for Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory, wrote on X that the new settlements would be located in the northern area of the West Bank, without specifying where.

Israeli media cited the Defence Ministry as saying that among the new Jewish…

Israeli occupation forces yesterday continued their military assault on the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camp for the 122nd consecutive day, and on the Nur Shams refugee camp for the 109th day, amid ongoing military escalation, raids, and forced displacement, the Palestinian Information Centre reported.

Since the beginning of the assault on Tulkarm, more than 4,200 families — comprising over 25,000 residents — have been forcibly displaced from the two…

The US envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, raised the American flag over the ambassador’s residence in Damascus today for the first time since the embassy closed in 2012, a year after a civil war broke out, Reuters reports.

After months of relatively little engagement with Syria’s new administration, the US has rapidly built ties in recent weeks. US President Donald Trump met with Syria’s new…