Category: 2. Middle East

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States is conducting “direct talks” with Iran over its nuclear program. 

Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters a “very big meeting” with Tehran would take place on Saturday between high-level officials. 

“We’re dealing with them directly, and maybe a deal is going to be made,” Trump said.  

For weeks, Iranian officials have refused to participate in…

American-Palestinian Muhammad Rabee feels abandoned by the United States, he told AFP on Monday, a day after Israeli forces killed his 14-year-old son during a family visit in the occupied West Bank.

Rabee’s family live in New Jersey, and like the vast majority of Palestinians from the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya are dual citizens, but the father said Washington “turns a blind eye” to soaring Israeli attacks and abuses against them.

The sorrow on his face showing even from behind his large…

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Monday that 15 medics and rescuers killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza were shot in the upper body with “intent to kill”.

The killings occurred in the southern Gaza Strip on March 23, days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory, and have since sparked international condemnation.

Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told journalists in Ramallah that an autopsy revealed that…

The leaders of France, Egypt and Jordan on Monday said the Palestinian Authority must head post-war governance in Gaza.

The question of who will rule the Palestinian territory has been one of the main sticking points in efforts to prolong a ceasefire in Gaza that collapsed last month.

On a visit to Cairo where he met his counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as well as Jordan’s King Abdullah II, French President Emmanuel Macron said Palestinian militant group Hamas should have no role in governing…

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Palestinian militant group Hamas should have no role in governing the Gaza Strip once its war with Israel is over.

On a visit to Cairo to discuss the war, Macron said he was strongly opposed to any displacement of Palestinians, throwing his weight behind a Gaza reconstruction plan endorsed by the Arab League to counter a US proposal to send the war-ravaged territory’s inhabitants elsewhere.

Speaking alongside President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, becoming the first foreign leader to personally plead for a reprieve from stinging US tariffs that have shaken the world.

Netanyahu, holding talks with Trump for the second time since the US president returned to power in January, will also seek further backing on Iran and Gaza where a short-lived US-brokered truce has collapsed.

“We’re going to talk about trade, and we’re going to talk about the obvious…