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Hamas Leader Visits Egypt Amid Intensive Talks on New Ceasefire
An Israeli soldier operates in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in this handout picture released on Dec. 20, 2023. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The leader of Hamas made his first visit to Egypt for more than a month on Wednesday, a rare personal intervention in diplomacy amid what a source described as intensive talks on a new ceasefire to let aid reach Gaza and get hostages freed.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who normally resides in Qatar, typically intervenes in diplomacy publicly only when progress seems likely. He last traveled to Egypt in early November before the announcement of the only agreement on a ceasefire in the war so far, a week-long pause during which more than 100 hostages were released.
A source briefed on negotiations said envoys were discussing which of the hostages still held by terrorists in Gaza could be freed under a new truce agreement, and what prisoners Israel might release in return.
Israel was insisting that all remaining women and infirm men among hostages be released, the source said, declining to be identified. Palestinians convicted of serious offenses could be on the list of prisoners to be freed.
The source described the negotiations as intensive and said a breakthrough could be possible within days.
A Palestinian official said Haniyeh was keen to listen to Egyptian officials for a possible new approach and noted that the official position of Hamas was to reject any new temporary ceasefire and demand a permanent halt to fighting.
“Hamas’ stance remains they don’t have a desire for humanitarian pauses. Hamas wants a complete end to the Israeli war on Gaza,” the Palestinian official said.
“Haniyeh and Hamas always appreciate the Egyptian effort. He is in Cairo today to listen to whether Israel has made new proposals or whether Cairo has some too. It is early to speak of expectations.”
A senior Israeli official repeated the government position that the war could end only with the release of all hostages and the destruction of Hamas: “As the prime minister has said, the war will end with total victory.”
The negotiations come as Israel has faced increasing pressure from its international allies to curb its military campaign in Gaza that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israeli communities.
Washington, Israel‘s closest ally, has publicly called over the past week for it to scale down its all-out war into a more targeted campaign against Hamas leaders.
UN VOTE DELAYED
At the UN Security Council, where Washington has twice used its veto to shield Israel from international demands for a ceasefire, negotiators put off a vote on the latest resolution for another day in hope of reaching an agreed text.
When asked if they were getting close to an agreement, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters on Tuesday: “We’re trying, we really are.”
Since the last truce collapsed at the start of this month, the war has entered a more intensive phase, with ground combat previously confined to the northern half of the Gaza Strip now spread across the length of the coastal enclave.
Israel has sworn to defeat Hamas, which rules Gaza, since its fighters killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages in the Oct. 7 attacks. Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza say thousands have been killed during Israel’s military campaign, although experts have cast doubt on the reliability of their casualty figures.
Israel‘s government has faced domestic political pressure to reach a further agreement to free hostages, especially after acknowledging last week that troops mistakenly killed three of those taken. Israel believes 129 hostages remain in Gaza, of whom 21 are feared to have died in captivity.
In the north, where Israeli forces claimed to have achieved most of their military objectives last month, fighting has been more intense than ever. Huge orange balls of flame and towers of black smoke soared into the sky over the northern Gaza Strip as seen from across the fence in Israel, as Israeli warplanes pounded the area at dawn.
In the south, where most of Gaza’s residents are now sheltering after fleeing other areas, there has been intense fighting around the center of the main southern city Khan Younis, which Israeli forces have partly stormed.
Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, including warning them in advance of strikes, and blames Hamas for harm to them for operating in their midst.
The post Hamas Leader Visits Egypt Amid Intensive Talks on New Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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