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Israeli PM Netanyahu to Hold Security Meeting After Delegation Returns from Cairo
Palestinians walk past the rubble of buildings, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold consultations with security chiefs and ministers on Friday after an Israeli delegation returned from Cairo with no agreement on extending the Gaza ceasefire, two Israeli officials said.
A Hamas official confirmed that Israel had sought to extend the 42-day truce agreed as a first stage in the ceasefire agreement through the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend. But he said Hamas wanted to move on to negotiations over the second stage, opening the way to a permanent end to the war.
“We are committed to the agreement,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Egyptian and Qatari mediators asked for some time over the next few days to resolve the impasse over the ceasefire, which is due to expire on Saturday, the officials said.
The agreement reached last month halted 15 months of fighting, allowing the exchange of 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais for around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees and was meant to lead to subsequent talks to build on the truce.
Israeli officials have previously said Israel was ready to resume fighting in Gaza if all its remaining hostages are not returned.
However, Israel and Hamas remain far apart on key issues and each has accused the other of violating the ceasefire, casting doubt over the second phase of the deal meant to include releases of additional hostages and prisoners as well as steps toward a permanent end of the war.
There is no sign of agreement, either among or between Israelis and Palestinians, or between Western and Arab governments, over Gaza’s future. That uncertainty is complicating efforts to negotiate a lasting resolution.
Hamas called on Friday for the international community to press Israel to immediately enter the second phase without delay. It is unclear what will happen if the first phase ends on Saturday without a deal.
A senior official of the Palestinian Authority, State Minister of Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian, also said on Friday that she would like the ceasefire phases to move ahead as originally planned.
“I doubt anyone in Gaza will want to go back to war,” she said in Geneva.
The Cairo talks are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar with U.S. support. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday there were “pretty good talks going on.”
Asked whether the ceasefire deal would move into the second phase, Trump said: “Nobody really knows, but we’ll see what happens.”
The Gaza war is the latest confrontation in decades of conflict between Israel and Palestinians.
It began on Oct. 7, 2023, when fighters from the Islamist group Hamas stormed border defenses from Gaza and attacked Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages.
CEASEFIRE
The ceasefire has mostly held during its first six weeks, although both sides have accused each other of breaches, particularly in the treatment of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees, and in the handling of releases.
Hamas has staged shows of strength during hostage releases, parading them in front of cameras. Israeli authorities have made released detainees wear clothes bearing pro-Israeli slogans.
Israel is now negotiating to extend the first phase of the ceasefire deal by 42 days, according to the Egyptian security sources.
Israeli government officials said earlier this week that Israel would attempt to extend the initial phase with Hamas freeing three hostages a week in return for the release of Palestinian detainees.
Discussions on an end to the war are complicated by the lack of any agreement over basic questions such as how Gaza would be governed, how its security would be managed, how it could be rebuilt, and who would pay for that.
Trump proposed this month that the US should take over Gaza and redevelop it as a “Riviera of the Middle East” with its population displaced into Egypt and Jordan.
Arab countries have rejected that idea but have yet to announce their own plan.
European countries have also rejected the displacement of Palestinians and say they still support a two-state solution to the conflict.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.