Families and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas gather to demand a deal that will bring back all the hostages held in Gaza, outside a meeting between hostage representatives and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that Israel was ready to proceed to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, as long as Hamas was ready to release more of the 59 hostages it is still holding.

Fighting in Gaza has been halted since Jan. 19 under a truce arranged with US support and Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and Hamas has exchanged 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais for some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

But the initial 42-day truce has expired and Hamas and Israel, which has blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza, remain far apart on broader issues including the postwar governance of Gaza and the future of Hamas itself.

“We are ready to continue to phase two,” Saar told reporters in Jerusalem as Arab leaders prepared to meet in Cairo to discuss a plan for ending the war permanently.

“But in order to extend the time or the framework, we need an agreement to release more hostages.”

Hamas says it wants to move ahead to the second phase negotiations that could open the way to a permanent end to the war with the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the devastated Palestinian enclave and a return of the remaining 59 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

But Israel says its hostages must be handed over for the truce to be extended and backs a plan to extend the ceasefire during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began on Saturday, until after the Jewish Passover holiday in April.

US President Donald Trump’s special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit the region in the next few days to discuss extending the ceasefire or moving ahead of phase two, the State Department said on Monday.

Saar denied that Israel had breached the agreement by not moving ahead to stage two negotiations. He said there was “no automaticity” between the stages, and he said Hamas had itself violated the agreement to allow aid into Gaza by seizing most of the supplies itself.

“It is a means to continue the war against Israel. It’s today the major part of Hamas income in Gaza,” he said.

Aid groups have said that looting and wrongful seizure of aid trucks into Gaza has been a major problem but Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that seized power in Gaza in 2007, denies seizing aid for its own members.

Saar declined to comment on an Israeli media report that Israel had set a 10-day deadline to reach an agreement or resume fighting but said: “If we want to do it, we will do it.”

The post Israel Says It Needs Deal on Freeing Hostages to Extend Gaza Ceasefire Deal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The S-300 missile system is seen during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 17, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Several senior Russian missile specialists have visited Iran over the past year as the Islamic Republic has deepened its defense cooperation with Moscow, a Reuters review of travel records and employment data indicates.

The seven weapons experts were booked to travel from Moscow to Tehran aboard two flights on April 24 and Sept. 17 last year, according to documents detailing the two group bookings as well as the passenger manifest for the second flight.

The booking records include the men’s passport numbers, with six of the seven having the prefix “20.” That denotes a passport used for official state business, issued to government officials on foreign work trips and military personnel stationed abroad, according to an edict published by the Russian government and a document on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.

Reuters was unable to determine what the seven were doing in Iran.

A senior Iranian defense ministry official said Russian missile experts had made multiple visits to Iranian missile production sites last year, including two underground facilities, with some of the visits taking place in September. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters, didn’t identify the sites.

A Western defense official, who monitors Iran’s defense cooperation with Russia and also requested anonymity, said an unspecified number of Russian missile experts visited an Iranian missile base, about 15 km (9 miles) west of the port of Amirabad on Iran’s Caspian Sea coast, in September.

Reuters couldn’t establish if the visitors referred to by the officials included the Russians on the two flights.

The seven Russians identified by Reuters all have senior military backgrounds, with two ranked colonel and two lieutenant-colonel, according to a review of Russian databases containing information about citizens’ jobs or places of work, including tax, phone, and vehicle records.

Two are experts in air-defense missile systems, three specialize in artillery and rocketry, while one has a background in advanced weapons development and another has worked at a missile-testing range, the records showed. Reuters was unable to establish whether all are still working in those roles as the employment data ranged from 2021 to 2024.

Their flights to Tehran came at a precarious time for Iran, which found itself drawn into a tit-for-tat battle with arch-foe Israel that saw both sides mount military strikes on each other in April and October.

Reuters contacted all the men by phone: five of them denied they had been to Iran, denied they worked for the military or both, while one declined to comment, and one hung up.

Iran’s defense and foreign ministries declined to comment for this article, as did the public relations office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military force and internally designated terrorist organization that oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program. The Russian defense ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Cooperation between the two countries, whose leaders signed a 20-year military pact in Moscow in January, has already influenced Russia’s war on Ukraine, with large numbers of Iranian-designed Shahed drones deployed on the battlefield.

ROCKETS AND ARTILLERY

The flight booking information for the seven travelers was shown to Reuters by Hooshyaran-e Vatan, a group of activist hackers opposed to the Iranian government. The hackers said the seven were traveling with VIP status.

Reuters corroborated the information with the Russian passenger manifest for the September flight, which was provided by a source with access to Russian state databases. The news agency was unable to access a manifest for the earlier flight, so couldn’t verify that the five Russian specialists booked on it actually made the trip.

Denis Kalko, 48, and 46-year-old Vadim Malov were among the five Russian weapons experts whose seats were booked as a group on the April flight, the records showed.

Kalko worked at the defense ministry’s Academy for Military Anti-Aircraft Defense, tax records for 2021 show. Malov worked for a military unit that trains anti-aircraft missile forces, according to car ownership records for 2024.

Andrei Gusev, 45, Alexander Antonov, 43, and Marat Khusainov, 54, were also booked on the April flight. Gusev is a lieutenant-colonel who works as deputy head of the faculty of General Purpose Rockets and Artillery Munitions at the defense ministry’s Penza Artillery Engineering Institute, according to a 2021 news item on the institute’s website. Antonov has worked at the Main Rocket and Artillery Directorate of the Defense Ministry, according to car registration records from 2024, while bank data shows Khusainov, a colonel, has worked at the Kapustin Yar missile-testing range.

One of the two passengers onboard the second flight to Tehran in September was Sergei Yurchenko, 46, who has also worked at the Rocket and Artillery Directorate, according to undated mobile phone records. His passport number had the prefix “22”; Reuters was unable to determine what that signified though, according to the government edict on passports, it isn’t used for private citizens or diplomats.

The other passenger on the September flight was 46-year-old Oleg Fedosov. Residence records give his address as the office of the Directorate of Advanced Inter-Service Research and Special Projects. That is a branch of the defense ministry tasked with developing weapons systems of the future.

Fedosov had previously flown from Tehran to Moscow in October 2023, according to Russian border crossing records viewed by Reuters. On that occasion, as he did for the September 2024 flight, Fedosov used his passport reserved for official state business, the records showed.

The post Russian Missile Experts Flew to Iran Amid Clashes With Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A general view shows destroyed buildings in northern Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza border, Nov. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Egypt was expected to present a reconstruction plan for Gaza to Arab leaders in Cairo on Tuesday that would cost $53 billion over five years and avoid resettling Palestinians, in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s idea of developing a “Middle East Riviera,” according to a copy of the plan seen by Reuters.

It was expected that the plan would be adopted in the final communique to be released at the end of the summit on Tuesday evening. Reuters has seen a draft of the final communique.

Neither the reconstruction plan nor the communique addresses the big unanswered question in negotiations over the future of the Palestinian enclave shattered by 15 months of Israel‘s war with Hamas – who will rule it?

The communique only mentioned what it called support for a Palestinian decision to form an administrative committee for Gaza affairs, and did not tackle the explosive issue of what Hamas’s role would be after the war ended.

Arab leaders were also expected to call for elections in the West Bank and Gaza in one year, according to the draft final communique.

An earlier draft of an Egyptian political plan seen by Reuters on Monday indicated Cairo was pushing for Hamas to be sidelined and replaced by bodies controlled by Arab, Muslim, and Western states. It was unclear if Egyptian officials would also be presenting the political plan at Tuesday’s summit.

Egypt’s reconstruction plan did not specify who would fund the reconstruction of an enclave that has been reduced to rubble.

Any proposal would require heavy buy-in from oil-rich Gulf Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, who have the billions of dollars needed.

The UAE, which sees Hamas as an existential threat, wants an immediate and complete disarmament of the Palestinian terrorist group, while other Arab countries advocate a gradual approach, a source close to the matter said.

Hamas, founded in 1987 by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood during the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, has said it rejects any solution imposed on the Gaza Strip by outsiders.

It is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, the European Union, Britain, and other countries.

ALTERNATIVE TO TRUMP PLAN

The draft of the summit’s final communique calls on the international community and financial institutions to quickly provide support for the Egyptian vision for Gaza.

Egypt, Jordan, and Gulf Arab states have for almost a month been consulting over an alternative to Trump’s ambition for an exodus of Palestinians and a US rebuild of Gaza, which they fear would destabilize the entire region.

Egypt’s Reconstruction Plan for Gaza is a 112-page document that includes maps of how its land would be re-developed and dozens of colorful AI-generated images of housing developments, gardens, and community centers. The plan includes a commercial harbor, a technology hub, beach hotels, and an airport.

The reconstruction plan projects that rebuilding the enclave would take five years and the first two-year phase would cost $20 billion and involve building 200,000 housing units.

Israel was unlikely to oppose an Arab entity taking responsibility for Gaza’s government if Hamas was off the scene, said another source familiar with the matter.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters the group rejected any attempt to impose projects or any form of non-Palestinian administration, or the presence of any foreign forces on Gaza Strip territory.

“We are keen for the success of the summit, and we hope that there will be a call to reject the displacement and to protect the right of our people in resisting the occupation and governing itself away from any custodianship and intervention,” he added.

The draft communique firmly rejects the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, which the US proposed and Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan see as a security threat.

Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages while starting the Gaza war.

Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.

Since Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007, it has crushed all opposition there.

The post Arab Summit to Focus on Egypt’s Alternative to Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.