TIRABIN AL SANA, Israel: The family members of four Bedouin Arabs taken hostage on Oct. 7 during the assault on southern Israel by Hamas gunmen have welcomed the return of two of the captives but wait for news of the others as fighting resumes in the Gaza Strip.
Yosef Hamis Ziadna, his sons Hamza and Bilal and his daughter, Aisha, were working on the Holit farm on Israel’s border with Gaza when they were seized by the gunmen along with more than 200 other Israelis and foreigners.
Aisha and Bilal were handed over during the seven-day truce between Israel and Hamas that ended on Friday morning but Yosef and Hamza are still being held, along with two other Bedouins, Farhan Al-Qadi and Samer Al-Talalqa.
“There were tough times, we always had hope,” said their cousin Kamel Al-Ziadna. “We want the release of Yousef and Hamza and all those held hostages, and Samer and Farhan, may God bring them back to their families.”
Bedouin Arabs make up about 4 percent of Israel’s population, living mainly in the southern Negev desert and in northern Israel.
Kamel said the families were urging Hamas to release their hostages. “They are Arab, Muslim youth,” he said.
While they wait, like the families of other hostages released during the week-long pause, their emotions are mixed.
When the news came through that Aisha and Belal were to be released, there was a large gathering of family and friends that celebrated through the night.
“It was nice moments, but the happiness was missing something, so until the whole family is reunited with Hamza and Yousef, then we will hold a huge party, and we will gather with friends and family and all those who shared these difficult times with us,” he said.
Families of Bedouin hostages wait for news as Gaza fighting resumes
https://arab.news/ym2wq
Families of Bedouin hostages wait for news as Gaza fighting resumes
- “There were tough times, we always had hope”
- Bedouin Arabs make up about 4 percent of Israel’s population
UAE president welcomes Egyptian counterpart in Abu Dhabi
- Abdel Fattah El-Sisi arrived in the UAE capital on Thursday
LONDON: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the president of the UAE, welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi at the Presidential Airport in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the deputy chairman of the Presidential Court for Special Affairs; Sheikh Mohamed bin Hamad bin Tahnoon Al-Nahyan, adviser to the UAE president; and Ahmed Al-Mazrouei, chairman of the President’s Office for Strategic Affairs, were present during the reception for El-Sisi.
Airlines including Lufthansa cautiously plan to resume some Middle East flights
- Airlines remain cautious and watchful before re-entering the region in full
- Air France-KLM said its flights between Paris and Beirut will be suspended until Jan. 31
DUBLIN: Germany’s Lufthansa Group is set to resume flights to and from Tel Aviv in Israel from Feb. 1 and Wizz Air restarted its London to Tel Aviv route on Thursday, the companies said following a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
Many Western carriers canceled flights to swaths of the Middle East in recent months, including Beirut and Tel Aviv, as conflict tore across the region. Airlines also avoided Iraqi and Iranian airspace out of fear of getting accidentally caught in drone or missile warfare.
Wizz Air also resumed flights to Amman, Jordan starting on Thursday from London Luton airport.
Lufthansa Group carriers Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Austrian Airlines and Swiss were included in Lufthansa’s decision to resume flights to Tel Aviv.
Ryanair said it was hoping to run a full summer schedule to and from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv in an interview with Reuters last week, before the ceasefire deal was announced.
In the wake of the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Turkish Airlines said it would start flights to Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Jan. 23, with three flights per week.
CAUTIOUS RETURN
But airlines remain cautious and watchful before re-entering the region in full, they said.
Air France-KLM said its operations to and from Tel Aviv remain suspended until Jan. 24, while its flights between Paris and Beirut will be suspended until Jan. 31.
“The operations will resume on the basis of an assessment of the situation on the ground,” it said in a statement.
The suspension of Lufthansa flights to and from Tehran up to and including Feb. 14 remains in place and the airline will not fly to Beirut in Lebanon up to and including Feb. 28, it said.
Death toll in Israeli strikes on Gaza rises to 77 since ceasefire deal, residents say
- Israel’s acceptance of the deal will not be official until it is approved by the country’s security cabinet and government
- Netanyahu has delayed the meeting, accusing Hamas of making last-minute demands and going back on agreements
DOHA/CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Israel airstrikes killed at least 77 people in Gaza overnight on Thursday, residents and authorities in the enclave said, hours after a ceasefire and hostage release deal was announced to bring an end to 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
The complex ceasefire accord emerged on Wednesday after mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the US to stop the war that has devastated the coastal territory and inflamed the Middle East.
The deal, scheduled to be implemented from Sunday, outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands have been killed. Hostages taken by militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave, would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel.
The deal also paves the way for a surge in humanitarian aid for Gaza, where the majority of the population has been displaced and is facing acute food shortages, food security experts warned late last year.
Rows of aid trucks were lined up in the Egyptian border town of El-Arish waiting to cross into Gaza, once the border is reopened.
Israel’s acceptance of the deal will not be official until it is approved by the country’s security cabinet and government, and a vote was slated for Thursday, an Israeli official said.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed the meeting, accusing Hamas of making last-minute demands and going back on agreements.
“The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.
Hamas senior official Izzat el-Reshiq said on Thursday the group is committed to the ceasefire agreement announced by mediators on Wednesday.
Hard-liners in Netanyahu’s government were still hoping to stop the deal, though a majority of ministers were expected to back it.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party said in a statement that its condition for remaining in the government would be a return to fighting at the end of the first phase of the deal, in order to destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages back. Far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has also threatened to quit the government if the ceasefire is approved.
In Jerusalem, some Israelis marched through the streets carrying mock coffins in protest at the ceasefire, blocking roads and scuffling with police.
Despite the hold-up to the cabinet meeting, political commentators on Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said the latest delay would likely be resolved and that the ceasefire was a done deal.
The White House also downplayed reports of a snag in the ceasefire deal on Thursday. Jonathan Finer, the deputy national security adviser, said in an interview with CNN: “We fully expect the deal to be implemented as described by the president and by the mediators — Egypt and Qatar — yesterday and on the timeline that was described. What we’re doing now is working through details of implementation.”
Calls for faster implementation
For some Palestinians, the deal could not come soon enough.
“We lose homes every hour. We demand for this joy not to go away, the joy that was drawn on our faces — don’t waste it by delaying the implementation of the truce until Sunday,” Gazan man Mahmoud Abu Wardeh said.
The accord requires 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the ceasefire, with 50 carrying fuel. The first phase of the agreement will also see Israel releasing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including many long-serving inmates.
Israelis may find it hard to see Palestinian militants who were serving life sentences for their involvement in deadly attacks in their country, set free.
But successive surveys have shown broad support among the public for a deal that would see the hostages released, even at what is seen as a heavy price.
“This has to be the only choice that we take in order to continue surviving as a state and as a nation, knowing that we will do anything to save each other,” said Jerusalem resident Chava Treitel.
While people celebrated the pact in Gaza and Israel, Israel’s military conducted more attacks, the civil emergency service and residents said.
Gaza’s health ministry said at least 81 people had been killed over the past 24 hours and about 188 injured. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said at least 77 of those were killed since the ceasefire announcement.
The Israeli military is looking into the reports, a military spokesperson said.
Israel secured major gains over Iran and its proxies, mainly Hezbollah, as the Gaza conflict spread. In Gaza, however, Hamas may have been crippled, but without an alternative administration in place, it has been left standing.
If successful, the ceasefire will halt fighting that has razed much of heavily urbanized Gaza, killed over 46,000 people, and displaced most of the tiny enclave’s pre-war population of 2.3 million, according to Gaza authorities.
That in turn could defuse tensions across the wider Middle East.
With 98 foreign and Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza, phase one of the deal entails the release of 33 of them, including all women, children and men over 50.
Global reaction to the ceasefire was enthusiastic.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas-led gunmen burst into Israeli border-area communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 soldiers and civilians and abducting over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Negotiations on implementing the second phase of the deal will begin by the 16th day of phase one, and this stage was expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The third stage is to address the return of all remaining dead bodies and the start of Gaza’s reconstruction supervised by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations.
Spain raises flag at Damascus embassy after 12-year closure
- Spain closed the mission in March 2012
- “It is an honor for me to be here in person,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said at the embassy
DAMASCUS: Spain raised its flag at Madrid’s Damascus embassy Thursday, in the presence of its top diplomat more than a decade after suspending activity and as Western countries resume ties following Syrian president Bashar Assad’s ouster.
Spain closed the mission in March 2012, a year after Assad began brutal repression of anti-government protests, triggering more than 13 years of war.
“It is an honor for me to be here in person,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said at the embassy, where the Spanish national anthem was played, an AFP correspondent reported.
“Raising the Spanish flag again is a sign of the hope we have for Syria’s future, of the commitment we convey to the Syrian people for a better future.”
A statement from the foreign ministry ahead of the visit said Albares would meet representatives of Syria’s new administration and of civil society.
The trip comes more than a month after rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) ousted Assad. Top European officials, including foreign ministers from France and Germany, have made a series of visits to meet with the country’s new rulers.
A transitional administration has been appointed until March and HTS, which has roots in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, has sought to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed and the rule of law will be respected.
Albares told public broadcaster TVE ahead of the visit that “the message that I want to send is a message of support to Syria.”
“But we also have red lines. Syria must be peaceful. Syria must be inclusive, and the rights of all must be respected, including those of women, and ethnic and religious minorities,” he added.
“This will be my first official trip this year,” Albares told TVE, adding he “wanted to start with one of the regions where Spanish foreign policy is most influential and where we work hardest to achieve peace.”
Albares’s trip to Syria followed a visit to neighboring Lebanon on Wednesday, where he announced a 10 million euro ($10.3 million) aid package for the country’s army, nearly two months into a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
Qatar’s PM arrives in Damascus to meet with de facto ruler Sharaa
DUBAI: Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Thursday arrived at Damascus’ International Airport, footage run by Al Jazeera Live showed.
Earlier, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson said on X the country’s PM would hold extensive talks with Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmed Al-Sharaa in the Syrian capital.
