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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday he expected the second phase of the US-sponsored ceasefire plan for Gaza to begin soon, and said he would meet President Donald Trump this month.The truce, in effect since October 10, has halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.But it remains delicate as Israel and Hamas accuse each other of violations.Under the terms of the ceasefire that entered into force on October 10, Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 47 living and dead captives seized on their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.All of the hostages have so far been released except for the body of an Israeli police officer.Speaking after meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said: “We very shortly expect to move into the second phase, which is more difficult.”The plan’s initial steps saw Israeli troops withdraw to positions behind a so-called “Yellow Line” in Gaza, though still in control of more than half the territory.Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, said the demarcation line is a “new border line”, the military quoted him as saying later Sunday.The second stage of the Gaza truce plan concerns disarming Hamas, the further withdrawal of Israeli forces as a transitional authority is established, and the deployment of an international stabilisation force.A final goal of the agreement is the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in phases if certain conditions are met.”We have a second phase, no less daunting, and that is to achieve the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarisation of Gaza,” Netanyahu said.- Flurry of aid diplomacy -Qatar and Egypt, which helped secure the long-elusive truce, called Saturday for the next steps to be taken including the withdrawal of Israeli troops.Hamas said on the same day it was ready to hand over its weapons in Gaza to a Palestinian authority on the condition that the Israeli army’s occupation ends.Netanyahu also said he would meet Trump later in December to discuss “opportunities for peace” in the region.The meeting is expected to take place in Washington after the premier’s office said Trump invited Netanyahu to the White House during a phone call Monday.Before Israel, Germany’s Merz was in Jordan where he urged more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz were also in Jordan Sunday to discuss humanitarian aid for the territory.Waltz is due to travel to Israel after Jordan.- Germany reaffirms support -The German leader, who took power in May this year, has repeatedly criticised Israel’s relentless military campaign in Gaza, which according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. The war was sparked by the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Merz urged the implementation of the plan’s next steps while reaffirming Berlin’s support for Israel during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.”Germany must stand up for the existence and security of Israel,” Merz said, after acknowledging his country’s “enduring historical responsibility” for the mass extermination of Jews during the Second World War.During the press conference with Netanyahu, Merz said criticism of Israel was “possible and sometimes perhaps even necessary”. “The relationship between Germany and Israel can withstand that. But criticism of the policies of the Israeli government must not be misused as a pretext for antisemitism,” he added.Merz also underscored German support for a two-state solution.- ICC warrant -Germany had in August moved to restrict German sales of weapons for use in Gaza but has since lifted those export restrictions following the ceasefire.Despite the truce, more than 360 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health authorities, as well as three Israeli soldiers. Although Merz’s public criticism of Israel was unusual for a German leader, it was measured by international standards.Nevertheless, Merz said he did not discuss the possibility of Netanyahu’s visit to Germany with the prime minister.The Israeli leader faces an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza from the International Criminal Court (ICC). “I am not going there because of an ICC decision,” Netanyahu said.Merz this year vowed to invite the Israeli leader and told him he would not be arrested.burs-glp-raz/jfx

Coach Ehab Abu Jazar is guiding a national team that carries on its shoulders all the hopes and sorrows of Palestinian football, but it is his mother, forced by war to live in a Gaza tent, who is his main inspiration and motivation.The war that broke out following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 put an end to Palestinian league matches, and left athletes in exile fearing for their loved ones in Gaza.But Abu Jazar’s mother refuses to let the conflict overshadow the sporting dreams of her son, to whom she feeds tactical advice from the rubble of the Palestinian territory by phone.”She talks to me about nothing but the team. She wants the focus to remain solely on the tournament,” the 45-year-old manager told AFP.”My mother asks me about the players, who will play as starters and who will be absent, about the tactics, the morale of the players and the circumstances surrounding them.”The coach’s mother Huda Mahmoud Abu Jazar, 62, is now displaced in Gaza’s Al-Mawasi camp, near Khan Yunis, living in a tent with her other son, his wife and their children.”My feelings are indescribable from the amount of happiness I feel for my son and his amazing team,” she told AFP.She beamed with pride about him and the Palestinian squad, saying her entire camp cheered when the team beat Qatar in an Arab Cup match last week.”You could hear ululations everywhere. They brought back a joy we had forgotten in Gaza,” she said.”He made us all proud. It is a great honour for us.”The manager, himself a former left-back, says he wants his players to convey the spirit of his mother and Gazans like her.”We always say that we are a small Palestinian family representing the larger family,” he said.”Undoubtedly, it puts pressure on us, but it’s positive pressure.”The Palestinian team are 96th in the FIFA rankings, and their hope of playing in their first World Cup vanished this summer.But the squad, most of whom have never set foot in Gaza, is within reach of the Arab Cup quarter-finals, keeping their message of resilience alive.Palestine play Syria in their final Arab Cup group match Sunday, where a draw would be enough to achieve an unprecedented feat for the team.He said progress would show the world that the Palestinians, if given the right conditions, can “excel in all fields”.- ‘Genes of resilience’ -Abu Jazar finished his playing career in 2017 before managing the Palestinian U-23 team and eventually taking the top job last year.After the war broke out, his family home was destroyed, displacing his mother in Gaza, like most of the territory’s population during the height of the conflict.He now feels pressure to deliver for them after witnessing from exile the horrors of the war, which came to a halt in October thanks to a fragile US-backed ceasefire.”At one point, it was a burden, especially at the beginning of the war,” he said.”We couldn’t comprehend what was happening. But we possess the genes of resilience.”If we surrender and give in to these matters, we as a people will vanish.”In her maternal advisory role, Abu Jazar’s mum is only contactable when she has power and signal.But she was able to send a message to the team before their match against Syria.”I send my words to my son and his team and pray for them every moment — may God guide their shots, and God willing, victory will be theirs today,” she said.Her and her family will find a way to watch the team’s match against Syria from her camp, praying for another victory.”From between the tents we will watch it on a TV screen. Everyone is waiting for the moment the match begins,” she said.Her determination is pushing Abu Jazar to give Gazans any respite from the reality of war.”My mother and siblings… struggle greatly to watch our matches on television. They think about how to manage the generator and buy fuel to run it and connect it to the TV,” he said.”This is what keeps us standing, and gives us the motivation to bring joy to our people.”All these circumstances push us to fight on the field until the last breath.”

As city after city fell to a lightning rebel offensive in Syria last December, Iranian forces and diplomats supporting Bashar al-Assad saw the writing on the wall, abandoning the longtime ruler days before his ousting, sources told AFP.During Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 following the government’s brutal repression of pro-democracy protests, Iran was one of Damascus’s biggest backers, sending Assad military advisers and forces from its Revolutionary Guards.Iranian and allied regional fighters — mainly from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, but also from Iraq and Afghanistan — had held key locations and helped prop up Assad, only to melt away in the face of Islamist-led forces’ headlong rush towards the capital.Syrian officers and soldiers served under the Iranian Guards, whose influence grew during the conflict as Assad’s power waned.A former Syrian officer assigned to one of the Guards’ security headquarters in Damascus said that on December 5 last year, his Iranian superior summoned him to an operations centre in the Mazzeh district the following day to discuss an “important matter”.The former officer, requesting anonymity due to fears for his safety, said his superior, known as Hajj Abu Ibrahim, made a bombshell announcement to around 20 Syrian officers and soldiers gathered for the meeting.”From today, there will be no more Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria. We’re leaving,” they were told.”It’s all over. From today, we are no longer responsible for you.” He said they were ordered to burn or otherwise destroy sensitive documents and remove hard drives from computers.- Border bottleneck -The announcement came as the Islamist forces were making huge gains, but it still took the Syrian soldiers by surprise, he said.”We knew things hadn’t been going well, but not to that extent.”They received one month’s salary in advance and went home.Two days later the Islamist forces captured Damascus without a fight after Assad fled to Russia.Two Syrian employees of Iran’s consulate in Damascus, requesting anonymity for security reasons, also described a hasty Iranian exit.The consulate was empty by the evening of December 5 as Iranian diplomats scarpered across the border to Beirut, they told AFP.Several Syrian employees “who held Iranian nationality left with them, accompanied by senior Revolutionary Guards officers”, according to one of the former employees.At Jdeidet Yabus, Syria’s main border crossing with Lebanon, taxi drivers and former staff reported a massive bottleneck on December 5 and 6, with an eight-hour wait to clear the frontier.Both of the former consulate employees said the Iranians told their Syrian personnel to stay home and paid them three months’ salary.The embassy, consulate and all Iranian security positions were deserted by the morning of December 6, they said.- Russian base -During the war, forces under Iranian command were concentrated in sensitive areas inside Damascus and its suburbs, particularly the Sayyida Zeinab area, home to an important Shiite Muslim shrine, and around Damascus airport, as well as near the Lebanese and Iraqi borders.Parts of the northern city of Aleppo and locations elsewhere in the province were also major staging areas for personnel and fighters.At a site that used to be a key military base for Iranian forces south of Aleppo, Colonel Mohammad Dibo said that when the city fell early in the rebels’ campaign, “Iran stopped fighting”.Iranian forces “had to withdraw suddenly after the quick collapse” of Assad’s military, said Dibo, who took part in the rebel offensive and now serves in Syria’s new army.On the heavily damaged walls of the abandoned base, an AFP journalist saw Iranian and Hezbollah slogans, and a painting of a sword tearing through an Israeli flag.Tehran’s foe Israel had launched hundreds of strikes on Syria over the course of the war, mainly saying it was targeting Assad’s army and Iran-backed groups.The former Syrian army officer who requested anonymity said that on December 5, a senior Iranian military official known as Hajj Jawad and several Iranian soldiers and officers were evacuated to Russia’s Hmeimim base on the Mediterranean coast, then flown back to Tehran.At the abandoned site near Aleppo, Dibo said that after the city’s fall, “some 4,000 Iranian military personnel were evacuated via Russia’s Hmeimim base” where they had taken refuge.Others fled overland through Iraq or Lebanon, he said.Their exit was so rushed that “when we entered their bases” in Aleppo province, “we found passports and identity documents belonging to Iranian officers who didn’t even have time to retrieve them.” 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reaffirmed Berlin’s support for Israel during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Sunday before talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Merz flew into Israel the day before for his first trip to the country since traditionally solid ties between the two nations were shaken by the Gaza war.During the visit to Yad Vashem, Merz said “Germany must stand up for the existence and security of Israel,” after acknowledging his country’s “enduring historical responsibility” for the mass extermination of Jews during the Second World War.The German leader arrived on Saturday was met at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who called Merz “a friend of Israel”. He then met Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem the same day.”I consider it a great honour and a truly great distinction to be here and to reaffirm that standing by this country is and will remain the unchanging core principle of the Federal Republic of Germany’s policy,” Merz said.Given the legacy of Nazi Germany’s industrial-scale murder of Jews, German leaders have long seen unflinching support for Israel as a bedrock of the country’s foreign policy.- ‘No place for antisemitism’ -Merz held talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II during a brief stopover there earlier on Saturday. Their discussions focused largely on the peace process in Israel and the Palestinian territories, he told reporters.Merz called for more humanitarian aid to flow into the Gaza Strip and for Hamas fighters to lay down their weapons, adding that both Jordan and Germany remained committed to a negotiated two-state solution.”There can be no place for terrorism and antisemitism in this shared future,” Merz said.Jordan’s royal palace said in a statement that Abdullah had stressed “the need to commit to implementing all stages of the agreement to end the war and deliver humanitarian aid to all areas of the Strip”.The king also warned of “the danger of continued Israeli escalations in the West Bank”, which Israel has occupied since 1967.Hamas’s lead negotiator and its Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said on Saturday that the group was ready to hand over its weapons in the Gaza Strip to a future Palestinian government, provided that Israel’s occupation had ended.He also said Hamas would “accept the deployment of UN forces as a separation force” ensuring the ceasefire but rejected the idea of any international force with a mission to disarm the militant group.- German criticism -Israeli-German ties were shaken during the Gaza war, with Merz, who took power in May, repeatedly criticising Israel’s relentless military campaign, which has killed more than 70,350 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.The war was sparked by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.In August, he also moved to restrict German sales of weapons for use in Gaza.Since a fragile US-backed ceasefire and hostage deal brought a halt to full-scale fighting, Germany has lifted those export restrictions.Despite the ceasefire, more than 360 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health authorities, as well as three Israeli soldiers. “The actions of the Israeli army in Gaza have posed some dilemmas for us (and) we have responded to them,” Merz said on Saturday.But, he added: “Israel has the right to defend itself.”- Defence deals -Although Merz’s public criticism of Israel was unusual for a German leader, it was measured by international standards.Nevertheless, German officials have said there are currently no plans to invite Netanyahu to Berlin.The Israeli leader faces an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza from the International Criminal Court.Earlier this year however, Merz vowed to invite the Israeli leader and told him he would not be arrested.Nor have any tensions disrupted key military ties. Germany last week put into operation the first phase of the Israeli-made Arrow missile defence shield.The $4.5-billion deal was reportedly the largest arms export agreement in Israeli history. Before leaving Berlin, Merz spoke with Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas. A spokesman said Merz underscored German support for a two-state solution but urged Abbas to push through “urgently necessary reforms” of the PA in order to play a “constructive role” in the postwar order.burs-glp/raz/dcp