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An end to fighting in Sudan still seems far off despite the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, fighting the army for more than two years, endorsing a truce proposal.The government, backed by the army, has yet to respond to US-led international mediators, and explosions rocked the army-controlled capital Khartoum on Friday.Experts express doubt about whether the RSF is truly ready to implement a truce, and warn it is in fact preparing an offensive to capture city of el-Obeid in the south.But the conflict may nevertheless be at a turning point.Fighting has raged since April 2023, pitting the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against those of his former deputy, RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.The United Arab Emirates is accused by the United Nations of supplying arms to the RSF, allegations it has repeatedly denied.The Sudanese army, meanwhile, has received support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran, according to observers.Now, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt are backing a proposed ceasefire.Here is what we know after two years and almost seven months of a war that has killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly 12 million and triggered a hunger crisis:- RSF victory in Darfur -Less than two weeks ago the RSF captured El-Fasher, the army’s last major stronghold in western Darfur.The takeover was accompanied by reports of mass killings, sexual violence and looting, triggering international condemnation.There are now fears of further atrocities as the conflict shifts east toward Khartoum and the oil-rich Kordofan region.Under international pressure, the RSF now says it is ready to consider a ceasefire, but the army has not responded and observers are unconvinced.”Its only intent is to distract from the atrocities it is currently committing in El Fasher and position itself as more responsible than the army,” Cameron Hudson of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies told AFP.The army, he said, is now “focused on retaking all of Kordofan and then proceeding on to El-Fasher”.El-Fasher’s fall has given the paramilitaries control over all five state capitals in Darfur and parts of the south while the army now dominates northern, eastern and central areas along the Nile and Red Sea.”The RSF, now that they control all of Darfur, has an incentive to try to bring food and assistance into areas under their control, but the army has an incentive to not allow the RSF to consolidate its gains,” Hudson said.No details of the ceasefire proposal have been made public, but a senior Saudi official told AFP that it calls for a “three-month truce”, during which both sides would be encouraged to hold talks in Jeddah on a permanent peace deal.- New explosions -On Friday, one day after RSF responded positively to the ceasefire idea, explosions were heard in Khartoum and in Atbara, an army-held city around 300 kilometres (186 miles) north of Khartoum, according to witnesses who spoke to AFP. Khartoum has seen relative calm since the regular army regained control this year, but the RSF continues to mount attacks in several regions.A resident in Omdurman, part of the greater Khartoum area, told AFP on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, he was awoken “around 2 am (0000 GMT) by the sound of … explosions near the Wadi Sayidna military base”.Another resident said they “heard a drone overhead around 4:00 am before an explosion struck near” a power station, causing an outage in the area.In Atbara a resident saw several drones before dawn on Friday.”Anti-aircraft defences shot them down, but I saw fires breaking out and heard sounds of explosions in the east of the city,” the resident said, also on condition of anonymity.There were no immediate reports of casualties. Neither the army nor the RSF commented on the blasts, though the RSF has been using long-range drones to strike army-held areas since it lost control of the capital.- Fighting in Kordofan -In the south, the Sudan Doctors’ Union accused the RSF of shelling a hospital in the besieged city of Dilling in South Kordofan on Thursday morning, wounding several people.In a statement, the union said that the shelling “destroyed the hospital’s radiology and medical imaging department”, crippling one of the region’s vital health facilities.Dilling has been under RSF siege since June 2023. It lies around 150 kilometres (93 miles) southwest of El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan — a key crossroads linking Darfur to Khartoum. – Famine and oil -Independent verification remains difficult due to heavy fighting and communications blackouts in the area, but Dilling faces a severe humanitarian crisis.According to the Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the city is now at risk of famine, while the state capital, Kadugli, is already facing one. Famine has also been confirmed in Darfur’s El-Fasher and three nearby displacement camps. Last year, the IPC also declared famine in parts of South Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains. South Kordofan, which borders South Sudan, is one of Sudan’s most resource-rich areas and home to the Heglig oil field, among the country’s largest. 

As guardian of the occupied West Bank’s oldest olive tree, Salah Abu Ali prunes its branches and gathers its fruit even as violence plagues the Palestinian territory during this year’s harvest.”This is no ordinary tree. We’re talking about history, about civilisation, about a symbol,” the 52-year-old said proudly, smiling behind his thick beard in the village of Al-Walajah, south of Jerusalem.Abu Ali said experts had estimated the tree to be between 3,000 and 5,500 years old. It has endured millennia of drought and war in this parched land scarred by conflict.Around the tree’s vast trunk and its dozen offshoots — some named after his family members — Abu Ali has cultivated a small oasis of calm.A few steps away, the Israeli separation wall cutting off the West Bank stands five metres (16 feet) high, crowned with razor wire.More than half of Al-Walajah’s original land now lies on the far side of the Israeli security wall.Yet so far the village has been spared the settler assaults that have marred this year’s olive harvest, leaving many Palestinians injured.Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and some of the 500,000 Israelis living in the Palestinian territory have attacked farmers trying to access their trees almost every day this year since the season began in mid-October.The Palestinian Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, based in Ramallah, documented 2,350 such attacks in the West Bank in October.- ‘Rooted in this land’ -Almost none of the perpetrators have been held to account by the Israeli authorities.Israeli forces often disperse Palestinians with tear gas or block access to their own land, AFP journalists witnessed on several occasions.But in Al-Walajah for now, Abu Ali is free to care for the tree. In a good year, he said, it can yield from 500 to 600 kilograms (1,100 to 1,300 pounds) of olives.This year, low rainfall led to slim pickings in the West Bank, including for the tree whose many nicknames include the Elder, the Bedouin Tree and Mother of Olives.”It has become a symbol of Palestinian endurance. The olive tree represents the Palestinian people themselves, rooted in this land for thousands of years,” said Al-Walajah mayor Khader Al-Araj.The Palestinian Authority’s agriculture ministry even recognised the tree as a Palestinian natural landmark and appointed Abu Ali as its official caretaker. Most olive trees reach about three metres in height when mature. This one towers above the rest, its main trunk nearly two metres wide, flanked by a dozen offshoots as large as regular olive trees.- ‘Green gold’ -“The oil from this tree is exceptional. The older the tree, the richer the oil,” said Abu Ali.He noted that the precious resource, which he called “green gold”, costs four to five times more than regular oil.Tourists once came in droves to see the tree, but numbers have dwindled since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Abu Ali said, with checkpoints tightening across the West Bank.The village of Al-Walajah is not fully immune from the issues facing other West Bank communities.In 1949, after the creation of Israel, a large portion of the village’s land was taken, and many Palestinian families had to leave their homes to settle on the other side of the so-called armistice line.After Israel’s 1967 occupation, most of what remained was designated Area C — under full Israeli control — under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were meant to lead to peace between Palestinians and Israelis.But the designation left many homes facing demolition orders for lacking Israeli permits, a common problem in Area C, which covers 66 percent of the West Bank.”Today, Al-Walajah embodies almost every Israeli policy in the West Bank: settlements, the wall, home demolitions, land confiscations and closures,” mayor Al-Araj told AFP.For now, Abu Ali continues to nurture the tree. He plants herbs and fruit trees around it, and keeps a guest book with messages from visitors in dozens of languages.”I’ve become part of the tree. I can’t live without it,” he said.

Kazakhstan said Thursday it will join the Abraham Accords between Israel and mainly Muslim nations, in a largely symbolic move aimed at boosting US President Donald Trump’s push for Middle East peace.The central Asian republic has had diplomatic ties with Israel for decades, unlike the four Arab states that normalized relations with Israel under the original accords signed in Trump’s first term.But with Trump aiming to shore up his fragile Gaza ceasefire deal, Washington is pushing to get as much support as possible behind a wider peace initiative.The announcement comes as Trump hosts Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the leaders of the other four central Asian republics — Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan.After the leaders arrived at the White House, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he, Tokayev and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held a “great call.”An official signing ceremony will be announced soon, Trump said, adding that “there are many more Countries trying to join this club of STRENGTH.”Kazakhstan said Thursday it was “natural and logical” for it to join.”Our anticipated accession to the Abraham Accords represents a natural and logical continuation of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy course — grounded in dialogue, mutual respect, and regional stability,” the country’s government said in a statement.US special envoy Steve Witkoff said earlier that a new country would join the accords, sparking initial speculation — later quashed — that it could be the elusive prize of Saudi Arabia.Kazakhstan will be the first country to join since the original Abraham Accords in 2020, when the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized ties with Israel.- ‘Lot of people joining’ -Saudi Arabia had been in talks with the United States on normalizing ties with Israel, in what would be a historic milestone as the kingdom is home to Islam’s two holiest sites.But the Gulf kingdom stepped back after the Gaza war broke out following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.Saudi Arabia has long insisted it cannot normalize ties without progress toward an independent Palestinian state, a prospect long opposed by Netanyahu.Trump said at the America Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday: “We have a lot of people joining now the Abraham Accords and hopefully we are going to get Saudi Arabia very soon.”He then added jokingly to an audience which included the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, “But I’m not saying that. I’m not.”The US-brokered Gaza deal has been in place since October 10 but remains shaky, with Israel accusing Hamas of dragging its feet in returning the bodies of hostages.Israel has also launched a number of attacks despite the truce, claiming that its forces have come under attack, and says Hamas is not doing enough to give up its weapons.Witkoff, one of the key negotiators, said Thursday he was still hopeful it could hold, adding that they were “right in the middle of standing up a decommissioning process of weapons” by Hamas.Hamas insisted this process would depend on the deployment of an international security force, which would be greenlighted under a draft UN Security Council resolution presented by the United States this week, Witkoff said.

The United Nations Security Council voted in favor of a US resolution on Thursday to lift sanctions on Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, ahead of his White House visit next week. “(The Council) decides that Ahmed al-Sharaa…and (Interior Minister) Anas Hasan Khattab are delisted from the ISIL and Al-Qaida Sanctions List,” said the resolution, approved by 14 council members. China abstained.The formal lifting of sanctions on Sharaa is largely symbolic as they were waived every time he needed to travel outside of Syria in his role as the country’s leader. An assets freeze and arms embargo will also be lifted.Nevertheless, the move was lauded by Syria, with Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani writing on X: “Syria expresses its appreciation to the United States and to friendly nations for their support of Syria and its people.”US President Donald Trump will host Sharaa for talks on November 10, having said the former jihadist had made “good progress” toward establishing peace in his war-torn country.Washington’s ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said Sharaa’s government was “working hard to fulfill its commitments on countering terrorism and narcotics, on eliminating any remnants of chemical weapons and promoting regional security and stability.”Though it will be Sharaa’s first visit to Washington, it will be his second to the United States after a landmark UN trip in September, where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.In May, the interim leader, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour.Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.- Syria’s new image -Decisions to lift sanctions are usually made by the Council’s sanctions committee behind closed doors — but they require unanimity, while a full vote of the council does not.China, which abstained, “expressed legitimate concerns about counterterrorism issues — in particular (foreign terrorist fighters) in Syria, and put forward many amendment proposals,” said China’s UN ambassador Fu Cong.”However, (Washington) did not fully heed the views of all members,” he added.Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their own violent extremist past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.Syria’s president will discuss issues including lifting remaining sanctions, reconstruction and counterterrorism when he visits Washington later this month, Damascus said Sunday.Syria’s ambassador to the UN Ibrahim Olabi welcomed the vote.”At its core, the resolution reflects the will of Syrian men and women. It reflects their will to return our country to its rightful place among nations. It reflects our will to move forward with confidence and hope towards building a new Syria,” he said.”Today, for the very first time in so many years, the council has united.”Syria and Israel remain technically at war, but they opened direct negotiations after Assad was toppled by an Islamist-led coalition last December.Trump has expressed hope that Syria will join other Arab countries that have normalized ties with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords.A Syrian official had told AFP earlier this year that Syria expects to finalize security and military agreements with Israel in 2025, in what would be a breakthrough less than a year after Assad’s ouster.