Stock markets managed to push higher on Tuesday but investors braced for volatility in the coming weeks as President Donald Trump pressed on with tariffs against China after delaying duties on Mexican and Canadian imports.The hesitant trading came after heavy selling Monday following Trump’s weekend announcement of the tariffs, before later offering a reprieve for …
Stocks recover but US tariff threats keep gains in check Read More »
Like most Palestinians, Hatem Azzam, a resident of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, was incensed by US President Donald Trump’s remarks suggesting Gazans should relocate to Egypt or Jordan.”Trump thinks Gaza is a pile of garbage — absolutely not,” the 34-year-old said, attacking Trump’s choice of words when he told reporters last week of his plan to “clean out the whole thing”.Calling him “delusional”, Azzam said that Trump “wants to force Egypt and Jordan to take in migrants, as if they were his personal farm”.Both Egypt and Jordan have flatly rejected Trump’s idea, as have Gazans and other neighbouring countries.Azzam’s outrage comes as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are set to meet in Washington later Tuesday and discuss plans for the Palestinian territory ravaged by more than 15 months of war.”Trump and Netanyahu must understand the reality of the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza. This is a people deeply rooted in their land — we will not leave,” Azzam told AFP.Ihab Ahmed, another Rafah resident, deplored that Trump and Netanyahu “still don’t understand the Palestinian people” and their attachment to the land.”We will remain on this land no matter what. Even if we have to live in tents and on the streets, we will stay rooted in this land,” the 30-year-old said.Ahmed told AFP that Palestinians had learned lessons from the 1948 war that followed the British mandate, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were chased from their homes at the creation of Israel, and never allowed to return.”The world must understand this message: we will not leave, as happened in 1948.”-‘Owners of this land’-Standing near crumbling buildings blocks destroyed by war in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, Raafat Kalob is concerned about the consequences that the Trump-Netanyahu meeting will have on his life.”I expect Netanyahu’s visit to Trump to reflect his future plans to forcibly displace the Palestinian people and redraw the Middle East,” he said.”I sincerely hope this plan does not succeed.”Behind him, rows of tents provided by charity organisations line a patch of land at the foot of concrete buildings whose facades still bear marks of war: bullet holes, blown away windows and facades stripped of their stone finishing.In Jabalia and Gaza’s north, areas that were particularly hard-hit by the war, displaced Palestinians who returned after a ceasefire took effect on January 19 have taken residence in tents next to their destroyed homes.Some were nevertheless optimistic, like Majid al-Zebda, a 50-year-old resident of Jabalia.Trump “will pressure Netanyahu to end this war” permanently, he said.The first phase of the ceasefire brought a fragile end to fighting in Gaza and started the process of a hostage and prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, but negotiations have yet to begin for a permanent end to war.Zebda, a father of six who lost his home in the war, said neither he nor any Gazan would leave the coastal territory.”We are the owners of this land; we have always been here, and will always be. The future is ours,” he said.
Stock markets wavered on Tuesday, with investors bracing for volatile trading in the coming weeks as President Donald Trump pressed on with tariffs against China after delaying duties on Mexican and Canadian imports.Oil prices retreated as Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs against US products, including hydrocarbons, shortly after US levies came into force on Tuesday.”Chinese imports …
A gunman attacked an Israeli military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, fatally wounding two soldiers before troops shot him dead, the military said.The shooting took place in the morning at a military post in Tayasir in the northern part of the West Bank, the military said in a statement.”A terrorist fired at the soldiers at a military post in Tayasir,” it said, adding the troops killed the gunman during a shootout.Two other soldiers were “severely injured” in the attack, while six were slightly wounded.Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad praised Tuesday’s “heroic” attack on the checkpoint, saying “the resistance will continue until the occupation is defeated”.Israeli forces have been engaged in what the army says is “an operation to thwart terrorism” in and around the northern city of Jenin, long a hotbed of militancy.Israeli commander Major General Avi Bluth, who is responsible for the West Bank, said Tuesday’s attack showed the “necessity” of continuing with the offensive in the northern part of the territory.”This morning’s engagement with a despicable terrorist who emerged from the northern Samaria region is the demonstration of the necessity of the counterterrorism operation,” Bluth told journalists when he visited the scene, vowing to “neutralise” militants in the area.On Sunday, the army said it had killed at least 50 militants since it launched the operation on January 21. The Palestinian health ministry said on Monday that Israeli forces had killed 70 people in the territory since the start of the year.The operation, which has also seen troops levelling buildings in the city’s refugee camp, has drawn condemnation from the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which called Israel’s actions “ethnic cleansing”.A spokeswoman for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said that events in Jenin refugee camp were heading in a “catastrophic direction”.”Large parts of the camp were completely destroyed in a series of detonations by the Israeli forces,” Juliette Touma said.”It is estimated that 100 houses were destroyed or heavily damaged.”Violence has surged across the West Bank since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack from Gaza sparked war with Israel.Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 884 Palestinians in the West Bank, many of them militants, since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.At least 32 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
After China announced retaliatory tariffs against the United States, walkers along Shanghai’s waterfront were stoic Tuesday in face of both the cold and the prospect of an escalating trade war.The tariffs on US energy, vehicles and equipment were unveiled minutes after additional levies on Chinese goods announced Saturday by US President Donald Trump came into …
Ordinary Chinese stoic in the face of escalating US trade war Read More »
Israel said it was sending a team to negotiate the next phase in its fragile ceasefire with Hamas, signalling possible progress ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday.Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader to meet Trump in the White House since his return to power last month, and will likely face some pressure to honour the ceasefire the US leader has claimed credit for.Hours before their meeting, Netanyahu’s office said Israel would send a delegation to the Qatari capital Doha later this week for negotiations.Hamas has said it is ready to negotiate the second stage of the ceasefire, mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, and which should focus on a more permanent end to the war.The first phase, which took effect on January 19, halted more than 15 months of bombardment and fighting that has levelled much of the Gaza Strip.In line with the agreement, Hamas and Israel have begun exchanging hostages held in Gaza for prisoners held in Israeli jails.”Israel is preparing for the working-level delegation to leave for Doha at the end of this week in order to discuss technical details related to the continued implementation of the agreement,” Netanyahu’s office said following meetings with Trump’s advisors, including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.- ‘Redrawn the map’ -The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, taking into Gaza 251 hostages, dozens of whom have since been confirmed dead.The conflict has devastated much of Gaza, while families of the Israeli hostages have been urging all sides to ensure the agreement is maintained so their loved ones can be freed.Relatives of the youngest hostages, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, made a plea on Monday for information on the two boys and their mother, Shiri, after their father Yarden Bibas was released in the latest swap.”Shiri, Ariel and Kfir, we miss you so much and are waiting for you with Yarden now,” Ofri Bibas, Yarden’s sister, said.Trump has touted a plan to “clean out” Gaza, calling for Palestinians to move to Egypt or Jordan.Both countries have flatly rejected his proposal, as have the territory’s own residents.”We are the owners of this land; we have always been here, and will always be. The future is ours,” said Majed al-Zebda, a father of six whose house was destroyed in the war.Before leaving for Washington, Netanyahu said Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and its confrontations with Iran had “redrawn the map” in the Middle East.”But I believe that working closely with President Trump we can redraw it even further, and for the better,” he said.Netanyahu hailed the fact he would be the first foreign leader to meet Trump since his inauguration as “testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance.”Trump, who prides himself on his dealmaking abilities, will be pushing Netanyahu to stick to the agreement, possibly offering incentives such as a normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia.Efforts under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden for normalisation froze with the Gaza war, and Saudi Arabia has in recent months hardened its position.- Focus on West Bank? -Trump said Sunday that talks with Israel and other Middle Eastern countries were “progressing” — but warned that he had “no assurances” that the truce in Gaza would hold.”I have no assurances that it will hold, I mean I’ve seen people brutalised, nobody’s ever seen anything like it, no I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold,” he said.Witkoff, who met Netanyahu on Monday over terms for the second phase of the truce, said however that he was “certainly hopeful”.Since the truce took effect, Israel has turned its focus to the occupied West Bank, launching a deadly operation in the area around Jenin, a hotbed of Palestinian militancy.UN aid agency UNRWA, which is now banned in Israel, warned the refugee camp of Jenin was “going into a catastrophic direction”.On Tuesday, the Israeli army said a gunman killed two Israeli soldiers in an attack on a military post in Tayasir in the West Bank. The assailant was also killed.Asked about how he viewed a possible annexation of the West Bank, Trump told reporters: “It’s a small country in terms of land.””It’s a pretty small piece of land. And it’s amazing that they’ve been able to do what they’ve been able to do,” he said.Under the Gaza ceasefire’s ongoing 42-day first phase, Hamas was to free 33 hostages in staggered releases in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.Four hostage-prisoner exchanges have already taken place, with militants freeing 18 hostages in exchange of some 600 mostly Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.The truce has also led to a surge of food, fuel, medical and other aid into Gaza, and allowed people displaced by the war to return to their neighbourhoods in the north of the Palestinian territory.Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory response has killed at least 47,518 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures as reliable.burs-ser/dv
