US stocks jumped while European indexes were mixed Wednesday as the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady after a policy meeting — and gold hit a new record as geopolitical concerns returned to the fore.The US central bank’s rate decision was widely expected, although it also cut its growth forecast for 2025 and hiked its …
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A man in tears struggled Wednesday to retrieve the body of a small boy from under the rubble of a building in Gaza City hit by a recent wave of Israeli air strikes.One by one, relatives and neighbours used a sledgehammer to try to break apart the large chunks of concrete trapping the young boy. His eyes closed and wearing a Spiderman sweater, the boy was visible but unreachable.”The civil defence tried to retrieve people but couldn’t get anyone out so they left,” said Muhammad al-Deiri, a neighbour who had come to help.Each strike of the sledgehammer echoed from the building’s collapsed second floor through the eerily quiet surrounding streets of what was once a bustling city.In the early hours of Tuesday, Israel launched its most intense air strikes since a ceasefire took hold in Gaza in January, killing more than 400 people according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.Israel vowed to keep up the pressure until the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas releases the hostages still held in Gaza. Of the 251 captives seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.Hamas says it is willing to negotiate and has called on the international community to act to bring the war to an end.- ‘Random bombings’ -In Gaza City’s al-Sabra neighbourhood where the boy was trapped under rubble, surrounding buildings had also been damaged in the strikes.Flattened floors lay atop one another.”Random bombings started everywhere,” said 21-year-old Sundus al-Imam.”The Al-Hattab family’s house — our neighbours — was hit, leaving some with minor injuries among us girls.””Since (President Donald) Trump’s time, the United States has been sending massive military aid to Israel, making it more powerful than before,” she added.Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have promised “hell” for Hamas if the remaining hostages held in Gaza are not immediately released.As part of its escalating pressure, Israel first blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza in early March, then cut the limited electricity supply to the territory’s main water desalination plant.Since then, humanitarian organisations operating on the ground have been reporting on the dire situation for the population.Rafat Ramadan, another resident of al-Sabra, painfully remembered seeing “bodies hanging from the rubble, needing cranes to remove them”.Ramadan’s own house was struck, trapping his daughters under concrete until he managed to free them with the help of his nephews.They took the girls to Gaza City’s Baptist Hospital, he said, only to find the facility overwhelmed. “What we lived through was hell,” said Ramadan, who says he lost his son in the war.- ‘Pray for your loved ones’ -After almost two months under the truce, Gazans are once again experiencing the panic of more than 15 months of war between Hamas and Israel.In the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, dozens of men gathered in mourning next to white plastic body bags.They said that four members of the same family were caught by overnight bombing while reciting a traditional Ramadan prayer.”Remember Allah, pray for your loved ones, your heart will be in peace,” read a poster near the bodies.A young man cried in silence while the body bags were loaded into a truck for burial.The Israeli military urged residents of several areas in Gaza’s border areas to evacuate “combat zones”, in particular Beit Hanun, in the territory’s far north.Residents took to the road, mainly by foot — and for most of them, not for the first time — in order to seek shelter in Gaza City.Children pulled water jerrycans next to donkey carts loaded with cheap foam mattresses, plastic bowls and tents. Residents carried only the most basic necessities for daily life, nearly a year and a half after the war started.Around them stood bombed-out buildings, piles of rubble and mountains of waste, while Israeli planes roared and drones buzzed above their heads.
Israel’s renewed attacks on the Gaza Strip have put Hamas in a very difficult situation, experts believe, with the Palestinian Islamist movement left with few options.The group may be now pinning its last hopes on external international pressure being exerted against Israel and internal pressure forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war.The renewed attacks come with deadlock in indirect talks on the second phase of the January ceasefire, with neither side prepared to budge from its position.Hamas has yet to respond militarily to the latest Israeli attacks, and said on Wednesday it remained open to negotiations, urging the international community to “take urgent action”.”Hamas is betting on mediators and internal divisions in Israel” to make the war end, Hamas expert Leila Seurat, a senior lecturer at SciencesPo in Paris, told AFP.Israel has said it will pound the Palestinian territory until Hamas releases the remaining 58 hostages held there, despite many inside Israel believing that this strategy will only endanger the captives’ lives.Ghassan al-Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst and former Palestinian Authority minister, believes Hamas will only release hostages if it is given guarantees that Israel will uphold the terms of the stalled January ceasefire.”If the hostages are released under the pressure of the Israeli attacks, then Hamas will be (left) with no guarantees,” he told AFP.”Hamas will not trust any word from Israel, but the guarantees should come from third parties” such as mediators Egypt, the United States or Qatar, Khatib added.- ‘Time for political options’ -Hamas now faces a militarily dominant Israel no longer restrained by its US ally.Khatib said fighting back is “not an option” for Hamas, “due to the difficult military reality on the ground” and because of diminished support from its allies Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.All the while, Israel has the upper hand as it benefits from US President Donald Trump’s backing for the war in Gaza.As the ceasefire talks stalled, Israel blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid and cut off power to a desalination plant in southern Gaza.”(The Israelis) are under much less pressure and therefore they don’t feel that they need the second phase (of the ceasefire) and war is less costly for them,” Khatib said.Under the second phase of the truce drafted under former US president Joe Biden’s administration, Israel would have withdrawn from Gaza in exchange for more hostage releases.All this means that Hamas’s “manoeuvering room is narrowing, that’s why now is the time for political options”, Khatib said.Echoing this, Seurat from SciencesPo pointed to the fact that Hamas cannot change the balance of power on the ground.She said Hamas can instead hope to fold proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff into the existing ceasefire framework.She said that beyond mediator pressure, Hamas is instead hoping that dissident voices within the Israeli military, or public pressure, bring an end to the war.Jamal al-Fadi, a political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University, noted in an editorial that Hamas, which believes in Palestinian liberation by armed struggle, once condemned mediation in interactions with Israel.Hamas has long criticised its rival movement Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank — a separate Palestinian territory — for its strategy of appealing to the international community.- ‘Fantasies’ -Palestinian affairs expert Michael Milshtein of Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center said that cornering Hamas militarily with no exit strategy would not force it to back down.He said Hamas wants precise guarantees from the United States over how and when the war would end and Israel will withdraw from Gaza.Without that, he said “Hamas prefers right now to continue the fighting but not to release hostages”.As for Hamas’s future after the war, the main sticking point remains the Islamist movement’s militarisation. “They’ll never back down on that,” said Seurat. “It’s a movement that calls itself a resistance movement.”Milshtein agreed, saying that without a military wing “it’s not Hamas, it’s something else”.He argued that the only two viable options are for Israel to occupy Gaza, which he says Israel lacks the motivation for, or a deal that would end the war and force Israel to withdraw.Anything short of that, including “all the ideas that we will convince the Egyptians to deploy their forces in Gaza” or that Israel will “create a kind of regime based on clans in Gaza”, are “fantasies and nothing else”, Milshtein said.
Long lines of fleeing civilians filled the roads of Gaza Wednesday as Israel kept up its renewed bombardment of the territory for a second day despite a chorus of calls from foreign governments to preserve a fragile January ceasefire.The ministry of health in Hamas-run Gaza has previously said more than 400 people have been killed in the strikes. It published a much higher death toll on Wednesday for the last 48 hours, but an official later withdrew it, citing a “technical error”.Families with young children fled northern Gaza for areas further south, fearing for their lives after Israel urged civilians to leave areas it described as “combat zones”.A Hamas official said the group was open to talks on getting the ceasefire back on track but rejected Israeli demands to renegotiate the three-stage deal agreed with Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators.”Hamas has not closed the door on negotiations but we insist there is no need for new agreements,” Taher al-Nunu told AFP.”We have no conditions, but we demand that the occupation be compelled to immediately halt its aggression and war of extermination, and begin the second phase of negotiations.”Negotiations have stalled over how to proceed with a ceasefire whose first phase expired in early March, with Israel and Hamas disagreeing on whether to move to a new phase intended to bring the war to an end.Israel and the United States have sought to change the terms of the deal by extending stage one.That would delay the start of phase two, which was meant to establish a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and was swiftly rejected by Hamas, which demanded full implementation of the original deal.”There is no need for new agreements in light of the existing agreement signed by all parties,” Nunu said.- ‘Only the beginning’ -Israel and the United States have portrayed Hamas’s rejection of an extended stage one as a refusal to release more Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.Netanyahu’s office said he ordered the renewed strikes on Gaza after “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages”.In a televised address late Tuesday, the premier said: “Hamas has already felt the strength of our arm in the past 24 hours. And I want to promise you –- and them –- this is only the beginning.”The White House said Israel consulted US President Donald Trump’s administration before launching the strikes.The intense Israeli bombardment sent a stream of new casualties to the few hospitals still functioning in Gaza and triggered fears of a return to full-blown war after two months of relative calm.Two people, including a United Nations employee, were killed when a UN building in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, was hit, according to a UN source.One of those killed was employed by the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the source told AFP.According to a UN statement, “an explosive ordnance was dropped or fired at the infrastructure and detonated inside the building.”We don’t know at this stage what type it was (airdrop weapons, artillery, rocket),” the statement said.The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory blamed Israel, while the Israeli military denied it had struck the UN compound in Deir el-Balah.AFPTV footage showed UN vehicles and an ambulance transporting three men to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.Two of them appeared to have leg injuries and a third had bandages on both arms and abdomen, with traces of blood on his chest.Thousands of Israelis massed in Jerusalem on Wednesday, accusing Netanyahu of resuming strikes on Gaza without regard for the safety of the remaining hostages. “Many people here in Israel are so frustrated with the operation that began yesterday because it’s obvious it will not… make Hamas more flexible and bring the release of hostages,” said Palestinian affairs expert Michael Milshtein of Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center.- ‘Shattering’ hopes -Governments in the Middle East, Europe and beyond called for the renewed hostilities to end.German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Israel’s raids on Gaza “are shattering the tangible hopes of so many Israelis and Palestinians of an end to suffering on all sides”.European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she told her Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar that the new strikes on Gaza were “unacceptable”.Both Egypt and Qatar, which brokered the Gaza ceasefire alongside the United States, condemned Israel’s resort to military action.Israel’s resumption of military operations in Gaza, after it already halted all humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza this month, drew an immediate political dividend for Netanyahu.The far-right Otzma Yehudit party, which quit his ruling coalition in January in protest at the Gaza ceasefire, rejoined its ranks with its firebrand leader Itamar Ben Gvir again becoming national security minister.The war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.Of the 251 hostages seized during the attack, 58 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.burs/kir/ser/smw
A judge moved the legal case of a pro-Palestinian protest leader detained and slated for deportation by US authorities to a new court Wednesday, but not the highly conservative jurisdiction sought by President Donald Trump’s administration.The administration had pushed for Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s case to be heard in Louisiana, a district sympathetic to deportation efforts, but a New York judge instead moved it to New Jersey.”The government first moved Mahmoud to Louisiana, then it tried to move his federal case there, too, hoping for better odds in court,” said Ramzi Kassem, law professor at City University of New York and co-director of CLEAR, a legal non-profit that represents Khalil. “The judge rightly rejected that approach and transferred the case to a court in the greater New York City area, close to Mahmoud’s home, where the case and, most importantly, Mahmoud himself, belong. We intend to bring him home next.”Khalil, one of the most prominent faces of the protest movement that erupted in response to Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, was arrested and taken to Louisiana earlier this month, sparking protests.The government has not accused Khalil of breaking any laws. Instead, officials said his permanent residency was being revoked over his involvement in the protests under rarely used powers to deport non-citizens accused of undermining US foreign policy.His arrest has triggered outrage from critics of the Trump administration as well as free speech advocates, including some on the political right, who say such a move has a chilling effect on freedom of expression.Judge Jesse Furman moved the case on grounds that he did not have jurisdiction, as the legal filing that initiated it was submitted while Khalil was in New Jersey, not New York.Furman also wrote “this is indeed an exceptional case and there is a need for careful judicial review.””Such judicial review is especially critical when, as here, there are colorable claims that the Executive Branch has violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner,” he wrote.
The ear-splitting roar of his jet ski fills the air as Hamza al-Hamm thunders past, kicking up plumes of water — not at the beach, but in the heart of the Saudi Arabian desert.Sand-caked SUVs ring the temporary lake, formed by winter rains, as Hamm zips across the impromptu watersports centre doing donuts.Women in the traditional face-covering niqab sit on rugs by the shore, watching the action.The lake, surrounded by sand dunes near the small desert city of Zulfi, lasts only about three months a year.”One day, my friends challenged me to ride a jet ski,” said Hamm, who started out on a borrowed machine.Since then he has bought his own, gradually becoming one of a rare breed — an expert jet-skier who lives in the desert.Zulfi’s lake, more than 200 kilometres (124 miles) northwest of the capital Riyadh, appears every winter, giving desert-dwellers the chance to take part in a sport usually associated with seaside resorts.The rare phenomenon draws not only locals like Hamm, in his 40s, but also visitors from as far away as Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.Meshaal al-Otaibi, who came with a caravan from the Saudi town of Taif, more than 700 kilometres away, said he had to see the lake for himself.”When I heard about the lake on YouTube, about people gathering there and water activities, I couldn’t resist,” he said.Zulfi, which sits in a dip between sand dunes and mountains, “is a perfect trap for rainfalls pouring over the mountains”, according to scientist Alain Gachet.”That is why the lake is seasonal in Zulfi, which is located on the deepest part of this depression,” said Gachet, whose French-based company Radar Technologies International specialises in untapped natural resources.When it forms, the lake offers a welcome respite in a country where intense heat limits outdoor activities for much of the year.Issam Hamad, another Saudi who was visiting with his family, said it was relaxing just to be outside.”Some watch, others do watersports” but everyone enjoys the fresh air, he said.
Israel’s resumption of strikes on the Gaza Strip is a major step in the wrong direction after its ceasefire with Palestinian militant group Hamas earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II.”The resumption of Israeli strikes yesterday (Tuesday), despite the efforts of mediators, represents a dramatic step backwards,” Macron said ahead of talks in Paris with Abdullah.”It’s dramatic for the Palestinians of Gaza, who are again plunged into the terror of bombardment, and dramatic for the (Israeli) hostages and their families who live in the nightmare of uncertainty.”Israel earlier this week carried out its deadliest bombing of Gaza since a fragile ceasefire began in January between Israel and the Palestinian territory’s Islamist rulers Hamas.The renewed Israeli air strikes in the night of Monday to Tuesday killed more than 400 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. They have continued since.Macron slammed Hamas, saying the “axis of resistance is today an illusion”, but also warned Israel that there could be “no Israeli military solution in Gaza”.The Jordanian king called the strikes “an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation”.”The ceasefire must be restored and the flow of aid must resume immediately,” Abdullah said.- ‘Ready to contribute’ -After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Gazans endured more than 15 months of devastating conflict before a fragile cessation of hostilities took effect on January 19.As ceasefire talks stalled earlier this month, Israel cut off humanitarian aid and electricity to Gaza in a bid to pressure Hamas to give in to its terms. If the war stops, France has thrown its support behind a plan put forward by Arab nations, including Jordan, to rebuild Gaza without evicting its 2.4 million Palestinian residents.”We French and Europeans are ready to contribute to these deliberations and to this plan,” Macron said.Macron said he and other European leaders would discuss it on Thursday at the European Council, “among ourselves and with the Secretary General of the United Nations”.France, Britain, Germany and Italy earlier this month backed the plan, hailing it as a “realistic path” for Gaza to return to the control of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority after nearly two decades of Hamas rule.Israel and the United States have rejected the proposal.It came after US President Donald Trump triggered global outrage when he suggested the US “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, while forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt or Jordan.- ‘Palestinian state’ -Long term, said Macron, work should focus on “a Palestinian state to finally give back Palestinians their legitimate right”, though this should come with the “necessary security guarantees for Israel”.Abdullah said: “A political solution that leads to peace on the basis of a two-state solution is the only way to guarantee security for Palestinians, Israelis in the region.” The so-called two-state solution would see a new Palestinian state live peacefully side by side with an Israeli one.It was part of a peace plan in the 1990s but Israel has since only deepened its occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the bulk of the land which was to make up a future Palestinian state.The 2023 Hamas attack on Israel resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliation in Gaza has killed at least 49,547 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry.Of the 251 hostages seized during the attack, 58 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
