Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has issued a statement in relation to the talks being held in Qatar aimed at a truce and hostage-prisoner exchange in Gaza, calling the discussions “serious and positive”.

Hamas said:

Hamas affirms that, in light of the serious and positive discussions taking place today in Doha under the auspices of our Qatari and Egyptian brothers, reaching an agreement for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange is possible if the occupation ceases to impose new conditions.

Qatar, along with the US and Egypt, has been involved in months of behind-the-scenes negotiations for a Gaza truce and hostage release.

Hamas and other Palestinian militia now reportedly appear to be more open and flexible over a slower, phased end to the fighting with talks focused on the number of hostages to be released in any first phase.

As my colleague Peter Beaumont notes in this story, sticking points that torpedoed previous rounds of talks, including the presence of Israel troops in the so-called Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors inside Gaza, appear to have been sidelined for now, although a continuing issue is understood to be the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to return to their homes in the strip’s north.

A Gaza ceasefire deal expected to be signed in the coming days, according to sources briefed on the talks, reports Reuters. Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly on his way to Cairo for talks on the ceasefire.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel accused the head of the group that led the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria of being “a wolf in (sheep’s) clothes” because of his jihadist history.

Speaking at a press conference, Haskel held up a photo collage of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), showing him while a member of jihadist organisations, reports AFP.

“It is important to avoid falling for the attempt to whitewash jihadist (groups) in Syria. We know who they are and their true nature, even if they change their names, and we understand how dangerous they are to the West,” said Haskel.

“These are terrorist organisations and this is a wolf in (sheep’s) clothes.”

Jolani, who now uses his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa over his nom de guerre, fought for al-Qaida in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion. He later set up the al-Qaida subsidiary in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front, which for a period was allied with the Islamic State group.

However, Jolani later broke with and fought against both jihadist organisations and eventually rebranded Al-Nusra as the Islamist HTS.

Since taking Damascus earlier this month, Jolani and his group have pledged to protect religious minorities and denied having plans to impose strict Islamic rule. Jolani has also said “general exhaustion” in Syria meant it did not want another war.

Nevertheless, HTS remains proscribed by several western governments as a terrorist organisation and is under UN-backed sanctions.

Israeli negotiators head to Qatar as hopes rise for Gaza hostage deal

Peter Beaumont

Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter for the Guardian

An Israeli negotiating team has arrived for talks in Qatar amid renewed optimism that a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Hamas in Gaza can be achieved by the end of the year.

Both sides have expressed optimism in recent days that a deal may be close for a phased release of the surviving hostages in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

About 60 living hostages, mainly Israeli and and dual nationals, are believed to be still in captivity in Gaza as well as the bodies of 35 others, out of more than 240 who were abducted to Gaza during Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

The incoming US president, Donald Trump, has said he wants to see the hostages released or “all hell’s going to break out” and has sent a hostage envoy to Israel for meetings with senior politicians, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump spoke to over the weekend.

On Monday, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, briefed lawmakers that Israel and Hamas were “the closest we’ve been to a hostage deal since the last deal”, which took place in November 2023 and resulted in the release of more than 100 hostages.

He added that he expected the deal to get widespread support. “There will be a sweeping majority in the security cabinet and the cabinet for the emerging hostage deal.”

Although details of an emerging deal are being negotiated under tight secrecy, it is understood that it would involve a phased ceasefire with an initial cessation of hostilities for 60 days in exchange for the release of surviving hostages, including women, the elderly and those suffering illness.

You can read the full story here:

A UN refugee agency official has said that about one million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country in the first six months of 2025, asking countries to refrain from forced returns.

Rema Jamous Imseis, Unhcr director for the Middle East and north Africa, said:

Now we have forecasted that we hope to see somewhere in the order of one million Syrians returning between January and June next year so we shared this plan with donors, asking for their support.

At least 374,000 Syrians have been displaced by the fighting that led to the toppling of Bashar-al Assad, according to UN estimates, on top of the millions already made homeless by the country’s 13-year civil war, which started after the former Syrian president crushed pro-democracy protests in 2011.

Imseis said that thousands of people had fled Syria this month as rebels seized power from the Assad regime, while thousands had also returned to the country mostly from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Many European countries have said they will suspend the processing of asylum applications from Syrians, with Austria among those already preparing a “repatriation and deportation” programme to the country.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan said earlier today that he expected the EU to support the return home of Syrians who left the country during the civil war. Millions of Syrians fled to Turkey to seek refuge, with the majority living in Istanbul, Gaziantep or Sanliurfa.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed at least eight people from the same family, most of them women and children, Palestinian medics have said.

The deadly airstrike hit a house in Gaza City’s central neighborhood of Daraj yesterday evening, according to the health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service.

Among the bodies recovered from the rubble were a father and his three children, and the children’s grandmother, according to a casualty list obtained by The Associated Press.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper towards the western area of al-Mawasi, a so-called humanitarian evacuation zone, residents said.

Heavy fire from tanks rolling into the area forced dozens of families sheltering there to flee northwards towards the southern city of Khan Younis, Reuters reports.

Al-Mawasi is a 10-mile (16km) strip of sandy farmland that stretches along the Mediterranean coast, which was first designated as a “humanitarian zone” by the IDF last December. Since then, there have been widespread reports that the water supply is inadequate, there is almost no sanitation, healthcare is rudimentary and infectious diseases are rife. The area has been targeted in deadly Israeli airstrikes and is severely overcrowded.

At least 45,059 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,041 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Of those, 31 Palestinians were killed and 79 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.

Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory..

We are restarting our coverage of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, with Israel’s war on Gaza continuing and the Syrian rebel groups scrambling to form a transitional government in the wake of the fall of the Assad regime.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has said his country’s forces will maintain “security control” over the devastated Gaza Strip, even after the war is over, with Israeli soldiers able to act with “full freedom of action” over the territory.

In a post on X, Katz, the former foreign minister, said:

After we defeat Hamas’ military and governmental power in Gaza, Israel will have security control over Gaza with full freedom of action, just as it did in Judea and Samaria (an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank).

We will not allow any terrorist organization against Israeli communities and Israeli citizens from Gaza. We will not allow a return to the reality of before October 7th.

The question of Gaza’s postwar governance has remained unresolved, a year after the 7 October 7 Hamas-led attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Katz’s predecessor Yoav Gallant, who was sacked in November, was opposed to any prolonged Israeli control of Gaza, from which Israel withdrew troops and settlers in 2005 after decades of direct rule. Hamas seized full control of Gaza in 2007.

In May, then as defence minister, Gallant said that he would “not agree to the establishment of an Israeli military administration in Gaza”. “Israel must not have civilian control over the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said at the time, urging the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to devise a postwar plan for the territory.

In other developments:

• The head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, a UN investigative body, has written to Syria’s new authorities to express a willingness to engage with them and to travel to Syria to secure evidence that could implicate top officials of the former government. “There is now the possibility of accessing evidence of the highest level of (the) regime,” he said. The comments come after the head of a US-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

• German diplomats will hold their first talks with representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus today, focusing on a transitional process for Syria and the protection of minorities, the German foreign ministry said. France, a key early backer of the uprising, also sent a delegation to the Syrian capital on Tuesday, with special envoy Jean-Francois Guillaume saying his country was preparing to stand with Syrians during the transitional period. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, meanwhile, said her country was ready to engage with Syria’s new leadership after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, but urged caution. The US state department said on Monday that the American government has had more than one communication with HTS over the past week.

• US president-elect Donald Trump characterised the ousting of Assad as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey, which has historically backed the opposition. “I think Turkey is very smart … Turkey did an unfriendly takeover, without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children,” Trump told reporters at his residence in Florida.

• Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the HTS group that toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, said all rebel factions would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry” during a meeting with members of the Druze community. He stressed the need in a meeting with a delegation of British diplomats to end “all sanctions imposed on Syria so that Syrian refugees can return to their country”. The UK, along with other western countries, considers HTS to be a terrorist organisation, though this designation may soon change.

• The US military on Tuesday said it bombed a Houthi military facility in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in what was the latest US-led attack on the Iranian-backed rebels. The Houthi media office said the airstrike hit part of the sprawling complex that houses the rebels’ defense ministry. There were no immediate reports of casualties. US Central Command said the strike late yesterday evening targeted a key command and control facility that was “a hub for coordinating Houthi operations,” including attacks on US navy and merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.