Trump Declares Breakthrough In Negotiations Over the Disarmament of Hamas

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Trump has declared a breakthrough in negotiations over the disarmament of Hamas in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, issues that have so far stalled the implementation of last October’s ceasefire, but Israel has yet to respond officially to the plan and government officials have voiced scepticism over the deal.

Announcing the agreement in a social media post on Thursday night, Trump said it involved the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza and was “a monumental step toward ending the fighting”.

Israel has pointed to Hamas’s failure to disarm as justification for its continued strikes and refusal to allow any reconstruction in Gaza, and for Israeli forces’ steady edging forward from the demarcation line agreed in October.

After months of negotiations in Cairo, the Board of Peace (BoP), set up by Trump last year, managed on Thursday to secure Hamas’s agreement to a “roadmap” for phased disarmament, in parallel with Israeli withdrawal, and alongside a transfer of power in Gaza from Hamas to a Palestinian interim administration of technocrats, supported by specially trained Palestinian police and an international stabilisation force (ISF).

The 14-point plan, posted by the BoP on X on Friday, urges Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian factions to halt all military operations, and calls for an international verification committee (IVC) to be set up.

It outlines a 14-day period after all parties have accepted the roadmap, with a timetable and implementation mechanisms to be worked out.

Control of Gaza would then be handed to a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a panel of Palestinian professionals and experts set up by the BoP in January who have been waiting in Cairo since then to take over.

The NCAG would take over all administrative functions, backed by the new police force and the ISF. That would enable a “process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels”.

The disarming of Hamas and other groups would be “gradual, sequential and time-bound” and would be “linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza”.

#trump #hamas #israel #negotiations

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The ISF would operate between NCAG and Israeli-controlled areas of the territory, while internal security would be the responsibility of the NCAG and its police force.

There was no confirmation from the Israeli government by Friday afternoon that it accepted the agreement. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, dismissed it as “unacceptable”.

“The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of immigration must happen, Israel must win,” Ben-Gvir said on the Telegram messaging platform.

Hours after Trump announced the Hamas agreement, Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza, wounding several people. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the October ceasefire.

Hamas said it agreed to the roadmap on condition that disarmament was carried out at the same time as Israeli withdrawal.

“We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the strip,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team, told ​Al Jazeera.

By agreeing to Mladenov’s roadmap, Hamas has increased the pressure on Israel to fulfil the commitments it made in the October ceasefire.

A US official who briefed the press on Thursday night acknowledged that Israel was “very sceptical that Hamas will ‌disarm” but added that Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel did not meet its obligations under the agreement.

It is unclear how long the agreement would take to implement. The 13 members of the NCAG have so far been barred by Israel from entering Gaza, the special training of Palestinian police has yet to start, and troops from the countries volunteering to support the ISF, such as Morocco and Kosovo, have yet to arrive.

Hamas had previously said it was ready to disarm but had insisted it would not agree to any new deal before Israel had fulfilled Hamas’s obligations under the first phase of the ceasefire: stopping the bombing and pulling back to the agreed demarcation line.

“Hamas is eager to get rid of the governing burden of Gaza, having to pay the salaries of 35,000 employees. They see this as a burden,” Shehada added. Hamas leaders had hoped Iran would make the Gaza ceasefire a condition for its June memorandum of understanding with the US, but this did not happen.

“There is disappointment with Iran, as Gaza was not mentioned explicitly,” Shehada said. “The other reason is the fear that Israel would relaunch the war back to its full might.”

#trump #hamas #israel #negotiations

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Pressure From Three Directions At Once

Everyone agrees Gaza's ceasefire roadmap is fragile. Nobody agrees on who's breaking it. American officials went first, sharply criticizing Israel for continuing targeted killings just as Hamas agreed to disarm. "These are the fruits of eight months of negotiations intended to demilitarize Gaza.

Why continue the killings now and give them an excuse to back out?" the sources said, according to World Israel News. Then came the line that dropped all pretense of diplomacy: "He killed three innocent children, making Israelis look like bloodthirsty savages."

Hamas moved fast to cash in. Politburo member Ghazi Hamad told AFP, "Israel's escalation in Gaza today confirms that Israel doesn't want to reach an agreement," per the Malay Mail.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace's own high representative, didn't pick a side by name but didn't need to: "Two days of strikes across Gaza have killed civilians and destroyed medical supplies that people depend on," coming right after "intense efforts by the Board of Peace and the mediators… to bring the Palestinian factions in Gaza to agree to a Roadmap," he wrote, cited by Anadolu Agency.

And then the fourth voice flips the entire script. Netanyahu's own spokesperson, Doron Spielman, told Reuters that Israel has shared "serious security concerns" with Washington about the disarmament plan itself, insisting "disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less," per the Independent.

While all that diplomatic maneuvering played out, Defense Minister Israel Katz went on Channel 14 and skipped the diplomacy entirely. On Iran, he offered a threat and a scoreboard in the same breath: "If Iran attacks Israel, it will suffer a crushing blow," he said, adding that Israel has already "prepared Iran and all its proxies to 80 to 90 percent," in the interview aired Sunday night.

On the security zones, he recycled the line his ministry has repeated for months: the IDF "will not withdraw from the security zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza," as JNS reported.

And on Lebanon, he read off the receipts like a man closing a quarterly report: "Twenty-four Lebanese villages that were hundreds of years old… we destroyed all of the buildings," he said of communities he claims served Hezbollah.

So while Washington accuses Jerusalem of sabotaging the deal, and Jerusalem tells Washington the deal itself worries them, Israel's own defense minister is on live TV citing a village count and a percentage score against Iran, no ceasefire talk required. Four institutions, four messages, zero coordination. Who's actually negotiating peace here, and who's just keeping score?

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Iran #Lebanon #Netanyahu

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Reject the Document. Execute the Document.

Benjamin Netanyahu opened the cabinet meeting with a declaration built for the cameras: “Israel rejects the 15-point document.” No Israeli withdrawal, he said, before Hamas undergoes “real” disarmament — heavy weapons, lighter weapons, every weapon. Not “fictional disarmament.”

The document he rejects calls for a ceasefire, full demilitarization, a phased Israeli withdrawal and the transfer of Gaza’s civil and security authority to a national committee.

Hamas, meanwhile, says it remains committed to that same 15-point roadmap and wants a timetable for a full ceasefire, withdrawal, crossings, aid and reconstruction.

Then comes the less theatrical part. Israel has largely refrained from strikes and targeted killings in Gaza for nearly a week.

The IDF is reportedly holding the original Yellow Line, around 53% of the Strip, rather than expanding beyond it.

Discussions over limited pullbacks near Rafah have continued with the Americans. Publicly, the plan is dead. Operationally, it is being handled with gloves on.

This is not a contradiction. It is the standard architecture of Israeli politics: reject the document in Hebrew, implement selected clauses in practice, and call the gap “security.”

Nikolay Mladenov, tasked with Hamas’s disarmament, reportedly says dismantling the tunnels could take ten years. Ten years is not a timeline. It is a job-security plan for every official at the table.

Netanyahu says there will be no Palestinian state, no “Fatahstan” and no “Hamastan.” Hamas says it will honor the framework. Washington wants an exit. Israel wants no withdrawal. Hamas wants no disappearance.

Everyone supports the same deal, provided it becomes a completely different deal before anyone signs it.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Netanyahu #Trump #ceasefire #fakeDemocracy

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

“We Stopped the Genocide. To Some Extent.”

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, says Netanyahu is condemning Israel to deeper international isolation.

He says Israel’s objective is to remove Palestinians from Gaza and leave the enclave without Palestinians if possible.

Then Fidan delivers Ankara’s progress report: Turkey, Egypt and other states joined the Board of Peace to block that project through diplomacy.

“The first goal was to stop the genocide,” he says.

“Fortunately, we succeeded together. We stopped the genocide to some extent.”

To some extent. That phrase is doing extraordinary diplomatic labor. It allows Turkey to claim a moral victory while the war’s core machinery remains unresolved: Israel says it will not withdraw until Hamas is genuinely disarmed; Hamas says disarmament must be tied to a full Israeli withdrawal; mediators want a phased process; and everyone calls the other side the obstacle.

The Board of Peace framework is supposed to connect those contradictions. Hamas would gradually give up its weapons under international supervision. Israel would withdraw in stages. A Palestinian civilian body would govern Gaza. International stabilization forces would be deployed. Humanitarian aid and reconstruction would follow. It is an elegant flowchart, provided every armed actor agrees to dissolve, depart or obey on schedule.

Turkey’s role is not neutral humanitarian theater. Ankara wants a decisive place in postwar Gaza: Palestinian governance, Palestinian security forces, no permanent division of the Strip, and potentially a Turkish role in any international stabilization force.

Israel, meanwhile, has opposed a Turkish military role in Gaza.
So Fidan’s “to some extent” is more than a verbal hedge. It is the current Middle East settlement in miniature.

Turkey calls the arrangement a brake on genocide. Israel calls it conditional demilitarization. Hamas calls it a route to Israeli withdrawal. Washington calls it a peace plan.

Gaza calls it another day after the ceasefire that still needs a dictionary.

#Gaza #Turkey #Fidan #Israel #Netanyahu #Hamas #Egypt #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Gaza: Two Drones an Hour, Three “Martyrs” in One Family

At noon, an Israeli drone struck a tent near the Kuwaiti Hospital in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. Less than an hour later, another drone hit a home in northern Nuseirat.

Palestinian reporters described injuries in both places. The first strike hit the tent of the al-Rai family in a displacement camp. The second hit the home of Raafat Abu Khabiza.

In the official IDF version, the same hour contained two threats removed from the map: one Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in Khan Younis and one Hamas operative in Nuseirat, both allegedly advancing attack plans.

The agreement, then, is functioning normally. It includes targeted killings.

By evening, the first target was identified as Tareq Anwar al-Rai, described by Israeli sources as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative. Palestinian accounts called him the third “martyr” from his family.

That word has a family archive behind it.

His brother, Mohammed al-Rai, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in 2007. Israeli security sources identified him as the militant who fired the grenade from a mobile launcher during the 2004 APC disaster on the Philadelphi Route, which killed five Israeli soldiers transporting explosives.

Another brother, Khamis al-Rai, was described as a senior Islamic Jihad commander and was killed in Rafah in 2015.

Three brothers. Three Israeli strikes. More than two decades of attrition, promotion, revenge and obituary language.

Israel calls it removing immediate threats. Gaza calls it martyrdom. Both descriptions avoid the more durable fact: a militant organization and the military targeting it have spent a generation turning a family name into a recurring file.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #IslamicJihad #KhanYounis #Nuseirat #AlMawasi #war

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Kushner in Cairo: Hamas First, Netanyahu Later

Jared Kushner met Hamas leaders in Egypt before flying to Israel to see Benjamin Netanyahu. In Middle East diplomacy, this is what a hierarchy looks like when the person with guns must be persuaded before the person with an army can be briefed.

Kushner’s meeting with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya lasted more than two hours and included Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s director general for Gaza, also took part. Tony Blair was part of the wider delegation expected to continue on to meetings with Netanyahu.

The purpose was direct. Washington wanted a personal Hamas commitment to the roadmap for Gaza, especially disarmament, before Kushner met the Israeli prime minister.

The U.S. message was reportedly blunt: no political role for Hamas, no reconstruction and no wider Gaza political track until the group gives up its weapons and military infrastructure.

Hamas has already agreed, in principle, to a phased disarmament plan. Heavy weapons, production sites, depots and tunnel infrastructure would be inventoried and placed under a Palestinian national committee, with international verification and a stabilization force involved.

Israeli withdrawals are supposed to follow verified steps in that process. Hamas insists that implementation depends on Israel meeting its own obligations.

That is the part no one says loudly enough. Hamas is being asked to trade guns for a future administration it will not run, reconstruction it will not control and Israeli withdrawals it cannot enforce.

Israel is being asked to withdraw after Hamas disarms, but is also resisting the political plan built around that sequence.

Kushner reportedly told Hamas not to wait for Israeli elections, because Israel’s position on Gaza would not meaningfully change. That may be the clearest line of the meeting. Elections can change ministers. The U.S. message is that they will not change the terms of Palestinian surrender.

Israel’s Tzav 9 movement condemned the meeting, saying Hamas should have no legitimacy or voice after October 7. The group’s objection is instructive. The preferred peace process is one in which Hamas disarms before it speaks, and speaks only after it has disappeared.

Meanwhile, the personal commitment to disarm was reportedly delivered on the same day Israel struck two alleged militants in Gaza.

First, Hamas promises to put down its weapons.

Then Israel decides whether the promise counts.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #Kushner #Trump #Netanyahu #Egypt #disarmament

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Jared Kushner Is Talking Directly To Hamas 🗣


Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, held a rare meeting with Hamas’s political chief on Sunday in Egypt, in a new diplomatic effort to make progress in the stalled Gaza ceasefire.

Kushner will meet on Monday with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure after rejecting the new 15-point, US-backed road map.

The talks aim to salvage the plan for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territory shattered by war.

At stake are the lives of some 2 million people in Gaza and reconstruction of the crowded enclave now largely controlled by Israeli forces, more than 10 months since the ceasefire ended major military operations.

A meeting between Kushner, fellow envoy Steve Witkoff and Hamas leaders in Egypt last year helped clinch the ceasefire, whose progress until now had been stalled over the key issue of Hamas’s disarmament.

The over two-hour meeting in Egypt with Hamas’s political chief, Khalil al-Hayya, was confirmed by a regional official and a Hamas official, both speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Kushner was one of a trio of envoys meeting with al-Hayya, with officials from mediating countries Egypt, Qatar and Turkey also there.

Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, last week rejected the 15-point plan in a rare public show of defiance against the Trump administration, Israel’s closest ally.

Kushner’s meeting with the Hamas leader aimed at ensuring the militant group’s commitment to the road map, particularly disarmament, before his meeting with Netanyahu, the regional official said.

The Hamas official said the group is committed and waiting for mediators to start the 14-day negotiation period to work out a timetable for implementation. That period requires all parties’ approval of the road map to begin.

The Hamas official also said the Hamas leader demanded that Israel halt its attacks on Gaza and withdraw to the so-called “yellow line” dividing the territory before beginning implementation. The yellow line was never precisely defined. Israeli forces have moved beyond it and now control about 60% of Gaza.

Under the road map, Hamas would hand over weapons to the Palestinian technocratic committee meant to oversee daily operations in the territory. The committee has not yet entered Gaza. But Hamas has linked the surrender of its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, something Israel’s current government rejects.

Netanyahu faces a challenging election on 27 October as he tries to hold on to power with a coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza, and it’s not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then. Also coming up is the three-year anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

Netanyahu’s Likud party on Sunday responded to the statement by regional powers by claiming “Arab states want to topple” Netanyahu so that centrist challenger Gadi Eisenkot and center-left party leader Yair Golan “will give them everything they want. That will not happen.”

#kushner #trump #hamas #netanyahu

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Netanyahu, Kushner, and the Board of Peace

Jared Kushner arrived in Jerusalem after sitting in Cairo with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators, in meetings that included Hamas representatives. Then came more than four hours with Benjamin Netanyahu, a prime minister who had called the new Gaza roadmap “unacceptable” only days earlier.

Netanyahu brought Shin Bet chief David Zini and military-intelligence chief Shlomi Binder. Israel’s message was that Hamas had violated its commitments and that Turkish funding remained part of the problem.

The American delegation included Kushner, Gaza Board of Peace director-general Nickolay Mladenov, Tony Blair and senior advisers.

The agreement, in the Israeli telling, is simple. No reconstruction before Hamas is fully disarmed. No further Israeli redeployment before Gaza is demilitarized.

Every rifle, rocket, tunnel and workshop must become an item in a supervised disposal process. Israel will retain what it calls the right to self-defense and to act against any renewed Hamas activity.

Then comes the public-health track.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the sides created two working groups. One will handle Hamas’s disarmament and Gaza’s demilitarization. The other will address sanitation, clean water and public health, including issues that “also impact the people of Israel.” Gaza’s future has been divided into two tasks: remove the weapons, then contain the disease.

The mechanics of disarmament changed during the day. Early reports said Hamas would hand weapons to an American force for destruction.

Later accounts said Hamas would first transfer them to a Palestinian technocratic government, which would then pass them to an International Stabilization Force. One thing did not change: an American general would supervise and verify the process.

The underlying dispute did not disappear. Netanyahu insists targeted killings will continue while Hamas remains armed. Kushner reportedly wants Israel to take limited steps that could test whether Hamas’s disarmament pledge is genuine, while the U.S. works to prevent a wider escalation.

They agreed to build a “deconfliction” mechanism, diplomacy’s way of admitting that the deal is being negotiated under live fire.

Smotrich said the quiet part out loud. Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas, he argued, is incompatible with negotiating with Hamas leaders who “should not be alive at all.”

That is the whole roadmap in one sentence. Hamas must negotiate its own disappearance. Israel must decide whether each weapon surrendered is enough to pause the next strike. The Americans must turn those two incompatible jobs into a working group.

Inside Gaza, the practical question remains: who will hold the keys to the arms depots while everyone waits to see whether the war is truly over?

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Kushner #Netanyahu #BoardOfPeace #disarmament #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump: Iran, Oman, Gaza, and Israel’s Election

Donald Trump spent Sunday conducting four foreign policies at once. Iran should surrender. Oman could be bombed. Hamas is supposedly disarming. Israeli elections are none of his business, unless he chooses a candidate.

The president returned from New Jersey saying he had a “great weekend” with “a lot of meetings,” but refused to say whether Iran had been discussed.

Hours later, he posted that Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon “in any way, shape, or form.” Silence at the airport, capital letters online, threats on television.

In a Fox News interview, Trump said Iran should “put up the white flag of surrender.” He said he had no deadline and was “not in a hurry,” dismissing the idea that U.S. midterm elections would affect his decisions. Iran, he said, was full of “good poker players,” but was “dying.”

Trump also claimed Washington has a secret backchannel with senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials. Iran denied it. An IRGC spokesman called the claim a product of Trump’s “illusions and nightmares” after U.S. failure in the war.

The reported channel is now either a diplomatic breakthrough or a fantasy, depending on which capital is speaking.

Oman received a threat, not mediation. As Muscat negotiates with Tehran over arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said that if Oman “gets in the way,” the United States would “bomb the shit out of them.”

Oman has been one of Washington’s most useful regional intermediaries for decades. The reward for mediation is apparently to be threatened on Fox News.

On Gaza, Trump told Israel to avoid further attacks because Hamas had agreed to lay down its weapons. “We have our own relationship with Hamas,” he said. “They are giving up their guns.” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem welcomed the remarks and urged Trump to pressure Israel to honor the next phase of the peace plan.

Then Trump addressed Israeli politics with the evasive skill of a man who has already decided he wants to be asked. “I think it’s most appropriate for me to stay out of Israeli elections,” he said. “But I may endorse somebody.”

That is not noninterference. It is a public auction for relevance.

Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene added to the confusion, claiming without public evidence that the administration had discussed using nuclear weapons against Iran in strategy meetings. The White House has not confirmed the claim.

Trump’s diplomatic style is simple. He offers surrender, a backchannel, a threat and an endorsement. Each feature activates when the microphone is on.

#Trump #Iran #Oman #Hormuz #Gaza #Hamas #Israel #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🎈🟨 The Yellow Line and the Kites

The sequence in Deir al-Balah unfolded in fragments: an Israeli drone strike near the Palestinian Mental Health Association in al-Bassa; reports of casualties; then confirmation that one man was killed and another wounded when two missiles hit a home’s courtyard.

The dead man was Sharif Hussein al-Hasanat, 44. Israel identified him as a Hamas company commander in the Deir al-Balah battalion who had helped rebuild the group’s underground infrastructure and was planning attacks against Israeli troops and civilians. Palestinian medical sources identified him as the owner of the home that was hit.

The strike occurred beyond the Yellow Line, the ceasefire boundary separating Israeli-held areas from the rest of Gaza. The line has also moved westward since the ceasefire took effect, further restricting access to land inside the enclave.

Hamas has called on the ceasefire’s mediators and guarantors — including the Trump administration, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey — to press Israel over repeated strikes. The demand matters because disarmament is supposed to be the next step in the agreement: U.S. officials have discussed beginning it within 30 days, with an American general supervising the process.

The same weekend supplied material for competing ceasefire claims.

Givati troops shot a man who crossed the Yellow Line and approached their position in southern Gaza, the IDF said. Troops from the 99th Division later detained another alleged Hamas operative carrying a knife after he crossed the line in central Gaza.

This is a ceasefire in which killings and detentions are counted by the day.

On the Israeli side of the fence, the day’s threat came on paper and string.

Four kites crossed from Gaza and were found near Be’eri. The IDF said they contained nothing suspicious and posed no danger. Uri Epstein, head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council, said residents would not accept another assurance that “everything will be fine” after October 7. “The writing is already in the sky,” he said, demanding that the army act against every kite in real time.

In Gaza, anti-Hamas militias said they had captured several Hamas members in what they called a successful military operation in the north.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #YellowLine #Ceasefire #DeirAlBalah #Beeri #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🇮🇶🇪🇬 Hamas Moves Between Baghdad and Washington

A Hamas delegation led by Osama Hamdan was reported to have met in Baghdad with Hadi al-Ameri, head of Iraq’s Badr Organization and a central figure in the country’s Iran-aligned political and militia network.

If confirmed, the meeting would underline a familiar fact: Hamas still operates through the regional relationships built with Iran and its partners. Baghdad is not Doha or Ankara. But it is part of the same political geography in which Hamas’s external leadership has sought money, protection, influence, and military support.

At the same time, Washington is dealing with Hamas through a very different channel.

On Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s envoy, met Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s overall leader, in El Alamein, Egypt. It was Kushner’s second meeting with al-Hayya after their October 2025 talks helped produce the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement. The meeting marked another break with Washington’s long-standing policy of refusing direct engagement with Hamas, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization.

Kushner was joined by Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair, senior envoys of the U.S.-backed Board of Peace.

The body is intended to oversee the Gaza roadmap, including a planned transfer of Gaza’s civilian administration to a Palestinian technocratic committee and a process for placing Hamas weapons under that committee’s control. Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey also sent senior diplomats.

The central dispute was not diplomatic etiquette. It was sequencing.

Hamas told Kushner it would begin handing over weapons only after Israel publicly committed to the plan’s terms. Israel has maintained that it will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.

The American-backed framework asks each side to move first while promising that the other side eventually will.

Freddy Eytan, a former senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official and researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, criticized the meeting as a step toward legitimizing Hamas. In an opinion piece, he wrote: “How can Donald Trump authorize direct negotiations with a terrorist organization?”

He argued that Israel should “be uncompromising on security issues and obtain robust guarantees from the United States.” This is Eytan’s assessment, not an account from the negotiating room.

Hamas can speak with an Iran-aligned militia leader in Baghdad while its leadership negotiates with a U.S. envoy in Egypt.

The organization is not being asked to choose between those channels. It is being asked to surrender weapons while keeping both open.

#Hamas #Gaza #Iraq #Egypt #Kushner #Iran #Ceasefire #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Peace Council, War Terms

The Board of Peace has sent Hamas a warning through Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators. Stop every militant act, including kite launches, or face “serious consequences.” The U.S.-backed body wants the ceasefire intact long enough to begin Hamas’s disarmament.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty says Hamas and other Palestinian factions have agreed in principle to hand over all heavy and light weapons. The agreement was announced in Cairo, not Gaza. That is where most peace deals sound strongest.

The Board’s own official also delivered the other half of the message. Israel must comply with the ceasefire. Military action, he said, cannot go beyond a response to “genuine and imminent threats.” That is a hard rule to enforce in a war where every side calls its next strike preventive.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board’s Gaza envoy, told the U.N. Security Council that every weapon Hamas keeps and every tunnel it operates gives Israel’s advocates for renewed war another argument. He also warned that continued Israeli strikes are killing civilians and pushing the ceasefire toward a “point of no return.”

Meanwhile, Uganda has agreed to contribute troops to the proposed international stabilization force. Burundi is considering a role after military officials from both countries visited Israel last week, according to the Associated Press.

The plan is to bring African troops to Gaza to oversee disarmament after three years of war and decades of failure by everyone already in the neighborhood.

Hamas promises weapons. Israel demands proof. The Board demands restraint. Uganda may send soldiers.

Peace has now entered the outsourcing phase.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #PeaceCouncil

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Operation Under Air Cover

An Israeli force entered western Gaza City on Tuesday morning. It was detected near al-Katiba and the American Hospital. Gunfire followed. Israeli aircraft then hit targets across the area to cover the force’s withdrawal.

The IDF confirmed strikes against “several targets” to remove threats to security forces and said no Israeli personnel were injured. Defense Minister Israel Katz later said a senior Hamas operative had been captured. Israeli media reported that the operation involved a special force and an Israeli-backed militia.

Palestinian sources said the apparent target was a Hamas Internal Security officer with the rank of colonel. They said he survived. Hamas-linked outlets reported between six and 10 dead.

Gaza medical officials gave a lower confirmed early toll of three people killed, including two children and a woman, with eight wounded. The figures changed through the day and the identity of all casualties has not been independently established.

Witnesses reported at least 12 strikes. Two vehicles were destroyed near the al-Katiba area. A field hospital and school were reportedly evacuated. Smoke bombs were seen in the nearby Shati refugee camp.

The official version says Israel removed threats. The local version says a force was exposed while trying to seize or kill a Hamas officer. Both accounts agree on the useful part: someone entered Gaza City in daylight, the extraction required airstrikes, and civilians paid for the cover.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #GazaCity

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

The Ceasefire Receipt

An Israeli engineering vehicle drove over an explosive device north of Gaza’s Yellow Line. No soldiers were injured. The IDF called it a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire by Hamas, then struck Hamas infrastructure overnight.

That is the ceasefire’s operating system. One roadside bomb becomes the legal receipt for airstrikes, artillery fire and attacks across a territory where civilians live beside militants, military positions and whatever remains of the commercial map.

Palestinian medical sources reported five people killed across Gaza on Sunday, including two children. A drone strike in Gaza City killed Youssef Aqila and his 9-year-old daughter, Wafaa.

Artillery fire hit a classroom sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah, killing a 7-year-old child. Other strikes hit the Tuffah neighborhood and destroyed the former Al-Sakhra commercial complex, wounding nine people, according to those sources.

Hamas-affiliated sources also reported that Youssef Aqila had been a Nukhba company commander and one of Yahya Sinwar’s bodyguards.

Israel previously announced the killing of a different man, Razek Sahil Suleiman Abu Shahma, whom it identified as Sinwar’s bodyguard and a participant in the Oct. 7 attack.

The IDF says its forces remain deployed “in accordance with the agreement.”

The Yellow Line marks the Israeli military’s withdrawal line under the first phase of the October 2025 ceasefire, separating areas under Israeli control from areas where Palestinians are permitted to live and move.

In Gaza, the agreement does not stop the war. It assigns it paperwork. Hamas provides the violation. Israel provides the response. Civilians receive the receipt.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Ceasefire

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

Macron’s West Bank Translation

Emmanuel Macron said at the UN General Assembly that Hamas had “never been very active” in the West Bank. Israel answered with the name of a French citizen killed there two days earlier.

Netanel Shukrun, a father of six, was shot dead on Sunday while traveling with his son ahead of Yom Kippur. The son escaped. Israeli authorities say the attacker, identified as Hamas operative Qadri Samara, was arrested.

Netanyahu’s office called Macron’s statement a “grotesque absurdity” and said ignorance does not erase the blood of Israeli civilians killed in the West Bank.

Gadi Eisenkot, who once commanded the IDF’s West Bank Division, called Macron’s remark detached from reality. Hamas has carried out suicide bombings, shootings, kidnappings and armed-cell attacks in the territory for decades.

A list circulated by Israeli sources identifies about 150 Hamas attacks in or originating from the West Bank, with at least 583 Israelis killed and 3,374 wounded. That list is not a complete public accounting, but it is enough to make “never active” a spectacular choice of words.

Then came the repair crew. A French diplomatic source said Macron’s French wording, “le Hamas n’a jamais sévi en Cisjordanie,” meant that Hamas had never governed the West Bank, not that it had never operated there. But the UN’s simultaneous interpreter rendered it as “Hamas was never very active in the West Bank,” while other translations said it had “never struck” there.

The West Bank is governed in part by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’s rival. Hamas does not run the territory. It has still killed people there.

Macron’s office says the president was misunderstood. The sentence says the interpreter got the blame.

#France #Macron #Hamas #WestBank

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

🐓🪓Ben-Gvir’s Prison Theatre

Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the cell of Hassan Salameh, one of Hamas’s highest-profile prisoners, surrounded by masked guards and cameras. He told Salameh: “I want to kill you. I want to execute you.” Then he published the footage himself.

Salameh has been in Israeli custody since 1996 and is serving 48 life sentences for his role in Hamas suicide bombings that year, including attacks on Jerusalem’s No. 18 bus line. Dozens of Israelis were killed in the campaign that followed Israel’s killing of Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash.

Ben-Gvir told Salameh that the prison conditions were his doing and that he had made the prisoner’s life “hell.” He said that if appointed defense minister in the next government, he would work to execute prisoners convicted of killing Israelis and advance “voluntary migration” from Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas called the video a public death threat and said Israel had turned prisons into sites of “direct physical liquidation.” It said the footage would not weaken Salameh or other Palestinian prisoners and renewed its commitment to secure their release.

A minister publicly tells a handcuffed prisoner that he wants to kill him. Hamas broadcasts the threat as proof of Israeli brutality. Each side gets material for its audience. The only person who cannot leave the set is the prisoner in the cell.

#Israel #BenGvir #Hamas #Prisoners

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

The Aid Worker and the Parade

Four drone strikes hit Gaza on Sunday, according to local journalists, leaving at least two people dead and 16 wounded.

Gaza sources named one of the dead as Saqr Nabil Musa Qaisi, the Gaza representative of the Turkish aid organization Deniz Feneri, after a car was struck near Deir al-Balah. Initial Palestinian accounts put the wounded total from that strike anywhere between one and 10.

Israel later said Qaisi was a Hamas Nukhba Force operative who took part in the October 7 assault and had recently worked to attack Israeli troops and civilians and rebuild Hamas capabilities.

The IDF said he also ran Deniz Feneri’s Gaza operation, alleging that the Turkish charity employed Hamas operatives and financed them. Deniz Feneri presented Qaisi as its humanitarian-aid coordinator.

The car bombing therefore arrived with two biographies attached: Turkey’s aid worker and Israel’s October 7 operative.

The organization sits close enough to Ankara for the politics to be obvious. Deniz Feneri has hosted Hamas figures Khaled Mashaal and Sami Abu Zuhri at its gatherings, and Qaisi was known locally as an imam who preached in mosques across southern Gaza.

Turkey calls this solidarity. Israel calls it a Hamas funding channel. Either way, another Turkish-linked institution has become part of the Gaza battlefield.

Elsewhere, Gaza sources reported the killing of municipal employee Muadh Abu Nseira near Hamad City in Khan Younis, four wounded in Beit Lahiya, two in al-Salatin and three injured in Jabalia.

Figures remain fragmented because the attacks, casualty reporting and claims of responsibility are moving faster than verification.

In Rafah, the anti-Hamas Popular Forces militia under Ghassan al-Dahini released video of dozens of armed men marching under the title “Spear Force.”

The group says it is expanding recruitment and is thought to field roughly 600 to 800 fighters, making it the largest armed faction openly operating against Hamas inside Gaza. A militia parade is not a victory over Hamas. It is a recruitment commercial filmed inside a war zone.

The drone killed a man described as both aid official and Nukhba fighter. The militia marched to advertise its men.

Gaza now has humanitarian logos, Hamas cells and anti-Hamas uniforms sharing the same terrain. Every side calls it protection. Every side needs more bodies.

#Gaza #Hamas #Turkey #Rafah

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

Hamas’s Accounts Receivable

Israel bombs Hamas’s infrastructure. Hamas taxes the goods Israel allows into Gaza. The war has a revenue stream.

Channel 12 reports that Hamas collects roughly NIS 250 million a month, about NIS 3 billion a year, largely through levies on merchants importing goods. The money is raised inside Gaza, from goods that enter with Israeli permission.

An Oct. 18 TIME investigation documents how Israeli officials encouraged and coordinated nearly $2 billion in Qatari payments to Gaza over more than a decade, including vetting recipients and urging Doha to keep paying.

Israeli intelligence assessed that Hamas diverted about $4 million a month of those Qatari funds to its military wing from at least 2019 through 2021, roughly half the wing’s estimated budget.

Qatar calls its payments humanitarian assistance. Netanyahu has defended the policy as preventing civilian collapse. Hamas turned money meant to sustain Gaza into funds to sustain itself.

The official objective is to dismantle Hamas. Its income still depends on what Israel lets through, first Qatari cash and now taxed imports.

#BabylonBurning #Gaza #Hamas #Netanyahu #Qatar

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

Hamas’s archive goes on air

Hamas’s commanders filmed their meetings. Al Jazeera is now broadcasting the archive. In one underground group photograph, every commander pictured has since been killed by Israel.

Friday’s documentary showed military chief Mohammed Deif, his deputy Marwan Issa, Yahya Sinwar’s brother Mohammed Sinwar, and other commanders meeting in tunnels. It also featured Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Ismail Haniyeh visiting a rocket workshop, and Deif examining models of Israeli tanks in an operations room.

The network presented what it described as an operational order signed by Deif on Oct. 5, 2023, after a six-hour command meeting. It specified a 6:30 a.m. start for the attack. Another document purportedly recorded a February 2023 decision to begin preparations.

The group photograph predates May 2021, because Bassem Issa, visible among the commanders, was killed that month. [Whatever its framing,] it cannot show the final meeting before Oct. 7. The broadcast also included a Sinwar-Deif call marking the 2021 ceasefire.

The archive gives Hamas’s dead leadership another appearance on screen. It also records something less useful to their memorial, the meetings, weapons production, and orders behind the massacre. The commanders are gone, but their paperwork survives.

#Hamas #October7 #Gaza #AlJazeera

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸