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Netanyahu floats ‘allowing’ Palestinians out of Gaza as mediators renew truce push

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday revived calls to “allow” Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip, as the military prepares a broader offensive in the territory.Past calls to resettle Gazans outside of the war-battered territory, including from US President Donald Trump, have sparked concern among Palestinians and condemnation from the international community.Netanyahu defended his war policies in a rare interview with Israeli media, broadcast shortly after Egypt said Gaza mediators were leading a renewed push to secure a 60-day truce.The premier told Israeli broadcaster i24NEWS that “we are not pushing them out, but we are allowing them to leave”.”Give them the opportunity to leave, first of all, combat zones, and generally to leave the territory, if they want,” he said, citing refugee outflows during wars in Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.In the Gaza Strip, Israel for years has tightly controlled the borders and barred many from leaving.”We will allow this, first of all within Gaza during the fighting, and we will certainly allow them to leave Gaza as well,” Netanyahu said.For Palestinians, any effort to force them off their land would recall the “Nakba”, or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.Netanyahu has endorsed Trump’s suggestion this year to expel Gaza’s more than two million people to Egypt and Jordan, while far-right Israeli ministers have called for their “voluntary” departure.- Cairo talks -Israel’s plans to expand its offensive into Gaza City come as diplomacy aimed at securing an elusive ceasefire and hostage release deal in the 22-month-old war has stalled for weeks, after the latest round of negotiations broke down in July.Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty announced that Cairo was “working very hard now in full cooperation with the Qataris and Americans”, aiming for “a ceasefire for 60 days, with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian detainees, and the flow of humanitarian and medical assistance to Gaza without restrictions, without conditions”.Hamas said in a statement early Wednesday that a delegation of its leadership had arrived in Cairo for “preliminary talks” with Egyptian officials.A Palestinian source earlier told AFP that the mediators were working “to formulate a new comprehensive ceasefire agreement proposal” that would include the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza “in one batch”.Netanyahu said in his interview he would oppose the staggered release of hostages, and instead would “want to return all of them as part of an end to the war — but under our conditions”.Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure a breakthrough since a short-lived truce earlier this year.News of the potential truce talks came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel has intensified its air strikes on Gaza City in recent days, following the security cabinet’s decision to expand the war there.- Intensified strikes -Netanyahu’s government has not provided an exact timetable on when forces may enter the area, but civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Tuesday that air raids had already begun increasing over the past three days.Israel is “intensifying its bombardment” using “bombs, drones, and also highly explosive munitions that cause massive destruction”, he said.Bassal said that Israeli strikes across the territory, including on Gaza City, killed at least 33 people on Tuesday.”The bombardment has been extremely intense for the past two days. With every strike, the ground shakes,” said Majed al-Hosary, a resident of Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.An Israeli air strike on Sunday killed four Al Jazeera employees and two freelance reporters outside a Gaza City hospital, with Israel accusing one of the slain correspondents of being a Hamas militant.Israel has faced mounting criticism over the war, which was triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 2023 attack.UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in.Netanyahu is under mounting domestic pressure to secure the release of the remaining hostages — 49 people including 27 the Israeli military says are dead — as well as over his plans to expand the war.Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel’s offensive has killed at least 61,599 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, whose toll the United Nations considers reliable.

US denounces Europe on speech in pared-down rights report

The United States on Tuesday alleged that human rights were worsening in Western Europe due to internet regulations, in a pared-down annual global report that spared partners of President Donald Trump such as El Salvador.The State Department’s congressionally required report historically has offered extensive accounts of all nations’ records, documenting in dispassionate detail issues from unjust detention to extrajudicial killing to personal freedoms.For the first report under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department trimmed sections and took particular aim at countries that have been in Trump’s crosshairs, including Brazil and South Africa.On China, which has been identified as a top US adversary across administrations, the State Department report said “genocide” was ongoing against the mostly Muslim Uyghur people, whose plight Rubio took up as a senator.But the report also took aim at some close US allies, saying human rights have worsened in Britain, France and Germany due to restrictions on online hate speech.In Britain, following the stabbing deaths of three young girls, authorities took action against internet users who falsely alleged that a migrant was responsible and urged revenge.The State Department report accused British officials of having “repeatedly intervened to chill speech.”State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce, without naming Britain specifically, said online restrictions have targeted “disfavored voices on political or religious grounds.””No matter really how disagreeable someone’s speech may be, criminalizing it or silencing it by force only serves as a catalyst for further hatred, suppression or polarization,” Bruce told reporters.The criticism comes despite Rubio moving aggressively to deny or strip US visas of foreign nationals over their statements and social media postings, especially student activists who have criticized Israel.- ‘Less is more’? -Bruce said previous State Department rights reports had been “politically biased” and, on the level of detail, “sometimes less is more.”But a group of former State Department officials called some omissions “shocking,” like LGBTQ rights in Uganda, where a severe law against homosexuality passed in 2023.Democratic party lawmakers accused Trump and Rubio of treating human rights only as a cudgel against adversaries, inviting charges by Beijing and Moscow of US hypocrisy.Rubio’s State Department has “shamelessly turned a once-credible tool of US foreign policy mandated by Congress into yet another instrument to advance MAGA political grievances and culture war obsessions,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.The report said there were “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in El Salvador and instead noted a “historic low” in crime.President Nayib Bukele has unleashed a sweeping crackdown on crime, which rights groups say has put many innocent people in detention.Bukele took migrants from Trump’s mass deportation drive and held them in a maximum-security prison, where some have reported mistreatment too recently to be covered by the report.Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration admits was wrongly deported, filed a lawsuit alleging severe beatings, sleep deprivation and inadequate nutrition in El Salvador’s CECOT prison.The report trimmed down its section on Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. It acknowledged cases of arbitrary arrests and killings by Israel but said authorities took “credible steps” to identify those responsible.In contrast, the report said rights deteriorated in 2024 in Brazil, where Trump has decried the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, his ally accused of a coup attempt that echoes the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters.Brazil, the report said, has “undermined democratic debate by restricting access to online content deemed to ‘undermine democracy.'”The report also said rights “significantly worsened” in South Africa, where Trump has embraced the cause of the white minority.Amnesty International USA’s Amanda Klasing said the report sent a “chilling message” that the United States will overlook abuses if doing so suits its political agenda.”We have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this,” she said.

Disgraced crypto mogul Do Kwon changes plea to guilty in US court

South Korean cryptocurrency specialist Do Kwon pleaded guilty to fraud charges in front of a New York judge on Tuesday following his firm’s multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy, court filings showed.Do Kwon, who founded Terraform and nurtured two cryptocurrencies central to the bankruptcy, had faced nine counts in a superseding indictment filed by prosecutors in January 2025 to …

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Gaza mediators ‘working very hard’ to revive truce plan: Egypt

Egypt said Tuesday it was working with fellow Gaza mediators Qatar and the United States to broker a 60-day truce, as part of a renewed push to end the Israel-Hamas war.Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty made the announcement at a press conference in Cairo, as two Palestinian sources told AFP that a senior Hamas delegation was due to meet Egyptian officials for talks on Wednesday.Diplomacy aimed at securing an elusive ceasefire and hostage release deal in the 22-month-old war has stalled for weeks, after the latest round of negotiations broke down in July.Abdelatty said that “we are working very hard now in full cooperation with the Qataris and Americans”, aiming for “a ceasefire for 60 days, with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian detainees, and the flow of humanitarian and medical assistance to Gaza without restrictions, without conditions”.One of the Palestinian sources earlier told AFP that the mediators were working “to formulate a new comprehensive ceasefire agreement proposal” that would include the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza “in one batch”.Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure a breakthrough since a short-lived truce earlier this year.The Hamas delegation expected in Cairo, led by the group’s chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, is scheduled to meet Egyptian officials on Wednesday to “discuss the latest developments” in negotiations, said the second Palestinian source.News of the potential truce talks came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel has intensified its air strikes on Gaza City in recent days, following a government decision to expand the war there.- Intensified strikes -Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has not provided an exact timetable on when forces may enter the area, but civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Tuesday that air raids had already begun increasing over the past three days.Bassal said the neighbourhoods of Zeitun and Sabra have been hit “with very heavy air strikes targeting civilian homes”.”For the third consecutive day, the Israeli occupation is intensifying its bombardment” using “bombs, drones, and also highly explosive munitions that cause massive destruction”, he said.Bassal said that Israeli strikes across the territory, including on Gaza City, killed at least 33 people on Tuesday.”The bombardment has been extremely intense for the past two days. With every strike, the ground shakes,” said Majed al-Hosary, a resident of Gaza City’s Zeitun.”There are martyrs under the rubble that no one can reach because the shelling hasn’t stopped.”An Israeli air strike on Sunday killed five Al Jazeera employees and a freelance reporter outside a Gaza City hospital, with Israel accusing one of the slain Al Jazeera correspondents of being a Hamas militant.Israel has faced mounting criticism over the war, which was triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 2023 attack.UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allowed in.Netanyahu is under mounting pressure to secure the release of the remaining hostages — 49 people including 27 the Israeli military says are dead — as well as over his plans to expand the war.The Israeli premier has vowed to keep on with or without the backing of Israel’s allies.Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel’s offensive has killed at least 61,599 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, whose toll the United Nations considers reliable.