Trump and Netanyahu in key talks; Syria aims to restore US ties, says de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa

Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said his government aimed to restore ties with the US in the coming days but had not yet had any contact with the Trump administration, according to an interview with The Economist.

Talks had started on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, said a Hamas spokesperson on Tuesday.

Trump and Netanyahu in pivotal talks on Middle East  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, as the two leaders addressed the future of the Gaza ceasefire and ways to counter Iran.

Their meeting coincided with the start of mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas on the crucial second stage of the ceasefire deal and hostage release.

The region is at a critical juncture, with the Gaza truce fragile, a parallel Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire agreement in Lebanon nearing possible expiration and concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions persisting despite its weakened state.

Adding to unease is Trump’s suggestion that Gazans should be moved to neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Jordan, echoing the wishes of Israel’s far right and contradicting former president Joe Biden’s commitment against mass displacement of Palestinians.

Arab states have rejected the idea.

But a senior US official, when asked whether Trump was serious, defended the president, saying that he saw war-shattered Gaza as a “demolition site”, believed it would take 10-15 years to rebuild and it would be inhumane to force people to live on uninhabitable land.

The US, the official told reporters on Tuesday, would not impose a resolution but the problem needed to be treated realistically, with Arab partners and Israel helping to craft “creative solutions”.

In his first term, Trump handed Netanyahu a series of successes, including relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and the signing of the Abraham Accords, normalising relations between Israel and several Arab states.

He remains a strong supporter of US ally Israel, taking credit for helping broker the Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave even before he returned to office, while insisting he wants to end the wars in the Middle East.

Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, played a key role in helping the Biden administration secure the long-sought Gaza deal before the 20 January transfer of power in the US. The first phase has led to Hamas’ release of 18 hostages and Israel’s release of hundreds of jailed Palestinians.

“We’re in phase two now,” Witkoff told reporters. He said he met Netanyahu on Monday to discuss parameters for the policy negotiations and would meet the prime minister of Qatar, a mediator in the negotiations, in the US on Thursday.

On Monday, Trump acknowledged to reporters that there were no assurances that the ceasefire would hold.

Syria’s president aims to restore US ties

Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said his government aimed to restore ties with the US in the coming days but had not yet had any contact with the Trump administration, according to an interview with The Economist.

Sharaa, declared Syria’s interim head of state last week, also noted that US troops were in Syria without government approval, adding that any such presence should be agreed with the state. He described US sanctions still imposed on Syria as “the gravest risk” to the country.

“I believe that President Trump seeks peace in the area, and it is a top priority to lift the sanctions. The United States of America does not have any interest in maintaining the suffering of the Syrian people,” Sharaa said in the interview published late on Monday.

Sharaa led the Islamist armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, in the lightning offensive that toppled former President Bashar al-Assad on 8 December.

Syria has been under tough sanctions for years, imposed by the US and other Western powers to isolate Assad over his brutal crackdown and to generate pressure for a political solution after more than a decade of civil war.

In January, the outgoing Biden administration issued a sanctions exemption for transactions with Syrian governing institutions for six months. It followed a visit to Damascus by senior US diplomats in December.

The United States, however, continues to designate HTS as a terrorist entity, even though it severed ties with al-Qaeda in 2016.

The US embassy in Damascus suspended its operations in 2012.

Sharaa said HTS’s terrorist designation had “become meaningless” following a decision to dissolve all the armed factions that fought Assad.

Hamas says talks start on second phase of Gaza ceasefire deal

Talks had started on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, said the spokesperson for the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Tuesday.

The first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into force on 19 January after 15 months of war and involved a halt to fighting, the release of some of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the freeing of some Palestinian prisoners.

Phase two of the three-phase deal is intended to focus on agreements on the release of the remaining hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

“Contacts and negotiation on the second phase have begun,” said Hamas spokesperson Abdel-Latif Al-Qanoua, without providing further details.

Netanyahu’s office said earlier on Tuesday that Israel was preparing to send a high-level delegation to the Qatari capital Doha to discuss continued implementation of the deal.

The initial six-week truce, agreed with Egyptian and Qatari mediators and backed by the US, has remained largely intact but prospects for a durable settlement are unclear.

The war began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since then has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, say Palestinian health authorities.

Hamas and Netanyahu’s government, which includes hardliners who opposed the ceasefire deal, say they are committed to reaching an agreement in the second phase although each has criticised the other over its implementation.

Israeli leaders say Hamas cannot remain in Gaza, but the movement has taken every opportunity it could to show the control it still exerts despite the loss of much of its former leadership and thousands of fighters during the war.

Qanoua said Israel had stalled in implementing the humanitarian protocol of the ongoing first phase, hindering the repair of hospitals, roads, water wells and infrastructure destroyed by Israel’s 15-month offensive.

Freed Palestinian prisoners arrive in Turkey

Fifteen Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel under the 19 January ceasefire agreement with Hamas arrived in Turkey on Tuesday after being deported first to Egypt, said the Turkish foreign minister and the Hamas prisoners’ media office.

Among dozens of such former prisoners, they were the first to be taken in by a third country other than Egypt under the terms of the ceasefire, which bar prisoners convicted by Israel of violent attacks from returning to the Palestinian Territories.

Palestinians view those jailed for fighting Israel as resistance heroes.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the 15 former prisoners had arrived via Egypt, after Ankara responded positively to a request under the ceasefire deal provisions.

“We think it would be beneficial for some regional countries to take a role in this matter... Egypt and Qatar would play a role in that respect,” Fidan said at a joint press conference in Ankara with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty.

The first phase of the ceasefire in Gaza has led to Hamas’ release of 18 hostages and Israel’s release of 583 jailed Palestinians, of whom at least 79 were sent to Egypt.

As well as Turkey, some may be sent on to Algeria or Qatar, say Hamas sources.

Two Israeli soldiers killed in West Bank shooting

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded when a gunman opened fire on troops in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, setting off a gunfight in which the shooter was killed by Israeli soldiers, said the military.

Two of the wounded soldiers were in serious condition, with the other six lightly injured, said the military.

The incident, at a checkpoint near Tayasir in the Jordan Valley, took place during a period of high tension in the West Bank, with major Israeli operations under way in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm and smaller raids in other locations.

Israeli media outlet Ynet reported that the attacker, armed with an M-16 automatic rifle, opened fire from close range on a soldier coming out of a fortified bunker, leading to a gunfight that lasted several minutes.

The incident is the latest in a surge in violence across the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in 2023.

Israeli troops have conducted repeated sweeps, arresting thousands of Palestinians and killing hundreds, including both armed militants and uninvolved civilians.

Dozens of Israelis have also been killed in attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel.

Israeli military operation turns Jenin refugee camp into ‘ghost town’

An Israeli military operation in Jenin has turned the West Bank refugee camp into what residents and some officials describe as a ghost town, causing destruction on a scale not seen there for more than 20 years.

Israel’s military says the large-scale raid is aimed at suppressing Iranian-backed militant groups in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Two weeks after the military operation began, Jenin is largely deserted. Thousands of Palestinians have left their homes, taking only what they could carry, after Israel told them to leave through drones with loudspeakers.

After destroying roadways and other infrastructure, Israeli forces demolished multiple buildings at the weekend, causing loud explosions.

“We stayed at home until the drone came to us and started calling for us to evacuate the house and evacuate the neighbourhood because they wanted to carry out an explosion,” said 39-year-old Khalil Huwail, a father of four who left with his family.

“We left in the clothes we were wearing. We couldn’t carry anything, that was forbidden,” he said. “The camp is completely empty.”

After bulldozers and armoured vehicles were deployed near his home, he said, residents trudged away along rubble-strewn roadways to an assembly point where Red Crescent vehicles awaited.

Israel’s military said it had destroyed 23 structures and would “continue to operate to thwart terror wherever necessary”.

From a hillside overlooking the camp, little could be seen apart from clouds of smoke and soldiers moving among the blackened walls of burnt-out houses.

Unrwa, the UN Palestinian relief agency, said the demolitions in Jenin “undermine the fragile ceasefire reached in Gaza, and risk a new escalation”.

It said Jenin, a township for descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, “has been rendered a ghost town”.

Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub said the latest operation had left in the camp only about 100 people from the 3,490 families that had been there before it. DM

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