Hamas

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Israel’s military launched attacks on what it described as Hezbollah and Hamas “targets” in Lebanon after issuing ⁠evacuation orders for four villages in the ​country’s east and south.

An ‍Israeli army spokesperson said earlier it was planning air strikes on Hezbollah and ‍Hamas “military infrastructure” ⁠in the villages of Hammara and Ain el-Tineh in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and Kfar Hatta and Aanan in the south.

An AFP news agency photographer in Kfar Hatta saw dozens of families flee the village after an Israeli warning was issued with drone activity in the area. Ambulances and fire trucks are on standby.

Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 ending ​more than a year ‌of heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. Israel has repeatedly violated the truce with bombardment and continues to occupy five areas in the country.

‌Lebanon ‌has faced growing pressure ⁠from the United States and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear Israel could escalate strikes.

Lebanon’s army was expected to complete the disarmament south of the Litani River – 30km (12 miles) from the border with Israel – by the end of 2025. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Sunday called the disarmament efforts “far from sufficient”.

PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, as Washington looks to create fresh momentum for a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza that could be in danger of stalling before a complicated second phase.

Trump could use the face-to-face at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to try to leverage his strong relationship with Netanyahu and look for ways to speed up the peace process. Before that, Netanyahu met separately with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that Trump championed has mostly held, but progress has slowed recently. Both sides accuse each other of violations, and divisions have emerged among the U.S., Israel and Arab countries about the path forward.

The truce’s first phase began in October, days after the two-year anniversary of the initial Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people. All but one of the 251 hostages taken then have been released, alive or dead.

The Israeli leader has signaled he is in no rush to move forward with the next phase as long as the remains of Ran Gvili are still in Gaza. Netanyahu’s office said he met with Gvili’s parents in Florida.

Now comes the next, far more complicated part. Trump’s 20-point plan — which was approved by the U.N. Security Council — lays out an ambitious vision for ending Hamas’ rule of Gaza.

Iran and other topics likely to come up

The two leaders also are expected to discuss other topics, including Iran, whose nuclear capabilities Trump insists were “completely and fully obliterated” after U.S. strikes on its nuclear sites in June. Israeli officials have been quoted in local media as expressing concern about Iran rebuilding its supply of long-range missiles capable of striking Israel.

There are many key facets of the ceasefire’s second phase that Israel’s leader doesn’t support or has even openly opposed, said Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“This is going to be a really tall order, I think, for President Trump to get Netanyahu to agree,” she said.

“How he does that, what kind of pressure he puts on Netanyahu, I think, is going to be important to watch for,” said Yacoubian, who also said the two could exhibit ”a broader clash of approaches to the region.”

Next phase is complex

If successful, the second phase would see the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision by a group chaired by Trump and known as the Board of Peace. The Palestinians would form a “technocratic, apolitical” committee to run daily affairs in Gaza, under Board of Peace supervision.

It further calls for normalized relations between Israel and the Arab world, and a possible pathway to Palestinian independence. Then there are thorny logistical and humanitarian questions, including rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza, disarming Hamas and creating a security apparatus called the International Stabilization Force.

The Board of Peace would oversee Gaza’s reconstruction under a two-year, renewable U.N. mandate. Its members had been expected to be named by the end of the year and might even be revealed after Monday’s meeting, but the announcement could be pushed into next month.

Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House in his second term, but this will be their first in-person meeting since Trump went to Israel in October to mark the start of the ceasefire’s initial phase. Netanyahu has been to Mar-a-Lago before, including in July 2024 when Trump was still seeking reelection.

Much remains unsettled

Their latest meeting comes after U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, recently huddled in Florida with officials from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, which have been mediating the ceasefire.

Two main challenges have complicated moving to the second phase, according to an official who was briefed on those meetings. Israeli officials have been taking a lot of time to vet and approve members of the Palestinian technocratic committee from a list given to them by the mediators, and Israel continues its military strikes.

Trump’s plan also calls for the stabilization force, proposed as a multinational body, to maintain security. But it, too, has yet to be formed. Whether details will be forthcoming after Monday’s meeting is unclear.

A Western diplomat said there is a “huge gulf” between the U.S.-Israeli understanding of the force’s mandate and that of other major countries in the region, as well as European governments.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that haven’t been made public.

The U.S. and Israel want the force to have a “commanding role” in security duties, including disarming Hamas and other militant groups. But countries being courted to contribute troops fear that mandate will make it an “occupation force,” the diplomat said.

Hamas has said it is ready to discuss “freezing or storing” its arsenal of weapons but insists it has a right to armed resistance as long as Israel occupies Palestinian territory. One U.S. official said a potential plan might be to offer cash incentives in exchange for weapons, echoing a “buyback” program Witkoff has previously floated.

Questions about Gaza reconstruction

One displaced man in Khan Yunis, Iyad Abu Sakla, said Trump needed to urge Netanyahu to allow Palestinians to return to their homes. Under the agreement, most Palestinians are permitted in a zone just under half the size of Gaza.

“We are exhausted. This displacement is bad; it’s cold and freezing. Enough lying to us and enough insulting our intelligence,” Sakla said.

Israeli bombardment and ground operations have transformed neighborhoods across Gaza into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching in all directions.

Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are pressing for a negotiated deal on disarming Hamas and on additional Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before moving to next elements of the plan, including deployment of the international security force and reconstruction, three Arab officials said.

Three other officials, including two Americans, said the United Arab Emirates has agreed to fund reconstruction, including new communities, although they said plans have not been settled.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations between the various countries. The UAE did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Weissert, Mednick and Magdy write for the Associated Press. AP writers Darlene Superville in Washington and Lee Keath and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.

Dec. 29 (UPI) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit with President Donald Trump Monday in Florida to discuss the peace plan with Gaza.

Netanyahu is also likely to lobby the president for help with Iran as it continues its work on nuclear weapons.

The meeting will happen at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. On Sunday, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the resort to continue working on a peace plan between Ukraine and Russia.

Local officials have said that more than 400 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire, NBC News reported.

The Trump administration wants to see progress on the plan’s second phase in January. That means a Palestinian technocratic government would be created. Hamas would disarm, and the Israeli Defense Forces would pull out of Gaza.

But some believe that Netanyahu will stall the process and demand Hamas fully disarm before the IDF withdraws. Hamas has said it will disarm as progress moves toward an independent Palestinian state.

Netanyahu and his staff have repeatedly rejected Palestinian statehood since October.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that Israel will build settlements in Gaza and “never fully withdraw” even as Hamas disarms, the BBC reported. This would violate the cease-fire agreement.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Netanyahu before Trump’s meeting.

Two other tenets of the cease-fire haven’t yet emerged: A “Board of Peace” led by Trump is planned for governance of Gaza, and the International Stabilization Force, led by the United Nations, which will help with peacekeeping in Gaza.

Rubio has said those measures will be in place “very soon.”

Israeli officials are concerned that Iran is moving forward with its plans for ballistic missiles, and Netanyahu is expected to discuss options with Trump at Monday’s meeting.

Israel damaged the operations in June, but it wants to attack again, NBC News reported.

Dec. 27 (UPI) — Nine people who are accused of raising more than $8 million in Italy to help fund Hamas have been arrested by Italian authorities.

The nine are accused of raising $8.2 million over the past two years to help fund Hamas after it carried out the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli civilians and started the war in Gaza.

“The operation completed this morning by the State Police and the Guardia di Finanza (Financial Police) is a very important and significant one, with the arrest of nine people, including the most well-known Mohammad Hannoun,” Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said in a post on X on Saturday.

“Despite the necessary presumption of innocence that must always be recognized at this stage, the veil has been torn away on behaviors and activities that, behind the facade of initiatives to benefit the Palestinian population, concealed support for and participation in organizations with actual terrorist aims of an Islamist nature,” Piantedosi said.

“This is a danger to which our government is paying the utmost attention,” he added.

A joint investigation by Italy’s counter-terrorism and financial police forces started after the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Investigators uncovered a fundraising system with headquarters in Genoa and associates in Milan that raised the funds under the pretext of supporting Gazans.

“The suspects collected donations intended for the civilian population of Gaza,” a police statement said.

“However, it emerged that 71% of these funds were diverted to Hamas’ coffers to finance its military wing and support the families of suicide bombers or those detained for terrorism,” the police officials said.

Central to the investigation is Hannoun, who is the president of the Palestinian Association that is based in Italy and has denied being a financier for Hamas.

The funds allegedly were raised by Hannoun and eight other defendants through three charities and laundered to hide their true destination.

Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization by the United States and many other nations.

Dec. 24 (UPI) — Christians in Israel and Palestine are celebrating Christmas for the first time in two years now that Israel and Hamas have entered a cease-fire.

In Bethlehem, in the West Bank, tourism normally boosts the economy this time of year as Christians come from around the world to see the city where Jesus was born. But due to the fighting, tourists have avoided the region.

This year, the cease-fire emboldened Bethlehem Mayor Maher Canawati to bring back the annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, which drew visitors from around the region, but very few from international locations.

“[In] Bethlehem, you know, we are living from tourists, from tourism and from pilgrims who come to stay in our hotels, to eat in our restaurants, to buy our souvenirs that we’re producing here,” Canawati told CBS News. “And there was a complete halt on tourism for the past two years.”

The lack of tourists has driven Bethlehem unemployment to 70%.

Muhammad Abu Jurah’s Bethlehem souvenir shop has been in his family for generations, but he’s had to lay off all his staff.

“We don’t have a lot of tourists because, you know, the war,” he told CBS. “So, this is why they have a big problem in Bethlehem without tourists.”

Bethlehem tour guide Matthew Qasis said he wants the tourists to return.

“Come back, because Bethlehem belongs to everyone, and Bethlehem is a message of love and peace, a message needed now more than ever, and a prayer of hope that the faithful return to the place where it’s believed Christmas began,” he told CBS.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Catholic Church’s top leader in the Holy Land and the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, led a procession Wednesday from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

One day earlier, he led a Christmas Eve Mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, at which he baptized a new member: Marco Nader Habshi, The Washington Post reported.

Gaza Christians have been unable to celebrate their holidays openly for years. The Christian population in Gaza, mostly Catholic and Greek Orthodox, has dropped from 1,000 to 500.

“The celebrations of Christian and Muslim festivals were shared,” said Yousef AlKhouri, a Gaza native and dean at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank, about when he was young. He told The Post that there was always a sense of solidarity among “Palestinian Christians and Muslims in Gaza: going to school together, playing together, going to the YMCA.”

But since Hamas took control of the enclave, Christians have mostly celebrated privately.

“There is an assumption that Gaza has no Christian population, or no Christian history,” AlKhouri said. “And that’s not true.”

Holy Family Church served as a sanctuary for many Christians during the war. Elias al-Jilda, an Orthodox Christian in Gaza, had to shelter at the Catholic church after his home was destroyed one month into the war, he told The Post. He and his family now have a rented home but are still working to furnish it.

The holiday celebration “will not be full of joy, but it is an attempt to renew life,” Jilda, 59, who serves on the council of the Arab Orthodox Church in Gaza, said of this season’s holiday celebration. He told The Post he remembers Christmas in Gaza when Muslims and Christians came together to celebrate city-wide. “It was a special occasion; an opportunity for us to breathe.”

At the Sunday Mass at Holy Family, Pizzaballa told the Christians in Gaza to hold on to hope.

“We are called not only to survive, but to rebuild life,” he said. “We must bring the spirit of Christmas — the spirit of light, tenderness and love. It may seem impossible, but after two years of terrible war, we are still here.”

Dec. 19 (UPI) — An international hunger watchdog group said that while Gaza is no longer in famine conditions since the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, it’s still food-insecure and many people still go hungry.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a United Nations-backed group, released a report Friday that said on X that at least 1.6 million people are still facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

It said that acute malnutrition is still critical in Gaza City and is serious in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis with nearly 101,000 children under 5 likely to suffer acute malnutrition through mid-October 2026 throughout Gaza.

Israel’s foreign ministry called the IPC report “deliberately distorted” and “doesn’t reflect the reality in the Gaza Strip,” the BBC reported.

Between “600 and 800 aid trucks enter the Gaza Strip every day, 70 percent of them carrying food — nearly five times more than what the IPC itself said was required for the Strip,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Since the cease-fire, humanitarian agencies have been better able to get aid into Gaza, easing the famine that caused widespread hunger and malnutrition in the area during fighting, when Israel blocked aid from the Palestinians.

“Over the next 12 months, across the entire Gaza Strip, nearly 101,000 children aged 6-59 months are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition and require treatment, with more than 31,000 severe cases,” the report said. “During the same period, 37,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women will also face acute malnutrition and require treatment.”

UNWRA, the U.N. agency for Palestine, supported the report from the IPC.

“The latest report from the IPC info underscores how fragile the gains have been since the cease-fire began in October,” UNWRA said in a statement. “While Gaza Governorate is no longer classified as being in famine, 1.6 million people still face high levels of acute food insecurity. To end this catastrophe, supplies must be let in at scale and humanitarians allowed to do their job.”

Responding to reports that Hamas may be willing to partially disarm, handing over heavy weaponry but keeping its small arms, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said peace will never happen if the group has the capability to “threaten or attack Israel.”