��������

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has undeniably scored a diplomatic victory by helping to broker a truce for Gaza, but the path to the lasting peace he says he wants for the Middle East is littered with obstacles.
And it remains to be seen whether the 79-year-old Trump — who is not exactly known for his attention to the fine print — will devote the same level of energy to the conflict over the long term, once his victory lap in the region is over next week.
“Any agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, but especially one indirectly brokered between Israel and Hamas is an extraordinary achievement,” Aaron David Miller, who worked for multiple US administrations of both parties, told AFP.
“Trump decided to do something that no American president... of either party has ever done, which is to pressure and squeeze an Israeli prime minister on an issue that that prime minister considered vital to his politics,” said Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But Miller, who has participated in Middle East peace talks over the years, warned of the “universe of complexity and detail” that remains to be hashed out with respect to the implementation of phase two of the deal.
The Israeli army said its troops had ceased fire at 0900 GMT Friday in the Gaza Strip, in anticipation of the release of all Israeli hostages, dead and alive, in the subsequent 72 hours, in compliance with the deal it reached with Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Trump has said he expects to head to the Middle East on Sunday, with stops in Egypt, where the talks took place, and Israel.

Art of the deal? 

Given that every US president over the past 20 years has been unsuccessful in resolving crises between Israel and the Palestinians, Trump’s accomplishment is already remarkable.
But the Republican billionaire president has broader aspirations — to revive the Abraham Accords reached during his first White House term, under which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco offered Israel diplomatic recognition.
Trump has brought his son-in-law Jared Kushner, one of the architects of those accords, back into the administration to work with special envoy Steve Witkoff on the Gaza negotiations.
Officials and foreign policy observers agree that Trump deftly used a mix of carrot and stick — publicly and privately, and especially with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — to get the deal done.
He also leveraged his strong ties with Arab and Muslim leaders including Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For Miller, Trump clearly played a “decisive” role.
But while the agreement’s first phase appears to be on track, much remains undefined, including how — and if — Hamas will agree to disarm after two years of devastating conflict in the Palestinian territory, following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
“A ceasefire is not yet a lasting peace,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Thursday, after meeting with European and Arab ministers on how to help the Palestinians in the post-conflict period.
Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote: “Whether this leads to an end to the war remains an open question.”

Huge challenges 

Cook says the challenge now is to fully implement Trump’s 20-point plan, which calls for Hamas to surrender its weapons, the creation of an international stabilization force and new governing structures for Gaza that will not include the Palestinian militant group.
Trump insisted Thursday that “there will be disarming” by Hamas and “pullbacks” by Israeli forces.

Then on Friday, he added: “I think there is consensus on most of it, and some of the details, like anything else, will be worked out.”
But his administration will need to work hard to finalize the deal, and ensure that Arab countries in the region are invested in helping rebuild a devastated Gaza.
A team of 200 US military personnel will “oversee” the Gaza truce, senior US officials said Thursday.
Miller said there are “operational” holes in the plan as it stands, including “no detailed planning for either how to decommission and/or demilitarize Gaza, even if you had Hamas’s assent, which you don’t.”
The plan also calls for the creation of a so-called “Board of Peace,” a transitional body to be chaired by Trump himself — a proposal Hamas rejected on Thursday.
“Despite coming to office eager to shed America’s Middle East commitments, Trump just took on a huge one: responsibility for a peace plan that will forever bear his name,” wrote Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
 

DUBAI: The Arab world is often imagined through the lens of its ancient recipes and family kitchens. But behind those familiar traditions, new innovators are reshaping how food is cooked, stored, and even discarded.

From digital meal-planning apps in the Gulf to solar-powered composters in North Africa, innovation is bringing sustainability and convenience into the kitchen.

This is not just about gadgets, however. It is about ideas that bring tradition and technology together, showing how simple changes in the kitchen can influence whole communities and even shape policy.

They highlight how homemakers, engineers, app developers, and entrepreneurs are using food as an entry point to tackle some of the Arab world’s most pressing challenges: waste, energy, and climate resilience.

One example is Yufeed, an Abu Dhabi-based app created by entrepreneur Arij Baidas to help ease the daily stress of meal planning while tackling the food waste that often piles up in households.

“The inspiration for Yufeed came from the everyday decision fatigue that comes with constantly asking: ‘What should I cook today?’” Baidas told Arab News.

With thousands of small decisions to make every day, “this is even more exhausting for mothers trying to provide a balanced and nutritious menu with variety for their families.”

Yufeed reduces waste by generating weekly menus tailored to what families already have in their cupboards, preventing overbuying, overordering, and the temptation of last-minute takeout.

“It’s about turning planning into prevention,” she said.

Beyond meal planning, the platform is building features that prompt users to rethink leftovers.

“In many homes, leftovers still carry a stigma — they’re seen as second-best or something to quietly discard,” Baidas said.

She said Yufeed encourages families to reframe this through efficiency rather than shame — for example, by turning leftovers into school snacks, freezing them for later use, or drawing on traditional dishes that began as reinventions of old meals.

“It’s also about celebrating resourcefulness,” she added.

Baidas said Yufeed is also developing features that encourage mindful consumption, which suggest “creative ways to use leftovers or surplus ingredients before they spoil.”

The app’s recipe-sharing function strengthens this shift: “It’s about shifting mindsets from ‘throwaway’ to ‘recreate.’”

The app’s roughly 30,000 active users — often entire families — reflects a clear transformation in daily habits.

Families are cooking more at home, making fewer unnecessary grocery runs, and reusing ingredients more creatively.

“People are involving kids in meal planning, which builds awareness around food use,” Baidas said, noting that while the company is still measuring exact reductions, the early signs of less waste are clear.

But the challenge goes far beyond individual households.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the Middle East and North Africa region discards nearly 34 percent of all food produced — one of the highest rates in the world.

The World Health Organization has said that such waste not only undermines food security but also intensifies climate pressures, since decomposing food in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.

That same rethinking of the food chain is visible elsewhere in the region — but in Morocco, the innovation begins not with the menu, but with the scraps left behind.

Researchers at Sultan Moulay Slimane University have designed an autonomous rotary composter powered entirely by photovoltaic energy.

The device is intended to reduce the amount of household waste that ends up in landfills while producing valuable fertilizer for gardens and farms.

Using a solar panel to rotate food scraps inside a sealed drum, it creates the conditions for organic matter to break down efficiently.

According to a study describing the project, “the production time for compost is approximately four weeks, making it a practical and sustainable solution for household waste management.”

The researchers highlighted its simplicity and accessibility, noting that “the system is designed to operate autonomously, requiring minimal human intervention beyond loading and unloading.”

In a country where landfill space is limited and agriculture remains central to livelihoods, the innovation connects renewable energy directly to daily kitchen practices, turning waste into a useful resource.

Across the border in Tunisia, the shift toward solar power is more often associated with national infrastructure, but the impact is filtering into kitchens, too.

The government has approved projects that are expected to generate 500 megawatts of electricity — part of an ambition to meet 30 percent of the country’s energy demand with renewables by 2030.

While these are large-scale efforts, they have also encouraged smaller experiments at the household level.

Families are beginning to adopt solar ovens, while communities in regions such as Tozeur explore how abundant sunshine can power homes and kitchens.

Solar cooking may still be a niche practice, but attitudes are shifting, with families increasingly open to the idea that traditional dishes can be prepared not with gas or wood but with the same sunshine that warms their courtyards.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, entrepreneurs in �������� are tackling the same challenges from a different angle — rethinking how kitchens themselves operate.

One example is Matbakhi, a Riyadh-based platform that partners with chefs and restaurants to launch delivery-only brands from existing kitchens.

Speaking to Fast Company Middle East, co-founder Joe Frem described the model as an “ultra asset-light food-tech startup creating, marketing, and operating virtual food delivery brands.”

The approach cuts costs while meeting surging demand for delivery, which in �������� is projected to reach billions in market value.

But Frem also sees it as part of something bigger than logistics.

“The way food is conceptualized, sourced, cooked, delivered, and consumed is evolving by the day,” he told Hotelier Middle East, framing Matbakhi’s work within a broader transformation of how Saudis eat and how kitchens themselves function.

From Abu Dhabi to Tozeur, these experiments prove that kitchens can be more than just places of routine — they can be engines of change.

Whether through an app that reshapes daily habits, a cloud platform that redefines how restaurants operate, or solar-powered devices that turn scraps into soil, the Arab kitchen is quietly becoming a space of innovation.

As Yufeed founder Baidas put it: “It’s about building a culture of sustainability through food storytelling.”

The challenge now is to see if these initial shifts can scale up, moving from households and pilot projects to something larger, lasting, and transformative for the region.