��������

JERUSALEM: Hamas had yet to respond Tuesday to Donald Trump on his plan for Gaza, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military would stay in most of the territory after he gave the US president his backing.
The plan calls for a ceasefire, release of hostages by Hamas within 72 hours, disarmament of Hamas and gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, followed by a post-war transitional authority headed by Trump himself.
A senior Hamas official said Monday the group had not yet received the 20-point plan, but an official briefed on the matter later told AFP that Qatari and Egyptian mediators had met with Hamas to provide them with the document.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Hassan Mahmoud Rashad “just met with Hamas negotiators and shared the 20-point plan. The Hamas negotiators said they would review it in good faith and provide a response,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In a video statement posted on his Telegram channel after his joint press conference with Trump, Netanyahu said the military would stay in most of Gaza, and also said he did not agree to a Palestinian state during his talks with Trump.
“We will recover all our hostages, alive and well, while the (Israeli military) will remain in most of the Gaza Strip,” he said.
Still, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of Netanyahu’s coalition government, blasted the plan as a “resounding diplomatic failure.”
“In my estimation, it will also end in tears. Our children will be forced to fight in Gaza again,” he said.
In Washington on Monday, Trump insisted that peace in the Middle East was “beyond very close” and describing the announcement as a “beautiful day — potentially one of the greatest days ever in civilization.”
His plan includes deployment of a “temporary international stabilization force” — and the creation of a transitional authority headed by Trump himself and including former British premier Tony Blair.
Blair, still widely hated in the Middle East for his role in the 2003 Iraq war, hailed the “bold and intelligent” plan.
The deal would demand Hamas militants fully disarm and be excluded from future roles in the government, but those who agreed to “peaceful co-existence” would be given amnesty.
During the press conference, Netanyahu cast doubt on whether the Palestinian Authority, which nominally runs the occupied West Bank, would be allowed a role in Gaza’s governance.
Trump noted that during their meeting Netanyahu had strongly opposed any Palestinian statehood — something that the US plan leaves room for.
“I support your plan to end the war in Gaza which achieves our war aims,” Netanyahu said.
“If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr.President, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself.”
Trump said that Israel would have his “full backing” to do so if Hamas did not accept the deal.
Reaction was global, and swift. Key Arab and Muslim nations, including mediators Egypt and Qatar, hailed the agreement’s “sincere efforts” in the wake of their own talks with Trump last week.
Washington’s European allies promptly voiced support, with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy sharing strong expressions of support for the plan.
And European Union chief Antonio Costa urged all parties to “seize this moment to give peace a genuine chance.”
But in Gaza, people expressed skepticism.
“It’s clear that this plan is unrealistic,” 39-year-old Ibrahim Joudeh told AFP from his shelter in the so-called humanitarian zone of Al-Mawasi in south Gaza.
“It’s drafted with conditions that the US and Israel know Hamas will never accept. For us, that means the war and the suffering will continue,” said the computer programmer, originally from the southern city of Rafah, devastated by a military offensive that began in May.
Israeli air strikes and shelling continued across Gaza on Tuesday, according to the territory’s civil defense agency and witnesses.
The Israeli military said its forces were carrying out operations across the territory, particularly in Gaza City, where they have mounted a major offensive in recent weeks.
“Over the past day, the IAF (air force) struck more than 160 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including terrorists, weapons storage facilities, observation posts, and terrorist infrastructure sites,” the military said in a statement.
The Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank but could be set for a role in a post-war Gaza government, welcomed Trump’s “sincere and determined efforts.”
Hamas ally Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, said the plan would fuel further aggression against Palestinians.
“Through this, Israel is attempting — via the United States — to impose what it could not achieve through war,” the group said in a statement.
Israel’s military offensive has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed 66,055 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

KHARTOUM: The shattered remains of antique pottery and shards of ancient statues lie among broken glass and bullet casings at Sudan’s National Museum, not far from where the Blue and White Nile meet in the capital Khartoum. After over two years of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, Sudan’s army expelled the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces from Khartoum and its environs this spring. But much of the city still lies in ruins, including many of its heritage sites. Antiquities were damaged in the fighting, and still more were carted off by looters and smuggled into neighboring countries. Preservationists who returned to the city after the army’s advance are now sifting through the wreckage and trying to recover and restore what they can. “The museum was extremely damaged. A lot of artifacts were stolen that are very, very important for us. Any piece in the museum here ... has a story,” said Rehab Kheder Al-Rasheed, head of a committee set up to evaluate damage and secure museums and archaeological sites in Khartoum state, as she stood in a hallway strewn with debris. So far, about 4,000 antiquities have been counted missing in Sudan, according to Ikhlas Abdullatif, director of the museums sector at Sudan’s National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums. These include pieces in Khartoum, as well as other parts of the country such as the western Darfur region, where about 700 pieces disappeared from museums in the cities of Nyala and El Geneina, Abdullatif said. In El Geneina, the museum’s curator was killed when the building was shelled. Many of these pieces appear to have been smuggled to neighboring countries. Sudan is among a long list of countries including Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt where antiquities smuggling became rife in the wake of political upheaval. The National Museum’s open-air courtyard includes multiple temples and other artifacts moved to Khartoum from the country’s north in the 1960s to preserve them from flooding caused by the construction of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. One of the most spectacular is the Buhen Temple, built by the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned around 1,500 B.C. The temple sustained damage during the fighting which authorities are working to repair – albeit with “very, very limited resources,” Rasheed said. The National Museum was not the only site to suffer damage. The interior of Khartoum’s Republican Palace Museum is now filled with charred wreckage. Antique cars parked outside sit amid debris, their windows and headlamps smashed. Abdullatif estimated that the cost of restoring and maintaining Sudan’s museums and securing the remaining antiquities could be as high as $100 million. It is a sum preservationists are unlikely to obtain any time soon given the country’s devastated economy. There is also the question of when foreign specialists might feel it is safe enough to return. Sudan had around 45 archaeological missions in the country before the war, Rasheed said. Today, all of them have stopped. “We hope, God willing, the missions come back and continue their work,” Rasheed said.