Smoke billows following an Israeli air strike on Gaza City, 09 October 2023. (EPA)
Iran and Russia on Friday called for an immediate ceasefire in the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza.
The Russian foreign ministry said that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, discussed the current situation pertaining to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict during a telephone call.
“The two sides stressed the need for an immediate ceasefire and urgent humanitarian aid to the civilian population,” the Ministry statement said.
Meanwhile, a veteran Thai politician said on Friday that he held direct talks with the Palestinian group Hamas seeking the safe release of Thai hostages it is holding, amid a flurry of diplomatic activity by Thailand’s government.
Areepen Uttarasin, a veteran Thai politician and former education minister, said the back-channel talks that lasted for about two hours were conducted in person in the Iranian capital Tehran, on Oct. 26, and that Hamas officials said Thai hostages were safe and well-looked after.
“I told them that I am here not to negotiate but simply to ask for their release,” said Areepen, who declined to name the Hamas officials he met with.
Thailand's Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara Pranpree said on Thursday that his country was in touch with Iran and other regional governments that can contact Hamas, including Qatar and Egypt.
Parnpree, who was in the Middle East earlier this week, said Iran was close to Hamas and has promised to help with negotiations.
At least 23 Thai nationals were among more than 240 people taken hostage when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Of the more than 1,400 people Israel says were killed in the rampage, at least 32 were Thai.
Jared Kushner to Visit Israel and Egypt Next Week with Board of Peace Officials to Talk Gazahttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5306822-jared-kushner-visit-israel-and-egypt-next-week-board-peace-officials-talk-gaza
Trump envoy Jared Kushner at the Lake Lucerne Summit at the Buergenstock resort in Obbuergen, near Lucerne, Switzerland, Sunday, June 21, 2026. (Urs Flueeler, Pool Photo via AP)
Jared Kushner to Visit Israel and Egypt Next Week with Board of Peace Officials to Talk Gaza
Trump envoy Jared Kushner at the Lake Lucerne Summit at the Buergenstock resort in Obbuergen, near Lucerne, Switzerland, Sunday, June 21, 2026. (Urs Flueeler, Pool Photo via AP)
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition.
An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.
The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, the official said. The trip was reported earlier by Axios.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalized, said the meetings would demonstrate the determination of Trump and the Board of Peace to “see peace, prosperity and sustainable security emerge” in a demilitarized Gaza where Hamas has ceded control to allow reconstruction of the devastated territory.
But Israel has dismissed a recent deal announced by Trump for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian territory, marking a rare public display of friction with the Trump administration. Though Hamas accepted the plan to decommission its weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in recent days that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas has completely disarmed.
The deal had been seen as a potential breakthrough for ending the war in Gaza. The agreement was based on an October ceasefire that ended major military operations and brought about the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, but it has stalled on other fronts.
Israeli Settlers Divert Palestinian Water to Fill West Bank Poolhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5306819-israeli-settlers-divert-palestinian-water-fill-west-bank-pool
Armed Israeli settlers holding an Israeli flag look on as Palestinian and Israeli activists accompany Palestinian landowners in their property, which is threatened with confiscation by Israeli settlers, in Beit Sahour in the Israeli-occupied West Bank August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma
Israeli Settlers Divert Palestinian Water to Fill West Bank Pool
Armed Israeli settlers holding an Israeli flag look on as Palestinian and Israeli activists accompany Palestinian landowners in their property, which is threatened with confiscation by Israeli settlers, in Beit Sahour in the Israeli-occupied West Bank August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma
On a searing summer day, Israeli settlers splashed in a West Bank pool created by siphoning off water that had irrigated Palestinian crops, one of many seizures of water resources across the occupied territory.
The spring served as a lifeline for the nearby village of Fasayil in the fertile Jordan Valley, where Palestinians have relied on it for generations for food, employment and to supplement irregular Israeli supplies to their domestic taps, reported Reuters.
"Our water supply remains cut off to this day, depriving us of the water we depend on for our homes, our livelihoods, and our agricultural land," said Saad Nemer, who farms the land.
Israeli settlers seized his irrigation pipeline in June, channeling the water to an ancient pool in an archaeological site. Soon after, settlers advertised it as an Israeli tourist attraction and Israel's far-right finance minister pledged financial support.
"They are now in the process of developing a recreational park around the pool," Nemer said.
SETTLERS STOP PALESTINIAN VILLAGERS APPROACHING
The seizure of the spring at Fasayil is part of a pattern that Palestinians say is designed to make their lives in the West Bank untenable. Israeli settlers have attacked at least 160 water and sanitation sites across the Palestinian territory this year, United Nations data shows.
Nemer's greenhouses and fields would normally be full of eggplant, zucchini and watermelons, but without water he has not been able to plant in the scorched land.
"The settlers cutting off our water has caused us losses and has meant that many families will lose their work and their livelihoods," he said.
Nemer said that an employee had been beaten up by settlers and he himself had faced threats for attempting to approach the spring as far back as two years ago.
Yishai Shreiber, 21, an Israeli settler who had come to swim in the pool near Fasayil on an August afternoon, said Palestinians would not now dare approach.
"Now that they see this entire mass of people, all these large groups of Jews coming here to bathe, they are afraid to come here," said Shreiber.
Shreiber said the West Bank belonged to the Jewish people, and that if Palestinians don't want to accept Jewish authority, they should leave.
Nemer showed Reuters a 2025 land ownership document from COGAT, the Israeli military agency which enforces civilian policy in the occupied territories. He also presented a map drawn for the pre-occupation 1957 registration of his title deeds showing that his land included both the spring and the pool. COGAT and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich did not respond to requests for comment.
'WATER WAR' IS PART OF ISRAELI WEST BANK TAKEOVER, PALESTINIANS SAY
Israel's far-right coalition government has overseen massive settlement construction that Smotrich says is aimed at burying the idea of a Palestinian state, which has been recognized by more than 150 of 193 UN member states as encompassing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The United Nations and most governments consider the settlements to be illegal under international law related to military occupation. Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 war, but argues the territory is disputed rather than occupied.
Palestinians have experienced a sharp rise in settler violence, and Palestinian field researcher Fares Foqahaa estimated that settlers had now seized control of 95% of springs in the northern Jordan Valley, displacing communities.
In another West Bank village, Qusra, settlers still besieging three homes on Thursday had also cut off their water and electricity.
Adel Yassin, an official with the Palestinian Authority's water authority, said that settlers target water resources as part of a systematic campaign to force Palestinians off their land.
"I see this as a water war. It is the silent bullet that kills Palestinians without a sound," he said, referring to the process of making their livelihoods unsustainable.
ISRAELI ARCHAEOLOGIST SAYS SETTLERS ARE DAMAGING THE SITE
In early June, Eliav Libi, a settler leader targeted with sanctions by Canada and other countries, posted a video showing the pool beginning to fill with water.
He and other settlers say the pool belonged to the biblical-era Jewish king Herod. An archaeologist with the Israeli rights group Emek Shaveh, Alon Arad, said the pool's provenance is unclear.
"We see in many cases the use of archaeology ... to create this feeling that the West Bank is exclusively Jewish," Arad said, adding that the settlers were damaging an archaeological site by filling it with water.
Outside the pool, a billboard advertised a 3 million shekel ($1 million) investment from Smotrich, an architect of settler expansion, who said in a Telegram post the money was for the restoration and development of "Herod's Pools".
The pool and the nearby spring were packed with Israeli families swimming and wading in the water. No Palestinians were present.
One of the few natural springs still available to Palestinians is near the city of Nablus at Wadi al-Badhan. In July, families sat at plastic tables placed in shallow streams picnicking with their feet in the running water.
The springs are located close to Nablus' urban center and had until this year rarely faced incursions from settlers.
Hundreds of settlers descended into the springs earlier this summer, sitting at the plastic tables and walking through the pools, five Palestinians said.
Nizam Fares, the owner of a natural spring park in al-Badhan, said people could no longer enjoy visiting the area.
"People have become scared and jumpy. They come and ask if the settlers are coming or not?" he said.
Grundberg Condemns Houthi Escalation, Fears War in Yemen Could Return at Any Pointhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5306780-grundberg-condemns-houthi-escalation-fears-war-yemen-could-return-any-point
Grundberg Condemns Houthi Escalation, Fears War in Yemen Could Return at Any Point
UN Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg (United Nations)
With ongoing Houthi drone and missile attacks on government-controlled Yemeni areas, United Nations Special Envoy Hans Grundberg has warned that Yemen today faces a more serious risk of return to large-scale conflict than at any point since the 2022 UN-mediated truce.
In a briefing to the UN Security Council on Thursday, Grundberg said there has been an intensification of military activity along frontlines, with recent Houthi attacks in Marib, Hadramout, Mocha and beyond, causing casualties among both military personnel and civilians.
He added that with regional trade and energy flows already under intense pressure from the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, Houthis’ renewed attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, risk deepening Yemen’s entanglement with the wider regional confrontation.
“These attacks also put seafarers’ lives at risk; two days ago, a missile attack on a vessel killed several crew members,” he noted.
The envoy explained that tension had already been mounting prior to these developments.
In July, he said, an unauthorized flight from Tehran toward Sanaa was followed by airstrikes on Sanaa airport, and missile attacks on Abha airport and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.
He made clear that Yemen stands to lose on the years of relative calm.
“For four years, and well beyond its formal expiry, the truce kept Yemen’s front lines relatively quiet. Remarkably, even through the regional turmoil since 2023, this calm mostly held inside Yemen, giving civilians the most sustained respite since the start of the conflict,” he said.
A drone is launched in what Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis say is an attack on the Red Sea port city of Mocha, Yemen, at an unknown location in this still image taken from video released August 9, 2026. REUTERS
Grundberg warned that the calm cannot hold indefinitely amid the absent progress on the political process, particularly as Yemen’s state institutions are fragmented by over a decade of conflict, its economy left with little margin to absorb another shock, and the wider region engulfed by war.
Three Ways
The UN envoy proposed three ways to reverse the escalation and forge a credible path to a political solution in Yemen, mainly through de-escalation and working towards a robust ceasefire.
He said the calm along Yemen’s frontlines must be restored, adding that attacks and threats against shipping must stop, and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden must be upheld while cross-border attacks must stop.
The UN official said a mechanism for managing incidents and de-escalation already exists. “Military representatives from the Yemeni government and Houthis, together with the Saudi-led Joint Forces Command, have previously met under the UN auspices through the Military Coordination Committee.”
Therefore, he urged them to make full use of this channel and repeated his call on the parties to respect their obligations to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and to protect Yemen from being drawn further into the vortex of the already complex regional dynamics.
Some of the ballistic missiles used by the Houthis in their attacks (Houthi media)
According to Grundberg, the second way to reach a political solution in Yemen is economic de-escalation.
He said Yemen’s economy has itself become a frontline, with salaries, currency, trade, revenues, transport and essential services increasingly politicized.
Addressing these issues, he said, will require the parties to negotiate arrangements in which they have more to gain from cooperation than confrontation, adding that resuming oil exports, with appropriate security guarantees for production and export infrastructure, would provide a critical source of income and it would also support the country’s recovery.
Also, commercial vessels must continue to reach Yemeni ports, delivering the food and other essential goods Yemenis depend on, he said.
“The parties will also need to negotiate durable arrangements on the economic issues that touch Yemenis' daily lives more directly, including the payment of civil servant salaries, and the restoration of essential services,” the envoy added.
As for the third requirement, Grundberg said “is sustained engagement with the UN to consolidate these gains and relaunch an inclusive, Yemeni-owned political process.”
He said: “This remains the only credible path to comprehensively ending the conflict, ensuring that differences are resolved through dialogue rather than force, and establishing legitimate and accountable institutions that reflect Yemen’s political and social diversity.”
Therefore, the Yemeni parties must choose dialogue, he said. “No party controls where escalation leads; the only certainty is that the Yemeni people will pay the price,” the envoy noted.
File of Conflict-Related Detainees
Grundberg recalled that in May, the Yemeni parties agreed under UN auspices to release more than 1,600 conflict-related detainees.
Preparations to implement the releases are progressing, albeit slowly, he said, expressing his concerned that the wider escalation could stall this process further.
“I urge the parties to cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross to complete the remaining technical and operational preparations as swiftly as possible,” he said.
Grundberg then requested the release of 73 UN personnel, alongside colleagues from non-governmental organizations, civil society and diplomatic missions, arbitrarily detained by Houthis.
“Despite sustained United Nations efforts to find a solution, we have yet to see progress towards their releases. And I urge this Council to maintain its attention and use every available avenue of influence to help secure their immediate and unconditional release,” he said.
لم تشترك بعد
انشئ حساباً خاصاً بك لتحصل على أخبار مخصصة لك ولتتمتع بخاصية حفظ المقالات وتتلقى نشراتنا البريدية المتنوعة
