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Arab World

Netanyahu, Hamas Leader Indicate Deal on Gaza Truce and Hostages Is Close

Palestinian children above the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli strikes on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Mohammed ABED / AFP
Palestinian children above the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli strikes on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Mohammed ABED / AFP
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Netanyahu, Hamas Leader Indicate Deal on Gaza Truce and Hostages Is Close

Palestinian children above the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli strikes on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Mohammed ABED / AFP
Palestinian children above the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli strikes on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Mohammed ABED / AFP

The leader of Hamas said on Tuesday a truce deal with Israel was close and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped for good news soon about hostages, the most optimistic signals so far of a deal to pause the war in Gaza and free captives.

Hamas officials were "close to reaching a truce agreement" with Israel and the group had delivered its response to Qatari mediators, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement sent to Reuters by his aide.

Netanyahu said: "We are making progress. I don't think it's worth saying too much, not at even this moment, but I hope there will be good news soon", according to remarks released by the Israeli prime minister's office.

Later on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden told reporters that an accord to release some of the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas was very near. "My team is in the region shuttling between capitals. We're now very close, very close, to bringing some of these hostages home very soon," he said.

"But I don't want to get into the details because nothing is done until it's done."

Netanyahu summoned his war cabinet amid growing signs of a deal to free a number of the 240 hostages taken by Hamas militants to Gaza after their deadly cross-border raid into Israel on Oct. 7, which triggered the war.

A source familiar with the negotiations said Hamas would free 50 women and children, including some foreigners, while Israel releases 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and minors, during a four-day ceasefire.

A US official briefed on the discussions facilitated by Qatar gave the same figures for releases by each side, saying the 50 hostages to be freed would be mostly women and children, with fighting paused for four or five days.

There is a tentative deal, but it is not final until everything is agreed upon, the official said.

"We believe we are very, very close to having a deal," the official told Reuters. "There is still a lot of work to be done, still approval that has to be achieved. but we believe we are very close."

It would be the first truce of the six-week-old war and the first mass release of those held by both sides.

Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage into Israeli communities near Gaza killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. In Israel's subsequent aerial blitz and invasion of Gaza, the enclave's Hamas-run government says at least 13,300 Palestinians have been confirmed killed including at least 5,600 children.

A Hamas official told Al Jazeera TV earlier that negotiations were centered on how long the truce would last, arrangements for delivery of aid into Gaza and details of the exchange of captives. Both sides would free women and children, and details would be announced by Qatar, which is mediating in the negotiations, said the official, Issat el Reshiq.

Israel's Channel 12 and Channel 13 TV stations both quoted unidentified officials as saying terms of a deal could be reached "within hours".

Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, met Haniyeh in Qatar on Monday to "advance humanitarian issues" related to the war, the Geneva-based ICRC said in a statement. She also separately met Qatari authorities.

The ICRC said it was not part of hostage negotiations but as a neutral intermediary it was ready "to facilitate any future release that the parties agree to".

RAIN AND COLD WORSEN CONDITIONS

The Hamas incursion on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israel's 75-year-old history, prompted Israel to invade Gaza to try to annihilate the militant group that has ruled there since 2007.

Around two-thirds of Gaza's 2.3 million people have since been made homeless, with thousands a day still trekking south on foot with belongings and children in their arms. The central and southern parts of the enclave, where Israel has told them to go, have also regularly come under attack.

A day and a night of rain and cold winter weather worsened the dire conditions in the Gaza Strip for the displaced, many thousands of whom are sleeping rough or in makeshift tents.

Gaza health authorities said on Tuesday at least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza at midnight. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The already crowded Nuseirat district, which grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, is just south of wetlands that bisect the narrow, coastal strip and has been the arrival point for huge numbers escaping the fighting concentrated in the urbanized north.

Israeli bombing in southern areas leaves Gazans fearing they have no place safe to go. Neighboring Egypt has allowed the evacuation of some wounded and foreign passport holders, but says it will not accept a forced, mass exodus.

Despite an Israeli order to flee, tens of thousands of civilians are believed to remain in north Gaza - wide swathes of which Israel says its forces now control but where Hamas militants, deeply embedded within the population, are waging guerrilla-style war in fiercely contested pockets.

All hospitals in the north have ceased functioning normally, many still housing patients and displaced Gazans. Israel says Hamas uses hospitals as cover for its combatants, which Hamas and the hospitals deny.

The World Health Organization said it was working on plans to evacuate three Northern Gaza hospitals: Al Shifa, Al Ahli and the Indonesian Hospital, lamenting this as a last resort.

Issam Nabhan, head of the nursing department of the Indonesian Hospital, where the WHO and Gaza authorities say 12 people were killed on Monday by Israeli fire, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday there were 60 bodies in the grounds.

"There is no oxygen to supply the patients. All those on artificial respiration have died. We speak out to the free world. The Indonesian hospital has become a cemetery, not a hospital."

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Arab World

Lebanon’s Divide Over Israel Talks Reaches Religious Leaders

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and an accompanying delegation tour the southern city of Nabatieh on Saturday (EPA)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and an accompanying delegation tour the southern city of Nabatieh on Saturday (EPA)
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Lebanon’s Divide Over Israel Talks Reaches Religious Leaders

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and an accompanying delegation tour the southern city of Nabatieh on Saturday (EPA)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and an accompanying delegation tour the southern city of Nabatieh on Saturday (EPA)

Lebanon’s divisions over negotiations with Israel have reached its religious leadership, with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi backing state efforts to establish a monopoly on arms and pursue talks, and Jaafari Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Qabalan accusing the state of colluding against South Lebanon.

The split turns political disagreements over the government’s policies into a sectarian dispute as talks stall - with an eighth round of negotiations with Israel in Rome postponed until early next month - and the Israeli army continues strikes in the south.

Lebanon’s Shiite religious establishment, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement have long opposed direct negotiations, but Qabalan’s attack was the strongest since the talks began.

President Joseph Aoun has repeatedly pledged to protect Lebanon’s sovereignty, secure an Israeli withdrawal and return residents to occupied areas in the south through negotiations, which he sees as the only available alternative to war.

On Sunday, on the anniversary of the assassination of President-elect Bachir Gemayel, Aoun renewed his pledge to build “a strong and just state,” capable of safeguarding its independent decision-making, sovereignty and citizens’ dignity.

Christian Support for Official Position

Al-Rahi said in his Sunday sermon that placing all weapons under state control “is not the triumph of one side over another, nor a confrontation with a sect or group, but the affirmation of a single national authority.”

“The state cannot function with two decision-making authorities, nor can sovereignty be complete when there are multiple authorities,” he added.

Backing the presidency’s approach, al-Rahi called for negotiations and mediation to produce tangible results, including an end to attacks, Israeli withdrawal and stability under credible guarantees protecting Lebanon’s rights and sovereignty. Negotiations, he said, should not become “an open-ended process with no horizon.”

Qabalan Attacks the State

Qabalan took the opposite position after Aoun visited Nabatieh and pledged state support for the south, saying Israeli withdrawal, the return of prisoners and displaced residents, and reconstruction were national priorities.

In a message published by the state-run National News Agency (NNA), Qabalan accused the executive branch of “strangling and besieging” the south and “colluding against it.”

He warned of what he called government-driven “sedition,” accusing the executive branch of threatening national partnership and seeking to abandon the southern front, which he described as central to Lebanon’s sovereignty and existence.

“The issue today is not that the executive authority does not want to defend the south,” Qabalan said, “but rather the totality of policies that strangle the south, besiege it, drain it and deprive it of every means of life.”

He added that Lebanon’s security was indivisible and called for national action to prevent what he described as “the worst internal strife,” accusing the authorities of giving Israel enough time to continue destroying the south.

Arab World

Oslo Accords After 33 Years: Neither Alive Nor Dead — What Remains?

FILED - 08 September 2026, Palestinian Territories, Anata: Israeli forces raid the town of Anata in the West Bank. Photo: Jamal Awad/dpa
FILED - 08 September 2026, Palestinian Territories, Anata: Israeli forces raid the town of Anata in the West Bank. Photo: Jamal Awad/dpa
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Oslo Accords After 33 Years: Neither Alive Nor Dead — What Remains?

FILED - 08 September 2026, Palestinian Territories, Anata: Israeli forces raid the town of Anata in the West Bank. Photo: Jamal Awad/dpa
FILED - 08 September 2026, Palestinian Territories, Anata: Israeli forces raid the town of Anata in the West Bank. Photo: Jamal Awad/dpa

Perhaps all that remains of the Oslo Accords, signed 33 years ago between the Palestinians and Israelis, is an authority without real authority in the West Bank, widespread chaos, destruction and bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, and an East Jerusalem resembling West Jerusalem, both under full Israeli control.

All three — the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — were supposed to constitute the Palestinian state just five years after the agreement was signed in 1993, or so Palestinians believed and hoped at the time.

Yet Oslo’s main problem cannot simply be considered its failure to deliver the hoped-for state. Since it was signed, the Palestinian Authority’s ability to govern has declined, while the territory under its control has shrunk day by day.

The PA’s role has changed considerably. Israeli governments have left it besieged, powerless and nearly bankrupt, facing numerous financial and security problems and countless internal problems affecting it and all Palestinians — in politics, security, public safety, salaries, health, the economy, electricity, water, fuel and the banking system.

Today, 33 years after the agreement, Palestinians find themselves in a central struggle to prevent the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and their displacement from their land. After Oslo, their struggle had been to establish a state.

All the blame can be placed on Oslo, its course and the decision to pursue it, as many Palestinians do. But its other party cannot be overlooked: Israel, which did not sign the agreement for it to succeed. This was precisely what then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had promised: negotiations that would begin but never end, until nothing remained to negotiate over.

Nor can it be overlooked that a large segment of Palestinians themselves did not want the agreement either. Armed factions worked relentlessly to thwart it to the end, using all the power and weapons at their disposal.

Many on both sides regarded it as a dagger in their side and openly said they did not want it. In reality, it gave them neither peace nor security. Yet it has remained alive, refusing to die, even after Hamas launched the Al-Aqsa Flood attack in October 2023, sweeping away many things but not what remained of Oslo.

What is the Oslo agreement?

The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements was signed on Sept. 13, 1993. It provided for the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority during a five-year transitional period, culminating in a permanent settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

The agreement spoke of ending “decades of confrontation and conflict” and recognizing each side’s “mutual legitimate and political rights.”

The agreement clearly addressed the transitional period and permanent-status negotiations. The five-year transitional period was to begin with the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area. Permanent-status negotiations between the Israeli government and representatives of the Palestinian people were to begin as soon as possible, but no later than the beginning of the third year of the transitional period.

It also stipulated that those negotiations would cover the remaining issues, including Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other matters of common interest.

The agreement also resulted in the establishment of a Joint Israeli-Palestinian Liaison Committee to address issues requiring coordination, other matters of common interest and disputes.

The Oslo agreement divides the West Bank into Areas A, B and C. Area A includes the main Palestinian population centers and is under Palestinian security and administrative control, comprising 18% of the West Bank. Area B, comprising 21%, is under Palestinian administrative control and Israeli security control. Area C, comprising 61%, is under Israeli security and administrative control.

After October 2023, Israel no longer recognized these divisions.

What happened after Oslo?

A few years after the signing, Israel stopped completing the scheduled withdrawal of its forces. Instead, it repeatedly entered Area A, territory under full Palestinian security jurisdiction, and took measures that disrupted the transitional phase intended to achieve independence.

Israel carried out assassinations and killings, raided Area A, built more settlements and tightened political, security and economic pressure on the PA as though Oslo did not exist, while demanding greater security coordination from the PA under the agreement.

Israelis who opposed Oslo did not formally abolish it. They wanted it in intensive care — neither alive nor dead. Palestinians did not like Oslo either, but struggled to keep it alive even though they repeatedly declared it finished.

The Palestinians could not rid themselves of it because they simply could not maintain the PA without Oslo. That would mean a return to occupation — a thousand steps backward. For the Israelis, declaring themselves free of Oslo would mean dissolving the PA and returning to the occupation of the West Bank, the last outcome they wanted.

In short, everyone despised Oslo, but they wanted it. It continued to constrain them and produce further agreements.

Oslo’s extensions

It can be said that for many years, Palestinians and Israelis found themselves tied to Oslo. In an effort to keep it alive, the Palestinians concluded further agreements with Israel that could be described as extensions of Oslo.

Israel did not abide by any agreement it signed. Instead, it brought the PA to an unprecedented level of weakness after significantly changing its role. The PA entered one of the worst periods in its history, with the territory under its control shrinking, no political or economic horizon, a crippling financial crisis and another security crisis.

The Israeli left-wing group Peace Now has said that the Oslo agreement contributed significantly to increasing the number of settlements and settlers in the Palestinian territories.

Whether this amounted to marking time or moving backward, it was the reality Israel wanted, and it continued until the Al-Aqsa Flood war that began on Oct. 7, 2023.

After the war, everything changed. Israel began what resembled a war against the PA, the Palestinians and the dream of statehood. Israel appeared to want to reverse Oslo altogether and erase it, and no longer wanted the Palestinians or an agreement binding it to them.

Oslo, Netanyahu and Oct. 7

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret of his opposition to Oslo. Months into the Gaza war, Netanyahu called the Oslo agreement Israel’s great mistake, claiming that “the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza want to destroy Israel. One side says so openly, while the other does so through education and the International Criminal Court.”

Netanyahu’s attack on the PA was not new, but it was the clearest in revealing part of his plan to undermine the authority.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has begun treating the PA as though it did not exist. Israel escalated in the West Bank, with the army attacking cities, refugee camps and towns and permanently occupying some of them. It killed Palestinians in airstrikes, arrested them and destroyed infrastructure, while settlers were given free rein to kill, attack and seize vast areas by force.

At the same time, Israel advanced a plan to expand existing settlements and establish new ones, linking them through contiguous settlement belts. The plan served to expand settlement activity on the one hand, and to encircle and fragment the West Bank and create a barrier between the West Bank and Israel on the other.

PA remains committed to Oslo’s peaceful approach

After 33 years, what remains of Oslo is an Israel that continues to expand, with greater powers, and a Palestinian Authority with a president, security forces and ministries, but no state and fewer powers — along with more settlers, a devastated Gaza and a Jerusalem under Israeli control.

Yet the PA, now going through one of the worst periods in its history, remains fully committed to the Oslo agreement.

In May, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he remained committed to Oslo and subsequent agreements, the Palestine Liberation Organization and its program based on the unity of the Palestinian political system and a single legitimate weapon, as well as reforms and presidential and legislative elections, reaffirming his commitment to a peaceful approach amid a series of bloody wars in the region.

Contrary to what many believe or demand, Abbas told Fatah’s Eighth General Conference in Ramallah in May that inflicting a new Nakba on Gaza, killing and wounding more than 270,000 Palestinians there, making the territory uninhabitable, working to annex the West Bank through laws aimed at stealing land, unleashing settler terrorism in the West Bank, continuing to withhold Palestinian funds, besieging the economy, committing violations against Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and attempting to divide Al-Aqsa Mosque required a return to implementing the signed agreements.

These included the Oslo Accords, the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations and the 2023 Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh understandings, as well as an end to unilateral measures that violate international law.

“We want the ‘treacherous’ Oslo agreement. We want to preserve it,” Abbas said sarcastically, mocking criticism of the agreement.

Abbas immediately attacked Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault.

“Whatever the assessment of what happened on Oct. 7 — the ‘glorious’ Oct. 7,” he said sarcastically, “things are judged by their outcomes.”

“We were slaughtered, displaced and our country was destroyed because of this act,” he added.

It was as though Abbas wanted to voice what many of his supporters and Fatah members say: “Oslo brought the Palestinians back to their homeland, laid the foundations of the state and brought an airport and a seaport to Gaza, while Oct. 7 destroyed everything and displaced Palestinians abroad.”

Opponents of Abbas and Fatah respond to that argument by asking: “Why is Israel ravaging the West Bank, which did not carry out Oct. 7? And why does Oslo not protect you?”

The confrontation between the two arguments does not appear close to being resolved. History remains the judge between the two experiences, while Israel continues to encroach on the dream of a Palestinian state.

Arab World

Incubator Shortages, Premature Births Strain Gaza's Hospitals

The war in Gaza has devastated the territory's healthcare system, leaving premature babies even more vulnerable. BASHAR TALEB / AFP
The war in Gaza has devastated the territory's healthcare system, leaving premature babies even more vulnerable. BASHAR TALEB / AFP
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Incubator Shortages, Premature Births Strain Gaza's Hospitals

The war in Gaza has devastated the territory's healthcare system, leaving premature babies even more vulnerable. BASHAR TALEB / AFP
The war in Gaza has devastated the territory's healthcare system, leaving premature babies even more vulnerable. BASHAR TALEB / AFP

As monitors beep and doctors consult near them, two tiny newborns lie silently side-by-side, sharing a single incubator in a southern Gaza hospital running short on space and supplies.

Gaza's youngest already face an extremely precarious entry into the world, given the dire humanitarian situation in the war-shattered territory that borders Israel and Egypt, reported AFP.

But for babies needing specialist care, such as those born prematurely, the road ahead is even more perilous.

"The situation is dire: there is no oxygen available for them, nor is there any spare incubators in the hospital," said Hatem Dhahir, head of the neonatal department at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

"We're trying to transfer them to other hospitals, but they're always full and the situation is very bad. Most of the children need oxygen and are very underweight, and things are going from bad to worse," he told AFP.

The war between Israel and Hamas has devastated the Palestinian territory's healthcare system, with many medical facilities rendered completely or partially unusable.

Ongoing Israeli restrictions on goods entering the Gaza Strip mean medical supplies and specialist equipment are also running low.

Israel says it is preventing the entry of items that could also have military use as it accuses Hamas -- which carried out the worst-ever attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 -- of plotting further violence.

Dhahir said Nasser hospital had seen a significant increase in the number of premature births in recent months, as well as twins and triplets.

The influx was forcing staff to place two or even three babies in each incubator, he said.

In March, the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA said that one in three pregnancies in Gaza were high-risk and 70 percent of newborns were premature or underweight.

Incubator sharing significantly increased mortality risks, it said.

- 'No room' -

Nearly the entirety of Gaza's population was displaced at least once during the devastating war, sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The fighting flattened swathes of the territory, left hundreds of thousands of people living in tents and temporary shelters and shattered vital infrastructure such as sanitation and access to safe water.

Despite a US-backed ceasefire declared in October 2025, the Israeli military continues to target Palestinians it says are militants.

A UN-mandated inquiry published in June said that severe shortages of food, medical supplies, fuel and the collapse of healthcare services had an enormous impact on maternal health.

"Against this background, rates of miscarriage, stillbirth, low-birthweight infants and congenital defects have increased," the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry said.

Heart conditions were among three types of congenital defects to have particularly increased, the commission said, citing medical practitioners.

In southern Gaza, Mona Ahmad was accompanying a baby taken to Nasser hospital in late August and diagnosed with a serious congenital defect in which the heart's two main blood vessels are switched in position.

"We received a final report stating that the baby was suffering from transposed arteries and needed to be transferred, as there was absolutely no treatment available for her here," Ahmad told AFP.

"The baby spent a full week in the neonatal unit and was discharged because there was no room for her there," she added.

In a bid to revive Gaza's neonatal care system, the UN children's agency UNICEF has scaled up its work to supply medical equipment such as incubators, ventilators and monitors to hospitals.

Including work that began before the ceasefire, UNICEF has supplied 93 incubators to six facilities across the Gaza Strip.

But challenges remain immense and more needs to be done, said Toby Fricker, chief of advocacy and communications for UNICEF Palestine, following a visit to a neonatal intensive care unit in the territory.

For now, "through the pure... resilience of the doctors, of people, things are working," he said.