Israeli Defense Chief Says Temporary Truce with Hamas is Possible

FILE -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Israeli Defense Chief Says Temporary Truce with Hamas is Possible

FILE -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Israel’s defense minister says the window is closing on an opportunity to reach a temporary cease-fire deal with Hamas that he believes could also bring calm to the country’s volatile northern border with Lebanon.
Speaking to reporters, Yoav Gallant said that conditions are ripe for at least a six-week pause in fighting that would include the release of many of the hostages held in Gaza. However, he would not commit to a permanent end to the fighting, as Hamas has demanded, raising questions about the feasibility of a deal.
“Israel should achieve an agreement that will bring about a pause for six weeks and bring back hostages,” he said. After that period, he said, “we maintain the right to operate and achieve our goals — including the destruction of Hamas.”
The United States, along with mediators Egypt and Qatar, has been working for months to broker a cease-fire to end the devastating war between Israel and Hamas. A main area of disagreement has been Hamas’ demand for an end to the nearly year-old war and a full withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has raised a new sticking point in recent weeks, saying that Israel must remain stationed in a strategic corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt indefinitely.
Gallant has been quoted in Israeli media as saying that Israel could withdraw from the corridor for six weeks — to allow hostages to go free without risking Israel’s security. The two men reportedly got into a heated shouting match at a recent Cabinet meeting where ministers overwhelmingly sided with Netanyahu.
During Monday’s meeting with foreign journalists, Gallant was asked about his relationship with the prime minister.
“As defense minister, my first priority is the state of Israel and those who protect her, and then everything else,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying.
The current US-led proposal calls for a three-phase plan, beginning with a six-week pause in fighting during which Hamas would release some of the roughly 70 hostages who are still believed to be alive and held by the militants.
In exchange, Israel would free dozens of Palestinian prisoners, withdraw troops from Palestinian population centers, allow displaced Gazans to return to their original place of residence and facilitate the influx of large amounts of badly needed humanitarian aid.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Monday that Hamas had sought changes to the evolving proposal, calling it the “main obstacle” to a deal. Hamas rejected Kirby's allegations as “baseless” and again accused the US of hindering an agreement by siding with Israel.
Gallant cast doubt on Hamas' intentions and was skeptical about whether the deal’s second phase — which is to include the release of the remaining hostages and a complete halt to the fighting — could be implemented.
He said repeatedly that Israel remains committed to its “war goals” — bringing home all hostages, destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, and making sure the group can never threaten Israel again.
With Hamas repeatedly regrouping in areas of Gaza that Israeli troops have left, and with no plan for an alternative postwar government, it remains unclear when or if these goals can be fully achieved.
Gallant accused Hamas of intransigence in the talks and called for more international pressure on the militant group. Still, he said that after inflicting heavy damage recently on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there is an opportunity for at least the first phase of the deal.
He said he believed a truce with Hamas could also lower tensions with Hezbollah and allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border.



In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
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In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP

School lessons ended in Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.
"I am playing football"; "She is eating an apple"; "The boys are flying a kite" are written in English.
Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria's years of civil war.
And as the kids chase through clouds of concrete dust, a torture victim -- freed from jail this month when opposition factions toppled Bashar al-Assad's government -- hobbles through the rubble.
"Since I left the prison until now, I sleep one or two hours max," 30-year-old Mahmud Khaled Ajaj told AFP.
Since 1957, Yarmuk has been a 2.1-square-kilometer (519-acre) "refugee camp" for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the modern Israeli state.
Shattered city
Like similar camps across the Middle East, over the decades it has become a dense urban community of multi-storey concrete housing blocks and businesses.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria's conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees.
Rebellion, air strikes and a siege by government forces had devastated the area and left by September this year only 8,160 people still clinging to life in the ruins.
With Assad's fall, more may return to reopen the damaged schools and mosques, but many like Ajaj will have terrible tales to tell of Assad's persecution.
The former Free Syrian Army opposition fighter spent seven years in government custody, most of it at the notorious Saydnaya prison, and was only released when Assad's rule ended on December 8.
Ajaj's face is still paler than those of his neighbors, who are tanned from sitting outside ruined homes, and he walks awkwardly with a back brace after years of beatings.
At one point, a prison doctor injected him in the spine and partly paralyzed him -- he thinks on purpose -- but what really haunts him was the hunger in his packed cell.
"My neighbors and relatives know that I had little food, so they bring me food and fruit. I don't sleep if the food is not next to me. The bread, especially the bread," he said.
"Yesterday, we had bread leftovers," he said, relishing being outside after his windowless group cell, and ignoring calls from his family to come to see a concerned aunt.
"My parents usually keep them for the birds to feed them. I told them: 'Give part of them to the birds and keep the rest for me. Even if they are dry or old I want them for me'."
As Ajaj spoke to AFP, two passing Palestinian women paused to see if he had any news of missing relatives since Syria's ousted leader fled to Russia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances under Assad's rule.
Ajaj's ordeal was extreme, but the entire Yarmuk community has suffered on the frontline of Assad's war for survival, with Palestinians roped into fighting on both sides.
Bullets lodged
The graveyard is cratered by air strikes. Families struggle to find the tombs of their dead amid the devastation. The scars left by mortar strikes dot empty basketball courts.
Here and there, bulldozers are trying to shift rubble and the homeless try to scavenge re-usable debris. Some find work, but others struggle with trauma.
Haitham Hassan al-Nada, a lively and wild-eyed 28-year-old, invited an AFP reporter to run his hand over lumps he says are bullets still lodged in his skull and hands.
His father, a local trader, supports him and his wife and two children after Assad's forces shot him and left him for dead as a deserter from the government side.
Nada told AFP he fled service because, as a Palestinian, he did not think he should have to serve in Syrian forces. He was caught and shot multiple times, he said.
"They called my mother after they 'killed' me, so she went to the airport road, towards Najha. They told her 'This is the dog's body, the deserter'," he said.
"They didn't wash my body, and when she was kissing me to say goodbye before they buried me, suddenly and by God's power, it's unbelievable, I took a deep breath."
After Nada was released from hospital, he returned to Yarmuk and found a scene of devastation.