Blinken Calls for Push to Get Gaza Truce Deal over ‘Finish Line’

 Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, southern Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, southern Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP)
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Blinken Calls for Push to Get Gaza Truce Deal over ‘Finish Line’

 Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, southern Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, southern Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Monday for a final push for a Gaza ceasefire before President Joe Biden leaves office, after a Hamas official told Reuters the group had cleared a list of 34 hostages as first to go free under a truce.

"We very much want to bring this over the finish line in the next two weeks, the time we have remaining," Blinken told a news conference in South Korea, when asked whether a ceasefire deal was close.

Israel has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to Qatar for talks brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Some Arabic media reports said David Barnea, the head of Mossad, who has been leading negotiations, was expected to join them. The Israeli prime minister's office did not comment.

It remains unclear how close the two sides remain, with some signs of movement but little indication of a shift in some of the key demands that have so far blocked any truce for more than a year.

US President-elect Donald Trump has said there would be "hell to pay" in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas were not freed before his inauguration on Jan. 20, now viewed in the region as an unofficial deadline for a truce deal.

According to Gaza health officials, nearly 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's assault on Gaza. The assault was launched after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli territory in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

More than 100 hostages are still believed to be held in Gaza, and Hamas says it will not free them without an agreement that ends the war with Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will not halt its assault until Hamas is dismantled as a military and governing power and all hostages go free.

A Hamas official told Reuters the group had cleared a list submitted by Israel of 34 hostages who could be freed in the initial phase of a truce. The list provided by the official included female soldiers, plus elderly, female and minor-aged civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the list had been given by Israel to Qatari mediators as far back as July, and Israel had so far received no confirmation or comment from Hamas about whether the hostages on it were alive.

For Michael Levy, whose brother Or was one of the 34 names on the list, there was little comfort.

"The way I see this list is the way I saw all the recent rumors about an upcoming deal," he told Reuters. "For me, as long as my brother is not here and the hostages are not here in Israel, it's just a rumor."

BABY DIES OF COLD

Israeli forces, which have intensified their operations in recent weeks, continued bombardments across the enclave, killing at least 48 people and wounding 75 over the past 24 hours, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Harsh winter weather continued to exact a toll on the hundreds of thousands displaced into makeshift shelters, with officials saying a 35-day-old baby had died of exposure, at least the eighth victim of the cold in the past two weeks.

Officials from Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip said an Israeli airstrike at a school compound sheltering displaced families had wounded at least 40 people.

While Israel's military says Hamas has largely been destroyed as an organized military force, its fighters continue to hold out in the rubble of Gaza, which has been largely reduced to wasteland by the months of bombardment.

On Monday, two Israeli soldiers were severely wounded in northern Gaza, and three rockets were fired from Gaza, one of which hit a building in the nearby Israeli city of Sderot without casing casualties, Israeli police said.

Separately, the World Food Program said Israeli forces had opened fire on one of its convoys as the vehicles moved from central Gaza to Gaza City in the north. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a separate Palestinian territory where violence has also surged since the start of the Gaza war, gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded several others when they opened fire on a car and bus near the Israeli settlement of Kedumim.



Lebanon’s President Reveals the Country’s Stance on Relations with Israel

 Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on during a meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on during a meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)
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Lebanon’s President Reveals the Country’s Stance on Relations with Israel

 Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on during a meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on during a meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)

Lebanon has no plans to have normal relations with Israel at the present time, and Beirut’s main aim is to reach a “state of no war” with its southern neighbor, the country’s president said Friday.

President Joseph Aoun’s comments came as the Trump administration is trying to expand the Abraham Accords signed in 2020 in which Israel signed historic pacts with United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

In May, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said during a visit to France that his country is holding indirect talks with Israel to prevent military activities along their border from going out of control. Talks about peace between Israel and Syria have increased following the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad from power in December.

Aoun added in comments released by his office that only the Lebanese state will have weapons in the future, and the decision on whether Lebanon would go to war or not would be for the Lebanese government.

Aoun’s comments were an apparent reference to the armed Hezbollah group that fought a 14-month war with Israel, during which it suffered major blows including the killing of some of its top political and military commanders.

Hezbollah says it has ended its armed presence near the border with Israel, but is refusing to disarm in the rest of Lebanon before Israel withdraws from five overlooking border points and ends its almost daily airstrikes on Lebanon.

Earlier this week, US envoy Tom Barrack met with Lebanese leaders in Beirut, saying he was satisfied with the Lebanese government’s response to a proposal to disarm Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s weapons have been one of the principal sticking points since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. Since then, Hezbollah fought two wars with Israel, one in 2006, and the other starting a day after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.

The Hezbollah-Israel war, which ended with a US-brokered ceasefire in November, left more than 4,000 people dead in Lebanon and caused destruction estimated at $11 billion. In Israel, 127 people, including 80 soldiers, were killed during the war.

“Peace is the state of no war and this is what is important for us in Lebanon at the present time,” Aoun was quoted as telling visitors on Friday. He added that “the matter of normalization (with Israel) is not included in Lebanon’s current foreign policy.”

Lebanon and Israel have been at a state of war since 1948.