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Trump Says Peace Achieved as Israeli Hostages Swapped for Palestinian Detainees

Red Cross vehicles transport hostages, held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, following their handover as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City October 13, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Red Cross vehicles transport hostages, held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, following their handover as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City October 13, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
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Trump Says Peace Achieved as Israeli Hostages Swapped for Palestinian Detainees

Red Cross vehicles transport hostages, held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, following their handover as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City October 13, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Red Cross vehicles transport hostages, held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, following their handover as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City October 13, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas freed the last living Israeli hostages from Gaza on Monday under a ceasefire deal and Israel sent home busloads of Palestinian detainees, as US President Donald Trump told Israel's parliament that peace had arrived. 

The Israeli military said it had received all hostages confirmed to be alive, after their transfer from Gaza by the Red Cross. The announcement prompted cheering, hugging and weeping among thousands waiting at "Hostage Square" in Tel Aviv. 

In Gaza, thousands of relatives, many weeping with joy, gathered at a hospital where buses brought home some of the nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees freed by Israel as part of the accord. 

"The skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace," Trump told the Knesset, Israel's parliament, saying a "long nightmare" for both Israelis and Palestinians was over. 

"Now it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East," he said before departing for a summit in Egypt intended to cement the truce. 

He arrived in the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh about an hour before sundown for the summit of more than 20 world leaders, which Trump will chair alongside President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES REMAIN 

The release of the last living hostages captured in the October 2023 attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the war, in return for around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees follows a ceasefire and partial Israeli withdrawal. 

Thousands of Palestinians have been able to return to the ruins of homes they fled in the Gaza Strip, where health authorities say 68,000 people were killed in fighting that displaced nearly the entire 2.2 million-strong population. 

However, formidable obstacles remain, even to securing an enduring ceasefire, much less to bringing a wider, more durable peace. Among the immediate issues still to be resolved: recovering the remains of another 26 hostages believed to have died and two whose fates are unknown. 

Hamas says recovering the bodies could take time as not all burial sites are known. It said on Monday it would soon hand over four bodies. Israel's defense minister said handing over so few would be a "gross violation" of the group's commitments. 

Aid supplies are meant to flow more smoothly into the enclave under Trump's plan. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher underlined the need to "get shelter and fuel to people who desperately need it and to massively scale up the food and medicine and other supplies going in." 

Beyond that, crucial issues have yet to be resolved, including how to govern and police Gaza, and the ultimate future of Hamas, which still rejects Israel's demands to disarm. 

Hamas gunmen, seeking to assert their presence, launched a security crackdown in Gaza City after Israel's pullback, killing 32 members of a rival group, a Palestinian security source said. 

The Gaza War has also reshaped the Middle East through spillover conflicts, with Israel imposing punishing damage in a 12-day war against Iran and campaigns against its regional allies, including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthis. 

Trump, who has presented his plan as the catalyst for a wide regional peace settlement, even floated the idea of a peace deal between arch Middle East enemies Iran and Israel to the Knesset, saying he thought Iran wanted one: "Wouldn't it be nice?" 

JOY, RELIEF ON BOTH SIDES 

Beaming with relief and joy, two hostages waved to cheering crowds from vans on the way to an Israeli hospital, one hoisting a large Israeli flag then forming a heart with his hands. 

Video footage captured emotional scenes of families receiving phone messages from their loved ones as they were being released, their faces lighting up with disbelief and hope after months of anguish. 

"I am so excited. I am full of happiness. It's hard to imagine how I feel this moment. I didn't sleep all night," said Viki Cohen, mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, as she travelled to Reim, an Israeli military camp where hostages were being transferred. 

Palestinians meanwhile rushed to embrace prisoners freed by Israel. Several thousand gathered inside and around Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, some waving Palestinian flags, others holding photos of their relatives. 

"I am happy for our sons who are being freed, but we are still in pain for all those who have been killed by the occupation, and all the destruction that happened to our Gaza," a Gaza woman, Um Ahmed, told Reuters in a tearful voice message. 

Freed prisoners arrived in buses, some of them posing from the windows, flashing V-for-Victory signs. The appearance of armed masked Hamas fighters at the scene underscored the difficulty of resolving Israel's demand that they disarm. 

Israel was due to release 1,700 detainees it captured in Gaza, as well as 250 prisoners from its jails convicted or suspected of security offences, including attacks on Israelis. 

Samer Halabeya, a doctor freed from jail where he was serving a sentence for planning an attack that wounded an Israeli officer, stood by his weeping mother in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. 

The prisoners had only learned they would be released long after the agreement had been signed, he said: "We hope that everyone gets freed." 

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Arab World

UN Probe: RSF Actions in Sudan's el-Fasher Point to Genocide

Forces affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, Darfur region (AFP)
Forces affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, Darfur region (AFP)
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UN Probe: RSF Actions in Sudan's el-Fasher Point to Genocide

Forces affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, Darfur region (AFP)
Forces affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, Darfur region (AFP)

Mass killings of non-Arab communities when the Rapid Support Forces captured the Sudanese city of el-Fasher bears hallmarks that point to genocide, an independent UN probe said in a new report on Thursday.

At the end of October last year, the RSF took over the city - which had been the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the Darfur region in the west of the country - with thousands of people killed and raped during three days of horror, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan said.

It followed an 18-month siege where the RSF imposed conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of non-Arab communities, in particular the Zaghawa and the Fur, ‌the report stated.

The ‌UN mission said it found evidence that the RSF carried out a pattern ‌of ⁠coordinated and repeated ⁠targeting of individuals based on ethnicity, gender and perceived political affiliation, including mass killings, rape and torture, as well as inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction - core elements of the crime of genocide under international law.

The final draft of the report was shared with the Government of Sudan but no response was received, while the RSF did not respond to the UN mission's request to meet with its leadership, the report stated. The RSF and SAF did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

In the past, the RSF has ⁠denied such abuses - saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and ‌making counter-accusations against them.

"The scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation ‌by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around el-Fasher were not random excesses of war" said Mohamad ‌Chande Othman, Chair of the Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan.

"They formed part of a planned and organized operation ‌that bears the defining characteristics of genocide," he added.

Before its takeover el-Fasher's population mainly consisted of the Zaghawa, a non-Arab community, while displacement camps around the area were comprised of the Fur community, as well as Berti, Masalit and Tama, the report said.

"Survivors describe explicit threats to 'clean' the city," the report stated. Alongside attacking displacement camps, communal kitchens and medical centers ‌with drones and heavy weapons, the RSF also carried out killings, looting, beatings and sexual violence in el-Fasher, the report stated.

The RSF's "exterminatory rhetoric" and other violations indicated ⁠its intent to destroy ⁠the Zaghawa and Fur communities in whole or in part, the report said.

"Witnesses heard the Rapid Support Forces saying, 'Is there anyone Zaghawa among you? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all'," the report said.

Survivors recounted point-blank executions of civilians, as well as bodies of men, women and children filling roads, the report stated.

Women and girls aged 7 to 70 years old from non-Arab communities, particularly the Zaghawa were raped and subject to other acts of sexual violence, including whipping and forced nudity, the report stated.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the international response to the report and the situation in Sudan had to be emphatic and urged for a ceasefire.

"The findings of this UN report are truly horrific - atrocities including systematic starvation, torture, killings, rape and deliberate ethnic targeting used on the most horrendous scale during the Rapid Support Forces siege of el-Fasher," she said in a statement.

The UN mission was mandated by members of the Human Rights Council, following backing from countries that included Britain, to urgently investigate violations and abuses under international law in and around el-Fasher.

Arab World

Sudanese Political, Civil Groups Propose Ramadan Truce

The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)
The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)
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Sudanese Political, Civil Groups Propose Ramadan Truce

The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)
The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)

A broad coalition of Sudanese political and civil forces has made an urgent appeal to the leadership of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), calling for a “comprehensive humanitarian truce” during the holy month of Ramadan.

The initiative calls for a temporary cessation of hostilities, guarantees for the protection of civilians, and unhindered humanitarian aid delivery, amid increasingly dire humanitarian conditions as Sudanese citizens observe their fourth consecutive Ramadan under gunfire and shelling.

More than ten Sudanese political parties made the appeal, some of which are part of the Civil Democratic Alliance of the Forces of the Revolution (“Sumoud”), led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

Prominent signatories include the National Umma Party, the Federal Gathering, and the Sudanese Congress Party.

The document was also endorsed by parties outside the “Sumoud” alliance, most notably the Arab Baath Socialist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party, alongside various civil and trade union groups.

The appeal urges both warring parties — the army and the RSF — to announce a humanitarian truce beginning on the first day of Ramadan. The proposal includes a ceasefire, the safeguarding of civilian facilities, the opening of safe corridors for relief organizations, the immediate release of civilian detainees, and the initiation of prisoner exchange arrangements under international supervision to ensure compliance with humanitarian law.

It also calls for clear monitoring and implementation mechanisms to prevent either side from exploiting the truce for military gains.

The signatories stressed that the initiative comes in response to the worsening humanitarian crisis, particularly among vulnerable groups such as women, children, and the elderly, and to the mounting threats to the lives of millions, which they say require urgent intervention.

This marks the second initiative put forward by political and civil forces to halt the war since its outbreak in 2023. The first resulted in the signing of what became known as the “Addis Ababa Declaration” between the Civil Democratic Forces Alliance (Taqaddum) and the RSF. The declaration was addressed to the army leadership, which neither rejected nor signed it.

Since the fall of the cities of El-Fasher and Babanusa, as well as the town of Heglig in West Kordofan State, clashes between the army and the RSF intensified in South and North Kordofan before subsiding in recent weeks and shifting into more “technical” warfare.

This phase has seen the increased use of combat drones, jamming devices, guided artillery, and aerial munitions, leading to a rise in civilian casualties and injuries.

Arab World

Anger in Iraq Over Use of ‘Greatest Arab Poet’ in Ramadan Ad

The late Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri serves tea to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, as portrayed in a Ramadan advertisement
The late Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri serves tea to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, as portrayed in a Ramadan advertisement
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Anger in Iraq Over Use of ‘Greatest Arab Poet’ in Ramadan Ad

The late Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri serves tea to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, as portrayed in a Ramadan advertisement
The late Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri serves tea to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, as portrayed in a Ramadan advertisement

Baghdad - A promotional video produced by a local platform and sponsored by several companies has sparked widespread criticism in Iraq over content described as “irresponsible,” according to the Iraqi Writers and Authors Union, for allegedly insulting the “Greatest Arab Poet,” Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri (1899–1997), as well as former royal-era prime minister Nuri al-Said (1888–1958).

Although the production company branded the advertisement “Unified Iraq,” it depicted al-Jawahiri in an AI-generated image serving tea to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani inside his office. In a similar scene, Nuri al-Said was shown serving tea to former parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, triggering a wave of public outrage.

Alongside the controversy over the AI-generated portrayals of al-Jawahiri and al-Said, another debate erupted after the video showed US Chargé d’Affaires Joshua Harris, British Ambassador Irfan Siddiq, French Ambassador Patrick Durel, and German Ambassador Daniel Krebber at a banquet, appearing to be hosted by Farhad Alaaldin, the Iraqi prime minister’s adviser for foreign affairs.

The advertisement also briefly featured the late Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, holding an umbrella while walking through the streets of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, raising further questions about its purpose.

While the video included a song about “a unified Iraq as a homeland of peace,” critics said its central narrative — built around a homeless young beggar — was confusing and poorly defined. Sources close to the production team told Asharq Al-Awsat that the creators had “their own artistic methods” of expressing the idea.

Government Distances Itself

Amid the mounting backlash, the prime minister’s office expressed rejection of “the virtual video in which al-Jawahiri appeared in a manner inconsistent with the prime minister’s respect and appreciation for his literary and national stature.”

Al-Sudani instructed the Communications and Media Commission to launch an urgent investigation into the entities that produced, promoted, or published the advertisement, citing its alleged offense to cultural icons and state institutions, as well as what he described as the irresponsible and unprofessional use of artificial intelligence technologies.

He also signaled the possibility of legal action against the party responsible for producing what he called “the offensive video against Iraq and its national symbols.”

In contrast, the production company asserted that the PM’s office had prior knowledge of the project, and that the same applied to al-Halbousi. However, sources denied being aware of the inclusion of al-Jawahiri and Nuri al-Said in the work.

The sources also suggested that a government official may have been involved in facilitating the production in cooperation with Al-Bayan University, whose building and offices appeared in the advertisement.

“Deliberate Insult”

The Iraqi Writers and Authors Union condemned what it called an “insult to the immortal al-Jawahiri” after the video showed him serving tea to the prime minister.

In a statement, the union said the act reflected “a deliberate offense to a poet distinguished by his immense cultural and moral value, and his well-known national and humanitarian positions.”

It urged relevant authorities to take a firm and deterrent stance against “irresponsible acts aimed at distorting facts and undermining Iraq’s national symbols.”

The union added that al-Jawahiri remained a national symbol “we proudly present to the world and refuse to see insulted by any party.”

The union was founded in al-Jawahiri’s home in 1959 and he became Iraq’s first journalists’ syndicate head the same year.

Claims of Prior Approvals

Facing intense criticism, the advertisement’s author and head of the production company said all participating political figures had approved the details of the project and filming inside their offices.

She stated that the scenes featuring al-Sudani and al-Halbousi were real, with only the figures of al-Jawahiri and Nuri al-Said later added using artificial intelligence.

In a statement on Instagram, al-Jumaili said the project took two months to complete and was reviewed by several international parties before being shown in Iraq, adding that “no step was taken without official approvals.” She did not specify the nature of those entities or whether the political figures were aware of the AI portrayals alongside them.

She argued that the backlash was politically driven and overlooked the advertisement’s positive messages, later explaining that the tea-serving scenes symbolized a “national identity” passed from past intellectual and political leaders to a new generation of leaders.