2021 Notebook: The War in Gaza and the Razing of AP's Office

FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
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2021 Notebook: The War in Gaza and the Razing of AP's Office

FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)

An 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group in May left over 260 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

It was the fourth war between the bitter enemies since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, with fighting erupting after weeks of tensions and clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police in contested east Jerusalem.

Israeli aircraft struck hundreds of targets in Gaza, while Hamas launched over 4,000 rockets at Israel. In a first, the violence also spilled over into clashes between Jews and Arabs inside Israel as well.

In Gaza, tens of thousands of homes were damaged and more than 2,000 others were destroyed. Israel has eased its blockade of Gaza as part of Egyptian-led efforts to broker a longer-term cease-fire, but reconstruction efforts have yet to get off the ground. In rocket-scarred southern Israel, residents remain jittery.

On the sixth day of the war, the Israeli air force bombed the 12-story al-Jalaa tower, roughly an hour after ordering all occupants to evacuate. No one was injured, but the building was destroyed. The building was home to offices belonging to The Associated Press, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel as well as dozens of families. Israel has said it had evidence Hamas was using the building for military purposes, though it has not released any evidence publicly to back the claim.

Here, some AP journalists involved in the coverage reflect on the story and their own experiences.

FARES AKRAM, correspondent, Gaza City, Gaza Strip:
The destruction of the AP office felt like an attack on all of us. The office had been our professional home for years — and most of us had been sleeping there throughout the war, wrongly thinking that it was a rare safe place in Gaza.

Just days earlier, my family farmhouse was also destroyed by a bomb from an Israeli fighter jet. The house, located near the Israeli frontier in northern Gaza, had provided a precious escape from Gaza’s concrete jungle of homes and dirty streets.

After the war, I left Gaza through Egypt and went to visit my wife and children who have been living in Canada. I had not seen them for nearly two years due to coronavirus lockdowns. The four-month visit was the longest time I've ever stayed outside the tiny, impoverished crowded land on the Mediterranean that I call home.
Six months later, I wish I could say that things are getting better. But nothing has improved.

Large-scale reconstruction has yet to start. The nearly 15-year blockade that Israel and Egypt maintain on Gaza is still in place. Efforts to reach a deep, long-term cease-fire are stalled, and fears of another war breaking out are widespread. The process of rebuilding our office is moving slowly.
The crater made by the bomb on our farmhouse is still there, and the house is still in ruins.

It was my favorite spot in Gaza, something to look forward to on the weekends. It was where I could spend cold winter nights warmed by a burning bonfire or where my family would bake pastries and other dishes on the wood-fired clay oven. I self-isolated there during the lockdown because of the feeling of freedom walking in the field or feeding the chickens.

All of these lovely things have become a memory.

JOSEF FEDERMAN, bureau chief, Jerusalem:
The airstrike happened on the sixth day of the war. During those first few days, we had worked out a nice little routine. Karin Laub, the Mideast news director, would keep an eye on the story in the mornings while I would rest and do TV interviews. Then I would come in and handle the story and write the night's big roundup at the end of the day.

The airstrike happened on a Saturday, and it was actually kind of quiet. I went out and did a TV interview for Chinese television. Whenever I did TV, I would turn my phone off and put it down so I could focus on the interview. So, I turned my phone off for about 10 minutes.

When I turned it back on, there were eight missed calls from the office. I thought, “What the heck is going on?” And then as I was staring at my phone, it rang again and it was Karin and she was frantic. We had just received a warning from the Israeli army that the building with our Gaza office was going to be blown up. “We've been given an hour to clear out," she said, before asking me to call my contacts to see if we could stop it.

A couple of days earlier, I had given the Israeli military the GPS coordinates of our office to make sure it wasn’t accidentally bombed. So I called them to see if they could stop this. The spokesman was very nice, asked for more details about the building and said he would make some phone calls to see if anything could be done.

I then called the Foreign Ministry, telling the spokesman that this would be a public relations disaster if Israel destroyed the AP office. He also promised to make some calls and see if he could help.

Then, I called the prime minister's office and got a very different reply. There were no offers of help. The spokesman merely said: “Make sure you get your people out of there and they are safe.”

That's when I knew the office was going to get blown up.

I rushed home, flipped on the TV and watched our office get blown up in real time on live TV.

This wasn’t the worst thing we’ve dealt with. In 2014, two people were killed in an accident, an explosion in Gaza, and another staffer was badly wounded. So, all things considered, this wasn’t the worst outcome. At least everybody was safe.

They had an hour to get out of there. They grabbed what they could. And the amazing thing is, they went to work. They ran down the stairs, they got out of the building and they took incredible footage: They interviewed people, they spoke to the owner of the building who was also pleading with the army not to do this, they got incredible photos. We wrote some great stories and a first-person account. The resilience is amazing.

It’s not easy, but everybody kind of knows what to do. They spring to life, everybody knows their job, and they just go to work and take care of business.



Report: US Gave Syria List of Conditions for Partial Sanctions Relief 

Supporters of Syria's new government gather after the prayer in Umayyad square in Damascus, Syria, Friday March 14, 2025.(AP)
Supporters of Syria's new government gather after the prayer in Umayyad square in Damascus, Syria, Friday March 14, 2025.(AP)
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Report: US Gave Syria List of Conditions for Partial Sanctions Relief 

Supporters of Syria's new government gather after the prayer in Umayyad square in Damascus, Syria, Friday March 14, 2025.(AP)
Supporters of Syria's new government gather after the prayer in Umayyad square in Damascus, Syria, Friday March 14, 2025.(AP)

The United States has handed Syria a list of conditions that it wants Damascus to fulfill in exchange for partial sanctions relief, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters, including ensuring foreigners are not in senior governing roles.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Levant and Syria Natasha Franceschi gave the list of demands to Syrian foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani at an in-person meeting on the sidelines of a Syria donor conference in Brussels on March 18, according to two of the people - a US official and a Syrian source familiar with the matter.

Reuters was first to report both the list and the in-person meeting, the first high-level direct contact between Damascus and Washington since US President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, has been previously reported.

Reuters spoke to six sources for this story, including two US officials, a Syrian source, a regional diplomat and two sources in Washington familiar with the matter. They all requested anonymity to discuss the high-level diplomacy.

Among the conditions placed by the United States are Syria's destruction of any remaining chemical weapons stores and cooperation on counter-terrorism, the two US officials, the Syrian source and both sources in Washington said.

Another demand was making sure foreign fighters are not installed in senior roles in Syria's governing structure, the US officials and one of the sources in Washington said.

Syria has already appointed some foreign ex-fighters, including Uyghurs, a Jordanian and a Turk, to its defense ministry - a move that alarmed foreign governments.

Washington also asked Syria to appoint a liaison to assist US efforts to find Austin Tice, the US journalist who went missing in Syria over a decade ago, according to the two US officials and both sources in Washington.

In return for fulfilling all the demands, Washington would provide some sanctions relief, all six sources said. One specific action would be a two-year extension of an existing exemption for transactions with Syrian governing institutions and possibly the issuance of another exemption.

The US would also issue a statement supporting Syria's territorial integrity, the source said.

Washington did not provide a specific timeline for the conditions to be fulfilled.

Syria's foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comments. A spokesperson for the State Department said the agency does not "discuss our private diplomatic conversations publicly." Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce last week said Washington was monitoring the actions of the interim rulers.

Syria is in desperate need of sanctions relief to kickstart an economy collapsed by nearly 14 years of war, during which the United States, the UK and Europe placed tough sanctions on people, businesses and whole sectors of Syria's economy in a bid to squeeze now-ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

Some of those sanctions have been temporarily suspended, with limited effect. The US issued a six-month general license in January to ease the flow of humanitarian aid, but the move was not considered enough to allow Qatar to pay for public sector salaries through Syria's central bank.

Syrian officials including Shaibani and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa have called for sanctions to be fully lifted, saying it is unjust to keep them in place following Assad's toppling by a lightning opposition offensive in December.

US SYRIA POLICY IN PROGRESS

The delivery of the demands is the clearest signal yet of the Trump administration's policy on Syria.

US statements have focused on support for minorities and condemnations of extremism but they have otherwise said little, leaving uncertainty over the future of sanctions and whether US forces will remain deployed in the northeast.

That is in part due to differing views in Washington on how to approach Syria. Some White House officials have been keen to take a more hardline stance, pointing to the new Syrian leadership's former ties to Al-Qaeda as reason to keep engagement to a minimum, according to diplomats and US sources familiar with the policymaking process.

The State Department has sought a more nuanced approach to Syria, including possible areas of engagement, the sources added.

The differences led earlier this month to a heated deliberation between the White House and State Department on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statement denouncing violence in western Syria, where hundreds of civilians from the Alawite minority - Assad's sect - were killed after an ambush on new security forces by armed loyalists to the former regime.

Rubio condemned "radical terrorists" that carried out the violence, and called for Syria's interim authorities to hold perpetrators accountable.

The White House sought a more harshly worded statement while the State Department pushed back to add more balance, sources familiar with the process said. Reuters reported last month that Israel was lobbying the United States to keep Syria weak and decentralized.

The administration is still not fully subscribing to Israel's effort to discourage US engagement with Syria's new rulers, sources said, but some of the Israeli concerns are gaining more traction with some US officials.