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Israel’s Netanyahu Says Military Pressure Needed to Free Hostages

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, chairs a cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defence, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 24 December 2023. (EPA)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, chairs a cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defence, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 24 December 2023. (EPA)
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Israel’s Netanyahu Says Military Pressure Needed to Free Hostages

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, chairs a cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defence, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 24 December 2023. (EPA)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, chairs a cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defence, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 24 December 2023. (EPA)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel would not succeed in freeing the remaining hostages held in Gaza without applying military pressure.

"We wouldn't have succeeded up until now to release more than 100 hostages without military pressure," Netanyahu said during a speech in Israel's parliament. "And we won't succeed at releasing all the hostages without military pressure."

A deal brokered in late November by the US, Qatar and Egypt saw the release of more than 100 of the estimated 240 hostages who were taken captive to Gaza during an attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.

"Military pressure, operational pressure and political pressure and that's why there is one thing we won't do - we will not stop fighting," Netanyahu said.

Hostages' family members sat in the chamber looking down on the premier, holding posters of their relatives behind the plexiglass and intermittently interrupting him.

"Now! Now! Now!" the family members shouted.

Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad rejected on Monday an Egyptian proposal that they relinquish power in the Gaza Strip in return for a permanent ceasefire, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters.

Three Israeli hostages were killed mistakenly in Gaza by Israeli forces earlier this month.

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Arab World

Mother of Jailed French Journalist Asks Algerian President for Pardon

This undated handout photograph, courtesy of the Gleizes family, released on June 30, 2025, shows Christophe Gleizes, a prominent French sports journalist, at an unknown location. © So Press/RSF via AFP
This undated handout photograph, courtesy of the Gleizes family, released on June 30, 2025, shows Christophe Gleizes, a prominent French sports journalist, at an unknown location. © So Press/RSF via AFP
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Mother of Jailed French Journalist Asks Algerian President for Pardon

This undated handout photograph, courtesy of the Gleizes family, released on June 30, 2025, shows Christophe Gleizes, a prominent French sports journalist, at an unknown location. © So Press/RSF via AFP
This undated handout photograph, courtesy of the Gleizes family, released on June 30, 2025, shows Christophe Gleizes, a prominent French sports journalist, at an unknown location. © So Press/RSF via AFP

The mother of jailed French journalist Christophe Gleizes wrote a letter to Algeria's president requesting he pardon her son from his seven-year sentence on terror-related charges.

Gleizes, a sportswriter, was convicted of "glorifying terrorism" in June.

"I respectfully ask you to consider granting Christophe a pardon, so that he may regain his freedom and his family," Sylvie Godard wrote in the letter, which was dated December 10 and seen by AFP on Monday.

Gleizes's lawyers are also seeking a new trial with the country's highest court.

Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 while travelling to northeastern Algeria's Kabylia region to write about the country's most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.

In 2021, he met the head of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group designated a terrorist organization by Algiers.

At this month's appeal hearing, Gleizes said he did not know the MAK had been listed as a terrorist organization, and asked the court's forgiveness for his "journalistic mistakes".

An Algerian appeals court upheld his sentence this month, a decision his mother called "incomprehensible".

"Nowhere in any of his writings will you find any trace of statements hostile to Algeria and its people," she wrote in her letter to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

Gleizes is currently France's only journalist imprisoned abroad, according to rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to work towards his release.

Gleizes's jailing comes at a time of diplomatic friction between Paris and Algiers after France last year officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.

Arab World

Torrential Rains and Flash Floods Kill 37 in Moroccan City of Safi

The minaret of a mosque stands behind damaged or destroyed houses following an earthquake in Moulay Brahim, Al-Haouz province, on September 9, 2023. (AFP)
The minaret of a mosque stands behind damaged or destroyed houses following an earthquake in Moulay Brahim, Al-Haouz province, on September 9, 2023. (AFP)
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Torrential Rains and Flash Floods Kill 37 in Moroccan City of Safi

The minaret of a mosque stands behind damaged or destroyed houses following an earthquake in Moulay Brahim, Al-Haouz province, on September 9, 2023. (AFP)
The minaret of a mosque stands behind damaged or destroyed houses following an earthquake in Moulay Brahim, Al-Haouz province, on September 9, 2023. (AFP)

Floods triggered by torrential rains have killed at least 37 people in the Moroccan coastal city of Safi, the Interior Ministry said Monday.

Authorities said heavy rain and flash floods overnight inundated about 70 homes and businesses and swept away 10 vehicles. The Interior Ministry reported 14 people hospitalized, AFP reported.

Local outlets reported that schools announced three days of closures. Rains also caused flooding and damage elsewhere throughout Morocco, including the northern city of Tetouan and the mountain town of Tinghir.

Safi, a city on Morocco’s Atlantic shore more than 320 kilometers (200 miles) from the capital Rabat, is a major hub for the country’s critical fishing and mining industries. Both employ thousands to catch, mine and process the commodities for export. The city, with a population of more than 300,000 people, is home to a major phosphate processing plant.

Videos shared on social media showed cars stranded and partially submerged as floodwaters surged through Safi’s streets.

Climate change has made weather patterns more unpredictable in Morocco. North Africa has been plagued by several years of drought, hardening soils and making mountains, deserts and plains more susceptible to flooding. Last year, floods in normally arid mountains and desert areas killed nearly two dozen people in Morocco and Algeria.

This week's floods came after 22 people were killed in a two-building collapse in the Moroccan city of Fez. Morocco has invested in disaster risk initiatives although local governments often do not enforce building codes and drainage systems can be lacking in some cities. Infrastructural inequities were a focus of youth-led protests that swept the country earlier this year.

__ Associated Press writer Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.

Arab World

Witkoff, Kushner Brief EU Foreign Ministers on Gaza via Video Conference, EU Official Says 

Seen from a building heavily damaged during the Israeli air and ground operations, tents fill a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (AP)
Seen from a building heavily damaged during the Israeli air and ground operations, tents fill a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (AP)
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Witkoff, Kushner Brief EU Foreign Ministers on Gaza via Video Conference, EU Official Says 

Seen from a building heavily damaged during the Israeli air and ground operations, tents fill a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (AP)
Seen from a building heavily damaged during the Israeli air and ground operations, tents fill a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (AP)

US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner on Monday briefed EU foreign ministers on Trump's Gaza peace plan via video conference, an EU official said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said earlier on Monday that he had suggested to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas that Kushner and Witkoff provide an update on the implementation of the plan to the foreign ministers during their meeting in Brussels.