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Macron Rejects Any Hamas Role in Post-war Gaza

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomes French President Emmanuel Macron for a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, April 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomes French President Emmanuel Macron for a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, April 7, 2025. (Reuters)
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Macron Rejects Any Hamas Role in Post-war Gaza

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomes French President Emmanuel Macron for a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, April 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomes French President Emmanuel Macron for a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, April 7, 2025. (Reuters)

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Palestinian group Hamas should have no role in governing the Gaza Strip once its war with Israel is over.  

On a visit to Cairo to discuss the war, Macron said he was strongly opposed to any displacement of Palestinians, throwing his weight behind a Gaza reconstruction plan endorsed by the Arab League to counter a US proposal to send the war-ravaged territory's inhabitants elsewhere.  

Speaking alongside President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the Egyptian capital, Macron hailed his government's "crucial work on this plan, which offers a realistic path to the reconstruction of Gaza and should also pave the way for new Palestinian governance" in the territory.

The French president said Gaza's post-war governance should be "led by the Palestinian Authority", dominated by Hamas's rival party Fatah and based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"Hamas must have no role in this governance, and must no longer constitute a threat to Israel," Macron said.  

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and strongly rejected any future role for the group in the Gaza Strip after its unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack triggered the war, now in its 19th month.  

Hamas has recently signaled willingness to cede power in Gaza, which the Iran-backed group has ruled since 2007.  

After a two-month truce, Israel resumed intense bombardment across the Gaza Strip and restarted ground operations, killing at least 1,391 Palestinians since March 18, according to the territory's health ministry.  

Macron said both France and Egypt "condemn the resumption of Israeli strikes on Gaza", warning of a "dramatic" worsening in the situation on the ground.  

Both Macron and Sisi voiced support for "an immediate return" to the ceasefire and the resumption of aid access into Gaza, which Israel blocked shortly before renewing its offensive.  

- 'Realistic path' -  

Macron commended Egypt's "tireless efforts" as mediator in the conflict, having brokered along with Qatar and the United States the January truce.  

The deal collapsed when Israel sought to extend the deal's first phase, but Hamas insisted on talks for a second phase, as originally outlined by then-US president Joe Biden.  

Macron and Sisi were joined on Monday by Jordan's King Abdullah II for a summit on the war and humanitarian efforts to alleviate the war-induced suffering of Gaza's 2.4 million people.  

The visit is a show of support for Egypt and Jordan, the proposed destinations in United States President Donald Trump's widely criticized idea to move Gazans out of the territory.  

Macron said that "we are firmly opposed to the displacement of populations and to any annexation of both Gaza and the West Bank", which Israel has occupied since 1967.  

He said the Arab League's plan was a "realistic path for Gaza's reconstruction" without forcing Palestinians to leave.  

Sisi warned that without a "just solution" for the plight of Palestinians there will not be "lasting peace and permanent stability in the Middle East".  

King Abdullah stressed the need for "a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution", a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

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Arab World

Funerals Held in Lebanon for Three Journalists Killed in Israeli Strike

A woman stands amid Hezbollah flags on March 29, 2026, in the Choueifat area on the outskirts of Beirut during the funeral of journalists killed the previous day in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon. (AFP)
A woman stands amid Hezbollah flags on March 29, 2026, in the Choueifat area on the outskirts of Beirut during the funeral of journalists killed the previous day in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon. (AFP)
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Funerals Held in Lebanon for Three Journalists Killed in Israeli Strike

A woman stands amid Hezbollah flags on March 29, 2026, in the Choueifat area on the outskirts of Beirut during the funeral of journalists killed the previous day in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon. (AFP)
A woman stands amid Hezbollah flags on March 29, 2026, in the Choueifat area on the outskirts of Beirut during the funeral of journalists killed the previous day in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon. (AFP)

Mourners gathered on Sunday in Choueifat, south of Beirut, for the funerals of three journalists killed by an Israeli airstrike.

Ali Shoeib, a correspondent with Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, Fatima Ftouni, a reporter with the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV, and her brother Mohammed, a cameraman with the station, were killed in a strike on their car while covering the Israel-Hezbollah war in southern Lebanon on Saturday.

Israel’s military said it had targeted Shoeib, accusing him of being a Hezbollah intelligence operative, without providing evidence. Lebanese officials have condemned the strike as a war crime.

Mourners chanted, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” as the bodies were buried in an empty lot converted into a temporary graveyard during the war.

“It’s not the first time our colleagues are killed,” said Mohammad Ali Badreddine, an SNG engineer with al-Mayadeen. “It’s a big loss... they were among the brightest and most professional people and also among the kindest people.”

Arab World

Former Algerian President Liamine Zeroual Dies

Former Algerian President Liamine Zeroual casts his vote in the 1997 parliamentary elections. (AFP)
Former Algerian President Liamine Zeroual casts his vote in the 1997 parliamentary elections. (AFP)
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Former Algerian President Liamine Zeroual Dies

Former Algerian President Liamine Zeroual casts his vote in the 1997 parliamentary elections. (AFP)
Former Algerian President Liamine Zeroual casts his vote in the 1997 parliamentary elections. (AFP)

Algeria announced three days of national mourning on Sunday after the death of 84-year-old Liamine Zeroual, the former soldier who served as the country's president from 1994 to 1999.

Born on July 3, 1941 in the eastern city of Batna, Zeroual served in Algeria's National Liberation Army (FLN), which fought for independence from French rule.

After leading a transitional administration during a later civil war, Zeroual organized the country's first multi-party presidential election in 1995, winning by a wide margin.

In 1998, however, he unexpectedly cut short his five-year term, making way for Abdelaziz Bouteflika to succeed him and run the country for 20 years.

Zeroual remained respected in retirement. Algeria's presidency said he had died at a military hospital in Algiers after a serious illness and that flags would fly at half-mast across the country.

Arab World

Lebanon Kids Struggle to Keep Up Studies as War Slams School Doors Shut

UNICEF says the war has left almost half a million students out of school in Lebanon. Anwar AMRO / AFP
UNICEF says the war has left almost half a million students out of school in Lebanon. Anwar AMRO / AFP
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Lebanon Kids Struggle to Keep Up Studies as War Slams School Doors Shut

UNICEF says the war has left almost half a million students out of school in Lebanon. Anwar AMRO / AFP
UNICEF says the war has left almost half a million students out of school in Lebanon. Anwar AMRO / AFP

In a classroom turned shelter for displaced families, teenager Ahmad Melhem follows a recorded lesson on a tablet as the war between Hezbollah and Israel interrupts education for hundreds of thousands of students in Lebanon.

"I don't want to regret not finishing my studies despite the difficult circumstances," said Melhem, whose family was displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs, the site of repeated Israeli bombardment.

"We took a risk and went back to get schoolbooks," he told AFP.

"We're trying with everything we have to continue our education so we can achieve our goals," said the 17-year-old, who hopes to study engineering after finishing high school.

Crisis-hit Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East war on March 2 when militant group Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Israel has responded with large-scale strikes on Lebanon and a ground offensive in the country's south, killing more than 1,100 people -- including 122 children -- and displacing more than one million people, according to authorities.

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF says the war has left almost half a million students out of school in Lebanon, after more than 350 public schools were turned into shelters and many in areas under Israeli bombardment were closed.

Melhem's family and others are sharing a classroom divided up by plastic curtains at a school in a central Beirut district, the room scattered with thin mattresses and blankets, a table and small stove serving as a shared kitchen.

- 'Digital divide' -

In the corner, Melhem has set up his books and a computer screen, but there is no internet in the room.

An NGO has provided internet access in the schoolyard, crowded with children playing and families socializing, but Melhem says he cannot concentrate because of the noise, so he watches the recorded classes later.

His private school resumed distance learning two weeks after the war began, after cancelling subjects and shortening lessons.

"In-person (class) is better and more engaging," he said. "I miss group work and the science projects we used to do."

According to a 2023 World Bank report, each day of public school closures costs the Lebanese economy three million dollars.

In the courtyard, Melhem's mother helps her other son, aged eight, to follow his online classes.

"If I leave him alone, his mind wanders and he can't keep up with the lesson," says Salameh, 41.

"The war has destroyed everything," she added.

"Education is the only thing left for my children."

UNICEF's head of education in Lebanon, Atif Rafique, expressed particular concern about the future of students who are preparing to enter university while the war continues.

He warned of the dangers of children dropping out of school, especially "girls and adolescent young women" who face additional risks, including early marriage.

'Not even pens'

In Dekwaneh, north of Beirut, at a vocational institute that is now a shelter, Aya Zahran said she spends her day "preparing food and working to make the place livable".

"We have only one phone that my siblings and I share," said Zahran, 17, who is also displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs.

But "the link the school sent us (for online classes) doesn't work", she said.

Rafique said hundreds of public schools lack the resources for distance learning, and noted a "big digital divide" when it comes to internet access, with teachers also affected.

UNICEF has helped launch an online platform with recorded lessons, and a hotline allowing students to access materials through a phone call, without needing internet access.

He said children in south Lebanon have been disproportionately affected by education interruptions since the last round of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah broke out in October 2023.

Just a week before the latest war began, UNICEF reopened 30 schools in the south that had been damaged in the previous conflict, he said.

At the vocational institute's entrance, an education ministry employee was registering children to assess what educational services they need.

"The situation here is very difficult... there's no internet here, and not even pens," said Nasima Ismail, who has been displaced from the northeast Bekaa region, as she signed up her children.

"My children are top students. I don't want them to miss out on their education, as happened to us when we were kids," said Ismail, recalling Lebanon's devastating 1975-1990 civil war.

"I want them to complete their education, even if we are left with nothing," she said.

"I wish them days better than ours."