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DR Congo Latest to Promise Moving Israel Embassy to Jerusalem

Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, addresses the African Water Forum in N’Djamena, Chad, on July 16, 2026. (AFP file)
Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, addresses the African Water Forum in N’Djamena, Chad, on July 16, 2026. (AFP file)
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DR Congo Latest to Promise Moving Israel Embassy to Jerusalem

Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, addresses the African Water Forum in N’Djamena, Chad, on July 16, 2026. (AFP file)
Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, addresses the African Water Forum in N’Djamena, Chad, on July 16, 2026. (AFP file)

The Democratic Republic of Congo said Thursday it would move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, joining a small group of countries including the United States in taking the symbolic step of backing Israeli sovereignty in the contested holy city.

After a visit by President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, the two countries in a statement said they would take steps for "the relocation of the embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem", without giving a timeline.

Tshisekedi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a meeting spoke of their "shared commitment to strengthening diplomatic relations", the statement said.

Tshisekedi has spoken warmly about Israel for years, saying his support is driven by his Christian faith. He has also been eager for support from the United States, which has increasingly pressured Rwanda over armed rebel advances in DR Congo.

The announcement comes weeks after Colombia's new hard-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, also announced that he would move his country's embassy to Jerusalem, a sharp shift from his leftist predecessor who criticized Israel over its Gaza offensive.

The vast majority of countries, if they recognize Israel, keep their embassies in Tel Aviv on the grounds that the status of Jerusalem will be settled in a final resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

President Donald Trump shattered that consensus in 2018 during his first term by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, which is home to Israel's parliament, prime minister and most other major governmental institutions.

Since Trump's move, only a handful of small, US-aligned countries have followed suit -- Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay.

Kosovo and Somaliland, which are not member-states of the United Nations, have also opened what they consider their embassies in Jerusalem.

Argentine President Javier Milei, another right-wing Latin American who is an outspoken supporter of Israel, has promised to move his country's embassy to Jerusalem.

The shift has not yet taken place, however, reportedly due to disagreement over an Israeli company's plans to drill in the British-ruled Falkland Islands, which Argentina claims and calls the Malvinas.

Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it, declaring Jerusalem, home to Judaism's holiest site, to be its eternal, undivided capital.

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Arab World

Iraq’s Maliki Joins Chorus Rejecting Militia Disarmament

Members of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah carry the group’s flag in central Baghdad. (File photo - AFP)
Members of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah carry the group’s flag in central Baghdad. (File photo - AFP)
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Iraq’s Maliki Joins Chorus Rejecting Militia Disarmament

Members of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah carry the group’s flag in central Baghdad. (File photo - AFP)
Members of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah carry the group’s flag in central Baghdad. (File photo - AFP)

State of Law Coalition leader Nouri al-Maliki has joined a growing chorus of critics of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government program, unanimously approved by parliament, to restrict arms to state control.

Less than a month after the State Administration Coalition, comprising leading Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish forces, gave Zaidi full authority to determine how to handle the issue after Sept. 30 — when the remaining US troops are due to leave Iraq — armed factions, notably Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, rejected the deadline. They argue that their weapons are “ideological” and tied to the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.”

Maliki joined them Wednesday, declaring in televised remarks that “there will be no handover of weapons” after Sept. 30.

Instead, he advocated “regulation and containment” of weapons through a mechanism still under discussion.

Maliki pointed that distinctions could be drawn among heavy, medium and light arms.

His position came despite an earlier warning from the State Administration Coalition that any armed activity outside state authority after Sept. 30 would be dealt with under the counterterrorism law.

Shifting Terms

A visit to Iraq by Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf further complicated the process amid indications that Tehran was unwilling to see all factions surrender their weapons.

The government subsequently agreed to a Shiite Coordination Framework committee that would begin talks with armed groups after the end of September to persuade them to establish a mechanism for “regulating weapons, not disarming them,” as Maliki put it.

Maliki serves on the three-member committee alongside former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Badr Organization leader Hadi al-Amiri.

While Sudani has made no statement on surrendering weapons, Amiri and Maliki have taken turns, using terms such as “regulating,” “freezing” or “deferring” weapons rather than “disarmament.”

Maliki’s comments followed Amiri’s description two days earlier of the 2019 Tishreen protests as a “sedition” intended to topple the Shiite political system.

Amiri also identified the “resistance” as the so-called “third party” that carried out killings of protesters, leaving thousands dead or wounded, mostly from poor Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and central and southern provinces.

Political observers viewed his remarks as a deliberate message that armed factions “were, and remain, the ones protecting the political system when it is threatened.”

Akram al-Kaabi, secretary-general of Harakat al-Nujaba, meanwhile said US President Donald Trump was “deluded” if he believed he could achieve a victory in Iraq after failing to do so in Iran.

The government has maintained that the deadline for surrendering weapons remains unchanged and coincides with the US withdrawal, saying armed groups could be compelled to comply once the American presence ends and there is no longer justification for carrying arms.

Saleh al-Arbawi, head of the Wa’i Movement, told Asharq Al-Awsat that any handover could be circumvented or merely symbolic, saying armed groups follow “a transnational ideology and leadership” and have received no order to relinquish their weapons.

The government, he said, faces either confrontation or potentially lengthy dialogue and compromise. He added that the wider the current conflict becomes, the more difficult restricting arms to state control will be.

Arab World

Syria Says Thwarted Escape Attempt of Man Linked to Assad-era General

A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)
A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)
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Syria Says Thwarted Escape Attempt of Man Linked to Assad-era General

A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)
A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)

Syrian authorities on Thursday said they foiled an escape attempt by a man close to a general who served ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad and led a militia linked to Assad's cousin.

Security forces in the Damascus countryside said they "thwarted an escape attempt by Alaa Zahreddine, a key associate of the criminal Ghiath Dalla and former leader of the 'Shield of the Homeland Brigade' militia", accusing him of being "implicated in crimes against civilians".

"After his identity was confirmed during a stop at a security checkpoint, Zahreddine drew his weapon and shot himself, committing suicide to avoid capture. His companion in the vehicle was arrested."

Syrian authorities had previously said that the brigade was linked to Rami Makhlouf, cousin of former Syrian president Assad who was ousted in 2024.

The operation comes days after security forces said they killed an Assad-era army commander in a firefight while trying to arrest him in the Alawite-majority Syrian coast.

Authorities said both men were linked to Assad-era general Dalla.

Dalla, a former officer in the much-feared Fourth Brigade, had announced on social media last year the formation of a "military council for the liberation of Syria".

The announcement came shortly before deadly violence targeting the Alawite minority, to which Assad's family belongs, erupted on the Syrian coast in March 2025.

Authorities accused armed Assad supporters of sparking the violence by attacking security forces.

A national commission of inquiry said at least 1,426 members of the minority were killed, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor put the toll at more than 1,700.

Arab World

Israel Releases Five Civilian Lebanese Detainees

A photograph taken from the southern Lebanese area of Nabatieh shows smoke as it rises from the site of Israeli strikes that targeted the hilltops of the mountainous area of the strategic Ali al-Taher Ridge on August 14, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
A photograph taken from the southern Lebanese area of Nabatieh shows smoke as it rises from the site of Israeli strikes that targeted the hilltops of the mountainous area of the strategic Ali al-Taher Ridge on August 14, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
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Israel Releases Five Civilian Lebanese Detainees

A photograph taken from the southern Lebanese area of Nabatieh shows smoke as it rises from the site of Israeli strikes that targeted the hilltops of the mountainous area of the strategic Ali al-Taher Ridge on August 14, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
A photograph taken from the southern Lebanese area of Nabatieh shows smoke as it rises from the site of Israeli strikes that targeted the hilltops of the mountainous area of the strategic Ali al-Taher Ridge on August 14, 2026. (Photo by AFP)

Israel announced Thursday the release of five civilians captured in southern Lebanon, where it is at war with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah group, with one man already handed over to the Lebanese army.

Lebanon said its army had received a man returned by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the first since Beirut called in August talks for the release of an initial group seized since the start of a 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war.

"It was decided to release five Lebanese civilians who were arrested in areas under (Israeli army) control in southern Lebanon," the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

"After their interrogation was completed, it became clear that they are civilians who are not members of any terrorist organization, have not engaged in terrorism, and there is no reason to continue holding them in Israel."

A Lebanese official told AFP on Thursday that the release of the four other civilians -- two Lebanese and two Syrians -- was postponed to Friday.

Their release is a prelude to the continuation of Lebanon-Israel talks in Rome, the official added, requesting anonymity.

Lebanese authorities have not officially announced the number of citizens Israel seized during that war and a subsequent 2026 conflict, but a list of more than 30 people has been compiled by their families and a committee working on their cases.

The list includes at least one Syrian national and several Hezbollah fighters.

Netanyahu's office said the decision followed "extensive efforts" by Israel and Lebanon to locate and return the bodies of leaders of Lebanon's Jewish community abducted and killed in the 1980s during the country's 15-year civil war.

After the latest round of Lebanon-Israel talks in Rome last month, a Lebanese official said Israel gave Beirut a list of individuals to demand the return of their remains.

The Israeli military said in August it recovered the remains of a soldier killed in eastern Lebanon in 1982.

- 'Humanitarian operation' -

The ICRC, which handles the transfer of released people between Israel and Lebanon, said a humanitarian operation was underway.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said that the Lebanese army received Malek Ghazi earlier on Thursday, adding that he was taken to an army intelligence headquarters in the southern city of Tyre.

Ghazi's family, from the southeastern town of Ain Ata, said in October last year that they had lost contact with him after he had gone out to exercise.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam hailed the release, thanking "the American administration... for the efforts exerted in this regard".

He pledged to work "until the release of all our prisoners" and "the disclosure of the fate of the missing", as well as an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory.

The United States, which is sponsoring the Lebanon-Israel talks, commended through a State Department spokesperson both Israel and Lebanon "for demonstrating good faith through these initial steps" and added it hoped "this will serve as the basis for expanded discussions on other civilian issues".

Hezbollah attacked Israel in 2023 in support of Hamas after the outbreak of the Gaza war, leading to over a year of hostilities that escalated into a full-blown war in 2024.

The group drew Lebanon into the Middle East war two years later in support of its backer Iran after launching rockets at Israel.

Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion that Lebanon says have killed more than 4,300 people.

The conflict has calmed since a US-Iran memorandum of understanding and a framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon agreed in June.

The Lebanon-Israel deal calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in "pilot zones".

A date has not yet been set for the next round of Lebanon-Israel talks, and Israel still carries out strikes on Lebanon while occupying parts of its territory.