Israel studying Hamas reply to Gaza ceasefire proposal
Efforts to pause the fighting gained new momentum over the past week after Israel announced plans for a new offensive to seize control of Gaza City, and Egypt and Qatar have been pushing to restart indirect talks between the sides on a U.S.-backed ceasefire plan.
The proposal includes the release of 200 Palestinian convicts jailed in Israel and an unspecified number of imprisoned women and minors, in return for 10 living and 18 deceased hostages from Gaza, according to a Hamas official.
Two Egyptian security sources confirmed the details, and added that Hamas has requested the release of hundreds of Gaza detainees as well.
The proposal includes a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, which presently control 75% of Gaza and the entry of more humanitarian aid into the enclave, where a population of 2.2 million people is increasingly facing famine.
The last round of indirect talks between the sides ended in deadlock in July, with the sides trading blame for the collapse. Israel had previously agreed to the outline, advanced by U.S. special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, but negotiations faltered over some of its details.
Israel's plans to seize control of Gaza City in the heart of the Palestinian enclave have since stirred alarm abroad and among the estimated one million people presently living there.
On the ground, there were no signs of a ceasefire nearing as Israeli gunfire, tank shelling and airstrikes killed at least 20 Palestinians on Tuesday, according to Gaza health officials.
Tanks completed taking control of the Zeitoun suburb, an eastern neighbourhood on Gaza City's outskirts, and continued to pound the nearby area of Sabra, killing two women and a man, medics said.
Local health authorities said dozens of people had been trapped in their houses because of the shelling. The Israeli military said it was checking the report.
On Friday, it said its forces were operating in nearby Zeitoun to locate weapons, tunnels and gunmen.
"It has been one of the worst nights in Sabra and Gaza City as the explosions are heard throughout the city," said Nasra Ali, 54, a mother of five, who lives in Sabra.
"I was planning to leave my house when I heard there is a possible ceasefire. I might stay for a day or two, if nothing happens, then I will run away with my kids," she told Reuters via a chat app.
Thousands of people are estimated to have fled the area in the past few days.
In Israel, the threatened offensive prompted tens of thousands of Israelis on Sunday to hold some of the largest protests since the war began, urging a deal to end the fighting and free the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to convene discussions about the ceasefire proposal soon, the two Israeli officials said. He faces pressure from his far-right government partners who object to a truce with Hamas.
Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have called for Israel to keep the war going until Hamas' defeat, and annex Gaza.
Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq said that the truce proposal it has agreed to is an interim accord that would pave the way for negotiations on ending the war.
A source close to the talks said that, unlike previous rounds, Hamas accepted the proposal with no further demands.
But prospects for agreeing an end to the war appear remote, with gaps remaining on the terms. Israel is demanding the group lay down its arms and its leaders leave Gaza, conditions which Hamas has so far publicly rejected.
The war began when Hamas-led fighters stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Israel's offensive has since killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, plunged Gaza into humanitarian crisis and displaced most its population.
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The Guardian
a few seconds ago
- The Guardian
Wednesday briefing: Is Rachel Reeves about to overhaul the dreaded council tax?
Good morning. Britain's fiscal outlook is bleak. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces the daunting task of closing a £40bn black hole in the public finances. There is intense speculation over how she intends to, as runs that oft-used phrase, balance the books. This week, my colleagues have reported that the chancellor is considering a new 'proportional' property tax. It would mark a radical overhaul of stamp duty and council tax. While there has been a good deal of focus on stamp duty, changes to council tax in England have the potential to be the most transformative – and explosive. Almost all political parties agree that the council tax system – which replaced the deeply unpopular poll tax in 1991 and has remained unchanged since – is unfair and must be reformed. But just how to do so is notoriously complex and politically tricky – especially when so many local councils are strapped for cash. To better understand how England's council tax system exacerbates inequalities and why it has proven so difficult to change, I spoke with Richard Partington, the Guardian's senior economics correspondent. That's after the headlines. Ukraine | Donald Trump ruled out the deployment of American troops in Ukraine in his first interview after yesterday's White House meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and European leaders. UK news | Keir Starmer's asylum plans have been plunged into turmoil after a high court ruling blocked people seeking refuge from being housed in an Essex hotel. Gaza | Israel has said it will deliver its response to international mediators by Friday over a new Gaza ceasefire plan accepted by Hamas amid mounting pressure for a truce. UK politics | A Reform UK-led county council has served its residents a 'plate of chaos' from the start of its leadership, according to its Conservative opposition. Work | Older employees who are disturbed by younger, more boisterous colleagues in the workplace are not victims of age harassment, an employment tribunal has ruled. When you move into a new home, one of the first letters that comes through your letterbox is the amount of council tax you owe to the local authority. This local form of taxation is paid by every household living in the area, whether renting or owning. The funds are used to pay for services from rubbish collection to meals on wheels. It is a tax that people can see and feel in their daily lives. Just how council tax came to be goes some way to explain why there has been such a reluctance to try to change it. Before council tax, a system called rates used to fund local councils. In the 1980s, Margret Thatcher's Conservative government tried to introduce a flat tax, payable no matter the value of the property you lived in, or the income you were on. This became widely known as the poll tax. 'It was controversial. The poll tax was first introduced in Scotland as a sort of pilot scheme and there was a big uproar. When it was coming to England in the late 1980s, there were huge riots, which coincided with the massive unpopularity of the tail end of the Thatcher administration,' Richard Partington tells me. 'It was one of the factors that brought down her premiership. And to replace it, they went back to this compromised, fudged system between the old rates system and the poll tax, and it was called council tax.' The system was devised in 1991 and came into effect in 1993. The problem, however, is that the amount someone pays in council tax is still based on what property prices were in 1991. Which would work, if only we hadn't built any homes since then and prices had never changed. 'There's something like 4.5m new homes or more that have been built since 1991, and then countless more conversions of factory buildings, of barns, and other non-residential properties, like shops, to homes. And you've got this army of experts trying to guess how much it would have been worth in 1991,' Richard says. It's not just those on the left who think the system, as it stands, is absurd. Richard points to criticism by David Willetts, the chair of the Resolution Foundation, who was advising on tax policy in Margaret Thatcher's policy unit in the 1980s. 'He actually thinks that council tax has become as regressive as the poll tax.' Fundamentally unfair system It is worth spelling out just how ridiculous the council tax system is. Several taxation bands dictate how much a household will have to pay to a local authority. But a resident in Blackpool living in a band B property, where the average house price is £130,000, will pay £1,860; while in Kensington and Chelsea, where the average house is worth £2.2m, the same band B bill would be £1,220. 'It hasn't taken account of the huge booming property valuations that have taken place over the past 30-odd years. And that means that you've got people living in hugely expensive homes that are paying relatively low rates of council tax. And that is sort of fundamentally unfair,' Richard says. Of course, the question of how to fix a situation where the numbers are so out of touch with reality brings its own problems – but we'll get to that later. A worsening funding crisis Council tax is not the only way local authorities get money. They also receive grants from central government. But due to austerity measures under Conservative governments, spending power funded by these grants fell in real terms by more than 50% between 2010 and 2021. This is coupled with local councils' ballooning budgets trying to cater to the growing needs of the population. Councils are in charge of a lot more than just littering and local libraries; for example, they front the costs for social care for vulnerable adults and children. 'A large part of what councils do, most people won't see on a day-to-day basis. But adult and children's social care service spending has increased so much because we've got an older and increasingly unwell population, and the cost of delivery has increased. To pay for that, there have been cuts to other areas of spending like road cleaning and libraries,' Richard says. Several councils have declared bankruptcy as a result in recent years and they won't be alone in feeling the pinch. Almost half of councils in England risk falling into bankruptcy without action to address a £4.6bn deficit amassed under Conservative-era policies, according to the government's spending watchdog. 'Most people who wouldn't come into contact with adult social or children's services think that they're paying more to their local authority and not getting much for it. They don't understand why and that's a huge issue.' Winners and losers The problem with the council tax system is that the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to fix, Richard says. With the local council funding crisis coming to a head, the Labour government cannot choose to look away like its predecessors. But the solutions floated come with their own headaches. The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, is spearheading the 'fair funding review', to figure out a new way of distributing central government grant funding to councils. That is due to come in from April next year and is under consultation. 'Among the things they're looking at is rebalancing the amount of funding for councils in more deprived areas so that they receive more money in central government funding than wealthier areas. Largely that is going to help councils in the north of England and the Midlands, where they have historically been underfunded by central government grants. And the losers will be in London and the south and the home counties,' Richard says. But a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that some of the biggest losers will be inner London boroughs where property valuations might be high but there are pockets of deep deprivation and child poverty. 'It highlights that while reforming the system that is so broken, there are going to be all kinds of issues that pop up in the process. You might think that you're addressing one problem, but another one will arise as a consequence,' Richard says. More fundamental reforms Reeves is reportedly considering overhauling stamp duty and council tax in a bid to raise desperately needed revenue. This was an idea put forward last year by Dr Tim Leunig, who was a government adviser in Rishi Sunak's Treasury, in a report for the centre-right thinktank Onwards. 'His idea was to replace council tax and stamp duty in one go with a proportional property tax that would take more accurate account of current property valuations on a national level, and a local version that would fund local services that would over time replace council tax,' Richard explains. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The reporting suggests any changes to council tax will probably not take place until Labour wins a second term. Is this Labour kicking the can down the line? Richard doesn't think so. 'It's a slow process because there are all these issues to consider. One of the problems is that the scale of the house price changes since the 90s means that if you were to institute a council tax that was actually reflective of current property values, you'd probably crash the London property market and lots of other places where house prices have boomed since the 90s,' Richard says. He adds that there are many people across the country who might live in what are now hugely valuable properties, but it doesn't mean they bought them for those prices. And, perhaps most importantly, it doesn't mean they have high incomes to pay for a regular council tax charge that reflects the modern-day value of the home. 'People hate council tax, and the idea that your council tax would significantly rise would be politically toxic for Labour,' Richard says. 'So they've been very careful with it.' 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Similar in the i paper: 'Migrant policy in disarray as court rules protest hotel must evict asylum seekers' while the Telegraph says simply 'Migrant hotels facing closure'. Top story in the Financial Times is 'Trump hints at US air role in push to seal Ukraine peace' and the Mirror runs with 'Brit troops 'to keep the peace''. The Metro splashes on 'Fury at Reeves '£500k wealth tax on homes''. What price will Ukraine have to pay for peace? After a week of historic summits on the future of Ukraine, will the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have to trade land for peace? Diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reports A bit of good news to remind you that the world's not all bad A Swedish church that was built in 1912 is going on a road trip – albeit a short one. The 672-tonne church – which is in the Arctic town of Kiruna – is being moved 5km down the road. Dozens of cameras have been set up along the route to enable people across Sweden and the world to watch as part of the latest 'slow TV' extravaganza billed as 'Den stora kyrkflytten' (the big church move). More than 10,000 people, including the Swedish king, Carl XVI Gustaf, are expected to line the streets – which have been widened especially. The endeavour took eight years of planning, and the church is not expected to reopen at its new location at the end of next year. The whole town is being moved to make way for the expansion of Europe's biggest underground mine. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday And finally, the Guardian's puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
These are controversial comments that got Israeli figures BANNED from Australia - putting them in the same club as Bonnie Blue and Kanye
The diplomatic spat between Israel and Australia marks the lowest point in this country's relationship with the Jewish state since it was founded in 1948. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded Anthony Albanese a 'weak leader' who 'abandoned' Australia's Jews, while Immigration Minister Tony Burke hit back, claiming 'strength was not measured by how many people you can blow up'. But what triggered it? Australia's announcement last week that it would recognise the state of Palestine set Albanese on a collision course with Netanyahu. Yet, Australia is no outlier. The UK, France and Canada will also move to recognise Palestine at the UN next month. The escalation in language between both sides was prompted when Burke personally revoked the visas of far-right Israeli politician Simcha Rothman, former Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked and controversial Israeli advocate Hillel Fuld. In turn, Israel 's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar - who recently accused Albanese of 'loving Hamas' - said the visas of Australia's representatives to the Palestinian Authority had been revoked. So what did Rothman, Shaked and Fuld say to gain membership to an exclusive - and unwelcome - club, which already includes the likes of domestic abuser Chris Brown, sex pest Bonnie Blue and rapper-turned-Hitler-fan Kanye West? Simcha Rothman Rothman, 45, is a democratically-elected member of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, for the far-right National Religious Party - Religious Zionism. He was due to embark on a 'solidarity tour' of Australia this week, organised by the Australian Jewish Association, but had his visa pulled at the last minute. The Department of Home Affairs said it 'does not comment on individual cases' but a leaked document, published by Sky News, revealed that officials alleged Rothman had referred to Palestinian children as 'enemies' in an interview with Channel 4. 'When the interviewer asked why doesn't Israel let the children leave Gaza, the visa holder replied "They are our enemies",' the government document states. Outspoken Sky News host Sharri Markson claimed that this was a 'wildly inaccurate description' of what he said. The transcript reveals Lindsey Hilsum, the Channel 4 reporter, asked why Israel did not let the people of Gaza over the border into Israel if they wanted them to leave. 'Because they are our enemies,' Rothman responded. Hilsum asked: 'The children are your enemies?' To which Rothamn said: 'They are our enemies and according to international treaties about refugees in the time of war, you don't let them conquer your country with refugees.' Ayelet Shaked Shaked, 49, a right-wing Israeli politician who left parliament in 2022, was denied an Australian visa last year. At the time, Burke declined to explain why it had been rejected and Shaked accused the Albanese administration of anti-Semitism. In 2014, Shaked shared a passage on social media written by the late Israeli writer Uri Elitzur that refers to Palestinian children as 'little snakes' and described the entire Palestinian people as 'the enemy'. 'Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism,' the text read. 'They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. 'They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there. In 2014, Shaked (pictured) shared a passage on social media written by the late Israeli writer Uri Elitzur that refers to Palestinian children as 'little snakes' and described the entire Palestinian people as 'the enemy'. 'They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists.' Immigration Minister Burke defended the decision to block both Rothman and Shaked's visas on Wednesday morning. 'One of them has described Palestinian children as the enemy, and the other has described Palestinian children as little snakes,' he told ABC Radio National. 'Now, if anyone wanted to come on a public speech tour, and they had those views publicly expressed about Israeli children, I would block the visa. 'And I am going to not have a lower bar for the protection of views that are bigoted views against the Palestinian people.' He added: 'I can't stop what reaches people over the internet, but I do have a personal responsibility as to whether or not Australia formally rolls out a welcome mat to people with extreme views and says, come and express them here.' Hillel Fuld Fuld, a Jewish-American entrepreneur and activist, was blocked from coming to Australia for a speaking tour last month. The multi-millionaire received a letter from the Department of Home Affairs, advising him that he was guilty of denying 'documented atrocities and (promoting) Islamophobia rhetoric, which has been received by members of the Australian community as inflammatory and concerning.' In social media posts, Fuld had described Islam as a 'global plague' and claimed up to 15 per cent of Muslims were 'radicalised'. He also compared Gazans to Nazi-era Germans and said they should be 'treated as' such. 'Differentiating between Gazans and Hamas is at best inaccurate, at worst dishonest,' he said. 'The Gazans elected Hamas, and a vast majority of them support October 7.' He also said that some Palestinian children were terrorists. 'Tragically, it is not safe to assume that all children in Gaza are innocent,' he said. 'Children are taught from age zero that murdering a Jew is the highest accomplishment in life, and so often times, Arab terror (including the murderer of my brother), is carried out by children. 'The same goes for women and "journalists" in Gaza.' Fuld's brother, Ari Fuld, was stabbed to death at the age of 45 by a 17-year-old Palestinian at the Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank on September 16, 2018. On Thursday, Executive Council of Australian Jewry's co-CEO Alex Ryvchin called for calm from both the Australian and Israeli governments. 'The Australian Jewish community is profoundly disturbed and concerned by the rapidly deteriorating state of the relations between our government and the government of the state of Israel,' he told the ABC. 'We are calling on both governments to remember what's at stake, to ensure calm heads prevail and to conduct their matters of state privately, diplomatically and with respect for the longstanding diplomatic relationship between the two countries.'
BBC News
31 minutes ago
- BBC News
Aid worker from Surrey tells of humanitarian efforts in Syria
A humanitarian aid worker from Surrey who has been working in Syria for four and a half years says the situation in the country is "hopeful". Lucia Gobbi, 34, from Walton-on-Thames, works with the United Nations World Food Programme, and has been speaking to the BBC in conjunction with World Humanitarian Day. It comes a month after the UK government announced an additional £94.5m support package to cover humanitarian aid and support longer-term recovery within Syria during a visit by Foreign Secretary David Lammy. Ms Gobbi works to deliver either cash or food vouchers to vulnerable families to help with essential food needs. World Humanitarian Day aims to "honour those who step into crises to help others".Speaking to BBC Surrey, Ms Gobbi said: "Day to day now the situation is definitely hopeful. If anyone can rebuild it's the Syrians. "But there's a long way to go, more than half the population is food insecure meaning they don't know where their next meal is coming from." In December, rebels led by the Syrian Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stormed Damascus, where Ms Gobbi is based, toppling the Assad regime which had ruled the country for 54 then, Western countries have sought to reset relations with the country. Ms Gobbi said her life in Syria was "relatively normal". "I go running in the evenings and we visit restaurants in the old city [Damascus], it's a beautiful city and a beautiful country but it's a world away from Walton-on-Thames," she of the programmes Ms Gobbi works on provides a subsidised bread programme for vulnerable Syrians using wheat flour that comes from Ukraine. "In terms of humanitarian assistance, it is absolutely coming. It's the investment in infrastructure and real rebuilding of the economy that we're waiting for," she what her future in the country would be, Ms Gobbi said she would be "happy to stay as long as there is a job for her to do".
