Latest news with #demilitarization
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Netanyahu confirms ceasefire, Syrian withdrawal from Sweida due to 'forceful action'
"I instructed the IDF to act with force because the Damascus regime sent its army south of the capital and massacred the Druze," Netanyahu said. Israel has achieved aceasefire in Syria through 'forceful actions,' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday. 'We have established a clear policy: the demilitarization of the area south of Damascus and the protection of our brothers, the Druze,' he said. 'I instructed the IDF to act with force, because the Damascus regime sent its army south of the capital and massacred the Druze. As a result of our intensified action, a ceasefire has been established, and Syrian forces have withdrawn back to Damascus.' Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's government would soon withdraw its forces from areas with Druze populations, an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday night. Syria's Druze had reached a ceasefire agreement with the Syrian government in Sweida that would take immediate effect, Druze religious leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou said in a video broadcast by state media on Wednesday, Reuters reported earlier. A ceasefire announced on Tuesday night collapsed after a few hours. There was still fire from government forces in the predominantly Druze city of Sweida after the announcement was made, a witness told Reuters. Syria's official Syrian Arab News Agency corroborated the reports of a ceasefire agreement and said security checkpoints had been deployed across Sweida. Israel conducted strikes on key Damascus sites Israel struck the entrance to the Syrian regime's military headquarters complex in Damascus, the IDF reported Wednesday. On Thursday, Sharaa accused Israel of trying to fracture Syria and promised to protect its Druze minority after US intervention to help achieve a truce in fighting between government forces and Druze fighters. Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, the Islamist-led government's troops withdrew from Sweida, where dozens of people have been killed in days of conflict pitting Druze fighters against government troops and Bedouin tribes. But in a worrying development, a Bedouin military commander said their fighters had launched a new offensive in Sweida province against Druze fighters, and that the truce only applied to government forces. The Bedouin, a collection of Sunni Muslim farmers who have long-standing frictions with the Druze, were seeking to free detained colleagues, the Bedouin military commander told Reuters. A round of fighting between the Bedouin and Druze earlier this week prompted the government to send troops to Sweida to quell the clashes, but the violence escalated until a ceasefire was declared. The violence has underlined the challenges that Sharaa faces in stabilizing Syria and exerting centralized rule, despite his warming ties with the US and his administration's evolving security contacts with Israel. One local journalist said he had counted more than 60 bodies in the streets of Sweida on Thursday morning. Ryan Marouf of Suwayda24 told Reuters he had found a family of 12 people killed in one house, including women and an elderly man. On Wednesday, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, while also hitting government forces in the south, demanding they withdraw and saying Israel aimed to protect Syrian Druze, whom Israel's Druze consider brothers. Israel, which bombed Syria frequently under the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad, has struck the country repeatedly this year, describing its new leaders as barely disguised jihadists and saying it will not allow them to deploy forces in areas of southern Syria near its border. Addressing Syrians on Thursday, Sharaa accused Israel of seeking to 'dismantle the unity of our people,' saying it had 'consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime.' Sharaa, commander of an al-Qaeda faction before cutting ties with the group in 2016, said protecting Druze citizens and their rights was 'our priority.' He rejected any attempt to drag them into the hands of an 'external party.' Sharaa vowed to hold responsible those who committed violations against 'our Druze people.' Netanyahu said Israel had established a policy demanding the demilitarization of a swathe of territory near the border, stretching from the Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain, east of Sweida. Western diplomats were passing near Syria's Defense Ministry in Damascus in an armored convoy when Israel struck the building with several missiles on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the matter, including a Syrian eyewitness. No one in the convoy was wounded, and it continued on its way, the diplomats said, declining to elaborate about the nationalities or number of those involved. A Syrian medical source said the strikes on the Defense Ministry had killed five members of the security forces. Amichai Stein contributed to this report.
Russia Today
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
‘Obvious similarity' between Ukraine and Nazi Germany
Ukraine bears similarities to the Nazi state at the end of World War II and should undergo 'demilitarization,' 'denazification,' and 'democratization' in a manner similar to postwar Germany, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has told TASS. He spoke to the Russian news agency on Thursday, the 80th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference, which began on July 17, 1945. The conference was the last wartime meeting between leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It laid the groundwork for postwar Europe, including plans for Germany's demilitarization and denazification. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, explained that the concept of the 'three D's' had originally been formulated for Nazi Germany, which he described as an aggressor state that had disrupted the international order, according to TASS. 'The 1945 Reich and modern Ukraine are, of course, very different - in scale, global role, and even (formally) in state ideology. But there is also obvious similarity.' Medvedev said Ukraine shares its 'crisis of identity' with Hitler's Germany and engages in the 'open use of Nazi symbols,' while showing signs of dictatorship and economic degradation. 'All this makes the idea of applying the three D's relevant,' he stated. He added that demilitarization for Ukraine should not be seen as punishment, but rather as 'a chance to stop being a pawn in someone else's bloody geopolitical games.' He described denazification or 'debanderization' as a long-term effort involving public consciousness and historical memory. Democratization, he said, involved not only elections but also the restoration of legal institutions, free media, political competition, and the separation of powers. Many historic ultranationalist leaders, including Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) Stepan Bandera, a notorious Nazi collaborator, are widely revered by Ukrainians today. Russia has repeatedly condemned Kiev's elevation of these collaborators to national hero status and has demanded the 'denazification' of the country as part of a negotiated peace agreement. Russia has accused Western governments of deliberately ignoring continued neo-Nazi activity in Ukrainian ranks.
Russia Today
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
France names ‘red line' in Ukraine conflict
Demilitarizing Ukraine and leaving it without NATO membership, as Russia demands, is a red line for Europe, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu told weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles. Moscow insists that any resolution to the conflict must comprehensively address its security concerns. Russian officials want Ukraine to acknowledge the new territorial realities on the ground, agree to neutral status, guarantee that its Russian-speaking population is not discriminated against, and undergo demilitarization and denazification. As of now, all of these demands have been rejected by Kiev. In an interview, published on Wednesday, Lecornu argued that Europe cannot allow Ukraine to be left without a functioning army while denying it NATO membership. 'Our absolute red line is the demilitarization of Ukraine,' the minister said. 'We must be coherent. One cannot refuse Ukraine entry into NATO and at the same time accept that it no longer has an army,' he added. Ukraine formally applied for fast-track NATO membership in September of 2022, months after the conflict with Russia escalated. While Western nations initially supported Kiev's bid, no timeline for accession has been set. Meanwhile, support for Kiev's bid has been eroded by mounting military setbacks and shifting US policy. Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch reported last November that 'corruption continues to complicate' Ukraine's efforts to join NATO, citing multiple scandals in its Defense Ministry. US President Donald Trump, who is pushing for a peace deal with Moscow, has ruled out NATO membership for Kiev. Russia views NATO's eastward expansion as a direct threat to national security and has indicated that Ukraine's ambition to join the US-led military bloc was one of the key issues that triggered the current conflict. President Vladimir Putin stressed last month that Moscow's concerns had consistently been ignored. Putin also said that Ukraine had agreed to military limitations during the 2022 Istanbul talks, including troop numbers and weapons restrictions, but later withdrew from the deal to seek military victory with Western backing. He added that now, instead of a 'peaceful settlement to this issue,' Moscow has been forced to resolve the task – namely, demilitarization – by military means. Speaking ahead of this week's meeting of the Western-led 'coalition of the willing' – a UK-French initiative to deploy troops in Ukraine after a truce is reached with Russia – Lecornu said the group will urge Kiev to 'rethink' the future shape of its army, noting 'opportunities' for the French defense industry. Moscow has accused the West of encouraging Kiev to fight 'to the last Ukrainian' and maintains that no amount of military aid will reverse Kiev's fortunes on the battlefield. It has also repeatedly warned that any foreign forces fighting alongside Ukrainian troops will be treated as legitimate targets, while warning this could escalate the conflict.
Reuters
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Exclusive: U.S., Israel discuss possible U.S.-led administration for Gaza, sources say
Summary Possible U.S.-led administration would last until Gaza demilitarized and stable, sources say Discussions between US and Israeli officials are at a preliminary stage, with no guarantee of an agreement U.S.-led provisional administration would not include Hamas or Palestinian Authority, sources say A U.S.-led administration in Gaza would face risks, possible backlash in the region, sources say JERUSALEM, May 7 (Reuters) - The United States and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza, according to five people familiar with the matter. The "high-level" consultations have centered around a transitional government headed by a U.S. official that would oversee Gaza until it had been demilitarized and stabilized, and a viable Palestinian administration had emerged, the sources said. According to the discussions, which remain preliminary, there would be no fixed timeline for how long such a U.S.-led administration would last, which would depend on the situation on the ground, the five sources said. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the talks publicly, compared the proposal to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that Washington established in 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The authority was perceived by many Iraqis as an occupying force and it transferred power to an interim Iraqi government in 2004 after failing to contain a growing insurgency. Other countries would be invited to take part in the U.S.-led authority in Gaza, the sources said, without identifying which ones. They said the administration would draw on Palestinian technocrats but would exclude Islamist group Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which holds limited authority in the occupied West Bank. Islamist group Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, sparked the current war when its militants stormed into southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing another 251. The sources said it remained unclear whether any agreement could be reached. Discussions had not progressed to the point of considering who might take on core roles, they said. The sources did not specify which side had put forward the proposal nor provide further details of the talks. In response to Reuters questions, a State Department spokesperson did not comment directly on whether there had been discussions with Israel about a U.S.-led provisional authority in Gaza, saying they could not speak to ongoing negotiations. "We want peace, and the immediate release of the hostages," the spokesperson said, adding that: "The pillars of our approach remain resolute: stand with Israel, stand for peace." The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment. In an April interview with Emirati-owned Sky News Arabia, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he believed there would be a "transitional period" after the conflict in which an international board of trustees, including "moderate Arab countries", would oversee Gaza with Palestinians operating under their guidance. "We're not looking to control the civil life of the people in Gaza. Our sole interest in the Gaza Strip is security," he said, without naming which countries he believed would be involved. The foreign ministry did not respond to a request for further comment. Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, rejected the idea of an administration led by the United States or any foreign government, saying the Palestinian people of Gaza should choose their own rulers. The Palestinian Authority did not respond to a request for comment. RISKS A U.S.-led provisional authority in Gaza would draw Washington deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mark its biggest Middle East intervention since the Iraq invasion. Such a move would carry significant risks of a backlash from both allies and adversaries in the Middle East, if Washington were perceived as an occupying power in Gaza, two of the sources said. The United Arab Emirates - which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 - has proposed to the United States and Israel that an international coalition oversee Gaza's post-war governance. Abu Dhabi conditioned its involvement on the inclusion of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and a credible path toward Palestinian statehood. The UAE foreign ministry did not respond to questions about whether it would support a U.S.-led administration that did not include the PA. Israel's leadership, including Netanyahu, firmly rejects any role in Gaza for the Palestinian Authority, which it accuses of being anti-Israeli. Netanyahu also opposes Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel would expand its attacks in Gaza and that more Gazans would be moved "for their own safety". Israel is still seeking to recover 59 hostages being held in the enclave. Its offensive has so far killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry data. Some members of Netanyahu's right-coalition have called publicly for what they describe as the "voluntary" mass migration of Palestinians from Gaza and for the reconstruction of Jewish settlements inside the coastal enclave. But behind closed doors, some Israeli officials have also been weighing proposals over the future of Gaza that sources say assumes that there won't be a mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza, such as the U.S.-led provisional administration. Among those include restricting reconstruction to designated security zones, dividing the territory and establishing permanent military bases, said four sources, who include foreign diplomats and former Israeli officials briefed on the proposals.
