Egypt renewed its call for a truce to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on Friday and France asked Qatar to use its influence with Palestinians to reach a ceasefire, as NBC opted to return a reporter to the battlefield only days after removing him from its coverage of the fighting. NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin is to be reinstated and sent back into the region, the network said on Friday evening.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri, speaking at a news conference in Cairo with his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, urged Israel and Hamas to engage in negotiations to end the bloodshed.
Shukri said he had increased his efforts to persuade them to accept an Egyptian proposal. An earlier Cairo initiative was accepted by Israel, but rejected by Hamas.
“We hope that all sides will support this initiative so that bloodshed stops and this escalation does not get worse. We call on all sides to accept this proposal. We are working to find a framework so that both sides agree,” Shukri said.
Israel intensified its ground offensive in Gaza with artillery, tanks and gunboats on Friday. The Israeli land advance followed 10 days of barrages against Gaza from air and sea, and hundreds of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel.
More than 300 Palestinians — most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials — and two Israelis have been killed.
Fabius told reporters that France had asked Qatar, which has close links with Hamas, to help to reach a ceasefire.
“[Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas asked me to use France’s influence with its partners to try to persuade Hamas to accept a ceasefire,” he said. Fabius had met Abbas earlier in the day.
“With regard to Qatar, I told my counterpart our analysis of the situation and he underlined that, in his opinion, Hamas would need points to negotiate and, in particular, a lifting of the blockade on Gaza to accept a ceasefire,” he said.
Egypt, which has brokered ceasefires in previous flare-ups, sees Hamas as a security threat because it is an offshoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which was removed from power by the Egyptian army last year.
Shukri has said Hamas could have saved Palestinian lives if it had accepted the first initiative presented by Egypt.
HAMAS VIEW
Hamas leaders said they were frozen out of talks and not consulted on the Egyptian initiative, and that it did not address their demands, such as an end to a blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt.
Highlighting the difficulties in getting all sides to agree, Qatar’s foreign minister appeared to rebuff Fabius.
Minister Khaled al-Attiyah received a phone call from Fabius on Friday in which they searched for ways to reach a ceasefire agreement, the state news agency said.
Qatar emerged as a leading supporter of Islamist groups after Arab Spring protests that began in 2011, and sees the standoff as a chance to prove itself as a mediator. It hosts a number of exiled Islamists from across the Middle East, including Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.
Fabius was to meet Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi yesterday before traveling to Jordan and Israel to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“What we need to do is to avoid falling into this vicious cycle where we won’t have a ceasefire without talks and vice versa,” Fabius said.
NBC SILENCE
NBC’s decision to pull Mohyeldin off the story, after he witnessed an Israeli air attack that killed four young Palestinians and then posted remarks on Twitter about it, prompted a round of questions, and much criticism of NBC among Internet commenters. Some accused the network of reacting to pressure from the Israeli side in the conflict. Mohyeldin is an Egyptian-American who previously worked for the cable news channel Al Jazeera English.
When it removed Mohyeldin, NBC did not give a reason for its decision other than unspecified security concerns.
On Friday, NBC declined to give any explanation — official or not — for the sudden decision to send Mohyeldin back into Gaza. In a statement, NBC said only that its “deployments were constantly reassessed” in the region.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese