Sarah Basford Canales

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has been chastised by her Israeli counterpart for what he claimed was Australia distancing itself from Israel in its “most difficult year”.

Wong held talks with the Israeli foreign affairs minister, Gideon Sa’ar, on Tuesday, Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported, after a war of words between the two nations over recent votes at the United Nations general assembly.

Wong reportedly accused Israel of not providing enough humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, culminating in a heated clash, the paper, which is known for broadly supporting the Netanyahu government’s agenda, reported.

Sa’ar rejected the response and pointed to the 7 October attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas against southern Israel.

“Australia chose to distance itself from Israel in its most difficult year, in which it fought against its bitterest enemies,” Sa’ar is reported to have said.

A spokesperson for Wong said the call was “direct but respectful” and that the minister “conveyed Australia’s commitment to countering antisemitism and hate in all forms”.

Australia has shifted its support at the UN in recent months, backing motions condemning Israel’s recent vote to ban Palestinian aid agency Unrwa over allegations its staff had ties with Hamas and supporting a “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza.

Analysis: how Erdoğan’s balancing act in Syria paid off

Ruth Michaelson

Away from Gaza, my colleague Ruth Michaelson has this analysis of the relationship between Syria and Erdoğan’s Turkey.

Less than a week after the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, Turkish officials raised their flag over the embassy in Damascus. While many of the shutters on the palatial villa remained closed, the red and white crescent flew over the embassy rooftop for the first time in 12 years.

It was a moment preceded days before by the arrival in the Syrian capital of Turkey’s spy chief, Ibrahim Kalin. In this immediate aftermath of the end of the Assad regime, Kalin rode in a black sedan driven by the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, who wore civilian dress as he chauffeured Kalin through the crowded streets. The spy chief prayed beneath the hallowed archways of the Umayyad mosque, before emerging to stunned crowds gathered to see the first foreign dignitary to visit the new Syrian leadership.

Dareen Khalifa of the non-profit International Crisis Group describes Kalin’s visit to the Syrian capital as “a victory lap,” with Ankara emerging as a major beneficiary from the new government in Damascus. The toppling of Assad has vindicated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approach on Syria at home in Turkey, granted Ankara new opportunities in a power struggle across Kurdish areas in the north-east and afforded it fresh influence as Syria rebuilds.

“Relations between HTS and Turkey shouldn’t be overestimated, it’s not a proxy relationship, but Turkey was smart to wait until things were settled and then go in full force with Kalin’s visit and other senior people as well,” says Khalifa.

Read on here:

The US state department is facing a new lawsuit brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the agency of deliberately circumventing a decades-old US human rights law to continue funding Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, marks the first time that victims of alleged human rights abuses are challenging the state department’s failure to ever sanction an Israeli security unit under the Leahy Law, a 1990s-era law that prohibits US military assistance to forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.

The plaintiffs include Amal Gaza, a pseudonym for a mathematics teacher from Gaza who has lost 20 family members; Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, who endured six years of arbitrary detention in the West Bank; and Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American with relatives in Gaza who have been repeatedly displaced by the ongoing Israeli offensive. (Moor has written opinion pieces for the Guardian.) Along with two other plaintiffs, they are demanding judicial intervention to force the US to comply with the law.

With the death toll in Gaza since last October reportedly approaching 45,000 and humanitarian aid to the territory severely restricted, the legal challenge represents an attempt to force the administration to implement a law that has been seen as effective in helping the US to stem human rights violations by foreign military units in central America, Colombia, Nepal, and other countries.

Read more here:

What do we know so far about the latest ceasefire talks?

Peter Beaumont

On Tuesday an Israeli negotiating team travelled to Qatar while a report from Reuters – denied by his office and Egypt – said that the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was planning to travel to Cairo for talks.

Instead, Netanyahu’s office said he had toured a buffer zone inside Syria that was recently seized by Israeli forces after the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which he said would remain under Israeli control for the foreseeable future.

Two Egyptian security sources added, however, that Netanyahu was not in Cairo “at this moment” but that a meeting was under way to work through the remaining points – chief among them a Hamas demand for guarantees that any immediate deal would lead to a comprehensive agreement later.

CIA director William Burns, a key US negotiator, was due in Doha on Wednesday for talks with Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on bridging remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reported.

Hamas said in a statement that a deal was possible if Israel stopped setting new conditions. A Palestinian official close to the mediation efforts said negotiations were serious, with discussions under way about every word.

Reinforcing the sense of optimism the White House spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview with Fox News: “We believe – and the Israelis have said this – that we’re getting closer, and no doubt about it, we believe that, but we also are cautious in our optimism.”

He added, however: “We’ve been in this position before where we weren’t able to get it over the finish line.”

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Middle East crisis.

The pace of talks aimed at securing a ceasefire-for-hostages agreement in Gaza appeared to be accelerating, amid claims on both sides that a deal may be within reach, perhaps within days.

Senior Israeli officials, Hamas sources, and US and Arab officials have all expressed optimism that a deal may be close for a phased release of the surviving hostages in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

About 60 living hostages, mainly Israeli and dual nationals, are believed to be still held in Gaza as well as the bodies of 35 others, out of more than 240 who were abducted to Gaza during Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

More on that shortly. First, in other developments:

• A ceasefire between Turkey and the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian forces (SDF) around the northern Syrian city of Manbij has been extended until the end of this week, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller has said. Washington brokered an initial ceasefire last week after fighting that broke out earlier this month as rebel groups advanced on Damascus and overthrew the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

• Geir Pedersen, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, however, has warned that the conflict “has not ended”, highlighting the clashes between the Turkish-backed and Kurdish groups.

• Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israeli forces will stay in a buffer zone on the Syrian border, seized after the ouster of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, until another arrangement is in place “that ensures Israel’s security.” Netanyahu made the comments from the summit of Mount Hermon about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with the Israel-held Golan Heights.

• Israeli lawmakers narrowly approved the country’s 2025 state budget in an initial vote. The 59-57 vote in the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – to pass the wartime austerity budget in its first of three readings.

• A UN refugee agency official said that about one million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country in the first six months of 2025, with thousands of people already having returned to the country mostly from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

• Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said his country’s forces will maintain “security control” over the devastated Gaza Strip, even after the war is over, with Israeli soldiers able to act with “full freedom of action” over the territory.

• At least 45,059 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,041 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. Of those, 31 Palestinians were killed and 79 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.

• At least 10 people were confirmed killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City that destroyed the building, while further north in the town of Beit Lahiya at least 15 people were reportedly killed while they were sheltering in a house.

• Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that toppled Assad, said all rebel factions would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry” during a meeting with members of the minority Druze community.

• The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the bloc would send an ambassador back to Damascus. “We are ready to reopen our delegation, which is the European embassy, and we want this to be fully operational again,” she said. Kallas added that the EU would aim to help authorities restore basic services like electricity, water and infrastructure.