Turkiye detains three journalists over Istanbul prosecutor story

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Hamas should release all hostages held by the militant group in Gaza by midday Saturday or he would propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and “let hell break out.”
Trump cautioned that Israel might want to override him on the issue and said he might speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But in a wide-ranging session with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump expressed frustration with the condition of the last group of hostages freed by Hamas and by the announcement by the militant group that it would halt further releases.
“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock, I think it’s an appropriate time. I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I’d say they ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday,” Trump said.
He said he wanted the hostages released en masse, instead of a few at a time. “We want ‘em all back.”
Trump also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza. He is to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday.
The comments came on a day of some confusion over Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza once the fighting stops.
He said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily.
In an excerpt of an interview with Fox News channel’s Bret Baier broadcast on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the US gives the two countries “billions and billions of dollars a year.”
Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump said: “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing.”
“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,” he said, adding it would take years for Gaza to be habitable again.
In a shock announcement on Feb. 4 after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians and the US taking control of the seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

IGNITE THE REGION
Trump’s suggestion of Palestinian displacement has been repeatedly rejected by Gaza residents and Arab states, and labeled by rights advocates and the United Nations as a proposal of ethnic cleansing.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump’s statement that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza was “irresponsible.”
“We affirm that such plans are capable of igniting the region,” he told Reuters on Monday.
Netanyahu, who praised the proposal, suggested Palestinians would be allowed to return. “They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he said the day after Trump’s announcement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will depart later this week for his first visit to the Middle East in the office, said on Thursday that Palestinians would have to “live somewhere else in the interim,” during reconstruction, although he declined to explicitly rule out their permanent displacement.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disparity between Rubio and Trump’s most recent remarks on the plan.
Trump’s comments come as a fragile ceasefire reached last month between Israel and Hamas is at risk of collapse after Hamas announced on Monday it would stop releasing Israeli hostages over alleged Israeli violations of the agreement.
Israel’s Arab neighbors, including Egypt and Jordan, have said any plan to transfer Palestinians from their land would destabilize the region.
Rubio met Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in Washington on Monday. Egypt’s foreign ministry said Abdelatty told Rubio that Arab countries support Palestinians in rejecting Trump’s plan. Cairo fears Palestinians could be forced across Egypt’s border with Gaza.
Trump said in the Fox News interview that between two and six communities could be built for the Palestinians “a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is.” “I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent,” he said.

LONDON: Jonathan Sumption, a former UK Supreme Court judge, has described Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “grossly disproportionate,” and added there was “at least an arguable case” that they were genocidal.

Speaking ahead of the release of his new book, “The Challenges of Democracy: And The Rule of Law,” Sumption explained to The Guardian newspaper why he signed a letter last year accusing the UK government of breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

He said: “I thought — and I still think — that the conduct of Israel in Gaza is grossly disproportionate and there’s at least an arguable case that it’s genocidal. One can’t put it higher than that because genocide depends on intent. That’s quite a difficult thing to establish but I read the provisional decision of the International Court (of Justice) and it seemed to me that they were saying that that was an arguable proposition.

“Given that the obligation of parties to the genocide convention is proactively to prevent it happening and not just to react after the event, I thought that the authors of the letter — and I wasn’t the draftsman — had got a point.”

Israel has denied committing genocide, maintaining that its military operations were acts of self-defense while also rejecting the ICJ’s findings.

Sumption’s book, which is published on Thursday, focuses on perceived threats to democracy, including restrictions on free speech. He expresses concern over how certain opinions, particularly those supporting Palestinian rights, have been suppressed in some countries.

He said: “I think that supporters of the Palestinian cause have had a rough time in a number of European jurisdictions, notably Germany, where there’s been direct — and government — moves to suppress that strand of thought altogether.

“We haven’t got anywhere near as close to things as that … but there’s certainly been a lot of calls for toughness on pro-Palestine demonstrations, which assume, without actually saying, that it’s perfectly obvious that support for Palestine is wrong. I don’t think it’s wrong.”