Israel orders evacuations in northern Gaza as Trump calls for war to end

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By Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters  The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday before intensified fighting against  Hamas , as U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to the  war  amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire. “Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back,”  Trump  posted on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel’s offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages. But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military urged people in northern parts of the enclave to head south towards the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, which Israel designated as a humanitarian area. Palestinian and U.N. offi...
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US threatens to walk away from Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks if no progress made ‘in days’

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By Bart H. Meijer and Dominique Vidalon Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump will walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there are clear signs that a deal can be done, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday.

“We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks,” Rubio said in Paris after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders.

“The president feels very strongly about that. He has dedicated a lot of time and energy to this … this is important, but there are a lot of other really important things going on that deserves just as much, if not more attention.”

Rubio’s warning came amid signs of some progress in U.S. talks with Ukraine.

Trump said on Thursday he expected to sign a deal with Kyiv next week that would give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s minerals. An attempt to sign a minerals pact in February fell apart after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s clash with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office.

After the talks in Paris on Thursday – the first substantive, high level and in-person talks on Trump’s peace push that have included European powers – Rubio said a U.S. peace framework received an “encouraging reception”. Zelenskiy’s office called the talks constructive and positive.

Rubio’s comments on Friday underline mounting frustrations in the White House over a lack of progress in pushes to settle a growing list of geopolitical challenges.

Trump promised during his election campaign to end the war in Ukraine within his first 24 hours in the White House. He moderated that claim on taking office, suggesting a deal by April or May as obstacles mounted.

Rubio said he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after the Paris talks and had told him they had been constructive, and also briefed him on “some of the elements of” the U.S. peace framework.

Rubio said the issue of U.S. security guarantees as part of any deal came up in the talks in Paris, without going into greater detail.

He said security guarantees was an issue “we can fix in sort of in a way that’s acceptable to everyone,” but “we have bigger challenges that we need to figure out, whether it’s even possible within the short term”.

He said it was clear that a peace deal would be difficult to strike but there needed to be signs it could be done soon.

“There’s no one saying this can be done in 12 hours. But we want to see how far apart it is and whether those differences can even be narrowed, if it’s even possible to get movement within the period of time we have in mind,” he said.

Neither French presidency or foreign ministry immediately returned requests for comment.



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/C7oWmg1

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