UAE envoy: Currently ‘no alternative’ to Trump plan for Gaza Strip
(JNS) — While the United Arab Emirates regards U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza as “difficult,” Abu Dhabi has yet to see “an alternative to what’s being proposed,” the Emirati envoy to the United States said Wednesday.
Speaking with Al Arabiya’s Hadley Gamble at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, UAE Ambassador to the United States Yousef al-Otaiba said Abu Dhabi was “going to try” to find common ground with Trump.
Asked whether the UAE was working on an alternative to Trump’s plans to relocate the Gazan population, al-Otaiba said, “Not yet.”
Trump has suggested that the United States will “take over” the war-torn Gaza Strip, speaking during a press conference at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Feb. 4.
Initially, Trump said Palestinians could later opt to return to Gaza, but he reversed himself on Feb. 10, telling Fox News host Bret Baier that Palestinians who leave the Strip would not return under his plan “because they’re gonna have much better housing” elsewhere.
Trump, Putin agree to talks to end war with Ukraine
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump held a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which the two leaders agreed to hold talks to end the war in Ukraine.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump described the call as “lengthy and highly productive.”
“First, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia-Ukraine,” Trump wrote. “We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation.”
The Kremlin readout of the call largely aligned with Trump’s description of the conversation.
The move is the latest signal that Trump intends to follow through on breaking with his predecessor’s policy toward Russia, which involved close coordination with NATO and deference to Ukraine on when to begin negotiations.
Former President Joe Biden did not have any publicly acknowledged phone conversations with Putin after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2024, and no U.S. president has visited Russia since Barack Obama attended a G20 summit in St. Petersburg in 2013, before the Russian invasion of Crimea.
Hamas calls for ‘solidarity marches’ worldwide to protest Trump Gaza plan
(JNS) — Hamas called for “solidarity marches” on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to remove the Gazan population from the Strip in order to rebuild it.
“We … call on the masses of our people, our Arab and Islamic nation, and the free people of the world to go out in massive solidarity marches” to denounce “the plans to displace our Palestinian people from their land,” the terrorist group said in a statement on Wednesday.
Trump said that the United States will “take over” Gaza, speaking during a press conference at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Feb. 4.
Initially, Trump said Palestinians could return to Gaza, but he reversed himself on Feb. 10, telling Fox News host Bret Baier that Palestinians who leave the Gaza Strip would not return under his plan “because they’re gonna have much better housing” elsewhere.
Trump has suggested that the current population of Gaza would be moved to one large site or various locations. In an unverified report, Israel’s Channel 12 claimed that three areas being considered are Morocco, Somaliland and Puntland, a region in northeast Somalia that declared itself an autonomous state in 1998.
Netanyahu expressed support for the plan and a poll found that most Israeli Jews did so as well.
Jordanian top lawyer poses while trampling Israeli flag
(JNS) — The deputy head of the Jordan Bar Association posed for photographs while standing on a sidewalk painting of the Israeli flag, triggering a protest by Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Walid Al-Adwan made the gesture in Amman during the inauguration of the Bar Association’s new offices on Monday, the Andalou news agency reported.
“Placing the Israeli flag on the entrance floor and declaring that ‘anyone entering must step on it’ is an act of incitement that is inconsistent with the spirit of the peace agreement between the two countries,” Oren Marmorstein, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, wrote on social media.
Israel, Marmorstein added, “expects the Jordanian government to condemn the incident and take measures to prevent such actions from recurring. The lack of condemnation from the Jordanian authorities is concerning.”
Israel’s foreign ministry conveyed “an official protest to the Jordanian embassy in Israel, emphasizing the need to ensure that such incidents do not happen again in the future,” Marmorstein wrote.
