1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ HOSTAGES 🎗️Day 439 /

• a hostage deal could be signed by the end of this week and could include the deportation of senior Palestinian security prisoners to Qatar and Turkey https://lnk.sk/jcx2 
• CIA Director Bill Burns is set to meet Qatari Prime Minister in Doha on Wednesday, in an effort to bridge the remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas on a Gaza deal. https://lnk.sk/ieru 
• .Hamas-affiliated outlet says negotiations nearing conclusion, terrorists handed heavy sentences to be exiled to Turkey, Iran. https://lnk.sk/dzwa  

SYRIA 🇸🇾 /

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the IDF during his Tuesday visit to Mount Hermon Ridge to be ready to be deployed in the area until the end of 2025. https://lnk.sk/pwp4  
• War crimes prosecutor says Syrian mass graves expose Assad’s ‘machinery of death’. ’We really haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis,’ says top prosecutor after visit to mass grave; says more than 100,000 people disappeared, tortured to death https://lnk.sk/xyfq     

IRAN 🇮🇷 /

• UK, France, Germany sounds alarm over Tehran’s ‘capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons,’ says it must ‘reverse its nuclear escalation’ https://lnk.sk/oqkx

GAZA / 

• The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday ordered another evacuation in central Gaza ahead of an offensive in the area, even as Israel and Hamas appeared to inch closer to a hostage-ceasefire deal in the 14-month war. https://lnk.sk/blzf 
• The 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, intended to foster peace, is now viewed as a catalyst for Hamas’s rise and the October 7. Likud MK Avichai Boaron proposes legislation to allow Israeli resettlement in Gaza, though Prime Minister Netanyahu opposes such plans. https://lnk.sk/zkl3  

ISRAEL 🇮🇱 /

• Bibi trial day four: Judges press prosecution, Netanyahu presents arguments https://lnk.sk/pdtx 
• 57.8% of Arab Israelis saying they “believe that the ongoing war has fostered a sense of shared destiny between Arabs and Jews in Israel,” a new Tel Aviv University study has revealed https://lnk.sk/rbe2
• Behind Tel Aviv’s glittering tech startups and Jerusalem’s ancient stones the myth of Israeli prosperity is cracking. A recent report by Latet reveals that approximately 2.76 million Israelis, including 1.24 million children, live in poverty. https://lnk.sk/kruo  

EÚ 🇪🇺 SWITZERLAND 🇨🇭 FRANCE 🇫🇷 /

• EU Foreign Affairs Council has decided to resume the Association Council meetings with Israel, new EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas announces. Association Council meetings include all 27 EU foreign ministers. https://lnk.sk/hes7 
• Swiss parliament votes to outlaw Hezbollah. Rare motion for the neutral country passes the parliament’s lower chamber with 126 votes in favor, 20 against and 41 abstentions, despite government’s opposition to ban https://lnk.sk/auvq 
• An explosive investigation by Le Figaro: systemic antisemitism at France’s ‚Le Monde’. Testimonies reveal that the French Jewish community was explicitly referred to as a “hostile community” during editorial meetings. https://lnk.sk/tyy7 

Sources: various Arab media, Reuters, TV Channel 12, Israel National News, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post and the sources cited directly in some reports

©️ ICEJ Slovakia; peter.svec@icej.sk