Qatari Defence Minister met with his US counterpart Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon where it was announced a contingent of Qatari F-15 fighter jets will be hosted at a military base in the state of Idaho.
United States President Donald Trump is heading to the Middle East on Sunday as he looks to assert his perceived role as a peacemaker in the region after the Gaza ceasefire deal.
The visit would come days after the Nobel Peace Prize committee overlooked Trump’s public campaigning for the award and handed it to right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
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The White House has bemoaned the snub, accusing the Norwegian Nobel Committee of putting “place politics over peace”.
But in the Middle East, Trump is likely to be showered with praise from his hosts and credited with securing an end to the war in Gaza and the release of Israeli captives in the territory.
The White House said on Friday that Trump will depart for the Middle East on Sunday night, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher. The US president will first arrive in Israel, where he will make an address on Monday, before continuing on to Egypt for an official signing ceremony on the Gaza deal, Fisher reported from Washington DC.
Israel and Hamas have already lauded Trump’s role in the negotiations.
But analysts stress that for the deal to turn into long-term peace in Gaza, rather than another brief truce, the US president must pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against restarting the bombardment after the Israeli captives are released.
“I think that Donald Trump wants to oversee this very closely, and I think he wants to continue to send the message to Netanyahu that this is it. At least, that’s what I’m hoping,” said Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
“I assume he’s going to go and say very nice things about Benjamin Netanyahu; that’s what he always does publicly. But let’s hope, let’s hope, that he’s going to apply pressure.”
While Trump is taking much of the credit for the deal, experts say other factors pushed the truce over the line, more than two years into the brutal Israeli assault that United Nations investigators have concluded is a genocide.
Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel programme at the Arab Center Washington DC, said after destroying more than 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza while failing to free the captives, Israel was getting “diminishing returns” from its campaign in the territory.
“Israel is facing growing isolation and costs for continuing down this road. And I think there are also Israeli domestic political factors that influenced the timing of this as well,” Munayyer told Al Jazeera.
Similar proposals to the Trump plan have been on the table for the past two years, but Netanyahu has insisted on continuing the war.
However, the latest ceasefire comes at a time when countries across the world, including some of Israel’s Western allies, are condemning its blockade on Gaza and belligerence across the region, including its attack on Qatar last month.
Despite the international outrage, Israel has continued to receive military and diplomatic support from the US.
Not only did the Trump administration fail to denounce Israel’s policy of imposed starvation in Gaza, it also backed the GHF aid scheme to militarise humanitarian assistance, which killed hundreds of aid seekers.
As Trump celebrates his version of peace in the Middle East, rights advocates say there can be no true stability in the region without ending the occupation and ensuring accountability for the genocide in Gaza.
Nancy Okail, head of the Center for International Policy (CIP) think tank, warned that normalising the horrific abuses in Gaza could lead to the collapse of international institutions.
Protesters at the Broadview Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility near Chicago scuffled with police Friday morning. A day earlier a federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to the state of Illinois, saying the administration was providing “unreliable evidence” on supposed threats to federal agents.
The Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns met in a sold-out preseason game in Macau on Friday as fans cheered the NBA’s return to China after a six-year absence prompted by a pro-democracy tweet.
The first of two matches in Macau capped the NBA’s bid to mend fences with China, a lucrative market where an estimated 125 million people play basketball.
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“The atmosphere is amazing. I’ve been a Suns fan for a long time,” said David Jin, 26, who took a day trip from the nearby Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen.
“The NBA should come to mainland China more often. If it’s on my doorstep, I’ll show up to give my support,” Jin said, adding he spent about 5,000 yuan ($700) for tickets and travel.
Fans in the packed Venetian Arena gave four-time NBA All-Star Devin Booker a roaring reception and also particularly looked forward to seeing China’s 22-year-old debutant Nets forward Zeng Fanbo.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Thursday that “there’s tremendous interest in the NBA throughout China.”
Building on the charm offensive, Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez said the China trip was in part an opportunity visit and to learn about a new culture.
“We are told that we get support from China, a lot of fans watching our games. But the reality is you don’t know until you come here,” he said.
Also speaking before the game, Suns head coach Jordan Ott said many of his players were travelling to China for the first time.
“Just that excitement when they walk out tonight – we know it’s a packed house – would be a really cool experience for all of us to remember,” Ott said.
The Chinese Basketball Association announced a strategic partnership with the NBA on Friday, which includes providing opportunities for Chinese teams to take part in the NBA Summer League and WNBA preseason games in the United States, according to state media.
The NBA’s popularity in China took off during the 2000s with the Yao Ming craze, but the relationship soured markedly after a team official tweeted his support for the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The NBA was frozen out of China, and this was the league taking its tentative first steps back in.
Qin Junhong, a 19-year-old studying in Macau, said he remembered little about the dispute and was just “excited” to attend the game with his friends.
“There were so many people rushing for tickets,” Qin told the AFP news agency.
Friday’s game is part of a multimillion-dollar deal to stage NBA preseason matches at the Venetian Arena, part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate controlled by the Adelson family, who are the majority ownership group in the Dallas Mavericks.
Macau, the only place in China where casino gambling is legal, is a special administrative region of China close to Hong Kong.
Experts say that playing the first NBA games since 2019 in Macau was something of a “soft landing”, rather than playing in mainland China.
Before the game, crowds took selfies at NBA-themed booths and shops in a convention hall, with large signs showing the logos of the league’s Chinese brand partners.
Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition politician who was barred from standing in last year’s presidential election, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
In a post on the social media platform X on Friday, the Nobel Committee said it had decided to award the prize to Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.
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Announcing Machado’s win in Oslo, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Nobel Committee, said the award had gone “to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness”.
He added that she meets “all the criteria” laid out by Alfred Nobel for the prize, which states that the prize shall be given to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
Machado – who is known as the “Iron Lady” in Venezuela and is only the 20th woman out of 143 laureats awarded since the start of the prize in 1901 – said she was “in shock” after she learned she had been awarded the prize, according to a video sent by her press team to the AFP news agency.
“I’m in shock!” she is heard saying by telephone to Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced her as the candidate in the last presidential election after she was barred from running.
“We’re shocked with joy,” said Gonzalez.
Here’s what we know about Maria Corina Machado:
Maria Corina Machado Parisca, 58, is the leader of the Venezuelan opposition party, Vente Venezuela. Machado campaigns for transparent democracy, advocates for liberal economic reforms, including the privatisation of state-owned enterprises such as PDVSA, Venezuela’s oil company. She also supports the creation of welfare programmes aimed at aiding the country’s poorest.
Born on October 7, 1967, in Caracas, the eldest of four daughters, she has a degree in industrial engineering and a Master’s degree in finance.
The mother of three entered politics in 2002 as cofounder of the volunteer civil association called Sumate, which seeks to unite people amid polarisation under Nicolas Maduro’s rule.
At Sumate, she also led a referendum in 2002 to recall Hugo Chavez, the country’s president at the time, from office, over what Sumate claimed were his authoritarian policies. For this, Machado was accused of treason and her family received death threats from Chavez supporters, forcing her to send her children to live abroad.
But Machado has remained resilient in her opposition to Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.
In 2023, she won the Venezuelan opposition’s presidential primary after taking a decisive lead, placing her in a prime position to challenge longtime socialist leader Maduro at elections in 2024.
But a year later, Venezuela’s Supreme Justice Tribunal upheld a ban that prevented Machado from holding office. Attorney General Tarek Saab had accused some members of Machado’s Vente Venezuela party of being among 11 people who he said attempted to rob a military weapons arsenal in 2023 before a planned assault on a pro-Maduro state governor. The court also upheld claims that Machado had supported US sanctions, had been involved in corruption, and had lost money for Venezuela’s foreign assets, including United States-based oil refiner Citgo and chemicals company Monomeros, which operates in Colombia.
Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia replaced her as presidential candidate for the opposition bloc. Machado, however, continued campaigning far and wide for her proxy.
Today, she is isolated in Venezuela as nearly all of her senior advisers have been detained or forced to leave the country following threats by Maduro and his supporters, who oppose anyone who challenges his rule. Urrutia is understood to be in exile in Spain but some rumours suggest he is currently touring other countries in Latin America.
Following the July 2024 election, after which Maduro declared victory despite the the result being disputed by the opposition, Machado announced that she would be going into hiding within Venezuela, since she feared for her life under Maduro.
It is not known where she currently is. In August 2024, she briefly emerged from hiding to join her supporters who were protesting in the streets of Caracas against the contested national election results.
“Just as it took us a long time to achieve electoral victory, now comes a stage that we take day by day, but we have never been as strong as today, never,” Machado, who always arrives at protests dressed in white, told her supporters in Caracas.
In January this year, however, when she reappeared from exile to join a protest before Maduro’s presidential inauguration, she was briefly arrested before being released.
“They wanted us to fight each other, but Venezuela is united,” Machado shouted from atop a truck as she waved a Venezuelan flag in front of a few hundred protesters immediately before her arrest.
Maduro’s government, which has also accused Machado of leading a “conspiracy” against Maduro, quickly denounced the incident as an attempt to dent the administration’s reputation.
“The tactic of media distraction is not new, so no one should be surprised. Less so coming from fascists who are the architects of deception,” Information Minister Freddy Nanez wrote on the social media messaging platform, Telegram.
While Machado has returned to hiding, she remains in touch with her supporters through social media platforms.
In May this year, she claimed victory in the country’s parliamentary elections, even though Maduro’s ruling coalition was officially declared the winner. Machado wrote on X that the election was an “enormous farce that the regime is trying to stage to bury its defeat” in last year’s election.
Last year, the European Union awarded its top human rights prize to Machado along with Urrutia.
The European Parliament said the winners of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought were “representing the people of Venezuela fighting to restore freedom and democracy”.
In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it has always “honoured brave women and men who have stood up to repression, who have carried the hope of freedom in prison cells, on the streets and in public squares, and who have shown by their actions that peaceful resistance can change the world”.
“In the past year, Ms Machado has been forced to live in hiding despite serious threats against her life,” the committee noted.
“She has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”
The committee said it was “crucial” to recognise “courageous defenders of freedom” and democracy.
“Maria Corina Machado meets all the three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a peace prize,” the committee stated.
“She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy,” it added.
The Nobel Committee also said it is hoping that Machado’s win “will support her cause and not limit it”.
“This is the discussion we have every year for all candidates, particularly when the person who receives the prize is, in fact, in hiding because of serious threats to her life,” Frydne said, when asked by reporters about the considerations the committee made for Machado’s safety and security in awarding her the prize.
Frydnes also added that through this award, the committee wishes to let the world know that in a world in which the number of democracies is decreasing, “democracy is a precondition for peace”.
The decision to award Venezuela’s Machado is a “prize for democracy”, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) director, Nina Graeger, said on X.
“At a moment when authoritarianism is on the rise across the world, this award highlights the courage of those who defend freedom with ballots, not bullets,” she noted.
She added: “This year, PRIO’s own shortlist for the Nobel Peace Prize emphasised the crucial role of election observers – the very work Machado has long contributed to – underscoring that credible elections remain the cornerstone of democracy and peace.”
There has been no reaction from US President Donald Trump, who made no secret of the fact he was hoping for the prize, as yet.
Since the start of his second term as president Trump has made it clear that he believes he should win the coveted prize as he claims to have ended “seven wars”.
On Wednesday, he looked set to claim credit for the possible end to an eighth war, after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first stage of a ceasefire deal that is rooted in Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which he had unveiled last week.
Even though Trump has yet to say anything on the matter, White House spokesperson Steven Cheung condemned the Nobel Committee for not selecting Trump for the prize.
“[Trump] has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung wrote on X.
“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” he said.
When asked by reporters about Trump’s very public desire to win the peace prize, the Nobel Committee’s chairman, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, told reporters that the committee bases its decision strictly according to “the work and the will of Alfred Nobel”.
“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say, what for them leads to peace. This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity,” he said.
Hebron, occupied West Bank – Among the more than 67,190 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, there has been a particularly heavy toll on journalists and media workers. More than 184 journalists have been killed by Israel in the war, including 10 Al Jazeera staff members, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank were only able to look on at their colleagues’ sacrifice in Gaza from afar. But they have also faced their own challenges, as Israel continues its near-daily practice of raids throughout the Palestinian territory.
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As Palestinians in Gaza expressed relief at the news of the ceasefire deal, journalists in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, were documenting how Palestinians were being restricted from moving around large parts of the city because of the influx of Jewish Israelis as a result of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Among the areas where Palestinians’ movement has been restricted is the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, in central Hebron.
As the journalists navigated the Israeli road closures, they sent their own messages to their colleagues in Gaza – who were forced to endure two years of war marked by displacement, hunger, and loss.
“A thousand blessings to all of you – those who work with the international agencies, TV channels, websites, radio stations, and in the field. You gave everything and sacrificed immensely. I pray that your suffering ends after two years of hell, and that you never live through another war. Your message was the most sacred and powerful in history. You shook the world – because you conveyed the truth. No one could have done what you did.
“The psychological and emotional impact of those who died will never fade. [I remember when Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief] Wael Dahdouh stood over his son’s body and said, ‘They took revenge on us through our children,’ – I felt those words cut deep into my heart. I saw the footage on television and broke down crying. Imagine how his colleagues, who live it with him, must have felt.
“We live here in Hebron in constant contact with the Israeli occupation forces – there are frequent incursions and military checkpoints. After the war began, following October 7, 2023, the confrontations and clashes were intense.
“They treated us as part of the war, not as neutral observers, and used every possible means to fight us. Many times, I would say goodbye to my family as if it were the last time.”
“You journalists in Gaza sacrificed your lives for your people and homeland. You risked everything to convey the truth, the suffering, and the crimes against Gaza’s people. Whenever one of you is killed, I feel as it I’ve lost someone myself – as if I were the one wounded or arrested.
“You carried the message until your last breath, and you never stopped. You inspire us to continue the path you and the generations before you began. Thank you for every photo, every shot, every moment you captured for the world to see the many, many faces of war.
“War meant displacement. War meant famine. War meant being targeted by the military. War meant stopping education. Through your work, you made the world see it all.”
“My feelings are conflicted today after the ceasefire was announced. We in the West Bank followed everything happening in Gaza, where hundreds of journalists were killed or wounded, some losing limbs. What happened was a real crime, a genocide. Journalists [were especially targeted] because the occupation doesn’t want reports to come out of Gaza.
“Honestly, I feel ashamed as a Palestinian journalist. Despite our sacrifices in the West Bank, they don’t amount to even a drop in the sea of what our colleagues in Gaza experienced. They offered their lives and bodies – the most precious sacrifice of all.