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With truce talks with Hamas at critical stage, Israel seizes Gaza side of Rafah border crossing with Eqypt
Jerusalem — An Israeli tank brigade took control Tuesday of the Gaza Strip side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, authorities said, moving forward with an offensive in the southern city even as cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remain on a knife’s edge.
The move comes after hours of whiplash in the Israel-Hamas war, with the militant group on Monday saying it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated cease-fire proposal. Israel, meanwhile, insisted the deal didn’t meet its core demands. The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive – but only barely – for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the 7-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli 401st Brigade entered the Rafah crossing early Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said, taking “operational control” of the crucial crossing. It’s the main route for aid entering the besieged enclave and exit for those able to flee into Egypt. Israel has fully controlled all access in and out of Gaza since the war began.
Footage released by the Israeli military showed a tank entering the crossing. Details of the video matched known features of the crossing and showed Israeli flags flying from tanks that seized the area.
The Israeli military claimed it seized the crossing after receiving intelligence it was “being used for terrorist purposes.” The military didn’t provide evidence to immediately support the assertion, though it alleged the area around the crossing had been used to launch a mortar attack that killed four Israeli troops and wounded others near the Kerem Shalom Crossing.
The military also said ground troops and airstrikes targeted suspected Hamas positions in Rafah.
Hatem Khaled / REUTERS
The Reuters news agency cites Palestinian health officials as saying 20 Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in strikes that hit at least four houses.
Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, acknowledged Israeli forces had seized the crossing and had closed the facility for the time being. He said strikes had targeted the area around the crossing since Monday.
An Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson declined to immediately comment on the Israeli seizure. Egypt previously has warned any seizure of Rafah could see Palestinians fleeing over the border, a scenario that could threaten a 1979 peace deal with Israel that’s been a linchpin of regional security.
The offensive again raised the risks of an all-out Israeli assault on Rafah, a move the United States strongly opposes and that aid groups warn will be disastrous for some 1.4 million Palestinians taking refuge there.
Egyptian officials said the proposal called for a cease-fire of multiple stages starting with a limited hostage release and partial Israeli troop pullbacks within Gaza. The two sides would also negotiate a “permanent calm” that would lead to a full hostage release and greater Israeli withdrawal from the territory, they said.
An Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters the Hamas-approved proposal was a watered-down version of an Egyptian offer that had aspects Israel couldn’t accept. “This would appear to be a ruse intended to make Israel look like the side refusing a deal,” the Israeli official said.
Hamas sought clearer guarantees for its key demand of an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal in return for the release of all hostages, but it wasn’t clear if any changes were made.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly rejected that trade-off, vowing to keep up their campaign until Hamas is destroyed after its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Reuters reports that Qatar’s foreign ministry said its delegation would go to Cairo Tuesday to resume indirect talks between Israel and Hamas.
CBS News
14 suspects linked to powerful Sinaloa cartel arrested in Spain amid kidnapping and murder investigation
Spain has arrested 14 people suspected of links to the powerful Mexican Sinaloa cartel as part of a kidnapping and murder probe, police said Sunday.
The ring busted by Spanish investigators was mainly made up of Mexican nationals. It was connected to the Sinaloa drug cartel, which is based in northwestern Mexico and has been shaken by weeks of gang infighting.
“The dismantled criminal network, which is based in Catalonia, is believed to be involved in the kidnapping and death of a man whose body was found in a wooded area” in the northeastern Spanish region in August, police said in a statement.
The victim, whose nationality was not specified, allegedly worked with the gang and “had come from Italy for a meeting with several chiefs.”
The victim’s family in Kosovo reported his disappearance to the police after he was abducted between late May and June.
The family received a 240,000-euro ransom request ($253,000) and a total of $32,000 was paid in cryptocurrency.
The 14 detained suspects were allegedly involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and murder, the statement also said. The detainees, 11 men and 3 women, are between 30 and 70 years old.
The Catalonia-based ring received shipments from Mexico containing clothes soaked with methamphetamine, which they then extracted in a Spanish lab, police added.
The 14 arrests came just days after Spain arrested one of its top police officers after 20 million euros were found hidden in the walls of his house, as part of a probe into the country’s largest-ever cocaine bust.
The Sinaloa cartel, which is named after the Mexican state where it originated, is one of the largest criminal organizations in the world. Two of its founders, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada are jailed in the United States.
Zambada, 76, was arrested on July 25 in the southern United States, where he landed with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of “El Chapo’s” sons, who led a faction of the cartel known as the “Chapitos.” The veteran drug trafficker has accused Lopez of kidnapping him and handing him over to U.S. law enforcement.
According to an indictment released by the U.S. Justice Department last year, the “Chapitos” and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.” El Chapo’s sons were among 28 Sinaloa cartel members charged in a massive fentanyl-trafficking investigation announced in April 2023.
“El Chapo” is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
Spiraling criminal violence, much of it linked to gang drug trafficking, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006.
Spirit Airlines said Monday that it has filed for bankruptcy protection and will attempt to reboot as it struggles to recover from the pandemic-caused swoon in travel and failed attempts to sell itself to JetBlue and Frontier Airlines.
Spirit, the biggest U.S. budget airline, has lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020 and faces looming debt payments totaling more than $1 billion over the next year, obligations that it’s unlikely to be able to meet.
Spirit said it expects to operate as normal as it works its way through a prearranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy process and that customers can continue to book and fly without interruption.
Shares of Miramar, Florida-based Spirit dropped 25% on Friday, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the airline was discussing terms of a possible bankruptcy filing with its bondholders. It was just the latest in a series of blows that have sent the stock crashing down by 97% since late 2018 – when Spirit was still making money.
In October, Spirit and Frontier revived merger talks after discussions in 2022 ended with JetBlue outbidding Frontier, according to the WSJ. A federal judge blocked the JetBlue merger in January over antitrust concerns.
President-elect Donald Trump tapped Republican Brendan Carr, an Elon Musk-backed critic of big tech, to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), calling Carr a “warrior for Free Speech” in a statement on Sunday.
Carr has “fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms” and will “end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America,” Trump said in the statement.
Carr said on Musk’s social platform X that he was “humbled and honored” to take on the role of FCC chairman.
“We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans,” he wrote in another post Sunday.
Alex Wong / AP
It is a phrase he has used repeatedly, posting on Friday: “Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel,” adding that it “must be dismantled.”
Carr was already the senior Republican on the FCC, an independent agency that regulates licenses for television and radio, pricing of home internet, and other communications issues in the United States.
The five-person commission will have a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump will get to appoint a new member, The Associated Press points out, adding that Carr has also been the commission’s general counsel and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times and nominated by both Trump and President Biden to the commission.
Long rumored as a contender for FCC chair, he has built an alliance with billionaire Musk — Trump’s wealthiest backer, whose Starlink satellite internet service could benefit from access to federal cash.
The New York Times reported that Starlink received an $885 million grant in late 2020 from the FCC — but that the Democrat-led commission later revoked it because the service couldn’t prove it would reach enough unconnected rural homes.
Carr “vociferously” opposed the decision, the newspaper reported.
“In my view, it amounted to nothing more than regulatory lawfare against one of the left’s top targets: Mr. Musk,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion article last month.
Carr has also publicly agreed with the incoming Trump administration’s promises to slash regulation and punish television networks for what they say is political bias.
Trump has repeatedly called to strip major broadcasters such as ABC, NBC and CBS of their licenses.
During the 2024 campaign, he singled out CBS, saying its license should be revoked after its flagship news program “60 Minutes” aired an interview with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Trump had declined to sit for a similar interview.
Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of the 60 Minutes interview of Harris misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him. In a statement, CBS News called the former president’s claims “completely without merit” and said the network intended to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.
Carr also wrote a chapter on the FCC in the controversial Project 2025 document that purported to lay out a vision for a second Trump administration, in which he also called for the regulation of the largest tech companies, such as Meta, Google and Apple.
The FCC needs to bring new urgency to four main goals: reining in big tech, promoting national security, “unleashing” economic prosperity and ensuring FCC accountability, he wrote in the document by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Carr was a strong foe of the FCC’s reinstatement in April of landmark net neutrality rules that were repealed during the first Trump administration, the Reuters news agency notes. The Biden FCC rules were in turn put on hold by a federal appeals court.
