Meanwhile, we are also getting reports that a plane carrying US envoy Steve Witkoff and president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has just landed in Moscow, where they are expected to hold talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. (Although it may not necessarily be today, given it’s just before 11pm local time.)
Amid the hullabaloo and self-congratulation of Donald Trump’s “board of peace” launch in Davos, his administration laid out specific plans for the short- and long-term future of Gaza, aimed at a lasting peace. The blueprint set out on Thursday was extremely ambitious. It envisages a unified Palestinian-run Gaza, which represents a rebuff to the aims of Israeli extremists, including some in the governing coalition, who have sought the deportation of Gaza’s population and the building of Israeli settlements in its place. The plan’s success will depend largely on whether Trump and his board of peace has the determination to implement the plan, overcoming Israeli objections and obstruction – and whether a mechanism can be created inside Gaza to oversee the disarming of Hamas. A slideshow presented in Davos by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, imagined a futuristic dreamscape of gleaming apartment blocks and office towers, with neat industrial parks and residential districts – and even an airport. The territory had a slice taken off it to create a buffer zone along the Israeli border, and was treated as blank slate, ignoring the property rights of generations of Palestinians, but it was a move away from a partition between Hamas and Israeli-run halves. The plan also spelled out more achievable promises for the next 100 days, including the restoration of basic infrastructure – including water, sewage and electric systems, hospitals and bakeries – together with a significant increase in the flow of goods entering Gaza. The critical Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt is due to open for traffic next week, for the first time since Israeli troops seized control of it in May 2024. Kushner committed the US administration to achieving those short-term goals. “The next 100 days we’re going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented,” he said. “We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter, but then creating the conditions to move forward.” The board of peace will be represented in Gaza by a “high representative”, a veteran Bulgarian and UN diplomat, Nickolay Mladenov. But the plan, as spent out in Davos, puts much of the onus for implementation on the newly formed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a panel of Palestinian non-partisan technocrats who are supposed to run Gaza for a transition period. Its chair, the “chief commissioner” Ali Shaath, addressed the assembled world leaders in Davos by video link from Cairo, but also spoke directly to the people of Gaza, largely ignored so far in the Trump peace plan. “Step by step, with discipline and determination, we will rebuild a capable Gaza, capable of self-reliance, and we will build it into a centre for freedom, opportunity and peace,” Shaath told his fellow Palestinians. Shaath, an engineer and a former deputy transport minister in the Palestinian Authority, said the NCAG’s mission was “to restore order, to rebuild institutions and to recreate a future for the people of Gaza defined by opportunity and dignity under the principle of one authority, one law and one weapon”. According to documents supplied by the administration, “one weapon” means that all weapon possession in the future Gaza can be “authorized by one authority only (NCAG)”. The clause addressed a major and immediate hurdle to turning a semi-observed ceasefire into a real and lasting truce. US and Israeli officials agree there will not be further withdrawals by the Israeli army (still occupying more than half of Gaza) until Hamas disarms. Hamas has reportedly agreed in principle to hand over its heavy weapons, such as rockets and artillery, to a Palestinian administration, and is said to be prepared to accept the NCAG. To put that to the test, Shaath and the NCAG would have to be allowed to enter Gaza with a Palestinian police force that has been trained in Jordan and Egypt over past months. The plan presented in Davos notably made no mention of the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which was a key part of Trump’s peace proposals last year, endorsed in November by a UN security council resolution. Creating the ISF has been fraught with problems. None of the countries in the Arab and Islamic world that provisionally agreed to provide troops wanted their soldiers to confront Hamas over its weaponry. Israel declared it would not accept Turkish or Qatari forces, while other potential troop contributors insisted that Turkey and Qatar were involved. The US blueprint mentions only the new Palestinian police force. Heavy weapons would be “decommissioned immediately”, it said. “Personal arms [will be] registered and decommissioned by sector as NCAG police becomes capable of guaranteeing personal security,” the blueprint said. The end state would be a situation in which “only NCAG-sanctioned personnel may carry weapons”. The immediate test of the blueprint will come next week, when the Rafah crossing is due to open. “Opening Rafah signals Gaza is no longer closed to the future or to the world. This is a real step and it marks a new direction,” Shaath said in his video presentation. However, Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is due to discuss the opening of Rafah next week. There is considerable opposition inside the coalition to reopening the crossing, at least until the remains of the last unaccounted-for Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili, are returned. There will be considerably more internal opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian interim government in territory, which the far right is bent on emptying and annexing. The plan does not say a future Gaza would be part of a sovereign Palestinian state. But it does not exclude a unified Palestine, and it is unlikely the NCAG would be able to recruit credible Palestinian members if it did. Under the plan, the Israeli army would withdraw progressively from all Gazan territory in phases from the current truce line agreed as part of phase one of the plan. That further withdrawal would be “based on agreed-upon standards”, the Kushner blueprint said, but it gave no details, raising questions over whether Israel would comply. For the population of Gaza, most still living in tents and under regular Israeli fire, perhaps the most encouraging aspect of Thursday’s presentation in Davos was that Trump clearly still sees his prestige and that of his “board of peace” as being wrapped up in the ceasefire he brokered last year. In other words, the ceasefire plan is still harnessed to the bulldozer of the president’s self-esteem, which at least has the potential to break through the substantial hurdles to a free and peaceful Gaza.
A Toronto man posed as a pilot for years in order to fool airlines into giving him hundreds of free flights, prosecutors have alleged, in a case that has prompted comparisons to the Hollywood thriller Catch Me If You Can. Authorities in Hawaii announced this week that Dallas Pokornik, 33, had been charged with wire fraud after he allegedly fooled three major US carriers into giving him free tickets over a span of four years. Airlines typically offer standby tickets to their own staff and those with rival airlines as a way of ensuring the broader industry can effectively move employees across continents. According to court documents, Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, but then used an employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets, “which he in fact knew to be fraudulent at the time it was so presented”. The only Toronto-based airline, Porter, told reporters it was “unable to verify any information related to this story”. On one occasion, Pokornik is alleged to have requested a jumpseat in an aircraft’s cockpit, which are normally reserved for off-duty pilots, even though he was not a pilot and did not have an airman’s certificate. Federal rules prohibit the cockpit jumpseats from being used for leisure travel. It is unclear how Pokornik was able to convince the airlines he was employed as a flight attendant years after he stopped working in the industry. Typically, employees use a card linked to a database that has their photo and confirms they are an airline employee, according to a flight attendant at a major Canadian airline. Staff must show a government-issued identification and an employee badge. Rules are looser, however, if the person identifying as an airline employee is flying for leisure. Pokornik who was indicted on 2 October, was later arrested in Panama and extradited to the United States. The Department of Justice said the Department of Homeland Security is investigating the case along the US Marshals Service. If convicted, Pokornik faces up to 20 years in prison, and a fine of up to US$250,000.
Your long read article is a powerful account of the impacts of Syria’s civil war on the city of Aleppo (Out of the ruins: will Aleppo ever be rebuilt?, 20 January). However, in stating that “All the reconstruction efforts so far are local”, it overlooks significant international involvement. Since 2018, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk in Aleppo’s old city, with ongoing rehabilitation planned, reviving shops and covered markets. AKTC’s efforts have motivated traders to privately restore their own shops in peripheral areas of the souk, delivered according to local standards. UN organisations such as Unesco and UN-Habitat are also helping to restore elements of the city’s historic centre. An article published this month on the Aga Khan Development Network website, headlined The Aleppo Souk, Crucible of Memory, describes this work. Alongside the loss brought about by the war, it also portrays a city where international restoration is bringing a genuine sense of cautious optimism to the ancient medina. This narrative is real and deserves attention. Luis Monréal General manager, Aga Khan Trust for Culture • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The French navy has intercepted a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean suspected to be part of the “shadow fleet” that enables Russia to export oil despite sanctions. “This morning, the French navy boarded and searched an oil tanker from Russia, subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag,” President Emmanuel Macron said on X. “The operation was carried out on the high seas in the Mediterranean, with the support of several of our allies,” he added, saying the vessel had been “diverted”. The tanker, Grinch, is the latest in a series of Russian-linked ships to be intercepted by the US and European powers in recent months. It was located between the southern coast of Spain and the northern coast of Morocco in the western Mediterranean and then diverted, the French maritime police said in a separate statement. “After the team boarded, an examination of documents confirmed the doubts as to the regularity of the flag,” the Mediterranean Maritime Prefecture said. The ship “is currently being escorted by the national navy to a point of anchorage for further verifications”, it added. The EU has imposed 19 packages of sanctions against Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but Moscow has adapted to most measures and continues to sell millions of barrels of oil to countries such as India and China, typically at discounted prices. The term “shadow fleet” describes hundreds of unregulated ageing tankers from around the world in varying states of repair carrying oil from Russia to states including China and India. Many move under various identities and change flags to circumvent western economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. The tanker intercepted on Thursday was sailing from Murmansk in northern Russia reportedly under a Comoros flag. The global shadow fleet includes 1,423 tankers, of which 921 are subject to US, British or European sanctions, according to analysis from the maritime data specialist Lloyd’s List Intelligence. They sail without the top-tier insurance cover needed to meet international standards for oil majors and many ports. Paris had not notified the Russian embassy about the interception, the Russian news agency Tass reported on Thursday, citing the embassy. “At the moment, together with diplomats from the consulate general in Marseille, we are trying to find out whether there are any Russian citizens among the crew members in order to provide the necessary assistance,” the embassy said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, welcomed the interception, saying such action was “exactly the kind of resolve needed” to stop Russian oil revenues from financing war in Ukraine. “Vessels must be apprehended. And wouldn’t it be fair to confiscate and sell the oil carried by these?” he said on X. Macron said the activities of the shadow fleet contributed to financing of Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine”. Washington and European powers have intensified efforts to crack down on the shadow fleet in recent months. In October, France detained another sanctioned tanker, the Boracay, off its west coast and released it after a few days. The ship, which claimed to be flagged in Benin, is also suspected of being used to launch drones that closed airports across Denmark last year. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, condemned the interception as “piracy”. In December, Donald Trump imposed a naval blockade on sanctions-busting tankers operating near Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves. Last month, US special forces rappelled from helicopters to board the Skipper, a tanker off Venezuela that the US treasury had placed under sanctions in 2022. Earlier this month, the Marinera, a Russian-registered and flagged tanker, was stopped by the US Coast Guard in waters between Iceland and Scotland. Russia dispatched naval assets, including a submarine, to escort the tanker, and a British Royal Air Force spy plane appears to have flown over its path. US officials said the vessel was used by Russia, Iran and Venezuela to avoid western sanctions.
Peru’s interim president, José Jerí, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen. Jerí, 39, who took office in October after his predecessor Dina Boluarte was forced out, told a congressional oversight committee on Wednesday that he had been the target of a smear campaign designed to destabilise the country ahead of elections in April. “It could be understood to be a trap,” he told the committee after he was summoned to explain two meetings which were made outside office hours and were not publicly disclosed as part of his official agenda. Public prosecutors have launched an investigation into the meetings at a Chinese restaurant, or chifa, and a shuttered shop in Lima’s Chinatown. The scandal – dubbed “Chifagate” – comes as the United States and China jostle for influence in Latin America, where the Asian giant is the main trading partner for most countries, including Peru, and a major source of foreign direct investment. Peru’s chronically corrupt and unstable politics has seen a rapid turnover of seven presidents since 2018 in a revolving door of dismissals and resignations. Opposition lawmakers have said they will present a motion to impeach Jerí, though his popularity, at about 44% according to polls this month, is significantly higher than his predecessor Boluarte, whose approval rating continually slumped into the single figures. “I will not resign, because that would imply that I had done something wrong, which is not the case,” Jerí told lawmakers. The scandal broke with the emergence of videos of the meetings, showing the president, wearing a top with a hood pulled over his head in one and in dark glasses and gesturing wildly while making a telephone call in the other. Both meetings were with a well-connected Chinese businessman, Yang Zhihua, whom Jerí refers to as “Johnny” and who has resided in Peru for decades. Yang has built a small business empire including shops, restaurants and a concession for a hydroelectric project. Prosecutors say another Chinese citizen, Ji Wu Xiaodong, who was present at the first meeting in the restaurant, is accused of belonging to an illegal timber-trafficking network known as Los Hostiles de la Amazonia and had been placed under house arrest for two years. Official records show Ji Wu, an accredited Spanish translator who had worked with Lima’s Chinese embassy, made several visits to the presidential palace in the last few months, accompanied by Yang. In a national television interview on Tuesday, Jerí said Ji Wu had served the food at the restaurant but they did not talk because he spoke little Spanish. The interim president had previously issued a public apology after the meeting at the Chinese restaurant emerged, which appeared to have been shakily filmed on a smartphone. He said the visit was to coordinate the anniversary celebration of the day of Peruvian-Chinese friendship. He apologised for “giving rise to suspicions and doubts about my behaviour” by the way he was dressed. But hours after Jerí’s apology, another video emerged showing the second meeting with Yang, at his store in Chinatown, which had been forced to close by Lima’s municipal government for selling unauthorised products. The scandal is likely to raise eyebrows in Washington, where the Trump administration has raged at growing Chinese investment in Latin America. The Chinese firm Cosco Shipping Ports built a fully automated deepwater port in Chancay, 50 miles (80km) north of Lima, which has been operating since November 2024 and offers an express trade route to China. This month, in an apparent move to challenge China’s dominance, the US state department approved the potential sale to Peru of $1.5bn in equipment and services to help the country relocate its main naval base in Lima’s port of Callao, to allow the seaport’s expansion. In a statement, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the “proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy objectives of the United States by helping to improve the security of an important partner that promotes political stability, peace and economic progress in South America”.