US hopes for progress in Gaza talks next week

Anger in West Bank village at funeral of two young men

FE Team | Published: July 15, 2025 00:36:50

ncampments sheltering Palestinians displaced by conflict are pitched near the Sheikh Radwan wastewater collection pond, which is nearing its filling capacity, in Gaza City on Monday. — AFP

NEW YORK, July 14 (AFP): US President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that talks are ongoing over Israel's conflict in Gaza and he hopes for progress in the next week, even as ceasefire negotiations in Doha stalled.
"Gaza-we are talking and hopefully we're going to get that straightened out over the next week," Trump said, echoing similarly optimistic comments he made July 4.
Palestinian-American Saif al-Din Abdul Karim Musalat's body-draped in a flag and covered with a yellow and orange wreath-was carried through the crowded streets of Al-Mazra'ah ash-Sharqiyah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday.
The village, perched atop limestone hills, is known for its colonnaded villas and manicured gardens-and its few thousand residents who mostly come from the Palestinian diaspora in North America.
Musalat, 20, was one of them. Born and raised in Florida, he ran an ice cream parlour in Tampa, arriving in the Palestinian territory just a few weeks ago with a plan to spend the summer with his mother and siblings.
But on Friday, he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in nearby Sinjil, the Palestinian health ministry said, in the latest violence to hit the village north of Ramallah.
Hundreds gathered on Sunday, chanting prayers and slogans at Musalat's funeral. Inside his family's upmarket home, women wept and screamed at the sight of the young man's lifeless body.
On one of the walls, the young man looked from a poster-his beard neatly groomed and against the backdrop of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem's Islamic sanctuary.
Two teenagers embraced as tears ran down their faces. "It's awful," one of them sobbed. In recent months, the area has witnessed frequent attacks by Israeli settlers, sometimes backed by the Israeli army, local residents say.
A few days before Musalat's death, the UN said that "attacks, harassment, and intimidation by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have become a daily reality".