Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday “accepted” President Biden’s cease-fire plan that could end the 10-month war in Gaza, but whether the fighting actually stops depends on Hamas.

Speaking to reporters from Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the proposal put forward last week by the White House in coordination with leaders from Qatar and Egypt looked to “bridge the gaps” between the warring parties and has been “accepted” by Netanyahu. 

“He supports it,” Blinken said. “It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”

“The parties – with the help of the mediators, the United States, Egypt and Qatar – have to come together and complete the process of reaching clear understandings about how they’ll implement the commitments that they’ve made under this agreement,” he added.

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Blinken did not give specifics on what was included in the proposal and Netanyahu has not yet formally agreed to any cease-fire at this time. 

Blinken said both Jerusalem and Hamas have “complex issues” that will “require hard decisions” before the war can truly be considered over. 

“But there is, I think, a real sense of urgency here across the region on the need to get this over the finish line and to do it as soon as possible,” Blinken added. “The United States is deeply committed to getting this job done – getting it done now.”

Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and their supporters protest near the hotel where Secretary of State Antony Blinken is staying during his visit to Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

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The news that Netanyahu had “accepted” the terms put forward in the proposal came after a two-and-a-half-hour meeting between Blinken and the Israeli prime minister, as well as months of negotiations. 

The proposal is expected to include language to ensure the release of all hostages who have been held since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

It remains unclear if the proposal omitted Israeli control over strategic corridors inside Gaza, like the Philadelphi Route that runs between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and which Hamas has said is a non-starter when it comes to any peace agreement. 

A destroyed building along the Philadelphi Corridor, a buffer zone that runs the length of the Gaza-Egypt border. (Photo: TPS-IL.) (TPS-IL)

Though according to a report by the Times of Israel, an official familiar with the meeting between Netanyahu and Blinken,”the Americans did not reject Israel’s strategic logic.”

The official said Israel remains firm in its position that the route is a security issue while Hamas continues to exist.

A terrorist from Hamas takes part in a military parade. (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo)

Blinken’s visit to Israel concluded his ninth trip to the Middle East since the war began, and the secretary is set to head to Egypt and Qatar in the coming days.

Concern remains heightened in the region that a greater regional war could break out amid threats from Iran and other Islamic extremist groups like Hezbollah. 

A German court has rejected an appeal by a 99-year-old woman who was convicted of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.

The Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday upheld the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, who was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022 by a state court in Itzehoe in northern Germany.

She was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, function. She was convicted of being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.

At a federal court hearing in Leipzig last month, Furchner’s lawyers cast doubt on whether she really was an accessory to crimes committed by the commander and other senior camp officials, and on whether she had truly been aware of what was going on at Stutthof.

The Itzehoe court said that judges were convinced that Furchner “knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the commandant’s office of the Stutthof concentration camp from June 1, 1943, to April 1, 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly killed by gassings, by hostile conditions in the camp,” by transportation to the Auschwitz death camp and by being sent on death marches at the end of the war.

Prosecutors said during the original proceedings that Furchner’s trial may be the last of its kind.

However, a special federal prosecutors’ office in Ludwigsburg tasked with investigating Nazi-era war crimes says three more cases are pending with prosecutors or courts in various parts of Germany. With any suspects now at a very advanced age, questions increasingly arise over suspects’ fitness to stand trial.

Accessory to murder

The Furchner case is one of several in recent years that built on a precedent established in 2011 with the conviction of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk as an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp. Demjanjuk, who denied the allegations, died before his appeal could be heard.

German courts previously required prosecutors to justify charges by presenting evidence of a former guard’s participation in a specific killing, often a near-impossible task.

However, prosecutors successfully argued during Demjanjuk’s trial in Munich that helping a camp function was enough to convict someone as an accessory to murders committed there. A federal court subsequently upheld the 2015 conviction of former Auschwitz guard Oskar Gröning on the same reasoning.

Furchner was tried in juvenile court because she was 18 and 19 at the time of the alleged crimes, and the court couldn’t establish beyond a doubt her “maturity of mind” then.

Initially a collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from Danzig, Stutthof was later used as a “work education camp” where forced labourers, primarily Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died.

From mid-1944, tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos in the Baltics and from Auschwitz filled the camp, along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activity and Jehovah’s Witnesses. More than 60,000 people were killed at the camp.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday denied Hunter Biden’s latest bid to dismiss the tax charges against him, setting the stage for his trial to begin next month in California.

Citing a ruling in Florida that threw out a separate prosecution of former President Donald Trump, Hunter Biden’s lawyers had urged the judge to dismiss the case accusing him of a four-year scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in taxes.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon tossed Trump’s classified documents case last month because she said special counsel Jack Smith, who filed those charges, was illegally appointed by the Justice Department. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers had argued the same logic should apply in his case, which was brought by a different Justice Department special counsel.

But U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi noted in his ruling that he had already rejected a previous challenge by Hunter Biden to the appointment of special counsel David Weiss. The judge said there is “no valid basis for reconsideration” of that decision.

Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, had accused Hunter Biden’s lawyers of making “false statements” in their court filing urging the judge to dismiss the case. At issue was a defense comment that no charges were brought in the investigation until after Weiss was named special counsel in August 2023.

The judge noted that Weiss had not yet been named special counsel when he charged Hunter Biden with misdemeanor tax offenses as part of a plea deal that fell apart last year. Scarsi ordered Hunter Biden’s lawyers to explain why they should not be sanctioned.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers responded that they have “never tried to mislead” the court.

In his order Monday, the judge said he would not sanction defense lawyers after they amended their filing. But the judge wrote that the defense’s “conduct warrants an admonition: candor is paramount.”

A hearing in the case is set for Wednesday, when the judge is expected to hear arguments over what evidence the prosecution and defense can present to jurors.

It’s the second criminal trial in just months against the president’s son, who was convicted in June of three felony charges in a separate federal case stemming from the purchase of a gun in 2018.