Doha Forum 2025 updates: Gaza ceasefire not complete – Qatari PM

Thank you for joining our live coverage of the first day of the 23rd edition of the Doha Forum.

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The first day of this year’s Doha Forum is now over, so let’s bring you up to speed with today’s main developments:

• The forum has heard from leaders and top officials from across the Middle East, including Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Iran’s former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
• Qatar’s prime minister said the Gaza ceasefire process has reached a “critical moment” and remains incomplete until Israel withdraws from the enclave and stability is restored.
• Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara is ready to do whatever it takes to push the ceasefire process forward.
• Syria’s al-Sharaa has accused Israel of escalating regional tensions, including perpetrating “extreme violence” in Syria and violating its airspace.
• Looking to Syria’s future, al-Sharaa committed to new elections at the end of a five-year transitional period that will decide the country’s leader. Strong institutions, rather than individual leaders, will “guarantee the continuity of the state”, he said.
• Iran’s Zarif said Tehran – despite US and Israeli attacks this year – still has robust, autonomous security capabilities that the world should “come to terms” with. He also urged better relations with Arab states.
• European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the US remains Europe’s “biggest ally” despite stinging criticism of the continent in a major strategy document amid ongoing ceasefire talks on the Ukraine war.

Al Jazeera has spoken to Cameron Hudson, former White House director for Africa and Sudan analyst, about the war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Hudson said the security situation in Sudan’s el-Fasher, which has been captured by the RSF, has been deteriorating over the last month as the violence moves towards the central part of the country.

“Kordofan is right now in the crosshairs,” Hudson said on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, adding that any territorial gains made by the RSF against the army were “accompanied by massive civilian displacements and human rights abuses”.

He commented that the US did not see “the strategic priority of Sudan” up until recently.

According to Hudson, the RSF’s advancement made the US think that Sudan might end up as a failed state similar to Libya.

“This has woken up the United States to the potential long-term security implications of seeing Sudan fail like that,” the analyst said, stressing that Washington expressed in the past how important the Red Sea and the Gulf states’ security was for it.

Bill Gates has spoken about the importance of agricultural development in Africa, which, despite having hundreds of millions of farmers, is still a net importer of food.

The challenges facing the continent, Gates says, are “high population growth, degraded soils and the impact of climate change”.

However, he said he believes “if we innovate by empowering those farmers” – including through emerging technology such as AI – the industry could “more than overcome those headwinds and turn this into the primary area of economic growth and make Africa not only self-sufficient … but also a significant net food exporter”.

A new panel focused on innovation in the Global South has featured Qatar Museums chairperson Sheikha al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Gates Foundation chair Bill Gates and Dangote Foundation President Aliko Dangote.

Gates, in his opening remarks, noted that most children born in the current century will be born in Africa, highlighting the need for advances in health and nutrition across the continent.

“If their health hasn’t been taken care of, if their education systems aren’t capable, they won’t be achieving their potential,” said Gates. “That’s a terrible thing for the whole world.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has described the US measures imposed on her earlier this year as unlawful actions that have severely disrupted her personal and professional life.

“They violate the UN Charter, they violate the convention on privileges and immunities of UN personnel,” she told Al Jazeera.

Albanese, an Italian citizen, argued the measures were a direct retaliation for her work documenting Israeli violations.

“I have been punished for doing my work … the latest act of aggression toward me as someone who denounces the crimes that Israel commits against the Palestinians,” she said, adding that she has faced smear campaigns, threats, and baseless accusations of being an anti-Semite.

“I cannot exist in the global economy. I cannot have a credit card, I cannot have medical insurance … all my assets have been frozen.” Furthermore, she is unable to conduct any financial transactions, “including in Italy, or anywhere”.

Moreover, Albanese said her US-based insurance company recently refused to reimburse her. “I need to borrow money or borrow credit cards, which is not even always possible, because not all countries allow you to use a credit card that is not yours.

She noted that nine International Criminal Court judges, of whom two were European, have faced similar pressure, calling it “mafia-style intimidation … just for doing our job”.

Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, says journalists are “truth-tellers” by profession and they “do not want to be the news, they want to make news”.

“Those, like the Israeli Defence Forces, who do not want the truth to come out about the atrocities in Gaza, have indiscriminately attacked journalists,” Khan said, talking to Al Jazeera from the Doha Forum.

“Killing a journalist is the most outrageous way of censorship – unfortunately, this is what is happening,” she added.

The UN special rapporteur stressed that the violence against journalists is likely to become more common if no action is taken against the impunity of killing journalists, as most cases go unpunished.

She stressed that targeting a journalist is a crime under international humanitarian law, and called on the world powers to apply economic and diplomatic pressure on Israel to “bring an end to this terrible impunity of killing journalists”.

Fidan said the daily ceasefire violations by Israel in Gaza have presented an image that the agreement can be stopped at any time since “nobody seems to be stopping Israel”.

“Well, this is exactly the problem we’ve been having right from the beginning of the war. In the absence of any credible power in the field or any other mechanism or structure, nobody has used power, leverage against Israel at the moment,” Fidan said.

“Only the United States was able to stop Israel, and only a certain number of countries came together to convince the American administration. This is a chain reaction here. We talk to the Americans, the Americans talk to Israel,” he said.

Fidan says one of the “practical problems” about the board of peace, an international transitional government for Gaza, is that those on the US side mediating for Gaza are also mediating between Ukraine and Russia.

“I’ve been communicating and discussing with [US Special Envoy] Steve Witkoff and other friends and [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio. They are very, very aware of the gravity of the problem at the moment,” Fidan explained.

“They know they have to intervene timely to make sure that we can go into [the] second phase, otherwise we can lose momentum because Hamas has almost delivered what they’ve been asked in terms of releasing the hostages,” he said, with one captive’s body left to be retrieved in Gaza.

The Turkish foreign minister says recent attacks on ships off the country’s coast is a “very sensitive” issue for Turkiye.

“I talked to my counterparts in both capitals [Kyiv and Moscow] about the subject,” Fidan said.

“We don’t want to see that trade routes are being targeted and trade ships being hit. This is exactly what we were concerned [about] right from the beginning because this is an escalation of war.”

The Turkish Directorate General of Maritime Affairs said on Tuesday that a Russian-flagged tanker was attacked off the Turkish coast in the Black Sea, the third such vessel to have been targeted within a week.

Asked about reports this week that Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti was assaulted in Israeli prison, the Turkish foreign minister stressed that thousands of Palestinian prisoners are subjected to torture by Israel.

“This is a humanitarian tragedy. Unfortunately, nobody is paying much attention [to it],” Fidan said.

“The torture has become systemic because for Israelis, this is an act of revenge: Torturing the Palestinian prisoners in prison.”

Multiple reports have detailed the widespread torture of Palestinian prisoners amid Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, with Israeli organisation B’Tselem describing the Israeli prison system as a “network of terror camps”.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says Hamas’s disarmament has to be “realistic”, adding that the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) and a Palestinian police force have to be formed first.

“First, we should take over the administration, we should take over the policing force from Hamas, then we need to let the humanitarian assistance freely go into Gaza, we should let normal life [continue], give hope to people, then we can start addressing [the] decommissioning issue [of Hamas],” Fidan said.

The foreign minister added that it’s “understandable” that Israel might not be supportive of leaving the disarmament of Hamas for the last stage.

“We will have the ISF, we will have a non-Hamas police force in place and most importantly the regional countries and the countries who have put their signature on the peace declaration in Sharm el-Sheikh,” he said.

“They are going to be enforcing, one way or another, if Israel is following the agreement to the letter,” Fidan added.

Fidan says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel does not want Turkish forces to join the so-called international stabilisation force (ISF) in Gaza, as outlined under the peace plan.

“Mr Netanyahu doesn’t hide it; he – a couple times – stated openly that he doesn’t want to see Turkish troops there,” the Turkish foreign minister said.

He said Indonesia and other countries considering whether to send forces to join the ISF want Turkiye to join “because they know that we can play a leading role”. Turkish participation would also help those countries garner “more legitimacy and support” for the deployment from their respective populations, Fidan said.

“What we need first – first and foremost – is [to] stop the war between Palestinians and Israelis; that’s why we need the ISF to separate Israelis and Palestinians on the borderline, not to let each other to attack. This is what we see as the primary way to stop the war, or not to allow the war to start again,” he added.

“Once we can secure the borderline between two forces and two sides, then we can address the other issues inside Gaza.”

Fidan says Turkiye has made its position known on what it wants from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led group that held large swaths of territory in the country.

Earlier this year, the new Syrian government reached a deal with the SDF to integrate the group into the country’s state institutions.

“We want non-Syrian elements from SDF – the elements from Iraq, Iran and Turkiye – [to] immediately leave,” Fidan said at the Doha Forum. “That would be a good start.

“The second thing is, all the capacity and the units which have been positioned against Turkiye’s interests and security should be abolished. This is basically what we want.”

Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan is the next senior official to participate in a Newsmaker Interview at the Doha Forum.

Speaking to The Guardian’s Diplomatic Editor Patrick Wintour, Fidan said that when the war started in Syria in 2011, it had a “huge effect” in neighbouring Turkiye in terms of security, immigration and economy.

“But more importantly, Turkiye is a big country; we can carry certain burdens, but the human tragedy and drama that was taking place in Syria was unbearable for us. That’s why President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan instructed [the] open-door policy to allow the people who were running away from the cruel [toppled Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime,” Fidan said.

The foreign minister explained that the years 2016 and 2017 were “very difficult ones, and the Western community came to a position where they stopped assisting Syrian opposition”.

“Turkiye and Qatar, we were left alone in support of the Syrian opposition. The Americans and the West were advised by some circles to help [the] PKK instead of the Syrian opposition,” he said, referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, without elaborating.

In May, the PKK announced that it was disarming and disbanding.

Iran’s former top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran “wants to work” with Arab nations, arguing the region has nothing to lose and everything to gain from better ties.

Zarif said Iran has “paid a heavy price” for its support of Palestine – support he claimed surpasses that of any Arab state.

“Our friends in the region have everything to gain through cooperation with Iran. We have no desire. We are the biggest country in the region. We have no territorial ambitions against our friends in the region,” said Zarif.

He then asked: “Why do we have to be blamed by problems that are caused by Israel?”

The Syrian president has pushed against what he described as “politicised” suggestions that he was a “terrorist”.

“What is the definition of terrorism or a terrorist?” he asked in translated remarks. “It’s been 25 years of us hearing this word … but there is a lot of confusion in understanding the word terrorist.”

Al-Sharaa said that in his opinion, terrorists are those who kill innocent people, children and women and use illegitimate means to harm people.

“If we try to extrapolate this description on several countries in the world, we find that the number of victims in Gaza … most of them are innocent,” he said to loud applause.

Al-Sharaa said “the Syrian regime during” 14 years of war “killed more than one million” people, while many others were disappeared.

“We have liberated all prisons but we still do not know anything about these people, and this person is not called a terrorist or this regime is not called a terrorist,” he added.

“We saw wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq, all of those that were killed were innocent – and it is the killers that describe others as terrorists,” al-Sharaa said.

“So I think that after 25 years, people are now more aware about who is a real terrorist and who deserves to be called a terrorist,” he added, again to applause.

“Now, on a personal level, I have never harmed a civilian, I fought on several fronts and I fought for more than 20 years, with honour,” he said. “People now know that this description is not accurate, that is why I am no longer listed as a terrorist by the Security Council.”

Asked about the role of women in Syria today, al-Sharaa said they are “empowered, their rights protected and guaranteed, and we constantly try to ensure that women are fully participating in our government, in our parliament as well.

“I believe you should not fear for Syrian women, fear for Syrian men,” he jokingly concluded to widespread laughter and clapping around the hall.

President Ahmed al-Sharaa says Syria is “living through its best days”, stressing that “there is not a single country in the world without domestic issues.”

Answering a question on the domestic problems in his country during the interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the Syrian president said: “There is not an authority in the world that receives unanimous approval from its people.”

Al-Sharaa stressed that, through recent history, “the Syrian people did not know each other well.”

He also said the new government inherited “many conflicts and differences” from the old regime because it “used confessions” against different groups.

“However, since we took over, we resorted to pardoning large numbers of people and factions, so that we can build a sustainable, safe and secure future for the Syrian people,” the president said.

“[That way] we can secure another opportunity for the Syrian people to get to know each other, and in order to do that, we engage with a lot of factions and communities in the national dialogue and in the government to calm the situation down,” he added.

Al-Sharaa said his government is taking measures not to get caught in “a post-conflict cycle that often lasts longer than the war”.

“The majority of these measures were successful,” he concluded.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said Damascus is working to build broad support for its position vis-a-vis Israel.

“What we try to do is convince powerful regional players and powerful international players … and they support Syria and its demands,” he asserted.

The president said Syria’s demand remained the same – Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-December 8, 2024 lines and the preservation of the 1974 disengagement accord.

“This agreement has held on for over 50 years,” al-Sharaa said, cautioning that efforts to replace it with new arrangements, such as a buffer or demilitarised zone, could push the region “into a serious and dangerous place”.

“Who will protect that zone? Israel often says that they are afraid of coming under attack from southern Syria, so who will be protecting this buffer zone or this demilitarised zone, if the Syrian army or the Syrian forces are going to be there?” he asked.

“It is Syria that is being attacked by Israel and not the opposite … therefore, who has more right to claim a buffer zone and a pullout.”

The Syrian president has answered a question about the country’s electoral process, saying he is serving a five-year mandate as interim president, after which new elections will be held to decide the leader.

“The Syrian system is based on elections,” he said. “I think that the principle of people choosing their leaders is a basic principle. It is even part of our religion. Rules have to gain the satisfaction of the majority of people in order to rule properly, so this is what we believe in, and I think that this is the suitable path for Syria.”

He said that building strong institutions is more important than individual leaders in Syria, as it will “guarantee the continuity of the state”.