Rimbo, Stockholm – Representatives from Yemen’s government and Houthi rebels are attending UN-sponsored talks in Sweden for a second day, but back home a Saudi-UAE coalition has continued with deadly air strikes.

The Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah news outlet reported early on Friday that at least three air strikes targeted Hodeidah’s al-Tahita district, hours after representatives from the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels met for the first day of talks in Rimbo, a town around 50km north of the Swedish capital Stockholm.

According to Al-Masirah, at least 60 air strikes had targeted Houthi-held areas over the past 72 hours, with three women reported killed.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the reports.

Aid agencies have long warned that fighting in Hodeidah, a lifeline for millions of Yemenis, risks escalating the humanitarian crisis in the country, where about half the population – some 14 million people – could soon be on the verge of famine.

The UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has been seeking to introduce a set of confidence-building measures at the talks that will eventually pave the way for future negotiations between officials from President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government and representatives from the Houthi movement.

The warring sides are not expected to meet face-to-face, but the expected confidence-building measures will include negotiating a ceasefire in the port city of Hodeidah, large-scale prisoner swaps, the reopening of Sanaa international airport and the payment of salaries to civil servants in Houthi-held areas.

The Yemeni government proposed re-opening Sanaa airport and on Friday said that one of the conditions was that planes be inspected in Aden or Seiyoun airport.

During opening remarks at the talks on Thursday, Yemen’s government said it signed a large-scale prisoner swap with the Houthis as part of a “confidence-building measure”.

Earlier this week, reports suggested as many as 2,000 pro-government forces could be exchanged for 1,500 Houthis.

The breakthrough came a day after the Saudi-UAE alliance allowed 50 wounded rebels to be evacuated from Sanaa to Oman on a UN-chartered plane for medical treatment.

We don’t believe in a short-term peace. The Houthis will use a truce or a de-escalation as a tactic. They will use the time that we are here to advance on the ground.

Hamza al-Kamali, member of the Yemeni government delegation

‘Air strikes are defensive tactic’

Hamza al-Kamali, a member of the Yemeni government delegation to the talks, said while the priority for his government was addressing the country’s “dire humanitarian situation”, the coalition planned to continue targeting Houthi-held areas, irrespective of what developments took place at the talks.

“We don’t believe in a short-term peace. The Houthis will use a truce or a de-escalation as a tactic. They will use the time that we are here to advance on the ground. That’s why we’re engaging in defensive military actions. The air strikes are defensive tactic the stop the Houthis from transferring weapons from one area to another,” he said.

Since 2014, Yemen has been wracked by a multi-sided conflict involving local, regional, and international actors.

The Houthis, a group of Zaidi Shia Muslims who ruled a kingdom there for nearly 1,000 years, exploited widespread anger against President Hadi’s decision to postpone long-awaited elections and his stalled negotiations over a new constitution.

They toppled his government in 2015, triggering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

A coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened on March 26, 2015, at Hadi’s request after the Houthis continued to sweep the south and threatened to conquer the last government stronghold of Aden.

Since then, the US has been helping the coalition, which now primarily consists of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with weaponry and logistical support.

Launching more than 18,000 air raids, the strikes have resulted in mass civilian casualties, with weddings, medical facilities and funerals not spared from the bombardment.

“Our forces are thee kilometres form the port. We came here in order not to bring the battle to that area so that they can deliver it to the UN envoy as they promised,” Kamali said.

Following months of deadly battles in Hodeidah, the Houthis have told Al Jazeera they are willing to hand over the strategic port to the UN. They have, howver, not commented on whether they will leave the city, one of the demands of the government.

‘Red line’

Asked about a Houthi proposal to form a presidential council without President Hadi, Kamali said the idea crossed a well-established “red line”.

“We believe the war will end if we return to three initiatives – UN resolution 2216, the outcomes of the National Dialogue and the outcomes of the Gulf Initiative.

“We need to go back to the political track we had in 2011 – that is the best solution to ending Yemen’s crisis. President Hadi is off the table. He will be the president until we have elections after finishing steps from the Gulf Initiative.”

Griffiths, who has engaged in intensive diplomacy between the two sides for months, called Thursday’s meeting “a milestone” and urged the two sides to “deliver a message at peace”.

According to aid groups, the stakes could not be higher. An estimated 56,000 people have been killed in the fighting, while as many as 85,000 children may have already died from hunger.

The beginning of the talks coincided with the release of a World Food Programme survey which found 20 million people are going hungry and are in urgent need of food assistance.

Batan al-Hawa, Occupied East Jerusalem – Over the years, Israeli settlers have repeatedly offered Zuheir Rajabi and his neighbours millions of dollars for their modest homes stacked on a steep slope in Silwan’s Batan al-Hawa area in the occupied East Jerusalem.

The strategic location of these homes in what is known as the Historic Basin, and in proximity to the holy Al Aqsa Mosque located in the Old City makes them them prized possessions.

A Jewish settler once offered Rajabi a blank cheque and asked him to write any figure from three million to 30 million shekels ($800,000 to $8m) for his house.

But the 700 residents facing eviction in the neighbourhood say no amount of money will make them part with their homes.

“They thought that in 30 days the people would give up their houses,” Rajabi said, standing on the roof patio of the neighbourhood’s community centre, overlooking the valley.

“The people here are very simple. They have only one thing which is honour. We don’t mind living in poverty or in bad conditions, but we just can’t handle losing our honour,” said Rajabi, who is also the spokesperson for the Batan al-Hawa Committee.

Many of Batan al-Hawa residents have been living there for over 70 years. A large number of them were expelled from their homes, now located in Israel proper, in 1948 and 1967.

The residents now face another expulsion with a Jewish settler organisation, Ateret Cohanim, trying to wage what Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO, calls the single-largest takeover of a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem since Israel occupied it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Ateret Cohanim, which aims to Judaise East Jerusalem, claims the homes in Batan al-Hawa were built on land owned by the Jewish Benvenisti Trust in the 19th century when it settled Yemeni Jews in the area.

In 2002, Israel transferred the ownership of the land – about 5.5 dunams (1.4 acres) in size – to Ateret Cohanim without notifying the residents.

The transfer came a year after three members of Ateret Cohanim were appointed as trustees to the Benvenisti Trust.

In June this year, over a hundred Palestinian residents filed a petition, arguing that Benvenisti Trust owned just the buildings and not the land on which they stood.

Since the original buildings are now destroyed, the trust cannot claim the land, the residents argued.

The same month the Israeli government admitted that the Justice Ministry failed to investigate the Benvenisti Trust before issuing the title deed.

Yet, the Israeli High Court of Justice last month rejected the residents’ appeal to overturn the 2002 decision, effectively allowing Ateret Cohanim to pursue the takeover of Batan al-Hawa.

Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said that the court’s ruling has paved the way for the cleansing of Palestinians from Silwan.

“The judgment proves, yet again, that the Israeli High Court gives its seal of approval to almost any infringement of Palestinians’ rights by the Israeli authorities.”

The ‘octopus’ in East Jerusalem

So far, Ateret Cohanim has evicted 17 families and now owns six buildings in the area. In 2015, the group filed a lawsuit demanding eviction of seven families from the Rajabi house.

According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, of all Palestinian families facing eviction in East Jerusalem, 45 percent of them live in Batan al-Hawa.

B’Tselem called it “the most extensive expulsion process” in recent years in the city.

Rajabi said his father bought their plot of land in 1966 after they were expelled from the Old City’s Jewish Quarters without any compensation.

“I was born here, I grew up here, I got married here, I have lived here all my life,” he said.

Disappointed over the court’s ruling, he said the Israeli society is heading to the “extreme right”.

Rajabi compares Ateret Cohanim to an octopus, whose tentacles have gripped the Old City and Silwan.

“Ateret Cohanim is a powerful organisation, not just politically. It has money too,” Rajabi said.

Among its tactics used for seizing properties include offering sex services to Palestinian men and then threatening to publicise the negotiations which could endanger the Palestinian home owner’s life if he refuses to sell, according to Israeli daily Haaretz.

Ir Amim says the Israeli government has been directly involved in facilitating illegal private settlement in the Old City and surrounding Palestinian neighbourhoods.

“The government acted through the General Custodian and the Registrar of Trusts (both under the Ministry of Justice) to facilitate settlers’ seizure of Batan al-Hawa, as well as increasing its security budget by 119 percent from 2009-16 to ensure the protection of radical Jews settling in the hearts of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem,” the NGO said.

Consolidating Jewish control

According to a report by Ir Amim, the political objective of groups such as Ateret Cohanim is to consolidate Jewish control in East Jerusalem and thwart the two state solution.

Yacoub al-Rajabi, a member of the Batan al-Hawa Committee, said that the settlers have been trying to buy their house since 2003.

A year and a half ago, Ateret Cohanim offered $2m for his home so that they would drop the court case, but to no avail.

“If they evict us from our homes, we will build tents next to our homes. We will not go anywhere. We refuse to go anywhere. We refuse to be transferred [for the third time],” Yacoub said.

He described their neighbourhood as a prison where residents feel trapped and are regularly harassed by settlers, police, army and Israeli governmental institutions who pressure them to leave.

Whenever there is a Jewish holiday, he says the residents feel imprisoned since they cannot leave their homes and the children can’t go to school under military order.

“We do not have anything but our steadfastness. [We will] try to defend ourselves and our rights … We have the ownership of this land and it is ours by law,” he said.

Rajabi’s office is located in the community centre built for children – the only place in the neighbourhood where the kids can play safely. In one corner of his office, a screen displays CCTV footage from the cameras installed outside.

Across the street, a dozen more cameras surround his home. He had them set up to document attacks by settlers or Israeli authorities after his father died from inhaling tear gas fired by the police.

Rajabi says his cameras have been extremely useful in dismissing false claims by the settlers and the Israeli authorities.

The fate of their homes is now with the magistrate’s court in Jerusalem, which has to decide whether the Benvenisti Trust owns just the buildings, or the land too.

But Yacoub said there is little hope that justice can be delivered from Israeli courts.

“Even during the hearing the judge herself mentioned that there are some legal dilemmas in the court’s verdict,” Yacoub said adding that residents will try all possible means to stay such as taking the case to the International Criminal Court.

“This [court decision] will never break us. We will keep fighting for our rights, we will keep fighting for our ownership over our land and houses,” he said.

Image: Shutterstock / Patty Chan/target/hydro flask/paper source/amazon

Beirut, Lebanon – It was a Friday when Mark Tice received the call he dreaded.

“Are you sitting down?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.

Marc’s son Austin, a freelance journalist, had been reporting from Syria and was scheduled to reach neighbouring Lebanon the previous Tuesday, but he had not been in touch.

Marc was anxious to hear from Austin, but when the phone finally rang, it was an official from the US State Department on the line.

The official informed Marc that Austin was missing. He had been picked up from a checkpoint near Syria’s capital Damascus on 14th August 2012, the day he intended to leave the country.

Since that call, made “six years, three weeks and a few days ago,” says Marc’s wife, and Austin’s mother, Debra, the parents have not rested.

They are currently on their eighth visit to Beirut, where they are knocking on doors and searching for clues which might lead them to their son. The Lebanese capital is about a two-hour drive from Damascus, and the closest city the Tices can reach while they search for Austin.

Debra hopes to obtain a visa from the Syrian authorities to allow her to move the search closer to the location where he was last seen.

On this trip, they feel more optimistic. The visit comes soon after a top official for hostage recovery in the Trump administration saidhe thought Austin was “probably still alive”.

The parents have flown in to put pressure on their government and, hopefully, to be heard by those in Syria they believe are holding Austin captive. No one has come forward to claim responsibility for his abduction.

The Tice family doesn’t know who exactly was responsible – and doesn’t care to know either. They are cautious, carefully weighing their words so as not to offend any side of the conflict. To them, it is not who has abducted Austin, but who returns him, that matters.

First denial, then a relentless search

Given a chance, every parent can expound upon the achievements of their child. Marc and Debra Tice are no different. At a restaurant in Beirut, they talk about Austin’s skills, taking quick turns so that nothing is missed.

“He was first published when he was nine,” says Debra.

“He has always known what was important in life,” adds Marc.

“He is such a good swing dancer, he makes any woman dancing with him look beautiful,” Debra jumps in, gushing with pride.

During the first year of Austin’s absence, until late 2013, the family was in a state of disbelief. Every morning, they thought there would be a knock on the door and Austin would simply walk in.

Then, Marc and Debra decided that Austin was coming back. They just needed to play their part and ensure the Syrian and American governments were listening to them.

On their journey, they have established connections with hundreds of people in Lebanon, in Deraya — the Syrian suburb from which Austin had taken a taxi to cross into Lebanon when he went missing – and the US administration.

They started keeping “piles and piles of notebooks,” Debra says, to retrace his steps and understand what might have happened to their son. They connected with the families of other hostages and received sympathetic messages from other Americans freed in the past, including some who languished in the American embassy in Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis.

“We had joined the horrible club, which no one must be a part of,” says Debra.

Being a parent of the missing brings its own routine and changes to social life. The couple’s friendships went awry because their friends didn’t know what to say to them, how to say it or how to help. They didn’t know what to offer, while Marc and Debra did not know what to expect.

“I go to the market and see these faces. I want to say- look, I am here just for the tomatoes,” Debra says.

It has been hard, they admit, but nothing compared with what their son must be enduring.

Austin’s proof of life came from a 40 second video posted online, a fortnight after he went missing. Marc and Debra Tice call it a missed opportunity.

“Every pixel of that video was seen and analysed. Who are the people? Is it fake or authentic? I know that was my son.I want to thank those who posted it because they were telling us Austin was alive. But why did no one say, contact them and begin a dialogue?” Debra says.

Can Trump bring back the American journalist?

The Tice family, from Houston, Texas, has now pinned their expectations on the US President Donald Trump. For them, he is a president who walks the talk, and cares about the end result over protocol.

He has built a reputation for rescuing kidnapped Americans, they say, among them, Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student detained in North Korea.

In that extraordinary case, the Trump administration succeeded in bringing him home, though he was comatose and fatally sick from a never-explained brain trauma, and died shortly afterwards.

Following his death, Trump tweeted: “Otto’s fate deepens my Administration’s determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency.”

Marc and Debra are buying into the president’s words. They are convinced that Trump can and will strike some sort of a deal or understanding which facilitates Austin’s return.

They are also, through every press conference and interview, reaching out to the Syrian government. They hope, perhaps naively, that the two governments can forget their disagreements for the sake of an innocent life.

Debra visited Syria in 2014 and 2015. She walked through the souks of the capital city with a photograph of Austin, asking if anyone had seen him. She tried her best to seek help from senior figures in the Syrian government at a time when the US was backing the Syrian opposition forces.

On the record at least, President Bashar al-Assad‘s government has assured the Tice family that they are doing everything they can to find Austin. Does Debra believe the assurances? “I can’t not believe,” she says.

‘Austin meets us in our dreams’

Marc, Debra and Austin are caught up between complicated geopolitical calculations. Yet the parents are firm that they will not be defeated.

Deep in their minds, they say, their religious faith, as well as their love for their son and each other, sustain them.

At the end of the day, when Marc feels down, Debra carries on with a smile. They take turns.

“Austin is definitely coming home,” Marc says. “He meets us in our dreams.”

Debra describes one such meeting. “I am standing at the door, as I do, and there he is, Austin. He says, ‘Mom, now don’t make a big deal. I am back, shall we go inside?’”