The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has announced that it will “study” an Israeli proposal to declare a ceasefire lasting several weeks in the Gaza Strip. As part of the agreement, dozens of Israeli hostages are expected to be released and Palestinian prisoners in exchange, although it does not meet his basic demands.
Six months after the war broke out, the countries mediating the indirect talks, Qatar, Egypt and the US, put a three-stage proposal on the table, the first of which calls for a six-week ceasefire.
Assuring that it “appreciates” the efforts of the mediators and “wishes” an agreement to be reached, the Islamic Resistance Movement explained in a statement that the Israelis “did not satisfy any” of its and other Palestinian organizations’ demands, without further details.
“However, the leadership of the movement will study the proposal (…) and inform the mediators of the response” of the movement, the statement said, as Palestinians prepare for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which ends the month of Ramadan. , which was perhaps the most difficult the Gaza Strip has ever experienced.
What else does the proposal provide?
In addition to the ceasefire, the proposal also initially calls for the release of 42 Israeli hostages and in exchange for 800 to 900 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. It also proposes that 400 to 500 food trucks enter the enclave every day and return to the homes of northern Gazans who were forced to leave because of the war.
The Palestinian Islamist movement is demanding a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the entire Gaza Strip and the distribution of more aid to the civilian population, which the UN says is at risk of starvation.
Insisting that it will never agree to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of its troops from the entire coastal Palestinian enclave, Israel announced on Sunday the withdrawal of its units operating in Khan Younis (south), the focus of fighting in recent months . While on Monday it announced that 419 trucks with food aid had entered the Gaza Strip, the highest number since the war broke out.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallad said the time was “right” for a cease-fire agreement — which did not, however, prevent airstrikes from continuing into the night. The Hamas Health Ministry did not report a new deadly airstrike in the central part of the enclave.
Asked about this by the BBC, the spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majid al-Ansari, said he was more “optimistic”, adding, however, that the negotiations were still far from reaching the “finish line”.
Macron, Sisi and Abdullah II
French President Emmanuel Macron, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah II called for an “immediate” and “permanent” ceasefire. But also to release “all the hostages” in the Gaza Strip with an article they co-signed and printed in four newspapers, including Le Monde.
“The war in Gaza and the human suffering it has caused must stop immediately,” the three heads of state stressed, warning Israel against the “dangerous consequences” of a possible large-scale ground operation in Rafah.
Although indirect negotiations to declare a ceasefire continue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will order an assault on Rafah, which he describes as Hamas’s last stronghold in the Gaza Strip.
“It will be done. A date has been set,” he assured in a taped message, without however specifying which one it is. Mr Netanyahu opposes a permanent ceasefire, insisting that the Israeli military must “destroy” Hamas’ military capabilities before an end to its operations can even be discussed.
Almost immediately after Mr. Netanyahu’s statement, the US administration reiterated its opposition to a full-scale ground attack on Rafah, where nearly a million and a half Gazans have taken refuge, most of them displaced by the fighting.
“We have made it clear to Israel that we believe a massive military incursion into Rafah would have extremely harmful consequences for civilians,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said during a briefing of accredited editors. While he added that “it would, in the final analysis, affect the security of Israel itself.”
The testimonies of the survivors
Since Sunday, thousands of Palestinians have left Rafah, mostly to return to their homes in Khan Younis, just a few kilometers away. “We hope to find our house, or what’s left” of it, explained Safa Qandil, 46, who is grieving her son and daughter-in-law, who was pregnant.
Nothing was left standing in the family home. “It is (…) indescribable,” he admitted. “Nothing is like what we knew” before the war, Salim Sharab, 37, also acknowledges.
Germany and Nicaragua
Because of the war in the Gaza Strip, Nicaragua appealed against Germany to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the top judicial institution of the UN. There he denounced the military support it provides to Israel.
After calling Nicaragua’s presentation “grossly biased” on Monday, Germany is expected to rebut it before the ICJ later in the day.
The timeline of the war and its effects so far
The war broke out on October 7, when Hamas’s military arm launched an unprecedented raid from the Gaza Strip into southern parts of the Israeli territory, killing 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to a French tally. Agency based on official Israeli data.
More than 250 people were kidnapped, of whom 129 are still in the Palestinian enclave — but 34 of them are believed to be dead.
In retaliation, the Israeli civil-military leadership has vowed to “wipe out” the Palestinian Islamist movement it characterizes, as do the US and the EU, and its military operation in retaliation has so far killed 33,207 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
#Hamas #Studying #Israels #proposal #ceasefire #Gaza