DOUBTS and uncertainty are increasing regarding the fate of the ceasefire plan in the Gaza Strip on Thursday (2/5). Even though mediators have raised hopes of an end to the nearly seven-month war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants.
“Israel is still waiting for Hamas’ response to the latest proposal,” said an Israeli official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Mediators have proposed a deal that would halt fighting for 40 days and exchange Israeli hostages for thousands of Palestinian prisoners, according to details released earlier by Britain.
Such a deal would be the first since a one-week ceasefire in November that saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners. The war began with a Hamas attack on October 7 in southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel estimates 129 prisoners captured by the militants during their offensive are still in Gaza, but the military says 34 of them were killed. Israel’s counteroffensive, vowing to crush Hamas, has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza (mostly women and children) including 28 in the past day, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
Much of Gaza has been reduced to gray rubble. The debris includes unexploded ordnance and causes more than 10 explosions every week with more deaths and loss of limbs, the Gaza Civil Defense agency said on Thursday.
End the war
Humanitarian groups are struggling to get aid to Gaza’s 2.4 million residents. Hundreds of thousands of them have fled to Rafah, the southernmost point in the region, the UN said.
Also read: Netanyahu agrees to more talks, five Gaza residents die in food aid
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP late Wednesday that the movement’s position on the ceasefire proposal was negative for now. Senior Hamas official Suhail al-Hindi said the group’s goal remains ending the war contrary to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance.
Regardless of whether a ceasefire is reached or not, Netanyahu promised to send Israeli troops to Rafah to fight Hamas fighters there. United States (US) officials reiterated their opposition to such operations without a plan to protect civilians.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the Islamic movement to accept the ceasefire plan. “Hamas needs to say yes and needs to get it done,” Blinken said on Wednesday (1/5) while in Israel on his latest mission in the Middle East.
Also read: Israel-Hamas ready to negotiate again, UN warns of hunger in Gaza
In early April there was also initial optimism regarding the possibility of a ceasefire agreement. But then Israel and Hamas accused each other of undermining the negotiations.
After a meeting with Blinken, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid stressed that Netanyahu had no political reason not to reach a deal to free the hostages. Netanyahu faces regular protests in Israel calling on him to strike a deal that would repatriate the captives.
On Thursday (2/5), protesters displayed large photographs of female hostages outside Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem. In Tel Aviv they again blocked the highway.
Also read: Jordan and the US Discuss Accelerating a Ceasefire in Gaza
Under trial
Protesters accuse the prime minister, who is on trial on corruption charges, of trying to prolong the war. The impact of the fighting in Gaza has spread throughout the Middle East, including the Red Sea region where commercial shipping has been disrupted.
US and allied warships regularly shoot down drones and missiles fired by Iran-backed Yemeni rebels in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Criticism of the war is growing in the United States, Israel’s main military supplier. Demonstrations have spread to at least 30 universities in the US. Protesters often set up tents to defy the growing death toll in Gaza.
Talks on a possible deal to end the bloodiest war in Gaza have been held in Cairo involving the US, Egypt and Qatar as mediators. Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said he was pessimistic that Hamas would agree to a deal that did not include a permanent ceasefire.
A source familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday that Qatari mediators expected a response from Hamas within a day or two. The source said Israel’s proposal contained concrete concessions including a sustained period of calm after an initial lull in fighting and a hostage-prisoner exchange.
The source said Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza was likely still a matter of debate.
A mother’s tears
“Egypt is engaged in a series of telephone conversations with all parties,” the government-linked Al-Qahera News report said, citing a top Egyptian official who spoke of positive progress.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said improvements in providing more aid to Gaza could not be used to prepare or justify a major military offensive on Rafah. The US military since last week has built a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to assist with relief efforts. “The dock is now more than half complete,” the Pentagon said Wednesday.
In the town of Khan Yunis near Rafah, foreign aid and borrowed equipment helped almost completely restore the emergency unit at the Nasser Medical Complex.
Heavy fighting broke out in mid-February around the hospital which was then surrounded by Israeli tanks and armored vehicles. The Israeli army said Thursday that among strikes the previous day, fighter jets hit military structures in central Gaza.
Eyewitnesses and AFP correspondents on Thursday (2/5) reported air strikes on Khan Yunis and artillery bombardment in the Rafah area. Militants and Israeli troops are fighting in Gaza City in the north.
A Nadi resident, whose arms were bandaged after they were injured in the attack, feared the power at the hospital would go out, cutting off oxygen for her child and him dying. “I call on the world to move my child for treatment abroad. His condition is very bad,” he said, crying. (Z-2)
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