Despite US appeals, Israel refuses to spare Rafah, Gaza truce ‘no hope’

The prospect of another pause in Israel’s war with Hamas is bleak as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to delay a threatened attack on the Gaza city of Rafah. Despite a direct appeal from US President Joe Biden earlier this week, Netanyahu insisted the operation would continue regardless of whether Hamas agreed to further releases of Israeli hostages.

Netanyahu said foreign calls for Israel to spare the city, where more than a million Palestinians have sought asylum, were effectively telling the country to “lose the war against Hamas.” Efforts to ceasefire intensified this week as Qatar, along with fellow mediators Egypt and the United States, pushed for a ceasefire before Israeli forces entered the Gaza Strip’s last major population center.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who met with Israeli and Hamas negotiators this week, said a ceasefire was needed as “many countries” insisted any new truce would require further hostage releases. Efforts get complicated. “The situation over the past few days is really not promising,” he told the Munich Security Conference. His assessment came as Hamas threatened to suspend its participation in armistice talks unless relief supplies arrived in the northern Gaza Strip.

“Negotiations cannot take place during…”

“Negotiations cannot proceed when hunger is ravaging the Palestinian people,” a senior source in a Palestinian activist group told reporters. AFP. Earlier, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reiterated the group’s demands, which Netanyahu dismissed as “ridiculous.” These include a complete moratorium on fighting, the release of Hamas prisoners and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, with Qatar’s Haniyeh saying Hamas “will not agree to any other action”.

Netanyahu also rejected moves by some Western governments to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state without waiting for the two sides to negotiate a peace deal. “After the horrific massacre of October 7, there is no greater reward for terrorism than this, and it will hinder any future peaceful solution,” he said. The hawkish prime minister spoke as thousands of people gathered Israelis protested in Tel Aviv, accusing his government of abandoning Israeli hostages.

Israel said it had detained 100 people on Gaza’s main hospital after its army raided it on Saturday, amid growing concerns about the patients and staff trapped inside. According to the Ministry of Health, at least 120 patients and five medical teams at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the main city in southern Gaza, are without water, food and electricity. For weeks, Israel has been focusing its military operations on Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.

fierce battle

Fighting is raging around Al-Nasser Hospital, one of the only partially functioning major medical facilities in the Palestinian territories. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that after the attack, power was cut and generators stopped running, causing six patients to die from lack of oxygen.

The Israeli military said troops entered the hospital on Thursday, acting on what it said was “credible intelligence” that hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack were being held there. It later admitted it had found no conclusive evidence. The military insists it has done everything it can to keep the hospital powered, including bringing in replacement generators. The attack was criticized by medical staff and the United Nations.

The war in Gaza began with a Hamas attack on October 7 that killed approximately 1,160 Israelis, mostly civilians. According to Israeli data, militants have also taken about 250 people hostage, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, and 30 of them are presumed dead. Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza have killed at least 28,858 people, according to the region’s health ministry.

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