Hamas said on Monday it was studying proposals for a ceasefire and a hostage-prisoner exchange following talks in Cairo.
Palestinian territories:
Hamas said on Monday it was working on a proposal for a truce and hostage prisoner exchange after talks in Cairo, with Israel’s defense minister saying now was the best time to reach a deal six months into the war with Islamist militants in Gaza. opportunity.
Israel faces growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire, including from the United States, its top ally and arms supplier.
Late on Monday, a Hamas source with knowledge of the negotiations said the group was reviewing a proposal that would allow the release of Israeli women and child hostages in exchange for up to 900 Palestinian prisoners in a six-week truce .
The first phase will also include the return of displaced Palestinian civilians to northern Gaza and the delivery of 400 to 500 truckloads of food aid per day to the area, where the United Nations has warned of impending famine, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
But as negotiations continued, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a date had been set for sending troops to the city of Rafah in Gaza’s southernmost tip.
“This will happen – there is a date,” Netanyahu said in a video statement, without specifying when. He insisted that “defeating” Hamas militants in Gaza would require troops to enter Rafah, where some 1.5 million people have sought asylum.
The prospect of a Rafah invasion has alarmed world leaders and humanitarians. After Netanyahu’s comments, the U.S. State Department reiterated that the invasion would have “enormous harmful effects” on civilians and ultimately Israel’s security.
-‘Shock’-
A day earlier, the army had announced a withdrawal from the city of Khan Younis, north of Rafah, leaving thousands of displaced Palestinians trudging back through an apocalypse of dust and destruction.
“I was shocked by what I saw,” Umm Ahmed al-Faqawi said, his voice appearing choked with emotion. “All the houses were destroyed, not just mine but all the neighbors’ houses around us,” she said, surrounded by a landscape of gray rubble.
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said at least 38 more people had died than the previous day.
Witnesses told AFP that more Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire hit northern and central Gaza, as well as Rafah, where Israel regularly bombed targets even before the invasion.
Israeli data shows that the war began with an attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7 that killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians.
Palestinian militants have also taken more than 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, of which 129 remain in Gaza, 34 of whom the military said were dead.
– high pressure –
Netanyahu faces intense pressure at home from the hostages’ families and supporters, as well as a resurgent anti-government protest movement.
Israel has launched a retaliatory offensive vowing to eliminate Hamas, which has killed at least 33,207 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Sunday that troops were leaving Khan Younis after months of fighting “to prepare for future missions, including… on the Egyptian border in Rafah”.
Amid the threats and continued fighting, Netanyahu sent negotiators to new truce talks that started in Cairo on Sunday, along with U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
U.S. President Joe Biden dispatched CIA Director Bill Burns to the talks, three days after a tense phone call with Netanyahu in which Biden demanded an end to the fighting and greater measures Help and protect civilians in Gaza.
On April 1, an Israeli drone struck seven aid workers at the US charity World Central Kitchen, triggering global outrage against Israel.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said negotiators have presented a proposal for a ceasefire agreement to Hamas, “which will depend on whether Hamas can pass it.”
Egyptian state news outlet Al-Qahera quoted an unnamed senior Egyptian source as saying that “significant progress has been made on several contentious points of agreement.”
Qatari and Hamas delegations have left Cairo and are expected to “return within two days to finalize the terms of the agreement,” while U.S. and Israeli teams are also planning to hold consultations.
“I think we are at the right time now” to reach a deal with Islamist militants, Galante told Israeli recruits on Monday.
“The continued pressure on Hamas and our position of strength as part of this movement allow us to act with flexibility and freedom,” he added, according to a statement from his office.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said during a visit to Washington that a hostage deal would be “difficult” but “it is doable and therefore needs to be done”.
– body parts –
Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told the BBC he was “more optimistic today than a few days ago” but added: “We are by no means in the final stages of negotiations.”
The siege has left Gazans deprived of most water, food and other basic supplies – aid trucks and airdrops of relief supplies in recent weeks have only slightly alleviated dire shortages.
Charities accuse Israel of blocking aid, but Israel blames the shortage on aid organizations’ inability to distribute aid once it comes in.
After the call with Biden, Netanyahu’s office said Israel would allow aid deliveries to northern Gaza “on a temporary basis” through the port of Ashdod and the Erez checkpoint.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Heyman said that 322 trucks entered Gaza in the past 24 hours, which was “the highest number in a single day since the war began.”
Forensic technicians dressed in white gathered in the sandy courtyard of the bombed and burned ruins of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital.
Khalil Hamada, the hospital’s director of forensic medicine, said they were trying to identify parts of the decomposed body that had been “buried in a barbaric manner”.
There was a fierce battle in the hospital for two weeks.
Calls to halt arms shipments to Israel are growing louder. Nicaragua argued at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Monday that Germany violated the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention by providing arms to Israel.
Germany’s top lawyer called the case “seriously biased.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
