UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned Israel against a military offensive in the southern Gaza Strip. “I am particularly disturbed by reports that the Israeli military intends to next focus on Rafah – where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are under pressure in a desperate search for safety,” Guterres told the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday. Such an action would exponentially worsen “what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.” It is time for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the unconditional release of all hostages.
“The living conditions of the population there are catastrophic – they lack the bare essentials for survival,” said UN emergency aid coordinator Martin Griffiths on Wednesday evening in Geneva. “They are threatened by hunger, disease and death.”
As part of efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Israeli President Yitzhak (Isaac) Herzog and Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday. According to a draft, the radical Palestinian organization Hamas is proposing a three-stage plan for a ceasefire with Israel. Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in the south of the Gaza Strip.
With the plan, Hamas responded to mediation efforts by Qatar, Egypt and the USA. Their goal is to end Israel’s military operation, according to the draft, which was available to the Reuters news agency on Wednesday. In addition, hospitals and refugee camps in the Gaza Strip are to be rebuilt.
According to the draft, there should be indirect discussions in an initial phase lasting 45 days. Israeli troops should be withdrawn from the populated areas. Some civilian hostages are to be released, in return for Palestinian prisoners being released from Israeli custody. In a second phase, all hostages should be released – again in return for the release of Palestinians – and the Israeli military should completely withdraw from the Gaza Strip. In a third phase lasting 45 days, the dead will be exchanged.
Hamas is demanding the release of more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in return for the release of more hostages, according to a media report. These include 500 prisoners who were sentenced to life or very long prison sentences, the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera reported on Wednesday. In addition, all women, minors and older prisoners should be released.
Some of Hamas’ demands for a ceasefire are being described as unacceptable by a senior Israeli government official, according to a media report. It is now being discussed whether Israel should reject the draft completely or ask for new conditions, reports Channel 13 TV. He does not mention the name or office of the person.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said at a press conference with Blinken in Doha on Tuesday that they had received a “positive” response from Hamas. In the only agreement of its kind to date, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners, all women and teenagers, in November in return for 105 Hamas hostages.
The Israeli army announced on Wednesday that “armed terrorist cells” had been eliminated and numerous weapons had been seized in response to the fighting in Khan Younis. “Israeli paratroopers have killed dozens of terrorists in Khan Younis in the last 24 hours,” the statement said. The UN emergency relief office OCHA reported on Wednesday night that there were further civilian casualties, displacement of the population and destruction of civilian infrastructure. The OCHA, for its part, reported “intense Israeli bombardment from the air, on the ground and from sea in large parts of the Gaza Strip, particularly in and around Khan Younis.”
In an incident in the west of Khan Younis, Israeli soldiers encountered three gunmen who fired anti-tank missiles at them, the military said. The three men and “several other terrorists” were killed in hand-to-hand combat.
The Israeli army says it has discovered and destroyed a tunnel in the south of the Gaza Strip used by high-ranking Hamas officials and in which hostages were also being held. The “strategic tunnel” discovered by special forces in Khan Younis served as a hiding place for “high-ranking members of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the army said on Wednesday. At various times, “around twelve hostages” were held in a cell there.
Three of the hostages have now been brought back to Israel, the others are still being held in the Gaza Strip. The army did not initially say who the hostages were. According to the army, the tunnel was “in the heart of a civilian area.” The approximately one kilometer long facility is part of an “extensive underground labyrinth”. In addition, the tunnel was connected to another recently discovered tunnel in which hostages were also being held.
The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel’s history, carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations on October 7th in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip. Around 1,200 people were killed in Israel and more than 250 people were abducted. Israel responded with an ongoing massive ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli military information, of the approximately 136 hostages still held by Hamas, at most just over a hundred are still alive. According to unconfirmed reports, more hostages may have been killed.
According to the Hamas-controlled health authority in the Gaza Strip, at least 27,585 people have been killed in the territory since the war began. According to UN estimates, three quarters of the approximately 2.2 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip had to flee their homes during the war.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, told the US that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel without recognizing an independent Palestinian state. The country is demanding that a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital be recognized and that “Israeli aggression” against the Gaza Strip must stop, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. The borders must therefore correspond to the borders of 1967.
Jordan, which annexed the West Bank after the first Israeli-Arab war in 1948, renounced the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 in 1988. In November of the same year, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in Algiers proclaimed a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital.
