A senior Israeli official said today that Hamas is “blocking any possibility” of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip by insisting on an end to the war during negotiations with mediators in Cairo.
“Informations that Israel has agreed to end the war, as part of a prisoner exchange agreement, or that Israel will allow negotiations to guarantee that the war will end are inaccurate. So far, Hamas has not abandoned its demand for an end to the war, and by doing so it is blocking the possibility of reaching an agreement” on a ceasefire, the Israeli official said.
A Hamas official told AFP for his part that in the talks today in Cairo with the mediators (Egypt, Qatar, the United States) there was “no development”.
“Today’s negotiations are over and there will be a new round tomorrow,” he added.
Media reported this morning that Washington has given assurances to Hamas that Israel would agree to a cease-fire after a ceasefire agreement is reached.
As of October 7, Israel and Hamas have only agreed to a cease-fire, at the end of November. It lasted a week and allowed the release of 105 hostages, including 80 Israelis and dual nationals, against 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Yesterday, Hamas announced that it was going to Cairo “in a positive spirit to reach an agreement”, clarifying that it remained “determined” to achieve a “comprehensive end to the aggression” by Israel, “the withdrawal of the occupation forces” and “a serious exchange arrangement » hostages against Israeli prisoners.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterates that he is determined to go ahead with the large-scale attack on Rafah and rules out ending the war before Hamas is “neutralized”.
These statements, according to Hamas, “are aimed at torpedoing any possibility of an agreement”.
Thousands of citizens demonstrated tonight in Tel Aviv demanding that the Netanyahu government reach a cease-fire agreement that would allow the return of the hostages.
A banner with Netanyahu’s portrait read: “You are the ones who torpedo any deal.”
What does the proposal for a truce provide?
The proposal calls for a “40-day ceasefire” and the “release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of these hostages,” added Britain’s foreign minister, David Cameron, also in the Saudi capital.
The proposal calls for a 40-day ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages abducted during Hamas’s military arm’s unprecedented raid on southern Israel on October 7, the trigger for that war.
But Hamas insists on demanding a permanent ceasefire, which the Israeli government rejects, threatening to order a ground operation in Rafah (south), which it says is the “last” stronghold of its battalions, but where more than a million have taken refuge Palestinians, the vast majority of them displaced by the bombing and fighting.
“We will do what is necessary to defeat, to crush our enemy, not excluding Rafah,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated this week, announcing that the operation in the city would take place “with or without a deal” for ceasefire.
For Husham Badran, a member of the Hamas politburo, Mr Netanyahu’s statements about the attack on Rafah “are clearly aimed at nullifying any possibility of an agreement”.
On the contrary, for US Secretary of State Blinken “the only obstacle” to the ceasefire “is Hamas”.
On the night of Friday into Saturday, AFP sources in hospitals spoke of Israeli airstrikes in Rafah and neighboring Khan Younis, which has been almost completely leveled following heavy fighting with Hamas that followed the Israeli ground operation there.
Also read: Gaza: Hamas delegation in Cairo – “Significant progress has been achieved in negotiations”
“Blood Bath”
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing Egyptian sources, Israel is willing to give another week to the ceasefire talks, and if no agreement is reached it will go ahead with the operation it has been threatening for weeks to carry out in Rafah. .
“A large-scale military operation in Rafah could lead to a bloodbath,” warned yesterday Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), who is preparing a crisis response plan as it would see a huge “increase in the number of the wounded and the dead”.
This plan “is nothing more than a band-aid,” said Rick Peppercorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian Territories. “The health system, which is already on its knees, will not be able to withstand the potential scale of destruction that the invasion would cause,” he added.
International humanitarian aid, heavily vetted by Israel, continues to trickle in, mostly through Egypt and the Rafah crossing, as the enclave’s population — 2.4 million people — is threatened with starvation.
Faced with the often insurmountable difficulties of delivering aid by road, several countries have airdropped food into the Gaza Strip, while the US military is building an artificial harbor off its coast to facilitate the transport of aid by sea, via Cyprus.
Israel’s main ally, the US, opposes the ground invasion of Rafah and has called for a “credible” plan to protect civilians if such an operation were to go ahead. US Foreign Minister Blinken said yesterday that this has not happened in Washington and warned that given this fact, the attack on Rafa would cause much heavier losses than what would be “acceptable”, according to him.
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