Hamas announced on Saturday that it was “studying” an Israeli counter-proposal with a view to a truce in the fighting in Gaza associated with the release of hostages, the day After the arrival in Israel of a delegation of Egyptian mediators to try to relaunch the deadlocked negotiations.
Posted at 7:46 a.m.
Updated at 9:52 a.m.
The war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has raged since October 7 in the Gaza Strip where “starvation thresholds will be crossed in the next six weeks” if massive food aid is not provided, warned on Friday evening the UN.
“Today, Hamas received the official response from the Zionist occupation (Israel, Editor’s note) to our position which had been given to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on April 13,” declared the number 2 of the political branch of Hamas for Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya.
“The movement will study this proposal and submit its response once its study is completed,” he added in a press release published on Saturday.
Hamas had previously insisted on a permanent ceasefire, a hypothesis rejected by Israel, which instead insisted on a pause of several weeks in the fighting.
Israel is preparing to launch a ground offensive in Rafah despite international fears. Many capitals and humanitarian organizations fear a bloodbath in this city where a million and a half Palestinians are crowded together, many in tent camps, without water or electricity.
Rafah is regularly bombed. Hospital officials indicated that bombings there had left more than a dozen dead during the night from Friday to Saturday. An entire family was decimated, said a relative, Mohammed Yussef: “There is no one left: the father, the mother, a girl and two boys” were killed when their house was “targeted”.
Elsewhere in Rafah, people searched through the rubble of homes that Abed al-Aziz Barhum, a young man with a thin mustache, said were “bombed without prior warning.” He called on “all Arab people to support us against the occupation and to help us achieve a ceasefire.”
Framework for a “ceasefire”
After six and a half months of bombing and ground fighting, Israel estimates that Hamas has four battalions grouped in this city.
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out against Israel by Hamas commandos, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official data. Israelis.
PHOTO HATEM KHALED, REUTERS
A child mourns the deaths of those killed during nighttime Israeli bombings in Rafah on April 27.
More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have died according to Israeli officials.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization, as do the United States and the European Union. Its army launched an offensive which left a total of 34,388 dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States are trying in vain to conclude a new truce agreement in Gaza, after a week-long pause in fighting in November, which allowed the exchange of 80 hostages for 240 Palestinian detainees.
The details of the Israeli counter-proposal have not filtered out but the Israeli press mentioned earlier this week the possible release, initially, of 20 hostages considered to be “humanitarian cases”.
On Friday, an Egyptian delegation arrived in Israel to discuss a “comprehensive framework for a ceasefire” in Gaza, according to Egyptian intelligence outlet Al-Qahera News, citing a senior Egyptian official.
” We are tired ”
The war will also be at the center of talks with senior Arab and European diplomats, including the French and German foreign ministers, expected this weekend in Saudi Arabia.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People view the damage to a house destroyed by Israeli nighttime bombing in Rafah on April 27.
A special meeting of the World Economic Forum, scheduled to begin Sunday in the capital Riyadh, will include a session on Gaza on Monday, attended by the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mustafa, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mostafa Madbouly, and Sigrid Kaag, coordinator of United Nations aid for the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said its planes had struck more than 25 targets over the previous day in the Gaza Strip.
“We are tired after seven months of displacement and struggle in the camps. So we insisted on returning and staying in a tent on the rubble of our house in Khan Younes, said Abdelqader Mohammed Qwaider.
The World Food Program (WFP) has warned that famine poses “a real and dangerous threat” in Gaza. A British ship left Cyprus on Saturday to accommodate hundreds of US military personnel who are building an artificial pier in Gaza in a bid to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Lebanon, Yemen, United States
The United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), “the backbone of humanitarian operations” in Gaza according to its boss, Philippe Lazzarini, is facing a drop in its funding after Israel’s accusations in January according to which several of its employees were involved in the October 7 attack.
On Friday, the UN announced that it had closed or suspended five out of 19 cases targeting UNRWA employees.
The war between Israel and Hamas has caused an outbreak of violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where there are daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah, supported by Iran.
In Yemen, the Houthi rebels, also supported by Iran and claiming to act in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, claimed responsibility during the night from Friday to Saturday for attacks having damaged the Andromeda star, a ship sailing in the Red Sea according to the US Middle East Military Command (Centcom).
In the United States, Israel’s close ally, a protest movement against the war in Gaza is becoming widespread on campuses.
