Hamas said it was “ready” for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and called on Donald Trump to “put pressure” on Israel, which carried out new bombings on Friday on the Palestinian territory devastated by more than one year of war.
• Also read: IN PICTURES | Series of Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered on October 7, 2023 by an attack of unprecedented scale by Hamas on Israeli soil, diplomatic initiatives have not resulted in a ceasefire, Hamas and Israel accusing each other of blocking any agreement.
Israeli military operations have plunged the Palestinian territory into a serious humanitarian crisis and the conflict has spread to the Middle East, with Israel also fighting the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, which opened a front against it in support of Hamas, severely weakened.
“Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in case a ceasefire proposal [serait] presented and provided [qu’Israël la] respects,” assured AFP a member of his political office, Bassem Naïm, hoping that “the American administration and Trump” would put “pressure on the Israeli government to stop the aggression” in Gaza.
The recent election of Donald Trump to the White House could breathe new life into the conflict, with the Republican having promised to bring peace to the region.
“Serious agreement”
Hamas’ proposal also comes nearly a week after Qatar announced the suspension of its role as mediator in the war, urging all parties to be “serious.”
Mr. Naïm reaffirmed that Hamas wanted a “serious agreement for an exchange of prisoners”, namely Palestinian prisoners held by Israel for hostages taken on October 7, 2023 to Gaza.
During the Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data including hostages killed or died in captivity, 251 people were kidnapped on the Israeli soil. A total of 97 remain hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the army.
Islamic Jihad, an armed Palestinian group that participated in the attack of October 7, 2023, also broadcast on Friday morning a video extract of Israeli hostage Sacha Trupanov, speaking to a member of the government coalition, so that he contributes to his release and that of the other hostages still in captivity in Gaza.
Since the start of the war, a single truce had emerged and allowed the release of more than 100 hostages at the end of November 2023.
On Friday, an Israeli strike destroyed the house of Mohamed Baraka, a Palestinian from Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“I was woken up by the bombing at 2:30 a.m. (000 GMT),” he told AFPTV, standing amid rubble and broken glass littering the ruins of his house, saying the strike had made “three martyrs and 15 wounded” and urging “the world to end the war.”
The Israeli offensive left 43,764 dead in the Palestinian territory, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry.
Violent raids in Lebanon
At the same time, the Israeli army launched an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23, targeting in particular the strongholds of Hezbollah, followed by a ground offensive in the south of the country on September 30.
Israel claims to want to neutralize the pro-Iranian movement in the border regions of southern Lebanon to allow the return home of some 60,000 inhabitants of the Israeli north, displaced by the shooting of the pro-Iranian movement.
A new series of “violent” Israeli raids targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday, including a very busy sector of the capital, the Lebanese National News Agency (ANI) reported.
ANI also reported Israeli airstrikes carried out overnight on the town of Nabatiyeh (south).
For its part, the Israeli army said Friday morning that the day before it had targeted “command centers” of the elite Hezbollah unit, Al-Radwan, in the Nabatiyeh area, as well as rocket launchers used Thursday to shooting in northern Israel.
She also indicated that sirens had gone off in northern Israel, notably in the Bay of Haifa, ensuring that she had intercepted “two projectiles” coming from Lebanon on Friday.
More than 3,300 people have died in Lebanon since September 23, the majority being civilians, according to the Ministry of Health.
