The head of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas will arrive in Egypt in the next few hours to negotiate a new truce in the Gaza Strip, where this Thursday the fighting and bombing of Israel continues despite a critical humanitarian situation.
Ismail Haniyeh, who lives in exile in Qatar, should arrive in Egypt on Thursday or Friday to negotiate the truce, almost four months after the start of the war.
The Hamas leader, who lives in Qatar, should address an agreement proposal formulated during a meeting in Paris in Egypt between the director of US intelligence, William Burns, and Egyptian, Israeli and Qatari officials.
A Hamas source indicated that the Islamist movement is examining a proposal that consists of three phases. The first would include a six-week truce during which Israel would release between 200 and 300 Palestinian prisoners. in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages.
(Also read: Hamas studies truce proposal in Gaza but demands withdrawal of Israeli troops)
In addition, between 200 and 300 trucks of humanitarian aid could enter Gaza each day.
Hamas demands a complete ceasefire as a precondition to any agreement, while the Israeli government is limited to talking about a pause in the fighting, but not about ending its operation in Gaza. “We will not withdraw the army from the Gaza Strip or free thousands of terrorists. None of that will happen,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Smoke rising over buildings in Khan Younis during Israeli bombing.
To reinforce the negotiation of a second truce, the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, will return to the Middle East “in the coming days,” said a senior official from that country.
In addition to the mediation of the United States, Qatar and Egypt, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, offered to negotiate the release of Israeli hostages through a “peace commission.”
The proposal responds to a private letter from Netanyahu on January 11 in which the Israeli leader asked him to make “every effort” to intercede for people held by Hamas.
(You can read: The letter in which Netanyahu asks Petro to intercede for the hostages in Gaza)
“I consider it a priority to move quickly towards a cessation of hostilities and begin talks for the release of all the hostages,” said Petro, who openly supports the Palestinian cause and accuses Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
In Gaza, several witnesses reported nighttime Israeli shelling near the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, the large city in southern Gaza where Israel believes some Hamas leaders are hiding.
Tents for Palestinian refugees near a cemetery in Rafah, Gaza.
Israel announced days ago that it had surrounded the city and, after defeating the battalions of
Hamas in its eastern part now concentrates its actions in the western area. Some 184,000 Palestinians registered to ask for humanitarian aid after being forced to leave that sector, said the UN, which spoke of “intense shelling” throughout Gaza and, especially, in Khan Younis.
The Hamas Ministry of Health indicated this Thursday that the bombings last night left 119 dead in the Strip. For its part, the Palestinian Wafa agency reported violent clashes in Tubas, in the occupied West Bank.
Almost four months of war have devastated the Gaza Strip, where Israel also applies a strict blockade to the entry of food, water, medicines and energy. The population is “starving” and “is on the brink of the abyss,” the director of the World Health Organization's health emergencies program, Michael Ryan, warned on Wednesday.
(Keep reading: Aid cuts to UNRWA leave millions of Palestinian refugees in uncertainty)
Furthermore, the territory is “uninhabitable”, with half of its buildings destroyed, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development stated in a report.
The situation risks being aggravated by the suspension of donations from several countries to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) after Israel accused 12 of its employees of being involved in the Hamas attack on October 7. .
Israeli protesters block trucks carrying humanitarian aid bound for Gaza.
That day, fighters from the Islamist movement entered southern Israel and killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data.
They also kidnapped around 250 people and took them to the Gaza Strip. A hundred were freed in a first truce in November in an exchange with Palestinian prisoners.
In response to the attack, Israel launched an air and ground offensive to “annihilate”
Hamas, a group classified as terrorist by the United States and the European Union. This operation left more than 27,000 dead so far, mostly women, children and adolescents, according to the latest balance sheet from the Ministry of Health of Gaza, controlled by the Islamist movement.
(Also: Why is it difficult to achieve the creation of two states after Israel's war in Gaza?)
Dozens of Israelis, meanwhile, block the departure of humanitarian aid trucks headed to the Gaza Strip from the port of Ashdod.
The protests against the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza “to feed the enemy while the hostages starve,” the demonstrators argue, began a week ago at the Kerem Shalom crossing, where Israel inspects aid convoys sent by the community. international for the Strip.
AFP
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