Negotiations for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas are proving difficult, but according to Egyptian state television, “significant progress” has been made. Accordingly, mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US and representatives of Hamas will continue their talks in the Egyptian capital on Monday. They have been trying for weeks to reach an agreement on, among other things, a ceasefire before the start of Ramadan.
This year the Islamic month of fasting starts on Sunday, March 10 and Monday, March 11. Another central issue in the negotiations is the release of the 130 hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. There are currently negotiated proposals on the table that would halt fighting in the Gaza Strip for six weeks. Hamas must release Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli custody.
Netanyahu: “We will not surrender”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called on Hamas to give in before the new round of negotiations on a hostage agreement. “We are making great efforts to succeed, but one thing is clear: we will not capitulate to Hamas’s misleading demands,” he said in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening. While US Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire, the Israeli army announced it would kill more terrorists.
Israel wants a list of surviving hostages
Before Netanyahu’s speech, another meeting of the mediating states US, Qatar and Egypt took place in Cairo, but Israel – unlike Hamas – initially stayed away. Israel initially demands that the Islamists provide, among other things, a list of the hostages they are still keeping alive. Netanyahu made it clear that it was too early to say whether a draft deal would emerge in the coming days.
40 Israeli hostages against 400 Palestinians?
Israel also wants to know whether Hamas will agree to the number of Palestinian prisoners that would be released in exchange for hostages, as stated in the mediators’ latest proposal. Recently, media reports said that 40 hostages could be exchanged for 400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Netanyahu said he had not yet received answers to his questions. He rejects “international pressure to end the war” before Israel has achieved all its goals. With or without a new deal, “we will fight until total victory,” Netanyahu reiterated.
The impasse in the difficult indirect negotiations could pose a challenge to mediators’ efforts to broker a ceasefire. London-based Qatari daily Al Araby Al Jadid quoted a senior Hamas official as saying his organization would not be forced to release a list of hostages. “There will be a high price to pay for this, in the form of alleviation of the suffering of the people of Gaza and a comprehensive ceasefire,” he told the newspaper. According to US information, the mediation proposal only provides for a six-week ceasefire.
Kamala Harris, meanwhile, urged a ceasefire. “The threat that Hamas poses to the people of Israel must be eliminated,” Harris said Sunday in Selma, Alabama. Referring to the ongoing negotiations, she added: “And given the immeasurable extent of the suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks, which is currently on the table.”
US Vice President: “No excuses” for aid deliveries
“Our hearts break … for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe,” Harris said at an event marking the anniversary of the bloody, racially motivated police crackdown on a civil rights demonstration. 1965. “The people are starving, the conditions are inhumane,” Harris called on the Israeli government to allow significantly more aid into the coastal area and open new border crossings. There are “no excuses” in this regard.
The Israeli army has announced the killing of a Hamas member responsible for recruiting terrorists. Mahmoud Muhammad Abd Khad was also involved in raising funds for terrorism and in support of Hamas’s military activities, the army said on Sunday evening. He was killed in an airstrike in the central part of the closed coastal area in cooperation with Israeli intelligence. The army had previously reported that “more than 100 terrorists” had been killed in another operation in the northern Gaza Strip. In addition, 35 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist facilities were destroyed, including weapons depots and production facilities. “Dozens of terrorists” were arrested. The military also discovered and destroyed hundreds of launch pads and launchers. None of this information could be independently verified.
Source: Krone
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