Fresh strikes were reported across the Gaza Strip overnight into yesterday, as mediators urged Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden.
Since Biden spoke at the White House on Friday last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel would pursue the war — now nearing its ninth month — until it has destroyed Hamas and freed the captives taken during the Palestinian militant group’s unprecedented attack on Oct. 7 last year.
Hamas has said it “views positively” what Biden described as an Israeli proposal.
Photo: AFP
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Israeli Minister Without Portfolio Benny Gantz and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant to discuss the deal, the US Department of State said in a pair of statements on Sunday night.
In the calls, Blinken “commended” Israel on the proposal and “emphasized that Hamas should take the deal without delay.”
Netanyahu, a hawkish political veteran leading a fragile right-wing coalition government, is under intense domestic pressure from two sides.
Protesters backing an immediate hostage release, who rallied again on Saturday in Tel Aviv, want him to strike a truce deal, but his far-right allies are threatening to bring down the government if he does.
Meanwhile, fighting has continued to rock Gaza, with hospitals there reporting at least 19 killed in overnight strikes into yesterday morning.
Gaza’s European hospital said 10 people were killed and several wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house east of the main southern city of Khan Yunis, while six people were reported killed in a strike on a family home further north in the central Bureij refugee camp, Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said.
Airstrikes and shelling were also reported in Gaza City, in the territory’s north, as well as in Rafah, along its southern border with Egypt.
Netanyahu on Saturday said that “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”
Mediators the US, Qatar and Egypt later said they called “on both Hamas and Israel to finalize the agreement embodying the principles outlined by President Joe Biden.”
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Sunday told ABC News that “we have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them — an Israeli proposal — that Israel would say yes.”
Biden said that Israel’s three-stage offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza and an initial hostage-prisoner exchange.
Israel and the Palestinians would then negotiate for a lasting ceasefire, with the truce to continue as long as talks are ongoing, he said, adding that it was “time for this war to end.”
Netanyahu took issue with Biden’s presentation, insisting that according to the “exact outline proposed by Israel” the transition from one stage to the next was “conditional” and crafted to allow it to maintain its war aims.
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, leaders of the two extreme-right parties in parliament, warned that they would leave the government if it endorsed the truce proposal — potentially costing Netanyahu’s coalition its majority.
However, opposition leader Yair Lapid, a centrist former Israeli prime minister, said the government “cannot ignore Biden’s important speech” and vowed to back Netanyahu if his far-right coalition partners quit.
“I remind Netanyahu that he has our safety net for a hostage deal,” Lapid wrote on social media.
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