GAZA STRIP: Efforts towards a truce in the Israel-Hamas war continued Saturday after a new proposal from the Palestinian militant group which also called for more aid into Gaza, where famine threatens and the first food shipment by sea was unloaded.
Israel said it would send a delegation to Qatar for another round of talks on a possible deal. It also advanced plans for a military operation in Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has sought refuge from more than five months of war and deprivation.
The US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) on Saturday said its team had finished unloading almost 200 tonnes of food, the first shipment to arrive on a new maritime aid corridor from Cyprus.
“All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza,” WCK said in a statement.
AFP footage on Friday showed WCK’s partner, the Open Arms vessel, towing a barge with the aid close to the rubble-strewn shore of north Gaza. Open Arms had sailed from Cyprus on Tuesday.
The United Nations has reported particular difficulty in accessing northern Gaza for deliveries of food and other aid.
Residents say they have resorted to eating wild plants and animal fodder, and some have stormed the few aid trucks that have made it through.
“Doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies,” Dominic Allen, of the United Nations Population Fund, said after visiting Gaza’s north.
With the situation increasingly dire, multiple nations began daily aid airdrops over Gaza, and the new sea corridor is to be complemented by a temporary pier which United States troops are on their way to build.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Saturday that at least 31,553 people have been killed. The latest toll includes at least 63 deaths in the previous 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 73,546 people have been wounded in Gaza.
In negotiations aimed at securing a truce and hostage deal, Hamas has put forward a new proposal for a six-week ceasefire and the exchange of about 42 Israeli hostages for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, an official from the Islamist group told AFP.
Until Friday Hamas had insisted no further hostages would be exchanged without a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Now the militants are saying that, during a six-week truce, Israeli forces would need to pull out of “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza, according to the Hamas official.
The Hamas proposal also calls for ramped up humanitarian aid, the official added.
Israel has so far rejected withdrawing troops from Gaza, saying such a move would amount to victory for Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel would send a delegation to Qatar for another round of talks on securing the hostages’ release.
Biden praised unusually critical comments by US Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who had described Netanyahu as one of several “major obstacles” to peace.
“I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans,” Biden said.
