Hamas weighs Gaza truce proposal
Published on: Saturday, May 04, 2024
By: AFP
Blood stains are visible on the wall as a man sweeps rubble in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. At least 34,596 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory campaign.
GAZA STRIP: Hamas said it was considering in a “positive spirit” a proposed truce and hostage release deal with Israel as the bloodiest ever Gaza war claimed more lives on Friday.
Nearly seven months of war have devastated the Palestinian coastal territory, which the United Nations said would require a rebuilding effort on a scale not seen since World War II.
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After months of stop-start negotiations, Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said the group would “soon” send a delegation back to Egypt for ceasefire discussions, aiming for a deal that “realises the demands of our people”.
Haniyeh told Egyptian and Qatari mediators in calls on Thursday that Hamas was studying the latest proposal from Israel with a “positive spirit”.
After a meeting in Cairo last weekend, the Hamas delegation had returned to Qatar to discuss the proposal.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
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Gaza’s Civil Defence agency and medics said the toll rose overnight when Israeli warplanes struck a neighbourhood in Rafah, southern Gaza, killing six people in a family house.
The destruction there adds to the 72 percent of Gaza’s residential buildings which a UN report on Thursday said have been completely or partially destroyed.
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The only truce that mediators have reached so far was a week-long deal in November that saw the release of 80 Israeli hostages for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel estimates that 129 of the captives seized by the militants during their October attack remain in Gaza, while the army says 35 of them are dead.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces regular protests demanding a deal to bring home the hostages.
He leads a fragile coalition which includes religious and ultra-nationalist parties. Demonstrators accuse Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges he denies, of seeking to prolong the war.
Israel’s government said it had confirmed the death of another Gaza captive, 49-year-old Dror Or.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Or’s death emphasises the need to secure the freedom of all captives and to bring home the remains of those killed.
It called on the government to “exhaust every effort to bring Dror and... the other murdered hostages back for honourable burials in Israel”.
The truce offer includes a 40-day halt to fighting and the exchange of Israeli hostages for potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners, according to details released by Britain.
Demonstrators have gathered on at least 40 US campuses, often erecting tent camps.
University administrators have been left with the challenge of trying to balance free speech rights with complaints of criminal activity and hate speech.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog charged that the US universities had been “contaminated by hatred and anti-Semitism”.
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