After US signals Gaza ceasefire, Israel, Hamas indicate no deal is on the way
Israel and Hamas downplayed imminent prospects on Tuesday Success in talks for ceasefire in GazaUS President Joe Biden said Israel has agreed to halt its offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some hostages.
The president’s comments came on the eve of the Michigan primary, where he faces pressure from the state’s large Arab American population over his staunch support for Israel’s offensive. Biden said he had been briefed on the status of negotiations by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, but said his comments reflected his optimism for a deal, not that all remaining hurdles had been overcome. Are.
In the wake of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, Israel’s air, sea and ground campaign in Gaza killed thousands of people, destroyed large swathes of the urban landscape and displaced 80 percent of the affected area’s population.
According to the United Nations, Israel’s seal on the area, which allows only food and other aid, has led to concerns that famine may be imminent.
Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and France airdropped food, medical supplies and other aid into Gaza on Tuesday, as a lack of safe corridors was hampering the delivery of aid by UN trucks. On a beach in southern Gaza, boxes of supplies dropped from military planes parachuted down as thousands of Palestinians ran along the sand to retrieve them.
But there is growing concern about increasing hunger among Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said two infants died of dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City. He warned that the infant mortality rate was at risk of increasing.
“Dehydration and malnutrition will kill thousands of children and pregnant women in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The Al Helal Al Emirati maternity hospital in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, reported that newborns were dying because mothers could not get prenatal or postnatal care, the UN Population Fund said. Cases of premature birth are also on the rise, forcing staff to keep four or five newborns in a single incubator. Without giving figures on the number of deaths, it said, most of them do not survive.
Now the prospect of an invasion of Rafah has raised global concern over the fate of the approximately 1.4 million civilians trapped there.
Talks to stop the fighting have gained momentum recently and were still ongoing on Tuesday. Negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar are working toward a cease-fire under which Hamas would free some of its dozens of hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, ending a six-week pause and de-escalation in fighting. In aid distribution to Gaza.
The start of Ramadan, which is expected around March 10, is seen as an unofficial deadline for a deal. This month is a time of intense religious observance and fasting from dawn to dusk for millions of Muslims around the world. Israeli-Palestinian tensions have escalated in the past during the holy month.
“Ramadan is coming, and there has been an agreement by the Israelis that they will not engage in activities even during Ramadan, so that gives us time to get all the hostages out,” Biden said in an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night.” Could.” “With Seth Meyers” was recorded on Monday.
In separate comments the same day, Biden said he hoped the ceasefire agreement could go into effect by next week.
At the same time, Biden did not call for an end to the war, which began when, according to Israeli officials, Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 .
Israeli officials said Biden’s comments came as a surprise and were not made in coordination with the country’s leadership. A Hamas official shrugged off any sense of progress, saying the group would not soften its demands.
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive talks with the media, said Israel wants a deal immediately, but Hamas is putting forward excessive demands. He also said Israel was insisting that female soldiers be part of the first group of hostages released under any ceasefire agreement.
Hamas official Ahmed Abdel-Hadi indicated that optimism over a deal was premature.
“The resistance has no interest in giving up any of its demands, and what is proposed does not meet its requests,” he told pan-Arab TV channel Al Mayadeen.
Hamas had previously demanded that Israel end the war as part of any agreement, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “illusory”.
In Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke separately by phone with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss a plan for the reconstruction and governance of Gaza after the conflict.
Neither country is directly involved in the ceasefire talks, but both will be important in supporting an expensive, long and difficult situation when the fighting stops, especially in securing popular Arab support for security guarantees for Israel. In, should it agree to negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state.
In nearly identical statements, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken had discussed with ministers “a commitment to achieving sustained peace through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.”
At a news conference in Doha on Tuesday, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid al-Ansari said his country felt “optimistic” about the talks, without elaborating.
A senior Egyptian official has said the draft agreement includes the release of 40 female and elderly hostages in exchange for 300 Palestinian prisoners – mostly women, minors and elderly people.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said a proposed six-week pause in the fighting would allow hundreds of trucks a day to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza, including the badly hit north.
Biden, who has shown staunch support for Israel throughout the war, in his remarks left the door open for an eventual Israeli ground attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, where more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people live. Are. People have fled under Israeli evacuation orders.
Netanyahu has said that the ground operation in Rafah is an indispensable component of Israel’s strategy to crush Hamas. This week, the army submitted operational plans for the offensive as well as evacuation plans for civilians there for Cabinet approval.
Biden said he believed Israel had slowed its bombing of Rafah.
“They have to do that and they have committed to me that they will ensure that they have the ability to evacuate significant parts of Rafah before they go in and drive out the rest of Hamas,” he said. “But it’s a process.”
Israel’s offensive on Gaza has killed more than 29,700 people, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its counting.
The first and only ceasefire in the war, in late November, released approximately 100 hostages – mostly women, children and foreign nationals – in exchange for approximately 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, as well as a brief halt to . fighting.
About 130 hostages remain in Gaza, but Israel says about a quarter of them are dead.
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