Top US diplomat Antony Blinken urged Hamas to agree to a truce plan in Gaza despite an Israeli warning that the army would continue fighting the Palestinian militant group after any ceasefire.
Mediators proposed a truce deal that would end fighting for 40 days and exchange dozens of hostages for many more Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas said it would respond “within a very short time” to the proposal.
“Hamas must say yes and it must be done,” Blinken said Wednesday while in Israel for his seventh crisis tour of the Middle East since the war began in October.
He later added: “If Hamas truly claims to care about the Palestinian people and wants to see immediate relief from their suffering, it should accept this deal. »
Blinken spoke after visiting Kibbutz Nir Oz, attacked by Hamas on October 7, as well as Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza and the port of Ashdod, which Israel says will be used for shipments of ‘help.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, told AFP on Wednesday evening that the movement’s position on the truce proposal was for the moment “negative”, but that discussions were still ongoing.
The group’s goal remains “the end of this war”, a senior Hamas official, Suhail al-Hindi, told AFP, a goal at odds with the stated position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has pledged to send Israeli ground forces to the southernmost Gaza town of Rafah, despite major concerns over the fate of some 1.5 million civilians sheltering there.
“We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there with or without an agreement,” Netanyahu said this week.
UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be “an unbearable escalation, killing thousands more civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.”
Netanyahu made his threat at a time of tensions between the traditional allies, as the war in Gaza has sparked global anger and weeks of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. college campuses.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that any operation in Rafah must “include a credible plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians and maintain the flow of humanitarian aid”, the Pentagon said on Wednesday .
– ‘Long-lasting calm’ –
Talks on a possible truce and hostage release deal aimed at ending Gaza’s bloodiest war on record took place in Cairo, involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Hindi, the Hamas official, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, said there was “great interest on the part of Hamas and all factions of the Palestinian resistance to end this senseless war against the Palestinian people, who have consumed everything.
“But this will not be done at any price,” he added, stressing that the group “cannot under any circumstances raise the white flag or surrender to the conditions of the Israeli enemy.”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry called on all parties to “show the necessary flexibility” to reach an agreement “that stops the bloodshed of the Palestinians”, during a visit to Cairo of his French counterpart Stéphane Séjourne.
Analysts doubted Hamas would sign a new temporary ceasefire, knowing that Israeli troops could resume their attack as soon as it was over.
“I am pessimistic about the option that Hamas would accept a deal that does not include a permanent ceasefire,” said Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.
A source close to the negotiations said the Israeli proposal contained “real concessions”, including a period of “lasting calm” after an initial pause in fighting.
– “More rubble than Ukraine” –
The war began with the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, which left 1,170 dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages. Israel estimates there are 129 prisoners remaining in Gaza, but the army says 34 of them are dead.
Israel’s massive retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,568 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled territory’s health ministry.
Widespread bombing has left Gaza filled with “more rubble than Ukraine”, a UN agency said, warning that mine clearance efforts would be hampered by unexploded ordnance and toxic asbestos.
Israel also imposed a siege on Gaza’s 2.4 million residents, severely restricting access to food, clean water, medicine, fuel and electricity.
UN agencies have warned that without urgent intervention, famine threatens in Gaza, and the United States has also strongly urged Israel to speed up aid deliveries.
“The progress is real, but given the immense need in Gaza, it must be accelerated. It must be sustained,” Blinken said during his visit to the port of Ashdod, reopened for aid after US appeals.
Blinken escorted a Jordanian humanitarian convoy heading to the recently reopened Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, and later the US charity World Central Kitchen said it had resumed its work in Gaza.
The Israeli army confirmed that “for the first time since the start of the war, the Erez crossing was opened to the entry of humanitarian aid.”
Israel is facing growing international pressure over its conduct of the war, with Colombia announcing on Wednesday that it was severing diplomatic ties – a move Israel called a “payback” for Hamas.
burs-sct-jd/tym/mca
yahoo
