Will not make further compromises with Israel to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza: Hamas
The US said on Tuesday that Hamas had revised its ceasefire proposal and that the revision could break an impasse in negotiations (Photo: Bloomberg)
Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Wednesday it was unwilling to make more concessions to Israel in Gaza ceasefire negotiations, although talks were still underway in Cairo to pause Israel’s seven-month-old offensive .
Israel continued tank and air attacks on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Wednesday and threatened a major attack on it. His forces entered through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, cutting off a vital aid route and the only exit for the evacuation of injured patients.
Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in Qatar, said in a statement late Wednesday that the group would not go beyond a ceasefire proposal it accepted on Monday, which also included the release of some Israelis. would take hostages in Gaza. Palestinian women and children trapped in Israel.
“Israel is not serious about reaching an agreement and is using the negotiations as a cover to invade Rafah and occupy the border crossing,” Reshiq said.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which said on Monday that the three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because the conditions had been watered down.
Delegations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar have been meeting in Cairo since Tuesday. Citing a key source, Egyptian state-affiliated Al Qahera TV said talks in Cairo continued throughout Wednesday and well into the night.
The US said on Tuesday that Hamas had revised its ceasefire proposal and that the revision could break an impasse in negotiations.
Just hours before Hamas’s latest statement, Washington continued to say the two sides were not far apart.
“We believe there is a path to a deal… The two sides are so close that they must do what they can to reach a deal,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
The US wants to prevent a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, and a senior US official said, on condition of anonymity, that Washington has halted a shipment of 1,800 2,000-pound (907 kg) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.
US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Israel used these bombs to kill Palestinian civilians.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a result of those bombs and other ways they pursue population centers,” he told CNN.
Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan called Washington’s decision “very disappointing,” although he did not believe the US would stop supplying weapons to Israel.
Israel says it must attack Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters they say are hiding there. But the city is also a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have fled fighting further north in Gaza.
Hamas said its fighters fought Israeli forces in eastern Rafah on Wednesday and Islamic Jihad fighters attacked Israeli soldiers and military vehicles with heavy artillery near the city’s long-abandoned airport.
Israeli tank shells landed in the middle of Rafah on Wednesday, wounding at least 25 people, doctors said. Residents said an Israeli airstrike killed four people and injured 16 others in western Rafah.
The Israeli military said its forces had discovered Hamas infrastructure in several places in eastern Rafah and carried out targeted attacks on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and air strikes across the Gaza Strip.
Shortage of help
The UN, Gaza residents and humanitarian groups say a further Israeli incursion into Rafah will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
A UN official said no fuel or aid had entered the Gaza Strip as a result of the military operation, a situation “disastrous for the humanitarian response” in Gaza, where more than half the population is suffering catastrophic hunger.
Palestinians are crammed into tent camps and makeshift shelters and suffering from shortages of food, water and medicine.
Rafah’s main maternity hospital, where almost half of Gaza’s births take place, has stopped taking patients, the United Nations Population Fund told Reuters on Wednesday.
“The streets of the city echo with the cries of innocent lives lost, families torn apart and houses in ruins,” Rafah Mayor Ahmed Al-Sofi said, calling on the international community to intervene to grasp.
Israel has ordered civilians in Rafah, many of whom have been uprooted several times, to move to an “extended humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, about 20 kilometers away.
Estimates of the number of Palestinians who have left Rafah since Monday ranged from 10,000, according to UN agency UNRWA, to tens of thousands, according to the Gaza government’s Hamas-run media office.
“Some streets now look like a ghost town,” Aref, 35, told Reuters via a chat app.
The Israeli offensive has killed 34,844 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in seven months of war, Gaza’s health ministry said.
The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping 252 others, 128 of whom are still held hostage in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli figures.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: May 9, 2024 | 8:23 am IST