2024-03-04 00:21:15
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for Hamas to give in before further negotiations on a hostage deal. “We are making great efforts to be successful, but one thing is clear to you – we will not capitulate to Hamas’ delusional demands,” he said in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening. While US Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire, Israel’s army announced that it would kill more terrorists.
Before Netanyahu’s speech, another meeting of the mediating states USA, Qatar and Egypt took place in Cairo, but Israel – unlike Hamas – initially stayed away. Israel is initially demanding that the Islamists provide, among other things, a list of the hostages they still hold alive. Netanyahu made it clear that it was too early to say whether there would be a concept for a deal in the next few days.
Israel also wants to know whether Hamas will agree to the number of Palestinian prisoners that would be released in exchange for hostages, as stated in the mediators’ latest proposal. Media reports recently said that 40 hostages might be exchanged for 400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Netanyahu said he had not yet received an answer to his questions. He rejects “international pressure to end the war” before Israel has achieved all its goals. With or without a new agreement, “we will fight until total victory,” Netanyahu affirmed.
The stalemate in the difficult indirect negotiations might pose a problem for mediators’ efforts to reach a ceasefire. The London-based Qatari daily Al Araby Al Jadid quoted a senior Hamas official as saying that his organization would not allow itself to be forced to release a list of hostages. “There is a high price to pay for this, in the form of an alleviation of the suffering of the people of Gaza and a comprehensive ceasefire,” he told the newspaper. According to US information, the mediator’s proposal only provides for a six-week ceasefire.
US Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, pushed for a ceasefire. “The threat that Hamas poses to the people of Israel must be eliminated,” Harris said Sunday in Selma, Alabama. Referring to the ongoing negotiations, she added: “And given the immeasurable extent of the suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table.”
“Our hearts break (…) for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe,” Harris said at an event marking the anniversary of the bloody, racially motivated police crackdown on a civil rights demonstration Year 1965. “The people are starving, the conditions are inhumane,” Harris called on the Israeli government to allow significantly more aid into the coastal area and to open new border crossings. There are “no excuses” in this regard.
The Israeli military announced the killing of a Hamas member responsible for recruiting terrorists. Mahmoud Muhammad Abd Khad was also involved in raising funds for terrorism and to support Hamas’s military activities, the army said on Sunday evening. He was killed in an airstrike in the central section of the sealed-off coastal area in collaboration with Israeli intelligence. The army had previously reported that “more than 100 terrorists” had been killed in another operation in the north of the Gaza Strip. In addition, 35 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist facilities, including weapons depots and production facilities, were destroyed. “Dozens of terrorists” were arrested. The army also discovered and destroyed hundreds of launch pads and launchers. None of this information might be independently verified.
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