A potential deal for a new ceasefire in Gaza and the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas since its October 7th attack on Israel was reportedly due to be presented to the militant group on Monday night.
The development came a day after American, Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs met the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, in Paris, in an effort to break the deadlock, according to the US news network NBC.
Qatar and Egypt were key to mediating the deal in November, in which Hamas released 110 hostages during a one-week pause in the fighting in the now 16-week-old Israel-Hamas war.
The draft deal, approved by Israel, reportedly entails a 45-day truce, during which 35-40 of the 136 hostages, including the remaining women, children and elderly captives, will be released. During this truce, negotiations would take place over a second phase during which Israeli soldiers and male civilian hostages would be released, and a third phase, when the bodies of dead hostages would be returned.
The deal would also include a significant increase in the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and the reported release of thousands of Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel, including militants convicted of killing Israelis.
The main sticking point on Monday remained the Hamas demand that the deal include a permanent ceasefire and international guarantees that Israel would withdraw all its soldiers from the coastal enclave and would not resume the fighting.
Israel’s military offensive in the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding in tunnels along with hostages, continues.
Defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday that at least half of Hamas operatives in Gaza had been killed or wounded.
“We’re in a long war, but at the end we will break Hamas,” he told reservists on the Gaza border. “Terrorists remain, and we are fighting against pockets of resistance… it will take months, not one day.”
More than 26,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 240 kidnapped when Hamas-led gunmen stormed across the border on October 7th.
Despite the Israeli military advance, militants on Monday fired 11 rockets towards Tel Aviv and central Israel from the Khan Younis area. Seven were intercepted and the others landed in open areas.
Twelve right-wing Israeli ministers and 15 parliamentarians, including from prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, attended a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday night that called for re-establishing Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and expelling the Palestinian residents.
The controversial gathering came only a few days after the International Court of Justice in The Hague, considering South African allegations of genocide by Israel in the Gaza war, ruled that Israel should do more to “prevent and punish” public incitement to genocide, including calls to remove Palestinian residents from Gaza.
A soldier was run down and seriously wounded on Monday in an attack outside a navy base in the northern city of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. The driver, an Israeli Arab from the Galilee, then got out of his car armed with an axe and attempted to enter the base but was shot and killed by soldiers.
Five Palestinians were killed in four separate incidents in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday. One of them was a 14-year-old boy who, authorities said, tried to stab soldiers close to Bethlehem.
The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank has soared since the start of the Gaza war.
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