Negotiations to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip are advancing and are getting closer to an agreement in principle, although the parties have not yet closed any definitive agreement, according to sources familiar with the talks taking place in Cairo. A Qatari delegation landed this Saturday in the capital of Egypt to participate in a new round of negotiations, together with representatives of the country, Hamas and the United States, in order to try to overcome the main obstacle to a truce agreement in Gaza: the end from the war.
A source from the Palestinian side, on condition of anonymity, has assured that “there is great progress in the negotiations,” while detailing that the Egyptian delegation in the negotiating process “has reached an agreed formulation regarding the points of disagreement.” ”.
The negotiations deal with the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, in addition to guarantees for Israel to end the war, something that its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected for months. The leader of Hamas inside the Gaza Strip, Yahia al Sinwar, "wants a written American commitment to an unconditional end to the fighting" and also requests that Israel not prevent freed Palestinians from returning to the occupied West Bank in exchange for the hostages, sources familiar with the negotiations have stated.
According to a senior Hamas official cited by Al Jazeera, the fact that Netanyahu insists that Israel will enter the city of Rafah regardless of a possible agreement is a “key element” that is also being discussed today in the talks.
“That means that there will be no ceasefire and that the attack will continue, which goes against what we are discussing,” Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan told the Qatari network.
For their part, Israeli officials insisted this Thursday that the Israeli Government will not accept a permanent ceasefire as part of an agreement, according to local media.
“Contrary to reports, Israel will under no circumstances accept the end of the war as part of an agreement to release our hostages,” an official said, quoted by Haaretz and The Times of Israel.
Furthermore, far from envisioning a near future without combat, the same official insisted that the Israeli Army will enter the southernmost enclave of Rafah and “destroy the Hamas battalions that remain there” with or without a truce, The Times newspaper reported today. of Israel.
Last night, Hamas already announced that a team of mediators would arrive in Cairo today to address the latest ceasefire proposal in a “positive spirit,” in a statement via Telegram. The text also insisted on the determination, both of Hamas and other Palestinian factions, to “mature” the agreement to achieve the demands of their people.
Netanyahu's most radical government partners, including far-right settlers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are strongly opposed to a permanent ceasefire, to the point that they have threatened to leave the Executive if that were to happen.
Netanyahu himself has insisted on several occasions that the war will continue until what he calls “absolute victory” is achieved: ending Hamas as a military force, recovering the hostages and ensuring that Gaza stops constituting “a threat” to Israel.
In the Palestinian enclave, at least 32 people died in the last 24 hours, bringing the number of fatalities registered in the enclave's hospitals to 34,654, in addition to more than 77,900 injured, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Currently only 12 of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning, two of them in the north, another two in Khan Younis (south) and three in Rafah, where some 1.4 million Gazans, most of them displaced, are gathered.
No conflict has caused a level of destruction similar to that in Gaza since World War II, the United Nations reported Thursday, which estimated that postwar reconstruction could cost up to $50 billion.
“We have not seen anything like this since 1945,” Abdallah al Dardari, director of the Regional Office for Arab States of the UN Development Program (UNDP), said on Thursday. “That intensity, in such a short time and the massive scale of destruction,” he added.
More than 70% of the homes in the enclave have been destroyed, this UN official lamented, and assured that it will be necessary to remove around 37 million tons of rubble. By comparison, during Israel's 2014 Gaza war, which lasted 51 days, some 2.4 million tons were removed.
