Hamas official says group would lay down its weapons if a two-state solution is implemented

Hamas official says group would lay down its weapons if a two-state solution is implemented

Post By World Hamas, hostage exchange deal, israel palestie conflict, Khalil al-Hayya, Palestinian militant group, rafah

Khalil al-Hayya, a high-ranking official with the Palestinian militant group, who has represented it in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, speaks during an interview for The Associated Press, in Istanbul, Turkey on April 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.

The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview on April 24 came amid a stalemate in months of cease-fire talks. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction.

But it’s unlikely Israel would consider such a scenario. It has vowed to crush Hamas following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militants in negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage exchange, struck a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.

Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organisation, headed by the rival Fatah faction to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank. He said Hamas would accept “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with the international resolutions”, along Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Six months of Israel-Hamas war: revisiting 10 key moments in pictures

At dawn on October 7, at the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrate Israel from Gaza by land, sea and air. They kill civilians in the streets, in their homes and at a desert music festival, and attack troops in army bases. They bring around 250 hostages back to Gaza, some of them now dead. Israel vows to destroy Hamas and begins bombing Gaza.

On October 13, Israel calls on civilians in northern Gaza to move south within 24 hours, declaring the north, which includes Gaza City, a war zone. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee to the south of the Gaza Strip as entire districts in the north are razed to the ground.

On October 27, Israeli tanks roll into Gaza at the start of a ground offensive. The troops fight their way towards Gaza City.

On November 15, Israeli troops launch a night-time raid on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s biggest medical facility where bodies had been piling up after food, fuel and anaesthetics ran out. The raid causes an international outcry. Israel claims Hamas is running a command centre below the hospital, which the armed group denies.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows an overview Al Shifa hospital and surroundings in Gaza City on April 1, 2024. In March, Israel again targets the hospital in an intensive two-week operation that leaves hundreds dead and the complex in ruins.

On November 24, a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas negotiated in talks mediated by Qatar goes into effect. Hamas releases 80 Israeli hostages over seven days in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Twenty-five other hostages, mainly Thai farm workers, are released outside of the deal.
In this photo provided by the Israeli Army, Emily Hand, a released hostage, reunites with her father on November 26, 2023, in Israel.

As part of week-long truce, Israel allows more aid into Gaza during the pause but the humanitarian situation remains dire. When the war resumes, Israel expands its actions into southern Gaza. Seen here are Palestinian children running as they flee from Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 6, 2023.

On January 12, the US and Britain launch air strikes on targets in rebel-held Yemen after weeks of attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Iran-backed Houthis acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The strikes add to fears of a regional war.

In an interim ruling on January 26 in a case brought by South Africa, the International Court of Justice finds it “plausible” that Israel’s acts could amount to “genocide”. The world’s top court orders Israel to do “everything” to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering a halt to the war.

On February 29, Israeli forces open fire on desperate residents of northern Gaza who rush towards a convoy of food aid trucks, saying they believed they “posed a threat”. Gaza’s health ministry says 115 people were shot dead and hundreds wounded in what it calls a “massacre”.

Humanitarian aid is airdropped to Palestinians over Gaza City, Gaza Strip on March 25, 2024.

The US, Jordan and other countries begin airdropping food into Gaza. On March 15, the first food shipment along a new maritime corridor arrives in Gaza.

On April 2, seven aid workers from the US charity World Central Kitchen are killed in an Israeli strike when leaving a warehouse in central Gaza where they had just unloaded a portion of food aid from a ship. The dead are Australian, British, Palestinian, Polish and US-Canadian.

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If that happens, he said, the group’s military wing would dissolve.

“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” he said.

Over the years, Hamas has sometimes moderated its public position with respect to the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But its political programme still officially “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” — referring to the area reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes lands that now make up Israel.

Al-Hayya did not say whether his apparent embrace of a two-state solution would amount to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an interim step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying Israel.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority — the internationally recogniaed self-ruled government that Hamas drove out when it seized Gaza in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was left with administering semi-autonomous pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. While the international community overwhelmingly supports such a two-state solution, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government rejects it.

The war in Gaza has dragged on for nearly seven months and cease-fire negotiations have stalled. The war began with the deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Militants dragged some 250 hostages into the enclave. The ensuing Israeli bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to local health authorities, and displaced some 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

Israel is now preparing for an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled to.

Israel says it has dismantled most of the initial two dozen Hamas battalions since the start of the war, but that the four remaining ones are holed up in Rafah. Israel argues that a Rafah offensive is necessary to achieve victory over Hamas.

Al-Hayya said such an offensive would not succeed in destroying Hamas. He said contacts between the political leadership outside and military leadership inside Gaza are “uninterrupted” by the war and “contacts, decisions and directions are made in consultation” between the two groups.

Israeli forces “have not destroyed more than 20% of [Hamas’] capabilities, neither human nor in the field,” he asserted. “If they can’t finish [Hamas] off, what is the solution? The solution is to go to consensus.”

In November, a weeklong cease-fire saw the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. But talks for a longer-term truce and release of the remaining hostages are now frozen, with each side accusing the other of intransigence. Key interlocutor Qatar has said in recent days that it is undertaking a “reassessment” of its role as mediator.

Most of Hamas’ top political officials, previously based in Qatar, have left the Gulf country in the past week and travelled to Turkey, where Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday. Al-Hayya denied a permanent move of the group’s main political office is in the works and said Hamas wants to see Qatar continue in its capacity as mediator in the talks.

Israeli and U.S. officials have accused Hamas of not being serious about a deal.

Al-Hayya denied this, saying Hamas has made concessions regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners it wants released in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages. He said the group does not know exactly how many hostages remain in Gaza and are still alive.

But he said Hamas will not back down from its demands for a permanent cease-fire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops, both of which Israel has balked at. Israel says it will continue military operations until Hamas is definitively defeated and will retain a security presence in Gaza afterwards.

“If we are not assured the war will end, why would I hand over the prisoners?” the Hamas leader said of the remaining hostages.

Al-Hayya also implicitly threatened that Hamas would attack Israeli or other forces who might be stationed around a floating pier the U.S. is scrambling to build along Gaza’s coastline to deliver aid by sea.

“We categorically reject any non-Palestinian presence in Gaza, whether at sea or on land, and we will deal with any military force present in these places, Israeli or otherwise … as an occupying power,” he said.

Al-Hayya said Hamas does not regret the Oct. 7 attacks, despite the destruction it has brought down on Gaza and its people. He denied that Hamas militants had targeted civilians during the attacks — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — and said the operation succeeded in its goal of bringing the Palestinian issue back to the world’s attention.

And, he said, Israeli attempts to eradicate Hamas would ultimately fail to prevent future Palestinian armed uprisings.

“Let’s say that they have destroyed Hamas. Are the Palestinian people gone?” he asked.

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Palestinian prime minister submits government’s resignation

Post By World ceasefire, Giza, Hostages, Israel Hamas war, Palestinians, rafah

A six-week pause in fighting is being negotiated to allow for the release of hostages and prisoners and the delivery of aid into Gaza.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said Monday his government is resigning, in a move that could open the door to US-backed reforms in the Palestinian Authority.

President Mahmoud Abbas must still decide whether he accepts Shtayyeh and his government’s resignation. But the move signals a willingness by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership to accept a shake-up that might usher in reforms seen as necessary to revitalize the Palestinian Authority.

The US wants a reformed Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza once the war is over. But many obstacles remain to making that vision a reality.

“The next stage and its challenges require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the new reality in the Gaza Strip,” Shtayyeh said at a Cabinet meeting.

Abbas is expected to choose Mohammad Mustafa, chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund, as the next prime minister.

Total victory over Hamas in Rafah would be quick: Netanyahu

The Palestinian government’s resignation comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that total victory in the Gaza territory of Rafah would come within weeks once the offensive begins, even if a ceasefire agreement is reached.

Netanyahu confirmed to US broadcaster CBS that a deal is in the works.

Talks resumed Sunday in Qatar at the specialist level, Egypt’s state-run Al Qahera TV reported, citing an Egyptian official as saying discussions would follow in Cairo with the aim of achieving the cease-fire and release of dozens of hostages held in Gaza as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

A senior official from Egypt, which along with Qatar is a mediator between Israel and Hamas, has said the draft ceasefire deal includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women, minors and older people.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would include allowing hundreds of trucks to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza every day, including the north. He said both sides agreed to continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent cease-fire.

Negotiators face an unofficial deadline of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan around 10 March, a period that often sees heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

Hamas says it has not been involved in the latest proposal developed by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, but the reported outline largely matches its earlier proposal for the first phase of a truce.

Hamas has said it won’t release all of the remaining hostages until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws its forces from the territory, and is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including senior militants. Netanyahu has rejected those conditions.

Rafah operation ‘should not go forward’: US

Meanwhile, Israel is nearing the approval of plans to expand its offensive against the Hamas militant group to Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border, where more than half the besieged territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge.

Humanitarian groups warn of a catastrophe as Rafah is Gaza’s main entry point for aid.

The US and other allies say Israel must avoid harming civilians.

Netanyahu has said he will convene the Cabinet this week to approve operational plans that include the evacuation of civilians to elsewhere in Gaza.

“Once we begin the Rafah operation, the intense phase of the fighting is weeks away from completion. Not months,” Netanyahu told CBS. “If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway.” He said four of the six remaining Hamas battalions are concentrated in Rafah.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told US broadcaster NBC that President Joe Biden hadn’t been briefed on the Rafah plan. “We believe that this operation should not go forward until or unless we see (a plan to protect civilians),” Sullivan said.

Early Monday, Netanyahu’s office said the army had presented to the War Cabinet its “operational plan” for Rafah as well as plans to evacuate civilians from the battle zones. It gave no further details.

His office also said the War Cabinet had approved a plan to deliver humanitarian aid safely into Gaza.

‘We cannot find food’

United Nations agencies and aid groups say the hostilities, the Israeli military’s refusal to facilitate deliveries and the breakdown of order inside Gaza make it increasingly difficult to get vital aid to much of the coastal enclave. In some chaotic scenes, crowds of desperate Palestinians have surrounded delivery trucks and stolen the supplies off them.

Heavy fighting continued in parts of northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, where the destruction is staggering.

“We’re trapped, unable to move because of the heavy bombardment,” said Gaza City resident Ayman Abu Awad.

He said that starving residents have been forced to eat animal fodder and search for food in demolished buildings. In nearby Jabaliya, market vendor Um Ayad showed off a leafy weed that people pick from the harsh, dry soil and eat.

“We have to feed the children. They keep screaming they want food. We cannot find food. We don’t know what to do,” she said.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinians, said it has not been able to deliver food to northern Gaza since 23 January, adding on X, formerly Twitter, that “our calls to send food aid have been denied.”

Israel said that 245 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Sunday — less than half the amount that entered daily before the war.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday made clear that a ceasefire deal for Gaza wouldn’t affect the military’s daily low-level clashes with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.

“We will continue the fire, and we will do so independently from the south,” he said while visiting the Northern Command.

Israel declared war after the 7 October Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were released in a ceasefire deal in November. More than 130 remain in captivity, a fourth of them believed to be dead.

Israel’s air and ground offensive has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population from their homes, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation and the spread of disease. The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza says 29,692 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and children.

The ministry’s death toll doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says its troops have killed more than 10,000 militants, without providing evidence.

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Israeli strikes kill 13 in Rafah as Palestinians start fleeing area

Post By World anti-terrorism, ICJ, Israel Hamas war, rafah

An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s population, has crammed into the Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah.

Two Israeli airstrikes on Rafah overnight killed at least 13 people, including nine members of the same family, according to hospital officials and relatives.

The number of Palestinians killed during the war in Gaza has surpassed 28,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. A quarter of Gaza’s residents are starving. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and around 250 abducted in Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the war.

The overnight strikes came after US President Joe Biden once again cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against moving forward with a military operation into Gaza’s southernmost city without a “credible and executable plan” to protect around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there.

However, Israel’s defence minister said the country is “thoroughly planning” its promised ground invasion of Rafah, and Netanyahu vowed early Friday to reject “international dictates” on a long-term resolution of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

France and the EU have long advocated for a two-state solution in the Middle East through negotiations. But, with talks long stalled and Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza deepening, some European nations are now expressing support to recognising a Palestinian state sooner.

Macron said Friday at a meeting in Paris with Jordan’s King Abdullah, ‘’Recognising a Palestinian state is not a taboo for France.”

“We owe it to Palestinians, whose aspirations have been trampled on for too long. We owe it to Israelis, who lived through the worst antisemitic massacre of our time. We owe it to a region that is seeking to rise above those who promote chaos and seed revenge,” he added.

Macron did not give any details on when and what conditions under which France might reconise a Palestinian state, and it would come by surprise for France to make such a decision independently. Nonetheless, France holds significant diplomatic weight as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Palestinians fleeing Rafah

Israel has identified Rafah as the last remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza and vowed to continue its offensive there. An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s population, has crammed into the city, most of them displaced people who fled fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

Israel has said it will evacuate the civilians before attacking, though international aid officials have said there is nowhere to go due to the vast devastation left behind by the offensive.

Palestinians are reportedly already moving out of that area due to intensifying Israeli strikes, according to UN humanitarian officials, and moving toward central areas around Deir al-Balah

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Friday about the reported movements toward Deir al-Balah, which is roughly 16 kilometres north of Rafah. He also described the lack of food in Rafah and elsewhere — especially in northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, where large areas have been completely destroyed.

“In Rafah, humanitarian conditions have become increasingly severe, with continued reports of people stopping aid trucks to take food,” he said. “Vulnerable segments of the population including children, the elderly, and people with underlying health conditions, are particularly susceptible to the risk of malnutrition.”

Throughout Gaza, Dujarric said the delivery of aid is hindered by frequent border closures, longstanding import restrictions of goods into Gaza, damage to critical infrastructure, and the security situation.

Top UN court rejects motion for measures against Rafah offensive

Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice on Friday rejected an “urgent request” from South Africa to impose urgent measures to safeguard Rafah. It stressed, however, that Israel must respect earlier measures imposed late last month at a preliminary stage in a landmark genocide case.

The top UN court said in a statement that the “perilous situation” in Rafah “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures” that it ordered on Jan. 26.

It said no new order was necessary because the existing measures “are applicable throughout the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah.”

It added that Israel “remains bound to fully comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention” and the Jan. 26 ruling which ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.

Citing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the court noted “the most recent developments in the Gaza Strip, and in Rafah in particular, ‘would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.’”

Israel had earlier in the week urged the court to reject what it called South Africa’s “highly peculiar and improper” request and did not immediately comment on the ruling on Friday as it fell on the Jewish Sabbath, when government offices are closed.

Israel strongly denies committing genocide in Gaza and says it does all it can to spare civilians and is only targeting Hamas militants. It says Hamas’ tactic of embedding in civilian areas makes it difficult to avoid civilian casualties.

The provisional measures ordered last month came at a preliminary stage of a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention.

The court also called on Hamas to release the hostages who are still in captivity. Hamas urged the international community to make Israel carry out the court’s orders.

South Africa’s legal campaign is rooted in issues central to its identity: Its governing party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to “homelands.” Apartheid ended in 1994.

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Israeli forces rescue 2 hostages in dramatic Gaza raid that killed at least 67 Palestinians

Post By World Gaza Strip, Israel-Palestine conflict, Israeli forces, Palestinians killed, rafah

Israeli forces rescued two hostages early on Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in a densely packed town in the Gaza Strip and extracting them under fire and covering airstrikes that local officials said killed at least 67 Palestinians.

The plight of the hostages has profoundly shaken Israelis, and the rescue in Rafah briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from Hamas’ cross-border raid last year that started the war. Israel has described Rafah — a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled fighting elsewhere — as the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the territory and signaled that its ground offensive may soon target the city.

In Gaza, the operation unleashed another tragedy in a war that has killed 28,340 Palestinians in the territory, displaced over 80% of the population and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.

More than 12,300 Palestinian minors — children and young teens — have been killed in the conflict, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday. About 8,400 women were also among those killed. That means minors make up about 43% of the dead and women and minors together make up three quarters.

The Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, provided the breakdown at the request of The Associated Press. Israel claims to have killed about 10,000 Hamas fighters.

In Hamas’ cross-border raid on October 7, an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and militants took 250 people captive, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Hamas captivity after dozens were freed during a cease-fire in November. Hamas also holds the remains of roughly 30 others who were either killed on Oct. 7 or died in captivity.

The government has made freeing the hostages a top aim of its war, along with destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. But as the fighting drags on, now in its fifth month, rifts have emerged in Israel over how to retrieve them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says persistent military pressure will bring about the captives’ freedom even as families of the hostages and many of their supporters have called on the government to make another deal with Hamas.

Israeli military spokesman Read Adm. Daniel Hagari said special forces broke into a second-floor apartment in Rafah under fire at 1.49 a.m. on Monday, accompanied a minute later by airstrikes on surrounding areas. He said Hamas militants were guarding the captives and that members of the rescue team shielded the hostages with their bodies as the battle erupted.

The Army identified those rescued as Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, abducted by Hamas militants from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on Oct. 7. They also hold Argentinian citizenship. They are among just three hostages to be rescued; a female soldier was rescued in November.

The rescue, which Hagari said was based on precise intelligence and planned for some time, is a morale booster for Israelis but a small step toward winning the release of the remaining hostages, who are believed to be spread out and hidden in tunnels.

Har’s son-in-law, Idan Begerano, who saw the released captives at the hospital where they were airlifted, said the two men were thin and pale, but communicating well and aware of their surroundings.

Begerano said Har told him immediately upon seeing him: “You have a birthday today, mazal tov.” The men held long, tearful embraces with their relatives at hospital, according to video released by Netanyahu’s office.

The airstrikes hit jam-packed Rafah in the middle of the night and dozens of explosions could be heard around 2 a.m. Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at least 67 people, including women and children, were killed in the strikes.

Al-Qidra said rescuers were still searching the rubble. An Associated Press journalist counted at least 50 bodies at the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.

Mohamed Zoghroub, a Palestinian living in Rafah, said he saw a black jeep speeding through the town followed by clashes and heavy airstrikes.

“We found ourselves running with our children, from the airstrikes, in every direction,” he said, speaking from an area flattened by the strikes.

Footage circulating on social media from Rafah’s Kuwaiti hospital showed dead or wounded children. The footage could not immediately be verified but was consistent with AP reporting.

A young man could be seen carrying the body of an infant who he said was killed in the attacks. He said the girl, the daughter of his neighbor, was born and killed during the war.

“Let Netanyahu come and see: Is this one of your designated targets?” he said.

Netanyahu has said sending ground troops into Rafah is essential to meeting Israel’s war goals. On Sunday, the White House said President Joe Biden had warned Netanyahu that Israel should not conduct a military operation there without a “credible and executable” plan to protect civilians.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now crammed into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands live in sprawling tent camps and overcrowded U.N. shelters.

Biden’s remarks, made in a phone call with Netanyahu, were his most forceful language yet on the possible operation.

Discussion of the potential for a cease-fire agreement took up much of the call, a senior U.S. administration official said. The official said that after weeks of diplomacy, a “framework” is now “pretty much” in place for a deal that could see the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a halt to fighting.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations, acknowledged that “gaps remain,” but declined to give details. The official said military pressure on Hamas in the southern city of Khan Younis in recent weeks helped bring the group closer to accepting a deal.

Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the call. Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television station earlier quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying any invasion of Rafah would “blow up” the talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

Biden and Netanyahu spoke after two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat said Egypt threatened to suspend its peace treaty with Israel if troops are sent into Rafah.

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Biden says Israel shouldn’t press into Rafah without ‘credible’ plan to protect civilians

Post By World civilian protection, Israel Hamas war, Israel latest news, Israel War, netanyahu biden, netanyahu on war, rafah

Israel shouldn’t go ahead with a military operation in the densely populated Gaza border town of Rafah without a “credible” plan to protect civilians, President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, the White House said.

They spoke after two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat said Egypt threatened to suspend its peace treaty with Israel if Israeli troops are sent into Rafah, where Egypt fears fighting could force the closure of the besieged territory’s main aid supply route.

The threat to suspend the Camp David Accords, a cornerstone of regional stability for nearly a half-century, came after Mr. Netanyahu said sending troops into Rafah was necessary to win the four-month war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. He asserted that Hamas still has four battalions there.

Also read: Netanyahu promises ‘safe passage’ to Palestinians ahead of Rafah operation

Over half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled to Rafah to escape fighting in other areas, and they are packed into sprawling tent camps and U.N.-run shelters near the border. Egypt fears a mass influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who may never be allowed to return.

Mr. Netanyahu told “Fox News Sunday” that there’s “plenty of room north of Rafah for them to go to” after Israel’s offensive elsewhere in Gaza, and said Israel would direct evacuees with “flyers, with cellphones and with safe corridors and other things.”

The standoff between Israel and Egypt, two close U.S. allies, took shape as aid groups warned that an offensive in Rafah would worsen the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, where around 80% of residents have fled their homes and where the U.N. says a quarter of the population faces starvation.

A ground operation in Rafah could cut off one of the only avenues for delivering Gaza’s badly needed food and medical supplies.

Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television station quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying that any invasion of Rafah would “blow up” talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar aimed at achieving a cease-fire and the release of Israeli hostages.

Mr. Biden last week called Israel’s military response in Gaza “over the top.”

All three officials confirmed Egypt’s threats, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters on the sensitive negotiations. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other countries have also warned of severe repercussions if Israel goes into Rafah.

“An Israeli offensive on Rafah would lead to an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote on X.

I echo the warning by several EU member states that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would lead to an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt.

Resuming negotiations to free hostages and suspend hostilities is the only way to avert a bloodshed.

— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) February 10, 2024

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that forced displacement is a war crime and that civilians who don’t evacuate are still protected by international humanitarian law. “There is nowhere safe to go in Gaza,” refugee and migrant rights researcher Nadia Hardman said.

The White House, which has rushed arms to Israel and shielded it from international calls for a cease-fire, has also warned against a Rafah ground operation under current circumstances, saying it would be a “disaster” for civilians.

Israel and Egypt fought five wars before signing the Camp David Accords, a landmark peace treaty brokered by then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. The treaty includes several provisions governing the deployment of forces on both sides of the border.

Egypt has heavily fortified its border with Gaza, carving out a 5-kilometer (3-mile) buffer zone and erecting concrete walls above and below ground. It has denied Israeli allegations that Hamas operates smuggling tunnels beneath the border, saying Egyptian forces have full control on their side.

Egyptian officials fear that if the border is breached, the military would be unable to stop a tide of people fleeing into the Sinai Peninsula.

The United Nations says Rafah, normally home to fewer than 300,000 people, now hosts 1.4 million more who fled fighting elsewhere, and it is “severely overcrowded.”

Inside Rafah, some displaced people packed up again. Rafat and Fedaa Abu Haloub, who fled Beit Lahia in the north earlier in the war, placed their belongings on the back of a truck. “We don’t know where we can safely take him,” Fedaa said of their baby. “Every month we have to move, and with all the fear and missiles.”

An Israeli ground invasion of Rafah may force Palestinians in Gaza to flee to Egypt, Om Mohammad Al-Ghemry said, and she hoped that Egyptians would “open the borders and let us flee to Sinai.”

Israel has ordered much of Gaza’s population to flee south, with evacuation orders covering two-thirds of the territory, even as it regularly carries out airstrikes in all areas, including Rafah. Airstrikes on the town in recent days have killed dozens of Palestinians, including women and children.

Israel’s offensive has caused widespread destruction, particularly in northern Gaza, and heavy fighting continues in central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis. In Gaza City on Sunday, remaining residents covered decomposing bodies in the streets or carried bodies to graves. Some streets were piled high with sand from bombings.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday that the bodies of 112 people killed across the territory had been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours, as well as 173 wounded people. The fatalities brought the death toll in the strip to 28,176 since the start of the war. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters but says most of those killed were women and children.

The war began with Hamas’ attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, when Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Over 100 hostages were released in November during a weeklong cease-fire in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. Some of the remaining hostages have died.

Hamas has said it won’t release any more unless Israel ends its offensive and withdraws from Gaza. It has also demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including senior militants serving life sentences.

Mr. Netanyahu has ruled out both demands, saying Israel will fight on until “total victory” and the return of all the hostages.

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Netanyahu promises ‘safe passage’ to Palestinians ahead of Rafah operation

Post By World Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli incursion into Gaza, rafah

The threat of an Israeli incursion into Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah persisted on Sunday, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “safe passage” to civilians displaced there.

In an interview airing on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation against Hamas into Rafah.

Despite international alarm over the potential for carnage in a place crammed with more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people, Netanyahu told ABC News: “We’re going to do it”.

“We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave,” he said, according to published extracts of the interview.

It remains unclear however, where the large number of people pressed up against the border with Egypt and sheltering in makeshift tents can go.

When asked, Mr. Netanyahu would only say they are “working out a detailed plan”.

As Israeli forces have pushed steadily southwards, Rafah has become the last major population centre in Gaza that troops have yet to enter, even as it is bombarded by air strikes almost daily.

“They said Rafah is safe, but it is not. All places are being targeted,” Palestinian Mohammed Saydam said after an Israeli strike destroyed a police vehicle in the city on Saturday.

The Israeli Premier, who contends “victory” over Hamas cannot be achieved without clearing battalions in Rafah, directed his military on Friday to prepare for the operation. His announcement set off a chorus of concern from world leaders and aid groups.

“The people in Gaza cannot disappear into thin air,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on social media platform X, adding that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “humanitarian catastrophe in the making.”

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry warned Saturday of “very serious repercussions of storming and targeting” Rafah and called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting, while UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said he is “deeply concerned” about the prospective offensive.

“The priority must be an immediate pause in the fighting to get aid in and hostages out,” he wrote.

– Sharpening US rebuke –

The war in Gaza was sparked by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Vowing to eliminate Hamas, Israel launched a massive military offensive in Gaza that the territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 28,064 people, mostly women and children.

Militants also seized 250 hostages, 132 of whom are still in Gaza, although 29 are presumed dead, Israel has said.

Netanyahu announced the plan for a ground operation in Rafah only days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel seeking a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange.

Netanyahu has rejected the proposed truce after what he called “bizarre demands” from Hamas.

But Israel’s plans for Rafah have drawn sharp rebuke from main ally and military backer Washington, with the State Department warning that if not properly planned, such an operation risks “disaster”.

In unusually sharp criticism, US President Joe Biden on Thursday called Israel’s retaliatory campaign “over the top”.

Gaza’s Hamas rulers warned on Saturday that a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah could cause “tens of thousands” of casualties.

The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the move “threatens security and peace in the region and the world” and is “a blatant violation of all red lines”.

The Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said on Sunday that 94 people were killed in overnight bombardments across Gaza, including in Rafah.

The Israeli military said it killed two “senior Hamas operatives” in a strike on Rafah Saturday.

It was part of a wider bombardment that killed at least 25 people in the city, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

– UNRWA under pressure –

To the north in Gaza City, Israel’s military claimed that its troops uncovered a Hamas tunnel under the evacuated headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called for its head, Philippe Lazzarini, to quit.

Lazzarini said the agency had not operated from the compound since October 12 when staff evacuated it under instruction from Israeli forces.

Already under pressure after Israel claimed 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack, he called for an independent investigation into the latest Israeli accusations.

An AFP photographer was among a number of journalists taken to the compound and tunnel by the Israeli military on Thursday.

UN premises are considered “inviolable” in international law and immune from “search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference”.

Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli accusations that it has dug a network of tunnels under schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure as cover for its activities.

On Sunday, Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy called UNRWA “a Hamas front”.

– Public fury –

The war, now in its fifth month, has spawned intensifying public fury in Israel.

Protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand the release of the hostages, Netanyahu step down and fresh elections be called.

“It’s clear Netanyahu is dragging out the war, he has no idea what to do on the day after,” Israeli protester Gil Gordon said.

The war has had far-reaching impact well bedyond Israel and Gaza, with violence involving Iran-backed allies of Hamas surging across the Middle East.

A senior Hamas officer survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Lebanon, Palestinian and Lebanese security sources told AFP, but two other people including a Hezbollah member were killed in the attack.

And in Syria, Israeli strikes near Damascus killed three people, a war monitor said, adding the targeted neighbourhood hosted villas for top military and civilian officials.

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