Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday said that total victory in Gaza was within reach, rejecting the latest offer from Hamas for a ceasefire to ensure the return of hostages still held in the besieged enclave.
Netanyahu renewed a pledge to destroy the Palestinian movement, saying there was no alternative for Israel but bringing about the collapse of Hamas.
“The day after is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas,” he told a press conference, insisting that total victory against Hamas was the only solution to the Gaza war.
“Continued military pressure is a necessary condition for the release of the hostages.”
Nonstarters
But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comments, following a meeting with Netanyahu, suggested forging a truce agreement was not a lost cause.
“There are clearly nonstarters in what (Hamas has) put forward,” Blinken said at a late-night Press conference in a Tel Aviv hotel, without specifying what the nonstarters were.
“But we also see space in what came back to pursue negotiations, to see if we can get to an agreement. That’s what we intend to do.”
Blinken met the leaders of Qatar and Egypt on Tuesday and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah yesterday.
A senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, described Netanyahu’s remarks as “political bravado” that showed the Israeli leader’s intention to continue conflict in the region.
Hamas had proposed a Gaza ceasefire of four-and-a-half months, during which all hostages would go free, Israel would withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip and an agreement would be reached on an end to the war.
Israel began its military offensive after Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on October 7.
Gaza’s health ministry says at least 27,585 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. There has been only one truce so far, lasting just a week at the end of November.
According to the offer document seen by Reuters and confirmed by sources, during the first 45-day phase all Israeli women hostages, males under 19 and the old and sick would be freed, in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw troops from Gaza’s populated areas.
Implementation of the second phase would not begin until the sides conclude “indirect talks over the requirements needed to end the mutual military operations and return to complete calm”.
The second phase would include the release of remaining male hostages and full Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza. The remains of the dead would be exchanged during the third phase.
Meanwhile, Israel is trying to capture the main city in Gaza’s south, Khan Younis. Last week, Israel said it plans to storm Rafah, a move UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said would “exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”
The Israeli military said it had killed dozens of ‘militants’ in fighting over the past 24 hours.
In Rafah, on Gaza’s southern edge where half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people are penned against the border with Egypt, the bodies of 10 people killed by Israeli strikes overnight were laid out in a hospital morgue. At least two of the shrouded bundles were the size of small children.
Palestinian health officials say an Israeli air strike killed another three people in a house in Rafah yesterday. The officials added that a senior Palestinian police officer and Hamas member, Majdi Abdel-Al, was killed in an Israeli air strike on a car that was tasked to secure aid trucks in Rafah.
“Every visit from Blinken, instead of calming things down, it just makes things worse, we get more strikes, we get more bombing,” said mourner Mohammad Abundi.
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