Gaza truce negotiations resume

Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa Agence France-Presse A Palestinian man carries wood to a building in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, where he is temporarily sheltering with his family, on August 15, 2024, amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

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Negotiations continue Friday in Doha with a view to reaching a truce in the Gaza Strip, at a time when a bloody attack perpetrated by Jewish settlers in the West Bank has aroused general condemnation, including that of Israeli leaders.

The attack by a group of Jewish settlers on the Palestinian village of Jit, which left one person dead and another seriously injured on Thursday, was condemned by the United States and many Israeli leaders, with President Isaac Herzog going so far as to denounce a “pogrom.”

“I strongly condemn tonight’s pogrom in Samaria,” Mr. Herzog wrote in a message on X, using the name of the biblical province corresponding to the northern West Bank. The White House, for its part, denounced the attacks as “unacceptable.”

According to the Israeli army, dozens of Israeli civilians stormed into Jit, located between Nablus and Qalqilya, around 8:00 p.m. local time, setting fire to buildings and vehicles and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Soldiers and border guards “evacuated Israeli civilians from the town” and handed over one of them to police, a military spokesman told AFP.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, one man died “under settler bullets” and another was wounded by a bullet to the chest.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “takes seriously the riots that took place this evening in the village of Jit,” his office said in a statement, assuring that “those responsible for any criminal act will be arrested and prosecuted.”

Head of Likud, the major Israeli right-wing party, Mr. Netanyahu has governed since December 2022 with the support of far-right parties, advocating the extension of Israeli colonization in the West Bank and even the pure and simple annexation of this Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967.

“Tonight’s rioters in Jit have nothing to do with colonization and settlers,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the great architect of the expansion of Jewish colonization in the West Bank observed since the end of 2022, and especially since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, said on X.

“Criminals”

“These are criminals who must be dealt with by the authorities responsible for maintaining public order and with the full severity of the law,” he added.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also “strongly condemned” the attack.

Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, violence has flared up in the West Bank.

At least 633 Palestinians have been killed there by the Israeli army or settlers, according to an AFP count based on official Palestinian data, and at least 18 Israelis, including soldiers, in Palestinian attacks or during army operations in the Palestinian autonomous zone, according to official Israeli data.

Israeli colonization in the West Bank is regularly denounced as a violation of international law by the UN, which sees it as one of the major obstacles to the establishment of a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

In Doha, the Qatari Foreign Ministry confirmed that negotiations for a truce in the Gaza Strip would continue on Friday.

The Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators “remain firmly committed to continuing their efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that would facilitate the release of the hostages and allow the largest possible amount of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza,” the ministry said in a statement.

‘Nothing new’ for Hamas

CIA Director William Burns and the heads of Israel’s foreign intelligence [Mossad] and domestic intelligence [Shin Beth] are present at the talks. Hamas is not taking part, but on Thursday night, one of its officials, Osama Hamdan, told AFP that the movement had informed the mediators in Doha of its position.

If the talks are aimed at “setting a timetable for implementing what was presented and accepted by Hamas, then we will participate,” he explained. “If the mediators manage to force [Israel] to accept this, we will participate [in the talks]. But so far, there is nothing new.”

“Any agreement must result in a comprehensive ceasefire, a complete [Israeli] withdrawal from Gaza, [and] the return of displaced persons,” senior Hamas official Hossam Badran reaffirmed in Doha on Thursday evening.

The Doha talks are based on a plan announced on May 31 by US President Joe Biden, which provides for a six-week truce in the first phase, accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he would continue the war until Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, is destroyed.

On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel launched an attack that killed 1,198 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 111 are still being held in the Palestinian territory, including 39 declared dead by the army.

In response, the Israeli army launched intense aerial bombardments and then a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip that left at least 40,005 dead, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.

The United States believes that a ceasefire in Gaza would prevent an attack by Iran, which has vowed to avenge the assassination, attributed to Israel, of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in Tehran.

The risk of a military escalation throughout the region has redoubled following the assassination of Haniyeh and that, on July 30, of Fouad Shokr, military leader of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, killed in an attack claimed by Israel near Beirut.