Hamas studies draft truce agreement with Israel

Photo: Agence France-Presse Israel is preparing to continue its “missions in the Rafah area”.

Gaël Branchereau – Agence France-Presse and Belal al Sabbagh – Agence France-Presse respectively in the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem

1:36 p.m.

• Middle East

Deadly Israeli bombings hit the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, where Israel is maintaining its planned ground offensive on the overcrowded town of Rafah while Hamas studies a proposed truce combined with the release of hostages.

Six months after the start of the war triggered by the bloody attack carried out by the Islamist movement against Israel, Israeli military operations left 153 dead in 24 hours in the Palestinian territory, according to the Ministry of Security. Health of Hamas.

In Cairo, the mediating countries — Qatar, Egypt, United States — put on the table a new proposal in three stages, the first of which provides for a six-week truce, a source from the Hamas.

On the eve of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, Hamas said it “wished” for an agreement and “studying the proposal,” adding that Israel “had no responded to none of his requests.

In addition to a six-week ceasefire, the proposal initially provides for the release of 42 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 800 to 900 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, the entry of 400 to 500 trucks of food aid by day and the return home of residents of the northern Gaza Strip displaced by the war, according to the source within Hamas.

Israel, which controls the entry of aid by land from Egypt, said 419 trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Monday, the highest number in a day since the start of the war.

“There is a date”

Israel announced on Sunday the withdrawal of its troops from the large city of Khan Younes, in the south of the territory, destroyed after several months of fighting, in order to prepare “the continuation of their missions in the nearby Rafah zone”.

This border town with Egypt is home, according to the UN, to around a million and a half people, the majority displaced.

Despite multiple warnings from foreign capitals which fear heavy civilian losses, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, which he presents as the last major stronghold of Hamas, in power since 2007 in the Gaza Strip.

“It will happen, there is a date,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Monday.

“We will complete the elimination of Hamas battalions, including in Rafah. No force in the world will stop us,” he said again on Tuesday, visiting a military base.

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Tuesday that Israel had not provided the United States, opposed to a massive offensive on Rafah, with a date for this possible operation.

War broke out on October 7 when Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians , according to a report established by Agence France-Presse based on official Israeli figures.

More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 dead, according to Israeli officials.

In retaliation, Israel vowed to wipe out the Palestinian Islamist movement that took power in Gaza in 2007. Its army launched a campaign of intense aerial bombardments followed by a ground offensive, which has already left 33,360 people dead, the majority civilians, according to a new report Tuesday from the Hamas Ministry of Health.

The war has led to massive population displacement and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the small territory of 2.4 million inhabitants, besieged by Israel, where the UN fears widespread famine.< /p>

“Houses, schools, hospitals are in ruins. Teachers, doctors, humanitarian workers are killed. Famine is imminent,” criticized UNICEF chief Catherine Russell.

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“Gaza is no longer Gaza”

In the northern city of Gaza, a mission from the World Health Organization (WHO) summed up the dramatic reality after a visit on Monday to the al-Chifa hospital, destroyed in an Israeli operation in March: “This place, which was a place where life was given, now only evokes death,” said a doctor member of the delegation, Athanasios Gargavanis.

In the ruins of the immense hospital complex, the identification of corpses is a new ordeal for emergency services and families. “We lack the necessary equipment and time is not on our side, we have to finish before the bodies decompose,” the director of the emergency department, Amjad, told an Agence France-Presse correspondent. Aliwa.

On Tuesday, the army announced that it had destroyed “terrorist infrastructure” in several sectors and reported fighting in the center of the territory.

Since the announcement on Sunday of the Israeli withdrawal from Khan Younès, thousands of displaced people have returned to the city further north to discover an apocalyptic landscape.

“No more water, no more electricity, no more walls, no more doors, there is nothing left. Gaza is no longer Gaza, it’s a place in ruins,” says a woman who returned to Khan Younes, who refuses to give her name.

In anticipation of an offensive on Rafah, Israel wants to acquire a stock of 40,000 tents to shelter nearly 500,000 people, according to a government source who did not specify where these tents would be installed.

The Presidents of France, Emmanuel Macron, and Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, as well as the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, called Monday evening for an “immediate” and “permanent” ceasefire “, to a release of “all hostages” in Gaza and warned Israel of the “dangerous consequences” of an offensive in Rafah.