Negotiations on a possible truce during Ramadan in Gaza resume this Sunday in Cairo. There, a Hamas delegation must give an “official response” to a proposal prepared at the end of January by the mediating countries – Qatar, the United States, Egypt – and the Israeli negotiators.
The proposal includes in a “first phase” a six-week pause in fighting and the release of 42 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The Israelis have “more or less accepted” the plan and “the ball is in Hamas’s court,” a senior US official in Washington said on Saturday.
Israel has not confirmed this information. On Friday, US President Joe Biden reiterated the “hope” for a truce during Ramadan, the holy month of Muslim fasting, which will begin on March 10 or 11 this year.
In almost five months, the war provoked by Hamas has left 30,320 dead in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, according to the latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
It also caused a humanitarian catastrophe there. According to the UN, 2.2 million of the 2.4 million inhabitants are threatened by an “almost inevitable” famine, according to Jens Laerke, spokesman for OCHA, the agency that coordinates humanitarian affairs of the United Nations.
The Ministry of Health reports that 13 children died from “malnutrition and dehydration” in recent days.
Faced with difficulties in transporting humanitarian aid by road in the territory blocked by Israel, several countries have recently parachuted shipments there, notably Jordan, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as Egypt in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates .
The United States also carried out a first drop operation on Saturday, with three military planes parachuting in 66 “packages” containing more than 38,000 meals, in a joint operation with Jordan, according to a US military official.
The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 in southern Israel by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza, where the movement took power in 2007.
This attack left at least 1,160 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Some 250 people were also kidnapped and, according to Israel, 130 hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip, 31 of whom are believed to have died. A truce at the end of November allowed the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian detainees.
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization, along with the United States and the European Union. However, the deaths among the Palestinian civilian population number in the tens of thousands.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the upcoming launch of a major operation in Rafah (south) to defeat the Islamist movement in its “last bastion.”
This prospect worries the international community because the city is home to almost 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority displaced, trapped against the closed border with Egypt.
The UN Security Council on Saturday expressed “grave concern” over food insecurity in Gaza and called for the unimpeded delivery of “large-scale” humanitarian aid.
Land shipments, subject to the green light from Israel, which has imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2007, arrive only in very limited quantities, mainly through Rafah, from Egypt.
Their transportation, especially in the north of the territory, is dangerous due to fighting, Israeli bombing, debris blocking roads, and sometimes looting.
An aid distribution in Gaza City turned tragic on Thursday as several hundred people rushed onto humanitarian aid trucks.
Hamas claims that the Israeli army opened fire on the hungry crowd. Israel spoke of “limited shooting” by soldiers who felt “threatened” but claims that most of the victims died in a stampede and others were crushed by trucks.
A U.N. team said it found “a large number” of gunshot wounds at a hospital in the city where many victims had been admitted.
“To say that we attacked the convoy and deliberately hit people is baseless,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Saturday.
The international community called for an investigation and an immediate ceasefire.
Aid shipments or possible deliveries by sea, another option studied by the United States, “cannot replace the necessary entry of aid through the greatest possible number of land routes,” insisted a senior US official.
