Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Tuesday April 30 that the Israeli army would enter Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, that a truce agreement, which could be reached shortly, would be concluded or not with Hamas.
“The idea that we are going to stop the war before we have achieved all of our objectives is unthinkable. We will enter Rafah and eliminate the Hamas battalions there, with or without an agreement [de trêve]in order to obtain total victory »declared Mr. Netanyahu, quoted in a press release published by his office.
The mediating countries are hoping for a break in the war that has raged for almost seven months, awaiting a response from the Islamist movement to an offer of a forty-day truce. This proposition is associated with the liberation “thousands of Palestinian prisoners” detained by the Jewish state, in exchange for the release of hostages kidnapped on the day of the attack carried out by the Islamist movement on Israeli soil, October 7, 2023.
Israel will wait “until Wednesday evening” a response from Hamas to this truce offer in discussions in Cairo before making a decision on sending a delegation there, an Israeli official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday. After a meeting Monday in Cairo with representatives of Egypt and Qatar, two of the mediator countries with the United States, a Hamas delegation returned to Doha and is expected to give its response “as quickly as possible”a source close to the movement told AFP.
One hundred and twenty-nine people remain captive in Gaza
The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, expected in Israel on Tuesday after a stop in Jordan, said Monday ” hope “ a favorable response from Hamas to a proposal it described as“extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel”.
This proposal follows months of deadlock in indirect negotiations aimed at establishing a new truce in the Palestinian territory.
In November 2023, a first one-week truce allowed the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian detainees. More than 250 people were kidnapped on October 7, 2023 and taken as hostages to Palestinian territory, and 129 remain captive in Gaza, of whom 34 died, according to Israeli officials.
The war between Israel and Hamas has left 34,535 dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to a report released Tuesday by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s health ministry. On the Israeli side, around 1,170 people died – most of them also civilians – during the attack on October 7, 2023, according to a count from Agence France-Presse (AFP) established from official sources. Israelis. Moreover, according to the Israeli army608 of its soldiers were killed in fighting in Gaza.