[ad_1]
JERUSALEM (Reuters): An aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday confirmed that Israel had accepted a framework deal for winding down the Gaza war now being advanced by U.S. President Joe Biden, though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work.
In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, said Biden’s proposal was “a deal we agreed to — it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them”.
“There are a lot of details to be worked out,” he said, adding that Israeli conditions, including “the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas as a genocidal terrorist organization” have not changed.
Falk reiterated Netanyahu’s position that “there will not be a permanent ceasefire until all our objectives are met”.
Biden, whose initial lockstep support for Israel’s offensive has given way to open censure of the operation’s high civilian death toll, on Friday aired what he described as a three-phase plan submitted by the Netanyahu government to end the war.
The first phase entails a truce and the return of some hostages held by Hamas, after which the sides would negotiate on an open-ended cessation of hostilities for a second phase in which remaining live captives would go free, Biden said.
That sequencing appears to imply that Hamas would continue to play a role in incremental arrangements mediated by Egypt and Qatar – a potential clash with Israel’s determination to resume the campaign to eliminate Hamas.
Biden has hailed several ceasefire proposals over the past several months, each with similar frameworks to the one he outlined on Friday, all of which collapsed. In February he said Israel had agreed to halt fighting by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that began on March 10. No such truce materialized.
The primary sticking point has been Israel’s insistence that it would discuss only temporary pauses to fighting until Hamas is destroyed. Hamas says it will free hostages only under a path to a permanent end to the war.
Mediators urge Hamas, Israel to finalize Biden’s Gaza peace proposal
Gaza conflict mediators, Qatar and Egypt on Saturday urged Israel and Hamas to finalize a ceasefire and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden that they said would bring immediate relief to people in Gaza and to the hostages and their families.
Israel has said there will be no formal end to the war as long as Hamas retains power, raising questions of timing and interpretation over the truce offer, which has been provisionally welcomed by the Palestinian faction.
Biden said on Friday that Israel had proposed a deal involving an initial six-week ceasefire with a partial Israeli military withdrawal and the release of some hostages while “a permanent end to hostilities” is negotiated through mediators.
The US, Egypt, and Qatar have been seeking for months to mediate an end to the war, but a deal has proven elusive.
The proposal, Biden said, also “creates a better ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power”. He did not elaborate on how this would be achieved, and acknowledged that “there are a number of details to negotiate to move from phase one to phase two”.
As Israeli atrocities enter its 238th day, the death toll in the blockaded Gaza Strip rose to 36,898 people, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Saturday.
They announced that the death toll and the toll of casualties as a result of the ongoing Israeli genocidal offensive on the war-torn Strip rose to 36,898 and 87,407 respectively.
Within the last 24 hours, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) committed five massacres against families in the Strip, resulting in the killing of 95 people and injuring 350 others, the Gaza Health Ministry added.
[ad_2]
Source link
