Gaza: Truce Negotiations in Face of Threat of Famine · Global Voices

Contacts for a truce are intensifying while the situation in the region is getting worse with famine threatening residents. The talks with a view to the declaration of a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, accompanied by the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, are now some indications that they are moving forward, with the growing concerns that it will cause famine and around the conduct of a large-scale land operation in Rafa, on the closed border with Egypt, where over 1.5 million people have been trapped. The head of the Israeli intelligence agency, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Egyptian officials were expected to meet yesterday in Doha to discuss it, said a source of the French Agency informed about it. According to the American news website Axios, “positive” discussions were held and Israeli negotiators will remain in Doha to continue “detailed” talks with mediators from Qatar and Egypt. The State Department on its part announced today that U.S. diplomacy chief Anthony Blinken will be in Saudi Arabia tomorrow and the day after Thursday in Egypt to contribute to the effort to remove obstacles. Israel announced that it would send a delegation to Doha without specifying when, Friday. The development followed what seemed to be Hamas’s compromise proposal, which stated willing to accept a six-week truce, while for a long time it called for a definitive ceasefire. “We agreed to a partial departure (of the Israeli army) from the Gaza Strip before any exchange took place and, after the initial phase, full withdrawal,” Hamas representative Osama Hamdan said yesterday. In the first phase “there will be a complete cessation of military operations”, he added, referring to talks that may continue for “some days” yet. Israel asks for a nominal list of hostages Over 250 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip during the unprecedented raid of Hamas’ military arm in southern Israel on October 7, when more than 1,160 people died, to the majority of civilians, according to a French Agency count based on official Israeli data. In the Israeli military operation launched in retaliation over 31,700 people have lost their lives, in the vast majority of women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry. The obstacles to the close negotiations include the status of hostages and the identities of Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged with them. Over 130 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, but 32 are believed to be dead, according to sources in Israel, requiring a nominal list of those who remain alive. However, the Palestinian Islamist movement opposes the fact that it does not know who are “live or dead” and asks that it be given the opportunity to decide which will be the Palestinian prisoners released. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under great pressure from a portion of the hostages’ families, who demand to close an agreement immediately, and on the other hand from far-right members of his government, who reject any possibility of agreeing to release a large number of Palestinian prisoners. The road to Rafa During a telephone conversation, the first month after something, with the American president Joe Biden, Mr Netanyahu reiterated that he is determined to “achiev all the goals of the war” in the Gaza Strip, including “the elimination of Hamas”. Despite international pressure, Israel is preparing to move on to a land operation in Rafa, in which they have taken refuge, according to the UN, nearly 1.5 million. Palestinians, in their majority violently displaced, many more than once. Early this morning, the Hamas Health Department announced that 78 people were killed during the night in the Gaza Strip, the 15 in residence in Rafa. The conduct of a major land operation in the city would be “a mistake,” US presidency national security adviser Jake Sullivan said yesterday, noting that Israel will not proceed before there will be talks on it, “in the coming days”. American President Joe Biden asked to go to Washington Israeli delegation to discuss how Hamas could be targeted “without a large scale land attack taking place on Rafa,” he said via X (of former Twitter). He also reiterated that he wants a immediate ceasefire for “several weeks” in the framework of an agreement allowing the release of hostages and the increase in “help” in the Gaza Strip. One in two Gazans experiences a “destructive” food situation The major humanitarian disaster caused by war and famine, which is still concentrated in the north but threatens the entire Gaza Strip population, is increasingly worrying. Israel has imposed an absolute siege to the Gaza Strip since the early days of the war and controls the entry of humanitarian aid. It arrives mainly through Egypt in Rafa, but is completely insufficient to meet the huge needs of the population. And it is very difficult to reach the north, where some 300,000 people are currently in the United Nations. One of the two Gazans, or 1.1 million people, is experiencing a “destructive” food situation, especially in the northern part of the female, warned UN agencies yesterday, with World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adamom Gebreesus talking about “an imminent famine”. The Gaza Strip has been transformed into a “subversive cemetery”, EU diplomacy chief Giuseppe Borrell stressed, adding that famine is “used as a war weapon”. In the heart of Gaza City, heavy fighting broke out yesterday and bombings took place in the area around and inside the hospital let’s Shifa, the largest of the female, which the Israeli army had already taken on attack on November 15, before retiring. The Israeli army assured that it killed dozens of Palestinian militants and arrested “over 200” within the hospital, which announced that it launched because of “information” in which “high-ranking” Hamas used it for military purposes. After all, Washington said it confirmed the death last week of the deputy chief of the military arm of Hamas Marwan Isa, its highest-ranking executive killed by the outbreak of the war.