permanent ceasefire – News Agency nabakhabar

Israel pounds Gaza, insists on ‘Hamas destruction’ as US presses roadmap

News Agency nabakhabar — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 12:04:05 +0000

Hamas says it is open to a plan announced by Biden ‘based on the foundation of a permanent ceasefire, complete withdrawal’ from Gaza.

Israeli tanks and artillery fire have continued pounding the shattered Gaza Strip and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on the destruction of Palestinian group Hamas as part of a ceasefire plan presented by US President Joe Biden, raising questions about the prospect of a deal.

During a news conference at the White House on Friday, Biden said Israel has put forward “a comprehensive new proposal” to end the war. The three-phase plan seeks to implement a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that involves the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza and the release of all Israelis held captive in the strip.

Hamas has indicated that it is open to the proposal, raising hopes of a halt to Israel’s eight-month war.

In a statement, the group said it “reaffirms its readiness to positively engage and cooperate with any proposal based on the foundation of a permanent ceasefire, complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, reconstruction, the return of displaced people to their homes, and the completion of a genuine prisoner exchange deal, provided that the occupation announces its explicit commitment to this”.

But on Saturday, Netanyahu was adamant in declaring that for Israel’s war on Gaza to end, Hamas must be destroyed.

“Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” his office said in a statement.

It said those conditions must be met, “before a permanent ceasefire is put in place”.

“The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter,” it added.

Abdullah al-Arian, professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, pointed out a “major contradiction” in the demand, with both Israel and its staunch ally the US saying they do not want a future in Gaza in which Hamas has any kind of political role left.

“At the same time, this is an agreement that would have to be reached through negotiations with Hamas, so, how do you do that? How do you eliminate them as a political force and at the same time reach a negotiated solution that is agreed upon by all parties,” he told Al Jazeera.

Another “major sticking point” to an eventual deal would be Israel remaining as an occupying force in some parts of Gaza, which he said Palestinians have continuously rejected.

Alon Liel, former director of Israel’s foreign ministry, said Biden’s announcement was “music to the ears of the Israelis who want to end the war.

But, there is a “mixed message again coming from Washington,” he told Al Jazeera. “The surprising thing was that [the ceasefire proposal] was described as an Israeli offer. This contradicts many things that Netanyahu said recently; it looks more like an American offer that is presented as an Israeli one,” Liel said.

The armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, meanwhile, expressed “suspicion” of the plan announced by Biden saying the “cessation of aggression” must involve “complete withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Blinken lobbies Middle East leaders

Even as Biden presented the new plan, Israel continued its deadly attacks in Gaza, with artillery fire hitting residential buildings in the northern neighbourhoods of Gaza City, killing several Palestinians.

Another early morning Israeli strike in Gaza City also killed a journalist, identified as Ola al-Dahdouh, according to the Palestinian TV channel Al-Aqsa.

Israeli forces also hammered Rafah in southern Gaza with tanks and artillery, while witnesses in the east and centre of Rafah described intense artillery shelling.

In the shadow of the continuous Israeli bombardment, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held discussions with the top diplomats of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey amid efforts to gather support for the new Gaza ceasefire plan.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud received a call from Blinken, during which they discussed the latest proposal, the Saudi state news agency said.

Blinken in his shuttle diplomacy in the region has invested time in involving Saudi Arabia, hoping that the prospect of Israel normalising relations with the kingdom will encourage moderation in Netanyahu’s far-right government.

According to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, Blinken “emphasised that Hamas should accept the deal without delay”, in those telephone calls from his plane as he returned from a NATO meeting in Prague.

“[Blinken] underscored that the proposal is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the long-term security of the region,” Miller added.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, welcomed Biden’s ceasefire proposal as a step in the right direction. He said his country is willing to send peacekeeping troops to maintain a ceasefire in Gaza if required.

“When needed and when requested by the UN, we are prepared to contribute significant peacekeeping forces to maintain and monitor this prospective ceasefire as well as providing protection and security to all parties and to all sides,” he told a security conference in Singapore.

Israeli attacks on Gaza since the start of the war have killed at least 36,379 people and wounded 82,407 others, with thousands more missing under the rubble and presumed dead. Israel launched its assault on the besieged territory after a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel killed about 1,140 people.

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‘We want permanent ceasefire,’ Palestinians in Gaza say as truce extended

News Agency nabakhabar — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 12:21:46 +0000

Ayman Harb, a father of three children, stuck it out with his family in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shujayea for more than a month of the war, even as Israeli bombs and tanks destroyed the besieged enclave’s largest urban centre.

Last week, just before a four-day humanitarian pause came into effect, he decided the family had to flee. One of his sons has cerebral palsy and requires an oxygen tank and the Israeli soldiers threatened to shoot Harb if he did not throw away the oxygen. end of list

Now in central Gaza, Harb has but one dream — for the truce to turn into a full-fledged ceasefire that allows him and his family to return home.

On Monday evening as the four-day truce was coming to an end, Qatar, which has played a central role in mediating talks that enabled the pause in fighting, announced that the halt in the war had been extended by another two days.

For families across Gaza, that brief respite also serves to underscore the suffering and humiliation of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, who have been under attack since October 7. Palestinians are calling for a permanent ceasefire, stressing that their priority is to return to their homes even if they were destroyed in the heavy bombardment over the past month and a half.

The truce, which began on Friday, has seen the release of Israeli civilian captives held by Hamas in exchange for the release of Palestinian women and children imprisoned by Israel.

It has quietened the skies over the Gaza Strip from the incessant sound of Israeli drones and warplanes. But it has done little to ease the collective trauma of the people of Gaza. According to the United Nations, 1.6 million people have been displaced from their homes, many forced to flee to the south of the strip. Some families who have tried to return to the north during the truce have been fired upon by Israeli snipers.

Others have been forced to live in what they describe as “shame”.

Ayman Harb, who was injured when Israeli warplanes targeted a market in Shujayea, was forced to flee to the central Gaza Strip with his family, and they are now living in a tent in Deir el-Balah [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

“I’ve been here staying in a tent on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for a week, right next to the ambulances,” 41-year-old Harb said. “We are about 20 people in one tent, but I had to send my wife and my other two children to stay with a relative after the rain-soaked our tent this morning.”

“Yes, the bombings have stopped, but we need a truce that will return us to our homes,” he added. “Otherwise, there is no point in one. I’d rather go back to my home and die there than stay here in a tent living in shame and being forced to rely on people for the basic necessities of life.”

Harb said his family had to beg before in their lives. Now they are desperate for medicine, food and water.

“We don’t want war. We just want to live in our homes with our dignity intact,” his 20-year-old cousin Badr said.

Imm Shadi al-Taher, a 63-year-old mother of 10, was displaced from her home in Tall az-Zaatar in Gaza City three weeks ago.

Imm Shadi al-Taher from Tall az-Zaatar in Gaza City wants to go back to her neighbourhood to bury her dead siblings who were killed in an Israeli attack and whose bodies remain trapped under the rubble [Abdelhakim Abu Riadh/Al Jazeera]

She has also been staying with 25 members of her family in one tent on the hospital grounds.

“We had our pride and dignity, but look at the state we are in now, this destitution and the fact that no one is looking to help us or is thinking of us,” she said.

She acknowledged the “huge relief” of not hearing the sound of drones, warplanes or artillery shelling, noting that her grandchildren are more relaxed, but she cannot bear to stay away from her home, which was destroyed.

“I’m willing to live in a tent but on the ruins of my home, where I don’t need to ask anyone for help,” she said. “I want to go back to bury my siblings who are still under the rubble of their own destroyed homes.”

According to the Gaza media government office, at least 6,800 people are missing and presumed dead under the rubble. This is in addition to the 14,854 Palestinians killed since October 7, the majority of them women and children.

A child runs between tents set up for displaced Palestinians on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

For Noor Saadeh, a 23-year-old mother of two who was displaced from her home in Gaza City a month ago, the truce is not enough.

“What’s the point of a truce if we cannot go back to our homes?” she asked. “My son keeps telling me he misses his friends at nursery school. We want our old life back.”

She is worried about the onset of winter since she and her family fled while it was still warm and had no way to go back to their home.

“I had to ask people for appropriate clothes for the children at the very least,” she said. “We didn’t think we would be here for this long.”

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