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23-11-2023
GAZA CITY: Hamas chief says truce deal is “approaching”; reports suggest possible three- to five-day pause in fighting.
Hundreds of Palestinians trapped inside Indonesian Hospital which is surrounded by Israeli tanks. An earlier Israeli attack at the hospital killed at least 12 people.
Israeli air attacks on Gaza continued through the night, hitting Bureij refugee camp, Rafah and Gaza City, among other areas.
Relatives of Israeli captives in Gaza urged far-right politicians in Israel to stop talk of executing Palestinian fighters, saying it could endanger negotiations to free their loved ones.
More than 13,300 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.
Claims and denials of a potential ceasefire in Gaza continue. Some reports refer to a three-day pause in fighting, while others extend the truce to a full five days. Still, others claim the ceasefire could begin imminently and so on.
Even statements from the horse’s mouth differ. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied the report published by The Washington Post on Saturday that a tentative deal had been reached; a United States representative confirmed that talks were continuing but that a breakthrough was still awaited.
On Sunday, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced in Doha that the differences remaining between Hamas and Israel were “very minor”. Qatar has been central to mediation efforts in the war, including for the release of Israeli captives.
The last to be heard on the subject was Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh who on Tuesday told media that the parties are “close to reaching a truce agreement”. Another Hamas official told media that negotiations were centred on the duration of the truce, details of aid delivery to Gaza and the exchange of hostages and prisoners.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. With most parties involved looking to temporarily halt the carnage in Gaza, one must hope for the small step to a temporary respite.
It is also prudent to examine why the two warring sides are considering such a hiatus.
While such a pause would benefit Hamas politically, militarily there seems to be no obvious gain as I’ll explain on Wednesday.
For Israel, on the other hand, pausing the war could be advantageous from a military point of view and disadvantageous from a political one. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
