Netanyahu rejects Hamas three-phase Gaza truce offer, says victory near

Doha: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said total victory in Gaza was within reach, and rejected the latest offer from Hamas for a ceasefire to ensure the return of hostages still held in the besieged enclave.

Netanyahu renewed a pledge to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, saying there was no alternative for Israel but to bring about the collapse of Hamas.

“The day after is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas,” he told a press conference on Thursday (AEDT), insisting that total victory against Hamas was the only solution to the Gaza war.

An Israeli tank moves along the border, as Gaza is seen behind in southern Israel.Credit: Getty Images

Hamas had proposed a 4½-month ceasefire during which all hostages would go free, Israel would withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip, and an agreement would be reached on an end to the war.

Israel’s Channel 13 TV quoted an unidentified official as saying some aspects were not acceptable, and that officials were debating whether to reject the proposal or seek modifications.

The Hamas offer was a response to an earlier proposal drawn up by US and Israeli spy chiefs that was delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

People inspect damage caused to their homes following Israeli air strikes in Rafah, Gaza.Credit: Getty Images

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the offer with Netanyahu after arriving in Israel following talks with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt. Blinken later met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Major gaps remains between the two sides: Israel has said it will not pull its troops out of Gaza or end the war until Hamas is wiped out. But sources have described Hamas as taking a new approach to its longstanding demand to end the war, by proposing this as an issue to be resolved in future talks rather than a pre-condition for the truce.

A source close to the negotiations said the Hamas counterproposal did not require a guarantee of a permanent ceasefire at the outset, but that an end to the war would have to be agreed before final hostages were freed.

A second source said Hamas still wanted guarantees from Qatar, Egypt and other friendly states that the ceasefire would be upheld and not collapse as soon as hostages go free.

“They want the aggression to stop and not temporarily, not where [the Israelis] take the hostages and then the Palestinian people live in a grinder.”

Ezzat al-Reshiq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said the group’s aim was “to stop the aggression against our Palestinian people and secure a complete and lasting ceasefire as well as provide relief, aid, shelter and reconstruction”.

Hamas proposes three-phase truce

According to the offer document seen by Reuters and confirmed by sources, during the first 45-day phase all Israeli women hostages, males under 19 and the elderly and sick would be released, in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw troops from Gaza’s populated areas.

Implementation of the second phase would not begin until the sides concluded “indirect talks over the requirements needed to end the mutual military operations and return to complete calm”.

The second phase would include the release of remaining male hostages and full Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza. The remains of the dead would be exchanged during the third phase.

“People are optimistic, at the same time they pray that this hope turns into a real agreement that will end the war,” Yamen Hamad, a father of four sheltering in a UN school in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip told Reuters via a messaging app.

In Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people are penned against the border fence with Egypt, the bodies of 10 people killed by Israeli strikes overnight were laid out in a hospital morgue. At least two of the shrouded bundles were the size of small children. Relatives wept beside the dead.

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli ai strike killed another three people in a house in Rafah on Wednesday. A senior Palestinian police officer and Hamas member, Majdi Abdel-Al, was killed in an Israeli air strike on a car that was tasked to secure aid trucks in Rafah, they added.

Israel began its military offensive after militants from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed 1200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on October 7. Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 27,585 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. There has been only one truce so far, lasting just a week at the end of November.

Netanyahu is under competing pressure from far-right members of his coalition government who say they will quit rather than endorse any deal that fails to eradicate Hamas, and from families of hostages who demand a deal to bring them home.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shake hands during their meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Wednesday.Credit: AP

Washington has cast the hostage and truce deal as part of plans for a wider resolution of the Middle East conflict, ultimately leading to reconciliation between Israel and Arab neighbours and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu has rejected a Palestinian state, which Saudi Arabia – the biggest prize in Israel’s quest for acceptance from Middle East neighbours – says is a requirement for any deal to normalise relations with Israel.

The diplomacy comes as Israel is trying to capture the main city in Gaza’s south, Khan Younis. Last week, Israel said it plans to storm Rafah, a move UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday would “exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”

The Israeli military said it had killed dozens of militants in fighting over the past 24 hours. It has made similar claims throughout the fighting in Khan Younis that could not be independently verified.

Reuters

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