US President Joe Biden said Israel had agreed to halt military attacks on Palestinians in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan begins on the evening of March 10 and ends on the evening of April 9.
“Ramadan is approaching, and there is an agreement with the Israelis that they will not engage in activities during Ramadan to give us time to get all the hostages out,” Biden said.
He warned that Israel risks losing international support due to the large number of Palestinians killed, and that Israel has pledged to allow Palestinians to evacuate from Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, before intensifying its campaign to destroy Hamas.
Hamas is studying a draft ceasefire proposal that includes a pause in fighting and an exchange of prisoners and hostages.
The draft proposal, which sources said would allow Gaza’s hospitals and bakeries to be repaired and allow 500 aid trucks to enter the enclave every day, is the most serious attempt in weeks to end the conflict that erupted last October.
Biden said there was an agreement in principle on a ceasefire and the release of hostages, and that he hoped to see a ceasefire in the conflict by next Monday.
“Too many innocent people were killed. And Israel slowed down the attacks in Rafah,” Biden said.
We remind you that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the two-state solution.
The Israeli army proposed a plan for the evacuation of civilians in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government announced this morning before a possible offensive in Rafah.
The army “presented to the war cabinet a plan for the evacuation of the population from the combat zones in the Gaza Strip, as well as a plan for future operations,” according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
Details about the method of evacuation, as well as the location, have not been announced.
Israel’s prime minister wants to launch a ground operation in Rafah, which he says is the “last bastion” of the Palestinian movement Hamas.
The Hamas Health Ministry announced today that 92 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip in Israeli attacks overnight.
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas has stressed that it will only accept a prisoner exchange agreement with Israel if it agrees to a full ceasefire and the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
“The return of (Israeli) occupying prisoners has three prices. The first is to facilitate the return of our people to normal life. The second is to end the aggression, and the third is a real exchange of prisoners in which our 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons would be freed,” said Khalil al- Hayya, a member of the political bureau of the group, in an interview with the Qatari “Al Jazeera TV”.
He said that Israel, accused of genocide, refuses to withdraw from Gaza and does not allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes.
On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas’ proposal for a cease-fire and prisoner exchange as a “delusion.”
“Netanyahu last week went back on what he agreed to in the Paris paper,” al-Hayya said.
According to a Palestinian source, on February 7, Hamas proposed a three-phase plan for a ceasefire in Gaza that includes a 135-day pause in fighting in exchange for the release of hostages.
The original framework agreement was worked out at last month’s meeting of top officials from the United States, Israel, Qatar and Egypt in Paris.
Israel believes 134 Israelis are trapped in Gaza.
29,092 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 7.
On January 26, following a genocide lawsuit filed by the Republic of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel must refrain from any actions related to the killing, attacks and destruction of the residents of the Gaza Strip and take all measures to prevent genocide.
According to the United Nations, due to the Israeli offensive, 85 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip has been internally displaced and faces an acute shortage of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, AA writes.
