Netanyahu defends Gaza ceasefire, but does not accept end of war demanded by Hamas International

While Israel continues to bomb Gaza day after day, Hamas has claimed responsibility for launching several projectiles from the area into Israeli territory this Sunday without any fatalities, which has served to further escalate tensions. It comes as the warring sides, encouraged by negotiators, are trying to achieve a ceasefire with contacts in Egypt and Qatar. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…

While Israel continues to bomb Gaza day after day, Hamas has claimed responsibility for launching several projectiles from the area into Israeli territory this Sunday without any fatalities, which has served to further escalate tensions. It comes as the warring sides, encouraged by negotiators, are trying to achieve a ceasefire with contacts in Egypt and Qatar. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated this Sunday that he defends the ceasefire in the Strip, something that is not common in his war dialectics, as long as it does not change the fundamental pillars of his strategy: eliminate Hamas. Do and bring back, dead or alive, more than 100 hostages left in the strip. The Palestinian group insists that the release of the hostages should mean an end to the conflict, which the Jewish state leader rejects.

This Sunday, the Israeli government ordered the closure of the Qatari channel Al Jazeera in both Arabic and English, drawing criticism from the United Nations and several international organizations. A group of agents have seized the channel’s equipment during a raid on its offices in occupied East Jerusalem. Reporting teams continue to work in the West Bank and Gaza. Qatar hosts the Hamas leadership and is a key player in talks to end hostilities.

The Palestinian radical group has launched an attack on the Israeli military post at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Rafah (southern Gaza). The military has reported no casualties, although the local press reports several injuries, some of which are military. Military spokesmen have shown what they claim are images of rocket launches from the strip and how their warplanes bombed that point near Rafah shortly thereafter. That reaction caused at least three deaths, according to local health sources. Hamas claims that its attacks have caused deaths on military installations. In addition to this incident, the military’s bombardment, which has already killed more than 34,600 Palestinians in the enclave, has continued in recent hours, according to the Hamas government-reliant health ministry.

The army said the Kerem Shalom crossing, one of the points through which Israel allows some humanitarian aid into Gaza, was closed after Sunday’s attack. Just on the other side of that point is the enclave’s southern city of Rafah, which hosts about 1.5 million Palestinians displaced by the war and where Israel says it will launch a ground campaign to eliminate Hamas. Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who visited Gaza on Sunday, echoed that idea. According to words published on his profile on the social network, “Hamas rejects any plan to return our kidnapped people and its implications on the ground will be clear,” adding that “very soon” they will return to Rafah by land. Will attack).

“Giving in to the demands of Hamas would be a terrible defeat for the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said in statements made by his office after a ministerial meeting. “But while Israel has shown its will, Hamas persists in extreme positions, particularly with the demand to end the presence of all our forces from the Gaza Strip, end the war, and leave Hamas in power,” he added. Said.

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And he insisted: “Israel is and will remain ready to stop the fighting to free our hostages. “That’s what we did when we freed 124 hostages (in November) and resumed fighting, and that’s what we’re prepared to do today.” With these statements they make it clear that they do not accept Hamas’s demand to end the war in order to free the prisoners.

optimism

Over the past few hours, there has been optimism on both sides about a ceasefire, but an end to the conflict remains the main obstacle separating the Palestinian radical group and the Jewish state in negotiations. “Israel cannot accept this,” because, the prime minister understands, it would leave the door open for Hamas to “continue its massacres, rapes and kidnappings again and again.”

For his part, Ismail Haniya, Hamas’s top political leader, has said the group is interested in reaching a comprehensive ceasefire that ends Israeli “aggression”, guarantees Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an exchange of captives. But makes a serious compromise. According to a statement cited by Qatari network Al Jazeera. Haniya accused Netanyahu of “maintaining aggression and expanding the scope of the conflict and thwarting efforts made through mediators and various parties to achieve a ceasefire.”

In short, the Israeli government has shut down that channel, for the time being, for 45 days, which can be extended, because it believes national security is at risk based on the new law. Its journalists have on several occasions been the victims of Israeli attacks on Gaza, where a hundred journalists or media workers have already been killed by Hamas militants, among the approximately 1,200 people killed in Israeli territory since the war began on October 7. For official statistics. Al Jazeera has been an essential information tool for reporting on the conflict in the Strip, where Israel does not allow media access.

Criticism from the United Nations, whose human rights office attributes the decision to an effort to block coverage of the war in Gaza, has been added to criticism from journalist organizations such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which considers it a “repressive censorship measure”. . ”, or the association that brings together foreign informants in Israel and Palestine. For Human Rights Watch (HRW) this is an “attack on press freedom”.

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