Hamas to respond to Gaza war truce offer on Monday: “The atmosphere is positive”

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas would give a response on Monday to a truce offer in the war with Israel in Gaza, reports France Presse.

A tripartite meeting is to be held in Cairo between Egypt, Qatar and Hamas, whose delegation will be led by Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the movement’s political wing for the Gaza Strip and heavily involved in the negotiations, a senior official told AFP Hamas on condition of anonymity.

“The atmosphere is positive, except for new obstacles raised by Israel,” said an official of the Islamist movement, who asked to remain anonymous.

Hamas official: “The atmosphere is positive”

“No major issue was raised with the comments and requests that Hamas will present regarding the content of the proposal” at this meeting, he added.

The proposal was drafted by Egypt and adjusted by Israel.

It was presented in response to Hamas’s insistence since mid-April for a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has refused to consider.

Details of the Israeli proposal have not been made public, but according to the US news website Axios, citing Israeli officials, it includes a willingness to discuss “establishing a lasting calm” in Gaza.

The Cairo meeting comes nearly seven months after the start of the war, which was sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s bloody attack on Israel on October 7.

Internal and external pressures on Prime Minister Netanyahu

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have tried, so far in vain, to persuade the two belligerents to end the fighting. However, in late November, a week-long ceasefire led to the release of 80 hostages held by Hamas and 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Domestic pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government continues to mount, as a new demonstration showed on Saturday night, when thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv to demand the release of hostages kidnapped on October 7.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected this week in Israel, where he was last in March, and in Jordan, the US State Department announced on Sunday.

Blinken goes to Saudi Arabia on Monday, where a special meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is being held on the subject of the conflict.

During this two-day summit in Riyadh of the most important Arab and Western leaders, the head of Saudi diplomacy, Prince Faisal ben Farhane, said that “the situation in Gaza is clearly a catastrophe from every point of view, humanitarian, but and a total failure of the existing political system to deal with the crisis”.

Israel prepares ground offensive in Rafah

Invited to the event, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Washington to prevent a ground offensive that Israel says it is preparing against the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, which is already regularly bombarded and home to a million and a half Palestinians, mainly displaced persons.

“America is the only country capable of preventing Israel from committing this crime,” Abbas said, adding that such an operation, announced by Israeli officials, would be “the greatest disaster in the history of the Palestinian people.”

“If there is an agreement (on a ceasefire), we will suspend the Rafah operation,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s N12 channel on Saturday.