Palestinian Hamas on Saturday rejected as “American dictates” the new draft agreement for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where 15 members of the same family including nine children were killed in an Israeli strike according to the Civil Defense.
After more than ten months of war, talks on a ceasefire in Gaza were held on Thursday and Friday in Doha between Israel and the mediators – the United States, Qatar and Egypt – at the end of which a revised proposal for an agreement was presented by the United States, Israel’s main ally.
Launched in response to an attack by Palestinian Hamas against Israel on October 7, the Israeli offensive in Gaza has not let up and has not ceased during the umpteenth round of negotiations in Doha, in which Hamas has refused to participate.
PHOTO RAMADAN ABED, REUTERS
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip on August 17.
For the United States, a ceasefire in Gaza would help avoid a regional military escalation after Iran and its allies threatened to avenge the assassination, attributed to Israel, of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, and that of the military leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Fouad Shokr, killed a few hours earlier in an attack claimed by Israel near Beirut.
The Islamist movement Hamas refuses to negotiate further and wants the plan announced on May 31 by US President Joe Biden to be implemented at the end of May.
The plan provides for a six-week truce in the first phase, accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza and the release of hostages abducted on October 7, and in its second phase, a total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas rejected the latest revised proposal, denouncing “American dictates.”
“An illusion”
A “proximate” ceasefire agreement is an “illusion”, said Hamas official Sami Abou Zohri, for whom the latest American proposal “suggests a huge step backwards”.
He was responding to Mr Biden, who said on Friday that a deal “has never been closer”.
Hamas accuses Israel of adding “new conditions” to the text, including the “maintenance of troops” by Israeli forces on the Gaza border with Egypt and “a right of veto” over Palestinian prisoners who could be exchanged for hostages.
Truce negotiations are due to resume next week in Cairo, where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned of a “vicious and dangerous circle of instability” after talks with French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is flying to Israel on Saturday, after a senior US official warned that Iran would face “cataclysmic” consequences if it attacked Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he wants to continue the war until the destruction of Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by his country, the United States and the European Union.
“Indescribable scenes”
On the ground, the Israeli army has relentlessly continued its devastating offensive in the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip.
At least 15 members of the Ajlah family, including three women and nine children, were killed in a pre-dawn strike in al-Zawayda (central), according to Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal. The children killed were between two and 17 years old.
“At around 1am, three missiles hit the house directly,” Ahmed Abu al-Ghoul, who was helping other Palestinians search through the rubble and evacuate bodies, told AFP.
PHOTO EYAD BABA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Palestinian women mourn their relatives, killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip, August 17.
At the morgue, Omar al-Dreelmi, a member of the Ajlah family, spoke of “indescribable scenes, of dismembered bodies including those of children.”
Asked by AFP, the army did not immediately comment on this information.
In a statement, it said it had eliminated several “terrorists” in Rafah and Khan Younès (South).
According to the UN, “thousands” of Gazans were forced to “leave in a hurry, without knowing where to go, amid death and destruction” after new Israeli evacuation orders for areas of Deir al-Balah (center) and Khan Younis.
Ten dead in Lebanon
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 111 are still being held in Gaza, including 39 declared dead by the army.
The Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza has left at least 40,074 dead, according to Hamas’s health ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilians and fighters killed.
It has plunged the Palestinian territory into a humanitarian disaster, with the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people displaced.
On Israel’s northern front in Lebanon, the Health Ministry announced the death of ten Syrians, including two children, in an Israeli strike in the Nabatieh sector (south). The Israeli army claimed to have struck “a Hezbollah weapons warehouse” in this sector.
PHOTO MAHMOUD ZAYYAT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A man inspects damage to a building after an Israeli strike in the southern town of Kfour, Lebanon, August 17.
Hezbollah then announced that it had fired salvos of rockets at Ayelet HaShahar, in northern Israel, in response to this strike, one of the deadliest since the Lebanese Islamist movement opened a front against Israel in “support” of Hamas on October 8.