2024-04-07 02:55:00
Delegations from the United States, Qatar, Israel and Hamas will seek to agree in Egypt on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, devastated by a war that is now six months old.
CIA Director Bill Burns; the head of the Israeli Mossad, David Barnea; and Qatari and Egyptian officials will meet in Cairo.
An Israeli delegation and another from the Islamist movement Hamas will also travel to the Egyptian capital today, reported the pro-government Egyptian media Al Qahera News, close to the country’s security services.
Hamas indicated that it “will not give up” on its demands, which include a complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the return of displaced people to their homes, increased humanitarian aid and the exchange of hostages against prisoners. Palestinians.
The Israeli government, for its part, insists that the war will not end until “Hamas is annihilated.”
They recover the body of a hostage. US President Joe Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do “everything possible to ensure the release of the hostages.”
He also asked Qatar and Egypt, which mediate in this conflict along with the United States, to get the Islamist group Hamas to commit to accepting an agreement with Israel, a US official said.
Yesterday, the Israeli army announced that it recovered overnight in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, the body of hostage Elad Katzir, who was 47 years old at the time of his kidnapping from the Nir Oz kibbutz.
According to the same source, “he was murdered in captivity by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization,” which participated in the October 7 attack.
His death occurred in mid-January, a few days after Islamic Jihad issued a video in which the hostage asked the Israeli government to do everything possible to achieve his release, an Israeli military official said. Katzir had dual Israeli and Polish nationality, according to Israel’s ambassador to Poland.
After the announcement, his sister attacked the Israeli leaders. Releasing him alive “would have been possible if an agreement on the hostages had been reached in time,” estimated Carmit Palty Katzir on her Facebook account. “Prime minister, war cabinet, members of the government coalition. Look in the mirror and tell yourself that your hands are not covered in this blood,” she added.
“Betrayal to humanity.” Israel is under strong international pressure to let more aid into Gaza, especially after the death on Monday of seven aid workers from the NGO World Center Kitchen (six foreigners and one Palestinian) in an Israeli drone attack. The Israeli army admitted to making “serious mistakes” in this attack, claiming that its soldiers had mistakenly believed they were attacking “Hamas agents.”
The aid, coming mainly from Egypt, is controlled by Israel and enters in dribs and drabs through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, between Israeli territory and southern Gaza.
On Friday, Israel announced plans to “temporarily” open other border crossings to deliver more aid, as well as an “increase in aid through Kerem Shalom.”
The United States said it expects quick “results” on the ground, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the measures “insufficient.”
The head of Humanitarian Affairs at the UN, Martin Griffiths, said in turn that the Israeli campaign in Gaza has become a “betrayal of humanity.”
Family claim. About 100,000 people, according to the organizing organizations, demanded yesterday in the streets of Tel Aviv the calling of early elections and an agreement for the return of the Israeli hostages kidnapped in the Gaza Strip. The protesters gathered at the intersection of Kaplan and Begin streets in Tel Aviv, renamed Democracy Square with a multitude of Israeli flags and slogans against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yesterday, and for the first time since October 7, protesters returned to this Democracy Square, the scene of the massive weekly protests against the judicial reform of the Netanyahu government for more than a year before the start of the Gaza conflict. Previously they met in another part of Kaplan Street, where the headquarters of the Israeli Armed Forces is located.
Once the demonstration was over, the attendees joined the concentration for the hostages a few hundred meters away, on Begin Street, where the torches symbol of the protest burned again, in what is already the largest popular mobilization in Israel since the October 7.
The one in Tel Aviv was the largest protest, but demonstrations took place in fifty other locations such as Haifa, Caesarea, Herzliya, Kfar Saba, Raanana and Karkur.
In Caesarea there was at least one arrest, of a woman near Netanyahu’s private home, during one of the protests calling for early elections and the resignation of the prime minister.
Presidential message. On the occasion of six months since the attacks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog published a message to the nation in which he stressed that Israel is obliged to “do everything possible with creativity, persistence and determination” to achieve the freedom of the 130 hostages. held in the Gaza Strip.
“Tomorrow (today) at 6:29 it will be six months since the brutal terrorist attack and the terrible massacre. Half a year since this crime against our sisters and brothers, against our country, against humanity,” he recalled. Herzog has also referred to the subsequent war “heavy in days and heavy in blood.”
“Despite the pain and turmoil I am full of hope and I believe in us. In this half year I have seen Israeli society in all its glory. Half a year and every day I feel a new and immense pride in being part of this nation,” she argued before appealing to “healing and reconstruction.”
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