New truce talks under way
Hamas considering Israel’s latest proposal amid airstrikes, protests
Hamas said it was studying the latest Israeli counterproposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after media reports said a delegation from mediator Egypt arrived in Israel in a bid to jump-start stalled negotiations.
The signs of fresh truce talks came alongside at least three Israeli air strikes during the night in Rafah, southernmost Gaza, according to an AFP correspondent.
Rafah is crowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by nearly seven months of war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas. Strikes in Rafah and elsewhere killed more than a dozen people overnight, hospital officials said.
“Today, the Hamas movement received the official Zionist occupation response to the movement’s position, which was delivered to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on April 13,” Khalil alHayya, deputy head of Hamas’s political arm in Gaza, said in a statement.
“The movement will study this proposal, and upon completion of its study, it will submit its response.”
Hamas has previously innegotiations. sisted on a permanent ceasefire, something rejected by Israel.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new truce deal in Gaza ever since a oneweek halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
A delegation from Egypt arrived in Israel on Friday hoping to revive the truce Iran said on Saturday it would release the crew members of a Portuguese-flagged ship that its forces seized this month in the Gulf.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took over the MSC Aries with 25 crew members on board near the Strait of Hormuz on April 13.
Tehran later said the ship belonged to its arch-foe Israel and was being investigated for alleged violations of international maritime law.
“The humanitarian issue of the release of the ship’s crew is of great concern to us,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a phone call with his Portuguese counterpart Paulo Rangel.
“We have given consular access to their ambassadors in Tehran and announced to the envoys that the crew members will be released and extradition,” he was quoted as saying in a statement from his ministry, without elaborating.
Meanwhile, students across the US in New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles and at one of France’s most prestigious universities have called off protests over the Gaza war after street scuffles between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups.