Hamas weighs truce proposal

HAMAS said it was considering in a “positive spirit” a proposed truce and hostage release deal with Israel as the bloodiest ever Gaza war claimed more lives yesterday.

Nearly seven months of war have devastated the Palestinian coastal territory, which the UN said would require a rebuilding effort on a scale not seen since World War II.

After months of stop-start negotiations, Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said the group would “soon” send a delegation back to Egypt for ceasefire discussions, aiming for a deal that “realises the demands of our people”.

Haniyeh told Egyptian and Qatari mediators in calls on Thursday that Hamas was studying the latest proposal from Israel with a “positive spirit”.

After a meeting in Cairo last weekend, the Hamas delegation had returned to Qatar to discuss the proposal.

The war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34596 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Gaza’s Civil Defence agency and medics said the toll rose overnight when Israeli warplanes struck a neighbourhood in Rafah, southern Gaza, killing six people in a family house.

“It’s enough, enough ... They must pressure both parties” for a ceasefire, said Bassam al-Hafi whose neighbourhood was struck.

The destruction there adds to the 72% of Gaza’s residential buildings that have been completely or partially destroyed.

“The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented ... this is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II,” said Abdallah al-Dardari, the UN Development Programme’s Regional Director for Arab States.

The only truce that mediators have reached so far was a week-long deal in November that saw the release of 80 Israeli hostages for 240 Palestinian prisoners. Israel estimates that 129 of the captives seized by the militants remain in Gaza, while the army says 35 of them are dead.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces regular protests demanding a deal to bring home the hostages.

With or without a truce, Netanyahu says, he will send ground troops into Rafah.

The truce offer includes a 40-day halt to fighting and the exchange of Israeli hostages for potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners, according to details released by Britain.

The humanitarian crisis and rising death toll in Gaza have prompted pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world. They began at campuses in the United States and have spread to countries including France and Mexico.

World Central Kitchen resumed delivering food to starving Gazans this week. |

Rafah