Netanyahu rejects key truce demands
Israel PM objects to cease-fire conditions; calls grow for resumption of funding for UNRWA
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected two key demands Hamas has made during indirect cease-fire talks, saying Israel will not withdraw from the Gaza Strip or release thousands of jailed militants.
During an event on Jan 30, Netanyahu again vowed that the war will not end without Israel’s “absolute victory” over Hamas.
Netanyahu rejected the Hamas militant group’s two main demands — that Israel withdraw its forces from Gaza and release thousands of Palestinian prisoners — indicating that the gap between the two sides remains wide, The Associated Press reported.
After a meeting in Paris between US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials yielded a proposed framework for a truce, Hamas confirmed on Jan 30 that it had received the proposal and was “in the process of examining it and delivering its response”.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, whose government helped broker a previous truce in November, voiced hope that an initial deal might lead to a permanent cease-fire.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces working undercover as female medical staff killed three Palestinian militants in a raid on a hospital in the West Bank, where violence has surged since the Gaza conflict.
The Israeli military said forces entered the Ibn Sina hospital in the northern city of Jenin early on Jan 30.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said the Israeli forces opened fire inside the hospital’s wards, and called on the international community to stop Israeli operations in hospitals.
Ashraf al-Qedra, the spokesperson of the Hamas-run Health Ministry, told Xinhua that the health system in the Gaza Strip is collapsing in light of the continuation of the Israeli military operation.
He said that the Israeli army “deliberately destroyed health facilities and hospitals, including Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Strip, Indonesian Hospital, Al-Awda Hospital, Kamal Odwan Hospital, Al-Mamadani Hospital, Al-Quds Hospital and other health centers”.
The number of wounded and patients has swelled recently, with many of the wounded remained lying on the ground in pain and bleeding.
Lack of treatment in the Gaza Strip forced Abu Mustafa Salem, a 49-yearold Palestinian man, to deal with his injury by himself as the hospital is so far away from his tent.
The wounded man was the only survivor of his family in an Israeli attack that targeted his house in the Sheikh Redwan neighborhood in Gaza City two months ago.
The conflict has displaced a vast majority of Gaza’s population, according to the UN, which warned that the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory will only get worse if major donors do not restore funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, the UN’s main aid agency for Palestinians.
The UN’s coordinator for Gaza aid, Sigrid Kaag, said on Jan 30 that no other agency can “replace or substitute” UNRWA, which has thousands of employees.
The heads of several UN agencies, including the WHO, the UN rights office, UNICEF and the World Food Programme, later issued a joint statement warning that defunding UNRWA would “have catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza”.
Withholding the funds, they said, was “perilous and would result in the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, with far-reaching humanitarian and human rights consequences”.
A training center of UNRWA in Gaza’s major southern city of Khan Younis was attacked and set on fire on Jan 24, leaving at least nine people dead and 75 others wounded.
Thomas White, UNRWA’s operations director in Gaza, wrote in a post on social media platform X that two tank rounds hit the building.