CEASE-FIRE
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly rejected Hamas’ demands and repeatedly vowed to continue the war until Hamas is dismantled and all the hostages are returned. Israel didn’t send a delegation to the latest round of talks.
Israel was still waiting for Hamas to hand over a list of hostages who are alive as well as the hostage-to-prisoner ratio it seeks in any release deal, an Israeli official said. It wasn’t clear if that information was included in the latest proposal.
The Israeli and Egyptian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media on the negotiations.
When asked whether Hamas has a list of the surviving hostages, Hamdan said that the matter wasn’t relevant to the talks and accused Israel of using it as an excuse to avoid engaging in the negotiations.
Benny Gantz, a member of Netanyahu’s War Cabinet and his main political rival, met with senior U.S. officials in Washington on a visit that drew a rebuke from the prime minister, the latest sign of a growing rift
within Israel’s leadership.
Mediators had hoped to broker an agreement before Ramadan, the month of dawn-to-dusk fasting that often sees heightened Israeli-palestinian tensions linked to access to a major holy site in Jerusalem. Ramadan is expected to begin around March 10, depending on the sighting of the moon.
“The negotiations are sensitive. I can’t say there is optimism or pessimism, but we haven’t yet reached a point at which we can achieve a cease-fire,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Monday.
The war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. More than 100 of them were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November.
The attack sparked an Israeli invasion of the enclave of 2.3 million people that Gaza’s Health Ministry says has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians. Aid groups say the fighting has displaced most of the territory’s population and pushed a quarter of the population to the brink of famine.
The U.N. children’s agency said Monday that at least 10 children have reportedly died in isolated northern Gaza because of dehydration and malnutrition.
“There are likely more children fighting for their lives somewhere in one of Gaza’s few remaining hospitals, and likely even more children in the north unable to obtain care at all,” Adele Khodr, the UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
“These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable,” she added.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that 15 children have starved to death at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and another six were at risk of dying from malnutrition and dehydration. It wasn’t clear if the children had underlying medical conditions that increased their vulnerability.
Northern Gaza, the first target of Israel’s offensive, has suffered mass devastation. The World Food Program recently suspended aid shipments to the north, citing a security breakdown. An attempt by the Israeli military to bring in aid ended in tragedy last week when more than 100 Palestinians were fatally shot by Israeli forces or trampled to death in a melee.
The United States and Jordan airdropped 36,800 meals over northern Gaza on Tuesday, the second U.S. airdrop since Saturday.