Positive signals from Hamas and Israel on the roadmap proposed by Israel to stop the conflict in Gaza and allow the release of the hostages, after yesterday the American President Joe Biden forcefully returned to the field with a speech at the White House to say that “It’s time for this war to end”addressing in particular the Palestinian Islamic faction, after months of pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.
“Hamas considers positively” the Israeli roadmap towards a ceasefire announced by Biden, after almost eight months of war in Gaza. “Hamas considers positively” the contents of Biden’s speech on Friday regarding “a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of forces Israelis from Gaza, reconstruction and prison exchangesri,” the Palestinian Islamist movement said in a statement.
And Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a statement released by his office, stated that “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’ military and governance capabilities, the release of all hostages and the guarantee that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel”.
Netanyahu stressed that “under the proposal, Israel will continue to insist that these conditions be met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The idea that Israel would agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are met is a non-starter.”
The Jewish state, Biden announced, “has proposed to Hamas a roadmap for the ceasefire“. The proposal, he explained, consists of three phases: the first, of six weeks, with “a full and complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza and the release of a certain number of hostages including women, elderly, wounded in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners”. At this juncture, Palestinian civilians will be able to return to their homes and neighborhoods in all areas of Gaza, including the north, added the American president, specifying that humanitarian aid will increase.
Phase two “envisages the definitive cessation of hostilities based on the negotiations that will take place in phase one”. Finally, phase three, in which “an important reconstruction plan” for the Strip will begin.
The agreement, added the head of the White House, “will bring all hostages at home, will secure Israel and create a better government for Gaza without Hamas in power. The agreement lays the foundations for a political solution that offers a better future for both Israelis and Palestinians”. A clear path, in Biden’s opinion, which seems to force Hamas to give an equally clear response.
Netanyahu confirmed that he had authorized the negotiating team to “present a blueprint for achieving the release of the hostages”, but the prime minister’s office clarified that “the war will not end until all the objectives set have been achieved”including “the elimination of the Hamas militants and government.”
The US president’s intervention came on the same day that the IDF announced for the first time, after weeks of fighting, that it had moved to the center of Rafah. The military spokesman gave an account of a gradual “evolution” in the ongoing battle in the southernmost city of Gaza. The operation also concerns the ‘Philadelphia Corridor’, the strip of land that runs along the border with Egypt in Gaza, now under Israeli control and where pressure is growing. The army’s objective, the spokesperson explained, is to eradicate Hamas structures also with special forces that are in action with “targeted” operations from the outskirts of the centre.
Rafah therefore remains a strategic hub not only from a military point of view but also, at its crossing, for the entry of humanitarian aid in the Palestinian enclave. Egypt has denounced that Israel has rejected trucks with aid for Gaza sent from Egypt at the Kerem Shalom crossing, where security checks take place. The reason, according to Cairo sources, would be the resumption of armed clashes between Israel and Hamas in the area and near Rafah on the Palestinian side. The same sources then added that the employees of the Rafah terminal on the Egyptian side confirmed the return, for this reason, of dozens of trucks of humanitarian aid to the logistics warehouses of the airport.
On the question there could be a three-way Egypt-Israel-United States meeting today in Cairo to agree on the short reopening of the crossing. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced that the humanitarian situation for the population of Gaza remains disastrous and defined the closure of the Rafah border crossing as “a real problem”.
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