Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “reaffirmed his commitment” to the ceasefire in Gaza. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this the day after their meeting in Jerusalem: “I saw Netanyahu last night and he reaffirmed his commitment to the ceasefire proposal presented in recent days by the United States.
Blinken then called a Hamas’s announcement to welcome the United Nations Security Council’s vote on the resolution drafted by the United States is a “sign of hope”, underlining however what really matters is “the word that comes from Gaza” and from the leadership of the Palestinian enclave. A Hamas statement said the group welcomed the resolution, although it was not immediately clear whether this meant Hamas had accepted the plan.
Blinken also met separately in Tel Aviv today with Israeli opposition leaders Benny Gantz, who left Netanyahu’s government on Sunday, and Yair Lapid. In a note released by Gantz’s office we read that the leader of the National Unity party asked Blinken to exert “maximum pressure” on the negotiators to reach an agreement that leads to the release of the hostages. Gantz, he assured, “will support the government from outside any responsible agreement on the issue”. Gantz also spoke to Blinken about the threat from Hezbollah, saying that ”Israel will not hesitate to act with force” to protect its citizens.
Lapid’s office instead announced that the opposition leader told Blinken that ”we have one goal: to bring 120 hostages home. Time is up. We need an agreement”.
Biden: “Hamas shows it wants a truce”
For his part, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, called on Hamas to accept the ceasefire agreement proposed in the US plan, in the wake of the United Nations Security Council’s approval of the resolution drawn up by the Biden Administration for an immediate truce in the Gaza Strip and the release of the hostages. This is the first time the body has approved a comprehensive peace agreement to end the war in Gaza.
In a social media post after the vote, Biden said: “The UN Security Council has just adopted our resolution calling on Hamas to accept the agreement to establish a ceasefire with the release of hostages. Hamas says that they want a ceasefire. This agreement is an opportunity to show that they mean business.
WSJ: for Sinwar civilian victims are “necessary sacrifices”
“Necessary sacrifices”. This is how the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, defines the civilian victims of the ongoing war in a series of messages sent to mediators. And which demonstrate how, according to Sinwar, prolonging the fighting and increasing the number of Palestinians killed benefits Hamas and its survival. The Wall Street Journal writes this by exclusively publishing some of Sinwar’s messages which would demonstrate his desire to postpone an agreement on hostages and a ceasefire. ”We already have Israelis exactly where we want them,” he told Hamas officials engaged in negotiations with mediators from Egypt and Qatar. And then: ”As long as the fighters are still standing and we have not lost the war, the negotiations should be stopped immediately. We have the capabilities to continue fighting for months”.
There are dozens of messages, seen by the Wall Street Journal, that Sinwar sent to the negotiators for the ceasefire and to the Hamas militiamen outside Gaza. In all of them, the newspaper writes, ”a cold contempt for human life emerges” as well as the belief that ”Israel has a lot to lose in the war”. In a message sent to Hamas leaders in Doha, Sinwar also drew parallels between the ongoing conflict in Gaza and that fought in Algeria for independence from France, where hundreds of thousands of people have died. ”These are necessary sacrifices,” he argued. The same goes for the three sons of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in an Israeli air strike. In a letter to him on April 11, Sinwar wrote that their deaths and those of other Palestinians would “infuse lifeblood into the veins of this nation, pushing it to rise again.”
Israeli raid death toll rises to 37,164 since 7/10
The number of people who have been killed in the Gaza Strip has risen to at least 37,164 since the Israeli retaliation for the attack suffered by Hamas began on 7 October. This was announced by the Ministry of Health of Gaza City, updating the number of injured people to 84,832. In the last 24 hours alone, 40 Palestinians have died and 120 have been injured, the ministry adds.
Over 2 thousand trucks with aid waiting to enter Gaza from Egypt
There are over two thousand trucks with humanitarian aid and commercial goods waiting to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt. This was stated by the Directorate General for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations of the European Commission. ”Considering the intensity of the military operations, the Rafah crossing remains closed. The European Union calls for safe, substantial and unhindered humanitarian access”, writes the Directorate on ‘X’.
Hamas commander killed in West Bank in clashes with IDF
On the news front, a Hamas commander in the West Bank, Mohammed Jaber Abdo, was killed in overnight clashes with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers in a village near Ramallah. Hamas made this known in a statement explaining that three other militiamen lost their lives together with the commander. Abdo had spent 20 years held in Israeli prisons.
4 Israeli soldiers killed and 7 injured in explosion in Rafah
Four Israeli soldiers were killed in an operation in Rafah. According to reports from the IDF, the four died yesterday in the explosion of a booby trap in a three-storey building in the city in the southern Gaza Strip, inside which a tunnel was later found. Seven other soldiers were injured in the same explosion, five of them seriously.
50 rockets from Lebanon to Israel, sirens sound in Haifa
A barrage of 50 Katyusha rockets was fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon towards the Golan Heights in northern Israel without causing injuries. Hezbollah militiamen claimed responsibility and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it. The Israeli military explains that it shot down most of the rockets, while the remainder fell in open areas. The IDF also reported that warning sirens sounded in the coastal city of Haifa, northern Israel.
UN, death of civilians in blitz release of hostages may be a war crime
The killing of hundreds of civilians during the military operation that led to the rescue of four Israelis on Saturday may constitute a war crime. This was stated by Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the United Nations human rights office. “Hundreds of Palestinians, many of them civilians, would have been killed and injured,” Laurence said, pointing the finger both at the IDF and at the Palestinian militiamen who put civilian lives at risk by holding hostages in densely populated areas. “By holding hostages in such densely populated areas, armed groups are putting the lives of Palestinian civilians, as well as the hostages themselves, at further risk. All these actions, on both sides, may constitute war crimes,” he said. Hamas said at least 210 people were killed during the operation, while the IDF said it knew of around 100 Palestinian casualties but could not say how many were civilians and how many were terrorists.
