Palestinians hope Blinken visit can deliver Gaza truce before Rafah
assault
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[February 05, 2024]
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
(Reuters) - Palestinians huddling under bombardment in Gaza said on
Monday they hoped a visit to the region by the U.S. secretary of state
would finally deliver a truce, in time to head off a threatened new
Israeli assault on the last refuge at the enclave's edge.
Antony Blinken was in the air headed to the Middle East for his first
trip since Washington brokered an offer with Israeli input for the first
extended ceasefire of the war.
The offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian
mediators, still awaits a reply from militants who say they want more
guarantees that it will bring an end to the four-month-old war in the
Gaza Strip.
The U.S. diplomatic push comes at a time when Washington is also trying
to prevent further escalation elsewhere in the region, after two days of
U.S. air strikes against pro-Iranian armed groups across the Middle
East.
Meanwhile, Israel has pressed on with its offensive in some of the war's
most intense combat, and threatened a new ground assault on Rafah, a
small city where more than half of Gaza's people are now penned against
the enclave's southern border abutting Egypt, mainly sleeping rough in
makeshift tents.
The ceasefire proposal, described by sources close to the talks, would
see a truce for at least 40 days, while militants would free remaining
hostages from among the 253 they captured in the deadly Oct. 7 raid into
Israel that precipitated the war.
It would let in aid to alleviate Gaza's humanitarian crisis and let
Gaza's 2.3 million people return to homes abandoned during a war that
has laid waste to much of the enclave. The only previous truce so far
lasted one week.
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"We want the war to end and we want to go back home, this is all that we
want at this stage," said Yamen Hamad, 35, a father of four reached by
messaging app at a U.N. school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The
area is one of the few where Israeli tanks have yet to advance and is
now jammed with tens of thousands of displaced families.
"All we do is listen to the news through small radios and view the
internet looking for hope. We hope that Blinken will tell (Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu enough is enough, and we hope our factions
decide in the best interest of our people."
FIGHTING IN KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA CITY
In one of the biggest battles of the war, Israeli tanks have been
advancing for the past two weeks in Khan Younis, the main southern city,
which was already housing hundreds of thousands of people who fled other
areas. Fighting has also resurged in Gaza City in the north of the
Strip, in areas Israel claimed to have subdued in the first two months
of the war.
The Israeli military said on Monday its forces had killed dozens of
Palestinian fighters in combat in areas in northern, central and
southern Gaza over the last 24 hours.
Palestinians described heavy fighting in Gaza City, particularly its
western areas close to the Mediterranean shore, which had come under
bombardment from Israeli warships.
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A view of a destructed ambulance following an attack on PRCS
headquarters, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Jabalia, Gaza, in this still
image obtained from video released February 5, 2024. Palestine Red
Crescent Society via REUTERS
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Palestinian health officials said they had recovered the bodies of
14 people killed in a strike on Khan Younis overnight. They have
said repeatedly in recent days that rescuers are unable to reach
many of the dead and wounded in the city.
Gaza authorities say more than 27,000 Palestinians have been
confirmed killed in Israel's assault, with thousands more dead
feared unrecovered in the rubble. Israel says it has killed 10,000
gunmen and lost 226 soldiers in Gaza fighting, after 1,200 people
were killed in the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
After Israel announced last week that it was preparing for a
potential ground assault on Rafah, international aid agencies and
the U.N. said they feared the humanitarian consequences would be
catastrophic, with no place left for residents to flee.
Gazans fear that a thrust into Rafah would drive them out of the
enclave once and for all, into Egypt which rejects any attempt to
force them across.
An Israeli official told Reuters that the military would coordinate
with Egypt, and seek ways of evacuating most of the displaced people
northward, ahead of any Rafah ground sweep.
A ceasefire now could head off such an assault, but would mean
Israel pausing without having achieved its stated aim of
annihilating Hamas. Some far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet
have said they would quit rather than back such a deal.
Netanyahu says he is committed to "total victory", and that any
pause in fighting would only be temporary as long as Hamas fighters
are still at large. Hamas says it will not agree a truce or free its
hostages unless it receives guarantees that Israel will pull out of
Gaza and end the war.
The exiled Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, said last week he would
travel to Cairo to deliver his response to the ceasefire proposal,
but he has yet to turn up there and Hamas has set no timetable for
his trip.
A Palestinian official with knowledge of the negotiations told
Reuters the Hamas response could come "soon", but it was up to
Blinken to nudge Netanyahu to make the concessions that would get
the ceasefire deal over the line.
"Netanyahu doesn't want to end the war. He wants a hostage release
deal. That is far short of what our people will accept," the
official said in an interview over a messaging app.
"Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and other factions want guarantees the
occupation will be committed to ending the war on Gaza and pull out
its forces from there. Those are the key demands," he said. "The
Americans can restrain Netanyahu if they want to end the war and
succeed in mediation."
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Doha with additional reporting by
Dan Williams in Jerusalem; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Mark
Heinrich)
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