Hamas proposes 135-day Gaza truce with complete Israeli withdrawal

[February 07, 2024]  By Samia Nakhoul and Andrew Mills

DOHA/TEL AVIV/GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas has proposed a ceasefire to quiet the guns in Gaza for four-and-a-half months, during which all hostages would go free, Israel would withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip and an agreement would be reached on an end to the war.

The militant group's proposal - a response to an offer sent last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators and cleared by Israel and the United States - came during the biggest diplomatic push yet for an extended halt to the fighting.

Israel's Channel 13 cited a senior official as saying some of the demands presented by Hamas were not acceptable to Israel, without providing details. Israel has previously said it will not pull its troops out of Gaza until Hamas is wiped out.

The report quoted the unidentified official as saying Israeli authorities would debate whether to reject Hamas's proposals outright or ask for alternative conditions.

But the Hamas offer, in a document seen by Reuters and confirmed by sources, appears to finesse Hamas's longstanding demand for a full end to the war as a pre-condition before releasing hostages it seized on Oct. 7 in the raid that precipitated Israel's assault.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived overnight in Israel after meeting the leaders of mediators Qatar and Egypt, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the proposal.

A source close to the negotiations said the Hamas counterproposal did not require a guarantee of a permanent ceasefire at the outset, but that an end to the war would have to be agreed during the truce before final hostages were freed.

A second source said Hamas still wanted guarantees from Qatar, Egypt and other friendly states that the ceasefire would be upheld and not collapse as soon as hostages go free.

"They want the aggression to stop and not temporarily, not where (the Israelis) take the hostages and then the Palestinian people live in a grinder."

Ezzat El-Reshiq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, confirmed the offer had been passed via Egypt and Qatar to Israel and the United States.

"We were keen to deal with it in a positive spirit to stop the aggression against our Palestinian people and secure a complete and lasting ceasefire as well as provide relief, aid, shelter and reconstruction," he told Reuters.

According to the document, during the first 45-day phase, all Israeli women hostages, males under 19 and the elderly and sick would be released, in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw troops from populated areas.

Implementation of the second phase would not begin until the sides conclude "indirect talks over the requirements needed to end the mutual military operations and return to complete calm".

The second phase would include the release of remaining male hostages and full Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza. Bodies and remains would be exchanged during the third phase.

"People are optimistic, at the same time they pray that this hope turns into a real agreement that will end the war," Yamen Hamad, a father of four sheltering in a U.N. school in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip told Reuters via a messaging app.

Palestinian kids stand at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 7, 2024. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

In Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where half of the enclave's 2.3 million people are penned against the border fence with Egypt, the bodies of 10 people killed by Israeli strikes overnight were laid out in a hospital morgue. At least two of the shrouded bundles were the size of small children. Relatives wept beside the dead.

'MORE STRIKES, MORE BOMBING'

"Every visit from Blinken, instead of calming things down, it just makes things worse, we get more strikes, we get more bombing," said mourner Mohammad Abundi.

Israel began its military offensive after militants from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Gaza's Health Ministry says at least 27,585 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. There has been only one truce so far, lasting just a week at the end of November.

Netanyahu is under competing pressure from far-right members of his coalition government who say they will quit rather than endorse any deal that fails to eradicate Hamas, and from families of hostages who demand a deal to bring them home.

Washington has cast the hostage and truce deal as part of plans for a wider resolution of the Middle East conflict, ultimately leading to reconciliation between Israel and Arab neighbours and the creation of a Palestinian state.

"We will be working as hard as we possibly can to try to get an agreement so that we can move forward with - not only a renewed but an expanded agreement on hostages - and all the benefits that that would bring with it,” Blinken said at a news conference in Doha late on Tuesday.

Netanyahu has rejected a Palestinian state, which Saudi Arabia, the biggest prize in Israel's quest for acceptance from Middle East neighbours, says is a requirement for any deal to normalise relations with Israel.

The diplomatic push comes amidst intense combat in Gaza, with Israel pushing to capture the main city in the south of the enclave, Khan Younis, and fighting also resurging in northern areas Israel claimed to have subdued months ago.

Last week, Israel said it plans to storm Rafah, raising alarm among international aid organisations who say an assault on the last refuge at Gaza's edge would cause a humanitarian catastrophe for more than a million displaced people.

The Israeli military said it had killed dozens of militants in fighting over the past 24 hours. It has made similar claims throughout the fighting in Khan Younis, which could not be independently verified.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Andrew Mills and Samia Nakhoul in Doha, Pamuk Humeyra in Tel Aviv; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Sharon Singleton)

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