Switch off the editor’s digest free of charge
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Israel has stopped all humanitarian aid for Gaza after the militant group of Hamas rejected a revised proposal to extend the ceasefire that decayed early Sunday in the early Sunday and sentenced the latest plan as “manipulation”.
The conflict in Gaza was discontinued for 42 days after the two warfare parties in January in January, through us, Egyptian and Qataric mediation had approved a first ceasefire.
Israel and the Hamas have exchanged mutual accusations for violations of the deal in the past few days and have not agreed to expand the ceasefire into a second stage that should have ended the war and were said to have secured the war and the publication of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Sunday that Israel had agreed to a proposal that was allegedly designed by the US special officer Steve Witkoff, who would have extended the armistice by Ramadan’s Muslim holiday for another six weeks.
The proposal stipulates that on the first day of the deal, Hamas publish half of their remaining hostages, around 30 people, when the two sides, according to the Netanyahus office, begin talks about a “permanent ceasefire”. Hamas would then undertake to publish all the remaining hostages, “in the end. . . If an agreement is made, ”said the Israeli side.
It remains unclear whether Witkoff and the administration of US President Donald Trump are behind the proposal published by Israel, although analysts believe that such an Israeli explanation and the limit for Gaza will probably have been coordinated with Washington.
Mahmoud Mardawi, a Hamas spokesman, immediately rejected the proposal and said that Israel “repeatedly ward off the agreements signed by him and neither continues to avoid the implementation of his obligations”.
Mardawi confirmed the position of the group that the second stage of the ceasefire – a complete Israeli retreat from Gaza, a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of the smashed territory – would have to agree before additional hostages are published.
“This continuous manipulation will not return the (hostage) to their families, but on the contrary, on the contrary, lead to their suffering continued and their lives are endangered,” added Mardawi.
In response, Israel said that “the entire entry of goods and supply in the Gaza Strip is set,” says Netanyahu, who has been added: “Israel will not allow an armistice without the publication of our hostages. If Hamas continues its rejection, there will be further consequences. “
In a statement, Hamas described the decision as “cheap extortion, a war crime and an obvious cancellation of the agreement” and asked the international mediators to put Israel under pressure to reverse the step.
In the course of the first six -week ceasefirefire, Hamas published 33 Israeli hostages, eight of which were no longer alive, together with five Thai foreign workers. Israel, in turn, became more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners from his prisons and allowed 4,200 trucks to enter the Gaza a week.
Israel had delayed the starting talks in the second stage of the ceasefire, which should have started four weeks ago, as can be seen from the original contract signed in January. Last-ditch negotiations in Cairo could not bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas at the end of last week in Cairo.
Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that Israel would return to the war if it held the “negotiations ineffective”, and added that the US administration had guarantees such a step.
The US Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said on Saturday that he approved the accelerated delivery of $ 4 billion in the military support of Israel and, what he claimed to have a “partially weapon embargo” by President Joe Biden’s previous US management due to concerns about high civilian deaths and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Additional reporting from Heba Saleh in Cairo and Steff Chavez in Washington