Washington has increased pressure on all sides to reach a ceasefire (File)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Tuesday that the military would launch a ground offensive on the city of Rafah, on the southern tip of Gaza, “with or without” a truce agreement being negotiated with Hamas.
The aggressive prime minister issued the warning despite strong concerns raised by key ally Washington and hours before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on his latest Middle East crisis trip.
“The idea that we will stop the war before we achieve all its objectives is out of the question,” said Netanyahu, who promised to destroy Hamas during the October 7 attack that triggered the deadliest war ever in Gaza.
“We will enter Rafah and eliminate the Hamas battalions with or without an agreement in order to achieve total victory,” he told the families of some of the hostages still detained in Gaza, his office said.
Netanyahu’s comments came as Hamas weighed the latest truce plan proposed in Cairo talks with US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators, which raised cautious hopes of an end to the fighting.
The Palestinian group Hamas said it was considering a plan for a 40-day ceasefire and the exchange of dozens of hostages for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners.
The Islamist group, whose envoys returned from the Cairo talks to their base in Qatar, would “discuss the ideas and the proposal”, a Hamas source said, adding that “we are eager to respond as quickly as possible”.
Sources in Egypt previously told Al-Qahera News, a website linked to Egyptian intelligence services, that Hamas envoys were expected to “return with a written response.”
An Israeli official told AFP the government would “wait for answers until Wednesday night” and then “make a decision” about sending negotiators to Cairo.
– ‘Only obstacle’ –
Washington has increased pressure on all sides to reach a ceasefire – a message promoted by Blinken, who was on his seventh regional trip since the start of the war.
Blinken, who arrived in Jordan from Saudi Arabia and later headed to Israel for talks with Netanyahu and other officials on Wednesday, described Israel’s offer as “extraordinarily generous.”
Washington strongly supported its ally, but also pressured it to refrain from a ground invasion of Rafah, which is teeming with displaced civilians, and to do more to protect the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants.
President Joe Biden, facing growing fury on U.S. college campuses, on Monday urged Egyptian and Qatari leaders “to exert every effort to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.”
Biden called this “the only obstacle” to securing aid for Gaza civilians, who the UN has warned are on the brink of starvation.
Anger at the unprecedented scale of Palestinian suffering has triggered weeks of large-scale protests at universities in the United States and elsewhere, including in France and Lebanon.
Columbia University in New York, the epicenter of the US protest movement, began suspending student protesters on Monday after they defied an ultimatum to disperse.
– Children pulled from the rubble –
As diplomacy continued, Israel continued its bombing that leveled areas of Gaza.
An AFP correspondent reported several airstrikes on Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Rafah, as well as artillery shelling overnight.
The Israeli military said “fighter jets struck several terrorist targets in central Gaza.”
Palestinians in Rafah mourned the latest victims as children were pulled from the rubble.
At Al-Najjar hospital, anguished relatives huddled over the dead, whose bodies were shrouded in white.
“We demand that the entire world call for a lasting truce,” said a grieving relative, Abu Taha.
The war began after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count of official Israeli data.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed at least 34,535 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
Palestinian militants also took around 250 hostages on October 7. Israel estimates that 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 believed dead.
Unlike the group Netanyahu met with on Tuesday, which advocated military action, many hostage families called on the government to guarantee the freedom of their loved ones through a truce agreement.
At a press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday, Aviva Siegel – freed during a truce in November and whose husband Keith remains in captivity in Gaza – called on “the leaders of the free world to help us bring our people home”.
– Post-war state? –
As the Gaza war roils the region and its human cost provokes international outrage, political momentum in the search for a post-war solution to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict increases.
European and Arab foreign ministers met in the Saudi capital on Monday to discuss how to join forces to advance a two-state solution.
Netanyahu and many members of his far-right government oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he expected several European governments to announce their recognition of a Palestinian state next month, including Belgium, Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Spain.
To provide Israel with an incentive to support a Palestinian state, Washington promoted the prospect of normalized relations with Gulf kingpin Saudi Arabia, with Blinken suggesting that some progress was being made in that area.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said irreversible steps towards the establishment of a Palestinian state would be an essential component of any lasting ceasefire.
Meanwhile, China said rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah recently met in Beijing for “talks on promoting intra-Palestinian reconciliation.”
Hamas took exclusive control of Gaza in 2007, while Fatah maintains partial administrative control in the West Bank occupied by Israel through the Palestinian Authority.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said “the two sides have fully expressed their political will to achieve reconciliation”, without saying when they met.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
This story originally appeared on Ndtv.com read the full story
