The Palestinian resistance group Hamas has urged Gaza mediators to implement U.S. President Joe Biden’s truce plan with out additional negotiations.
The name on Sunday got here after one of many deadliest Israeli strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip in additional than 10 months of its genocidal conflict killed almost 100 folks and extra Palestinians fled southern Gaza’s Khan Younis after a brand new Israeli army operation.
International mediators had invited Israel and Hamas to renew talks towards a long-sought truce and hostage-release deal after the preventing in Gaza and the killings of Iran-aligned Hamas and Hezbollah leaders sparked fears of a wider battle.
Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of prolonging the conflict for political acquire, has accepted the invitation from the United States, Qatar and Egypt for a spherical of talks deliberate for Thursday.
Hamas stated Sunday it wished the implementation of a truce plan laid out by Biden on May 31 and later endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, “rather than going through more negotiation rounds or new proposals.”
Hamas “demands that the mediators present a plan to implement what they proposed to the movement … based on Biden’s vision and the U.N. Security Council resolution, and compel the (Israeli) occupation to comply”, it stated.
Unveiling the plan, Biden had known as it a three-phase “roadmap to an enduring cease-fire and the release of all hostages,” and stated it was an Israeli proposal. Mediation efforts since then have failed to supply an settlement.
Hamas on Tuesday named its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar to succeed slain political chief and truce negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, killed July 31 in Tehran in an assault carried out by Israel.
Haniyeh’s killing, simply hours after Israel assassinated the army chief of Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah in a strike on Beirut, spurred intense diplomacy to avert a wider conflict within the Middle East.
In Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s principal metropolis already ravaged by months of bombardment and battles, journalists stated lots of of Palestinians had fled northern neighborhoods after Israel issued contemporary evacuation orders.
The army dropped leaflets and despatched cell phone messages warning of “dangerous combat” in al-Jalaa district and telling Palestinian residents to go away the world, which till Sunday had been designated a humanitarian protected zone.
Similar evacuation orders have preceded main army incursions, usually forcing Palestinians displaced quite a few instances by the conflict to pack up and go away.
People search for salvageable objects within the rubble of a constructing destroyed in Israeli bombardment within the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Aug. 11, 2024. (AFP Photo)
3-phase plan
The army stated in a press release its forces had been “about to operate against the … organizations in the area.”
It got here a day after civil protection rescuers within the Hamas-run territory stated an Israeli airstrike killed 93 folks at a faculty housing displaced Palestinians, sparking worldwide condemnation.
Israel claimed it focused Hamas members working out of Gaza City’s al-Tabieen faculty and mosque with “precise munitions,” declaring that “at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad … were eliminated.”
Mahmud Bassal, spokesperson for the civil protection company, stated Sunday that figuring out the victims might take no less than two days as “we have many bodies torn into pieces” and “shredded or burnt by the bombs.”
Hamas in its Sunday assertion cited the Israeli “massacre against the displaced at al-Tabieen school” and “our responsibilities towards our people and their interests” as the explanations for its announcement.
The Gaza conflict started with Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel which resulted within the deaths of 1,198 folks, in line with an AFP tally based mostly on official Israeli figures.
Resistance teams additionally seized 251 folks, 111 of whom are nonetheless held captive in Gaza, together with 39 the army says are useless.
Israel’s genocidal conflict in Gaza has killed almost 40,000 folks, principally girls and kids, in line with the territory’s Health Ministry.
Biden stated the primary section of the proposed roadmap features a “full and complete cease-fire” lasting six weeks, with Israeli forces withdrawing from “all populated areas of Gaza” and a few hostages freed in alternate for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The second section would see the remaining dwelling hostages launched because the warring sides negotiate “a permanent end to hostilities,” adopted by “a major reconstruction plan for Gaza” and the return of useless hostages’ stays.
‘Have to go someplace’
Hamas officers, some analysts and critics in Israel have stated Netanyahu has sought to extend the preventing for political acquire.
Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and different regional allies have vowed retaliation for Haniyeh’s killing and that of Hezbollah’s army chief Fuad Shukr.
Biden, requested what his message was to Iran, responded: “Don’t.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an plane service group to hasten its arrival within the Middle East, the Pentagon stated Sunday.
Austin additionally ordered the USS Georgia guided missile submarine to the world, a Pentagon spokesman stated.
The U.N. company for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, stated that “just in the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza”, the place Khan Younis is situated.
The complete Gaza Strip has a inhabitants of about 2.4 million folks.
Umm Sami Shahada, a 55-year-old displaced Palestinian, stated she had “fled Gaza City at the start of the war for Khan Younis,” hoping to search out shelter.
“My daughter was killed in the bombardment, so we went to Rafah, then we came back here, and now with this new evacuation order we don’t know where to go,” she stated.
Families gathered their meager belongings as crowds of individuals left al-Jalaa, some loading mattresses, clothes and cooking utensils into pick-up vans. Others took to the highway on foot or left on donkey-drawn carts.
Majd Ayyad, displaced from Gaza City, stated: “We have to go somewhere, and we don’t know if it will be good or bad.”
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