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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that total victory in Gaza was within reach, rejecting the latest offer from Hamas for a ceasefire to ensure the return of hostages still held in the besieged enclave.
Amid mounting deaths and devastation, Hamas had proposed a three-stage plan to halt its ongoing conflict with Israel. The plan, which envisaged three truce periods of 45 days each, was in response to a proposal sent last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators and cleared by Israel and the US.
The details of that proposal were not widely reported, but Reuters has seen the Hamas document.
The ceasefire plan came on a day US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel again, and Saudi Arabia has said it will not normalise ties with the Jewish nation unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised.
What are the three stages?
In phase 1, Israeli women hostages, boys under 19, and the sick and the elderly will be released, in exchange for Palestinian women and children in Israeli jails. Israel will withdraw its military for populated areas, and reconstruction, specially of hospitals, will begin in Gaza.
In phase 2, the other male hostages will be released and Israeli troops will withdraw from all of Gaza.
In phase 3, bodies and mortal remains of those killed on both sides will be exchanged.
Hamas says that in this 135-day period, an agreement will be worked out to end the war.
A source told Reuters that Hamas also wanted guarantees from Qatar, Egypt and other friendly states that the ceasefire would not collapse as soon as hostages are freed.
US President Joe Biden had said Hamas’s demands were “a little over the top”, but negotiations would continue.
Netanyahu is under pressure from the right-wing elements in his government, who say they will not allow any concession to Hamas, and the families of hostages, who want their loved ones back.
What has the war done so far?
According to the Hamas health ministry, more than 27,700 Palestinians have been killed and at least 65,000 injured in the war so far. Despite the high death toll, the “total victory” Netanyahu talks of might not be achievable, some Israeli officials have acknowledged.
Outside of the battlefield, the violence seems to have wrecked the historic Israel-Saudi agreement that had been in the works before October 2023. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, many had said the timing seemed an attempt to sink this agreement, which would have meant Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Arab world, recognising Israel, in return for defence and economic benefits from the US and the Jewish nation. Saudi Arabia has now retreated to the position that no improvement of ties is possible till a state of Palestine is recognised on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
