Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli strike on a building in Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza Strip, November 14. Photo / AP
Israel, the United States and Hamas are close to an agreement to free dozens of hostages in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, it has been reported.
According to the Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the agreement, the release of hostages could begin within days.
Fifty or more hostages would be released in batches every 24 hours, according to the six-page agreement, the newspaper reported, while a pause in fighting would allow an influx of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.
There are 239 people believed to be held captive by Hamas after they were kidnapped in the terror attack on October 7.
The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment on the report, while a White House spokesperson said Israel and Hamas have not yet reached a deal on a temporary ceasefire.
The US is continuing to work to get a deal between the two sides, the spokesperson added.
A second Washington official told Reuters that no deal had been reached.
But Qatar’s prime minister shed more light saying the deal now hinges on “minor” practical issues, without providing details or a timeline.
“The challenges that remain in the negotiations are very minor compared to the bigger challenges, they are more logistical, they are more practical,” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told a joint press conference with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
Qatar has helped to broker talks aiming to free some of the hostages in return for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza war.
It comes after Israel on Saturday was preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza while air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools.
Hundreds of patients, medical staff and people displaced by Israel’s war against Hamas also left Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, with one evacuee describing a panicked and chaotic scene as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among those leaving and took some away.
Israel’s military has been searching Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command centre that it alleges is located under the facility - a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli troops and a small number of health workers to care for those too sick to move.
“We left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told the Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. “Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded UN shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camp’s Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.
“The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help,” Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the area “with the aim of hitting terrorists”. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimise civilian harm.
“Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced,” Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.
In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing its mission in western areas. “With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate,” he said, adding that the militants would learn that in southern Gaza “in the coming days”.
His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to southern Gaza, where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war. The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.
What led to the Shifa Hospital evacuation wasn’t immediately known. Israel’s military said it was asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave to do so and that it did not order an evacuation. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military ordered the facility cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.
A Shifa physician, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that about 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying.
Twenty-five of Gaza’s hospitals aren’t functioning due to a lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational, according to the World Health Organisation.
Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were used as militant command centres and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.
Internet and phone service were restored Saturday to Gaza, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. Fifty-two Israeli soldiers have been killed.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the Israeli military would have “full freedom” to operate within the territory after the war. The comments again put him in conflict with US visions for a post-war era in Gaza.
In an op-ed published Saturday in The Washington Post, US President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited and governed under a “revitalised Palestinian Authority” while world leaders work toward a peaceful two-state solution. Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state.
The US is providing weapons and intelligence support to Israel in its offensive to root out Hamas.
- With AP
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