By Ami Bentov, Tia Goldenberg, Samy Magdy and Joseph Krauss | Associated Press
RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (AP) — Egypt’s president announced Sunday his country has proposed a two-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas during which four hostages held in Gaza would be freed. There was no immediate response from Israel or Hamas as the latest talks were expected in Qatar, another key mediator.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said the proposal includes the release of some Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza. It aims to “move the situation forward,” he said, adding that negotiations would continue to make the cease-fire permanent.
Talks in pursuit of a longer, phased cease-fire have repeatedly stalled. Hamas wants Israeli forces out of Gaza as a precondition, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said they will remain until destroying Hamas. There hasn’t been a cease-fire since November’s weeklong pause in fighting in the earliest weeks of the war.
Israel’s Mossad chief was traveling to Doha on Sunday for talks with Qatar’s prime minister and the CIA chief in the latest attempt to end the fighting and ease regional tensions that have built since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
Those tensions now see Israel at war with both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and openly attacking Iran, their backer, for the first time this weekend. Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday said Israel’s strikes — in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack this month — “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation.
During a government memorial for the Hebrew anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that “not every goal can be achieved through only military operations,” adding that “painful compromises will be required” to return the hostages.
At the same event, protesters disrupted Netanyahu’s speech, shouting “Shame on you.” Many Israelis blame him for the security failures that led to the attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing hostages home.
Inside Gaza, the latest Israeli strikes in the north killed at least 33 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said, as an offensive in the hard-hit and isolated area entered a third week. The U.N. secretary-general called the plight of Palestinians there “unbearable.” Israel said it targeted militants.
Netanyahu says strikes on Iran achieved Israel’s goals
Netanyahu in his first public comments on the strikes said “we severely harmed Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us.”
Satellite images showed damage to two secretive Iranian military bases, one linked to work on nuclear weapons that Western intelligence agencies and nuclear inspectors say was discontinued in 2003. The other is linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran said a civilian had been killed, with no details. It earlier said four people with the military air defense were killed.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, said “it is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime.” Khamenei would make any final decision on how Iran responds.
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Monday at Iran’s request. Switzerland, which holds the council’s rotating presidency, said Russia, China and Algeria, the council’s Arab representative, supported the request.
Iran’s most powerful proxy is Hezbollah, which has stepped up firing on Israel in response to Israel’s ground invasion in southern Lebanon in recent weeks.
Two Israeli strikes killed eight people in Sidon in southern Lebanon, with 25 wounded, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
The Israeli military said four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, without providing details. An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon wounded five people in Israel, authorities said.
Truck ramming in Israel wounds dozens
A truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon near Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding more than 30. Israeli police said the attacker was an Arab citizen of Israel and had been “neutralized.” The ramming occurred outside a military base and near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack but did not claim it.
Tensions have soared since the war in Gaza began, and Israel has carried out regular military raids into the occupied West Bank that have left hundreds dead.
‘Harrowing levels of death’ in northern Gaza
The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said 11 women and two children were among 22 killed in strikes late Saturday in Beit Lahiya in the north. Israel’s military said it carried out a strike on militants.
Ministry official Hussein Mohesin said 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in the Shati refugee camp in the north, with many injured. “Most of the injuries are children and women, and most of them are in very serious condition,” he said. Israel’s military did not immediately comment.
Israel has waged a massive air and ground offensive in northern Gaza since early October, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled in the latest wave of displacement.
Aid groups have warned of a catastrophic situation. Israel has severely limited the entry of humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north say they have been overwhelmed. The U.N. secretary-general noted “harrowing levels of death.”
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages remain in Gaza, around a third of whom thought to be dead.
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Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The offensive has devastated much of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Magdy from Cairo and Krauss from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press reporters Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
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