Fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian Hamas continued to rage on Friday in the Gaza Strip despite
"first"
signs suggesting a new truce and the release of hostages, after almost four months of war.
Le Figaro
takes stock of the situation.
105 Palestinian civilians killed
During the night from Thursday to Friday, Palestinian witnesses reported Israeli raids in the center and south of the Gaza Strip, particularly in the area of Khan Younes, the second city in the territory where Israeli operations have been concentrated in recent weeks. .
And the Hamas Health Ministry counted at least 105 civilians killed in the evening and night across Gaza.
In parallel with these ground battles, diplomacy is active behind the scenes to try to impose a second truce, longer than that of a week last November and which allowed the release of around a hundred hostages held at Gaza and nearly 300 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas leader expected in Egypt to negotiate truce
Following a meeting in recent days in Paris between the head of the CIA, William Burns, and Egyptian, Israeli and Qatari officials, a new truce proposal was presented to the leadership of Hamas, whose leader Ismaïl Haniyeh, based in Qatar, is expected in Egypt.
According to a Hamas source, the proposal concerns three phases, the first of which provides for a six-week truce during which Israel will have to release between 200 and 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages held in Gaza, and 200 to 300 trucks of aid will be able to enter the Palestinian territory every day.
This proposal was
“approved by the Israeli side”
, declared Thursday the spokesperson for Qatar’s diplomacy, Majed al-Ansari.
“We now have a first positive confirmation from Hamas
,” he said, adding that he hoped that
“in the next two weeks we will be able to share good news on this subject
. ”
A source close to Hamas in Gaza, however, told AFP that there was still no consensus on the proposal, on the agenda for Ismaïl Haniyeh's discussions in Egypt, and that Qatar's statement was
"hasty and false." »
.
Demonstrations in Tel Aviv for the release of hostages
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure both from hostage families to reach an agreement and from ministers who threaten to leave the government in the event of an agreement that they believe is too generous towards the Palestinians.
On Thursday evening, demonstrators gathered in the Israeli metropolis Tel Aviv to demand an agreement allowing the release of the hostages.
“The only way is to make a deal
,” Moran Zer Katzenstein, 41, said on the spot.
"I still think that after this we will have time to deal with Hamas and remove it from the management and direction of Gaza (...) but we must first deal with the hostages
. "
US sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers
The war in Gaza has also exacerbated tensions in the occupied West Bank and at the regional level, between Israel and its allies on the one hand and Iran and its
“axis of resistance”
on the other , which includes, in addition to Hamas , Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and the Yemeni Houthis.
Israel's key ally, the United States announced rare sanctions on Thursday targeting extremist Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, with President Joe Biden denouncing an “
intolerable”
situation .
“These actions (by certain settlers in the West Bank) undermine the objectives of the foreign policy of the United States, including that of a two-state solution”
Israeli and Palestinian, and as such represent
“a threat to the national security of the United States
,” Joe Biden wrote in a decree.
Another sign of tensions between Israel and Western countries: the summons of the Israeli ambassador to Belgium after strikes which
“destroyed”
the offices of the Belgian development agency (Enabel) in Gaza, announced the head of Belgian diplomacy by evoking an
“unacceptable”
gesture .