After visiting Egypt and Qatar, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken will continue his meetings this Wednesday with Israeli leaders for his fifth tour of the Middle East.
On the agenda, the truce in the fighting in the Gaza Strip formulated at the end of January in Paris by American, Qatari and Egyptian officials.
Hamas confirmed that it had submitted its response on Tuesday, without detailing it, to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
A Palestinian movement source said the three-phase project included a six-week truce during which Israel would have to release 200 to 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages held by Hamas, and more humanitarian aid. in Gaza.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane Al-Thani said he was “optimistic” that a truce would be reached, describing Hamas’s response which contained “some comments” as “generally positive”.
For its part, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that Hamas' response had indeed been "transmitted by the Qatari mediator to Mossad", the Israeli foreign intelligence services.
“Still a lot of work to do”
“The details are being examined carefully by the officials involved in the negotiations,” added the services of the Israeli Prime Minister who is due to speak with Antony Blinken four months to the day after the start of the war.
“There is still a lot of work to be done to achieve a new truce.
But we continue to believe that an agreement is possible and even essential, and we will continue to work tirelessly to achieve it,” explained the head of American diplomacy before his arrival in Israel.
According to him, the new draft agreement, drawn up at the end of January in Paris, “offers the prospect of prolonged calm, a release of hostages and an increase in aid” in Gaza, in the grip of a crisis. major humanitarian.
“It would clearly be beneficial for everyone,” he explained.
At the end of November, a first one-week truce allowed the increased entry of aid and the release of around a hundred hostages, out of the approximately 250 taken to Gaza on October 7, and Palestinian prisoners.
The fact remains that if Hamas demands a total ceasefire, Israel refuses, maintaining that its offensive in Gaza will only end once Hamas is eliminated and the hostages freed.
“We are on the path to total victory and we will not stop.
This position is that of the overwhelming majority of the population,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Rafah in the viewfinder
For now, the fighting continues.
As the US Secretary of State's plane landed in Tel Aviv, bombings and fighting were still underway less than a hundred kilometers to the south, in the Gazan towns of Khan Younes and Rafah, according to reports. witnesses.
Since the start of the war, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed by Israeli bombings and 1.7 million people have been displaced among the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants of the small territory.
More than 1.3 million displaced people are now crowded into desperate conditions in Rafah, five times the original population of this city backed by the closed border with Egypt, according to the UN.
Now this city could be Israel's next objective.
On Monday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who is also due to meet with Antony Blinken on Wednesday, warned that the army “would reach places where it has not yet fought until the last bastion of Hamas, namely Rafah” .
“An escalation of hostilities in Rafah could lead to large-scale loss of civilian life.
We must do everything in our power to avoid it,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA), declared in Geneva.
Outside Gaza, tensions remain high in the region between Israel and its allies on the one hand and Iran and its “axis of resistance” on the other, including, in addition to Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Tuesday evening, the Israeli army claimed to have got its hands on documents “proving” transfers of 154 million US dollars from Iran to Hamas from 2014 to 2020. And during the night, Israeli strikes on the region of Homs, in Syria, left five dead, including three civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).