GAZA: Hamas said on Saturday it was ready to go ahead with the "remaining stages" of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, as the first phase drew to a close with uncertainty over the following stages. "We affirm our keenness to complete the remaining stages of the ceasefire agreement, leading to a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire, full withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, reconstruction and lifting the siege," the Palestinian militant group said in a letter to the Arab League summit due to be held on March 4. "We categorically reject the attempt to impose any non-Palestinian projects or forms of administration or the presence of any foreign forces on the territory of the Gaza Strip," it added.
Over the initial six-week phase, Gaza militants freed 25 living hostages and returned the bodies of eight others to Israel, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. A second phase of the fragile truce was supposed to secure the release of dozens of hostages still in Gaza and pave the way for a more permanent end to the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sent a delegation to Cairo, and mediator Egypt said "intensive talks" on the second phase had begun with the presence of delegations from Israel as well as fellow mediators Qatar and the United States. But by early on Saturday, there was no sign of consensus, and Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group rejected "the extension of the first phase in the formulation proposed by the occupation (Israel)". He called on mediators "to oblige the occupation to abide by the agreement in its various stages". Max Rodenbeck, of the International Crisis Group think tank, said the second phase cannot be expected to start immediately. "But I think the ceasefire probably won't collapse also," he said.
The preferred Israeli scenario is to free more hostages under an extension of the first phase, rather than a second phase, Defence Minister Israel Katz said. A Palestinian source close to the talks said that Israel had proposed to extend the first phase in successive one-week intervals with a view to conducting hostage-prisoner swaps each week, adding that Hamas had rejected the plan.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire "must hold". "The coming days are critical. The parties must spare no effort to avoid a breakdown of this deal," Guterres said in New York. The truce enabled greater aid flows into the Gaza Strip, where more than 69 per cent of buildings were damaged or destroyed, almost the entire population was displaced, and widespread hunger occurred because of the war, according to the United Nations. The Gaza war began with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to official figures. The Israeli retaliation has killed 48,388 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory, figures the UN has deemed reliable. Though the truce has effectively held, there have been a number of Israeli strikes. On Friday the military said it targeted two "suspects" approaching troops in southern Gaza, where a hospital said it had received the body of one person killed in a strike.
Meanwhile, Switzerland said it will host an international conference on March 7 on the protection of Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories, as called for in a United Nations vote. The 196 signatories to the Geneva Convention will be invited to the meeting, which will be attended by ambassadors, a spokesperson for the Swiss foreign ministry said. Such "conferences of high contracting parties" cannot take binding decisions but can "reaffirm the rules of international humanitarian law and the obligations", the Swiss government says on its website. — AFP
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