Hamas in consultations with Palestinian factions over Gaza ceasefire
Al Jazeera :
The Palestinian group Hamas has said it is in consultations with various Palestinian factions about the latest ceasefire proposal for Gaza, as Israel’s relentless bombardment of the besieged enclave enters its 22nd month.
In a statement on Friday, Hamas said it had entered discussions “with the leaders of Palestinian forces and factions around the proposal it received” from the mediating countries.
A source close to Hamas told Reuters news agency the group has sought guarantees that the new United States-backed ceasefire proposal, the details of which two Israeli officials said were still being worked out, would lead to an end to Israel’s war on Gaza and not allow it to break the ceasefire and resume its attacks at any time of its choosing.
US President Donald Trump, who is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, said he expects a response from Hamas soon on whether they will accept what he describes as a “final proposal” for a ceasefire.
“We’ll see what happens, we are going to know over the next 24 hours,” he said when asked whether Hamas had agreed to the latest ceasefire deal framework.
Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalise a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, during which the parties will work to end the war.
The US is Israel’s main weapons provider and diplomatically but Trump claimed he wanted “to see safety for the people of Gaza. They’ve gone through hell.”
“I want the people of Gaza to be safe, more importantly,” Trump told reporters when asked if he still wanted the US to take over the Palestinian territory as he announced in February, a proposal which was condemned globally by rights experts, the United Nations and Palestinians who described it as “ethnic cleansing”.
A previous two-month truce ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on March 18 and led to what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called “the cruellest phase of a cruel war”. More than 6,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel broke the truce.
Overall, Israeli forces have killed at least 57,130 Palestinians and wounded more than 130,000 since October 7, 2023, when an attack spearheaded by Hamas in southern Israel led to the killing of an estimated 1,139 people.
In Gaza, hundreds of thousands have also been displaced multiple times, cities and towns have been razed, hospitals and schools targeted, and 85 percent of the besieged and bombarded territory is now under Israeli military control, according to the UN.