DUBAI (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday rejected Hamas’ ceasefire proposal for the Gaza Strip as “unrealistic”, while announcing the sending of a delegation to Qatar to discuss a possible agreement.
The latest proposals from the Palestinian movement were examined on Friday during a meeting of the Israeli cabinet, the Prime Minister’s office said.
During this meeting, Benjamin Netanyahu gave the green light to the Israeli army’s preparations for an offensive in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’ plan provides, initially, for the release of women, children, elderly and sick people still held in the enclave, in exchange for 700 to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, according to a document consulted by Reuters.
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These releases would include 100 Palestinian prisoners sentenced to life in Israeli prisons in exchange for “female recruits” of the Israeli army.
Hamas added that it would agree on a date for a permanent ceasefire after the initial exchange of hostages and prisoners.
The next step, according to Hamas’ proposal, would be to determine a deadline for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
All detainees from both camps would be released in a second phase.
In Washington, the White House spokesperson for national security, John Kirby, declared himself “cautiously optimistic” following this proposal, which is “certainly within the limits, broadly speaking (… ) of the agreement we have been working on for months”,
“We are cautiously optimistic that things are moving in the right direction, which does not mean that it is done,” he added.
The three mediator countries, Qatar, Egypt and the United States, say they continue to work towards a settlement acceptable to both parties to put an end to the conflict in Gaza, where a quarter of the population is threatened with famine.
(Report by Samia Nakhoul, written by Nayera Abdallah; French version Kate Entringer and Sophie Louet, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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