Jerusalem, Jan 21 (EFE) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of a proposal to “end the war” in Gaza in exchange for the release of all captives sparked on Sunday a new outcry from the families of hostages held by Hamas.
“I reject outright the terms of surrender of the Hamas monsters,” Netanyahu said in a video released by his office, in an apparent response to reports earlier on Sunday of a new deal proposal brokered by Qatar and Egypt.
According to Netanyahu, Hamas’ demands are “the end of the war, the exit of our forces from Gaza, releasing all the murderers and rapists of the Nukhba (Hamas’s elite military wing) and leaving Hamas intact.”
In the face of Netanyahu’s flat refusal, some of the families of the abductees marched to the Israeli prime minister’s residence in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia, where they decided to camp out in protest.
“My daughter didn’t just die, she died on our watch,” Orrin Gantz, the mother of Eden Zacharia, who was abducted and died in captivity at the age of 28, told the media and demonstrators, calling on the prime minister and the war cabinet to “give up on ego” in order to bring back the hostages.
But for Netanyahu, a ceasefire now would mean that “the next Oct. 7 will be only a matter of time,” he said in his speech, referring to the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli soil that left more than 1,200 dead and 240 kidnapped.
An estimated 136 are still being held in Gaza, although at least 27 of them have been killed, some by Israeli fire, according to the latest official information and propaganda videos distributed by Hamas on Telegram.
On the night of Friday 19, some family members camped out in front of Netanyahu’s second residence in the Israeli city of Caesarea, where the president usually spends his weekends. These protests were preceded by massive demonstrations throughout the country calling for the prioritization of the rescue of the hostages.
The Wall Street Journal reported in an exclusive on Sunday that Qatar and Egypt have presented Israel and Hamas with a proposal for a three-phase ceasefire to end the conflict for good.
The 90-day plan calls for a permanent ceasefire during which Hamas would release all civilian hostages, while Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, withdraw from Gaza’s cities, allow freedom of movement in the enclave, end the use of drones and double the amount of aid it allows in.
In a second phase, Hamas would release female soldiers and the bodies of those who died in captivity and Israel would release more prisoners, while in the third phase Israel would withdraw its troops to the Gaza border and the Islamist group would release all the soldiers and men of fighting age held hostage.
“If we agree to this, our soldiers fell in vain. If we agree to this, we cannot guarantee security for our citizens,” the prime minister said in his recorded speech.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the families of the hostages during his weekly meeting that there are ” initial signs” that the Israel Defense Forces are “advancing” toward their two goals: wiping out the Islamists and returning the captives.
In the Gaza Strip, 107 days into the military offensive, the death toll has already exceeded 25,000, in addition to 62,681 wounded, mostly women and children, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. EFE
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