21 November 2023 , 23:16
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Hamas is “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel to allow the release of more than 50 hostages, all of them women and children, it was claimed last night.
Intense negotiations continued between Qatar, the US, Israel and Hamas to seal the deal. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh made his “truce” comments in a statement posted on Telegram. But while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said progress was being made and he hoped “there will be good news soon”, he warned last night that Israel will continue its campaign against Hamas even if a temporary ceasefire is reached.
In comments ahead of an expected Cabinet vote on a ceasefire proposal, Mr Netanyahu said: “We are at war and we will continue the war. We will continue until we achieve all our goals.” Mr Netanyahu called the return of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 a “sacred and supreme mission” as he faced continuing anger from family members over the slow progress in securing their release.
Injured child from northern Gaza cared for at a hospital in the south (AFP via Getty Images)Israeli media reports said an agreement would include a five-day halt in Israel’s offensive in Gaza and the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for some 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Israel’s Channel 12 TV said the first releases would be expected to take place on Thursday or Friday . Majed Al-Ansari, from Qatar’s foreign ministry, said: “We are at the closest point ever in reaching an agreement.” He added that negotiations were at a “critical and final stage”.
US President Joe Biden said a deal is now “very close”, adding: “We’ve been working on this intensively for weeks.” But Irish citizen Tom Hand, whose nine-year-old daughter Emily is one of 240 hostages held in Gaza, said: “I will believe it when I see it.” Palestinian sources said 50 to 100 Israeli civilian and foreign hostages would be freed, but no military personnel.
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
In exchange, some 300 Palestinians would be released from Israeli jails, among them women and children. The deal would include an immediate five-day ceasefire with up to 300 trucks of food and medical aid allowed to enter Gaza. As talks rumbled on, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said there is “no way to achieve security and stability except through the... two-state solution”.
Emily Hand is missingMeanwhile, Unicef spokesman James Elder called the health situation in Gaza “a perfect storm for tragedy”. He added: “Without enough fuel, we will see the collapse of sanitation services. So we have then, on top of the mortars and the bombs, a perfect storm to spread disease. We have a desperate lack of water, faecal matter strewn across densely populated settlements, lack of latrines, severe restraints on hand-washing, hygiene and cleaning.”
Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital is “a mass grave”, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza said. Citing the head of the hospital’s nursing department, its spokesman said: “There are corpses in all departments and we lost many lives due to lack of supplies. There are 60 bodies in front of the mortuaries.” The announcement of a potential deal came as Israeli troops battled militants in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza and around hospitals crowded with patients and families.
Palestinian health officials said yesterday they had lost the ability to count the dead because of the partial collapse of Gaza’s health system and the difficulty of retrieving bodies from areas overrun by Israeli tanks
and troops. The Health Ministry, which carefully tracked casualties over the first five weeks of war, gave its most recent death toll of 11,078 on November 10.