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A proposed agreement to pause the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas envisages a truce of up to three months and a detainee and hostage exchange under which as many as 5,000 Palestinians could be freed from Israeli prisons, sources told The National on Tuesday.
But, they added, Hamas is standing by its demand for a permanent ceasefire and international guarantees for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
“The draft was sent to Hamas last night in Gaza and the tentative response was a ‘no’ but included a tentative ‘yes’ to most provisions,” said one of the sources.
“They said they will give their final and detailed answer by the end of the week.”
The head of Hamas's political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Tuesday that the group was studying the proposals and that he would visit Cairo to discuss them further.
He added that Hamas was open to any “serious and practical initiatives or ideas, provided that they lead to a comprehensive cessation of aggression” and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced hope on Monday that the agreement would halt the fighting in exchange for liberating the 132 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
“Very important, productive work has been done. And there is some real hope going forward,” Mr Blinken said after meeting Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman in Washington. Both the US and Qatar have been heavily involved in mediating the truce talks.
“Hamas will have to make its own decisions. I can just tell you that there is good, strong alignment among the countries involved that this is a good, strong proposal,” Mr Blinken said.
Very important, productive work has been done. And there is some real hope going forward
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Sheikh Mohammed also said progress has been made in the negotiations.
The proposal was drawn up during talks in Paris that began on Sunday between CIA chief William Burns, his Egyptian and Israeli counterparts, and officials from Qatar.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would not “release thousands of terrorists”.
“I would like to make it clear: we will not withdraw [the Israeli army] from the Gaza Strip and we will not release thousands of terrorists,” he said at Eli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
“None of this will happen.”
His office had earlier called the talks “constructive” but pointed to “significant gaps which the parties will continue to discuss”.
The sources said Hamas did not want an agreement that allowed Israel to resume its offensive in Gaza after all hostages are released.
They also pointed out that Mr Netanyahu had vetoed previous attempts to halt the fighting.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war will not end until Hamas is defeated and its military and governance capabilities are dismantled.
Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza has killed more than 26,700 Palestinians, displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents and razed large swathes of the territory’s built-up areas.
The war began on October 7 when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages.
“It is clear that there are contradictions that are difficult to overcome in an attempt to draw a road map,” a source in Gaza close to the Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, told The National.
“Israel set a war goal to eliminate Hamas as a military [force] and as a ruling authority. But it is forced to negotiate with Hamas to release its prisoners,” the source said.
“The length of the war and its consequences have forced Israel in the past to negotiate for truces and exchanges, and today for exchanges and long truces. But it is also worth mentioning that the Paris meeting was preceded by similar meetings in more than one European capital that did not lead to the desired result.”
The latest draft partially mirrors Egyptian proposals that were discussed in recent weeks but eventually rejected by Israel and Hamas.
It provides for a truce of up to three months and a three-phase detainee and hostage exchange, during which Hamas would free the rest of the captives it holds in Gaza in return for the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
Hamas freed more than 100 hostages during a week-long truce in November last year, while Israel released hundreds of Palestinian detainees from its jails. The truce collapsed on December 1.
Under the latest proposals, the first group of hostages will be made up of about 40 women, elderly people and those in need of medical treatment, the sources said.
The second group will include five female Israeli soldiers as well as the remains of hostages who have died since October 7.
The third group to be released will be made up of male civilians and active-duty Israeli military personnel, including officers.
Hamas remains adamant that the proposed 4,000-5,000 Palestinian detainees to be freed should include high-profile figures sentenced to life or long-term jail sentences, including Marwan Barghouti of Fatah, and Ibrahim Hamed, a senior commander of Hamas’s military wing.
In terms of the ratio of detainees to hostages for release, it has been proposed that Israel could free 100 Palestinians for every civilian hostage and 250 for every soldier.
Hamas and Israel would be expected to announce the names of the hostages and detainees to be released on the day of the exchange, the sources said, with delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross and Egyptian security officials overseeing the logistics of the swap.
The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to the proposal, would be carried out in tandem with the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza, having been forced to move southwards by the war.
The sources said Cairo would use the proposed truce to try to reconcile rival Palestinian factions, a goal that has for years eluded Egyptian mediators, in a bid to form an interim government in Gaza that oversees the reconstruction of the territory and prepares for legislative and presidential elections.
Egypt, which borders both Israel and Gaza, does not believe that Hamas could be completely left out of any postwar scenarios for the enclave and, like Washington, advocates for a demilitarised Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank that exists alongside Israel.
Mr Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution, while Hamas has rejected the idea that a future Palestinian state should be demilitarised.
Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007, when it expelled representatives of Fatah from the territory in a brief civil war. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the strip in 2005, ending 38 years of occupation.
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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Traits of Chinese zodiac animals
Tiger:independent, successful, volatile
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Ox:diligent, perseverent, conservative
Rabbit:gracious, considerate, sensitive
Dragon:prosperous, brave, rash
Snake:calm, thoughtful, stubborn
Horse:faithful, energetic, carefree
Sheep:easy-going, peacemaker, curious
Monkey:family-orientated, clever, playful
Rooster:honest, confident, pompous
Dog:loyal, kind, perfectionist
Boar:loving, tolerant, indulgent
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Qosty Byogaani
Starring: Hani Razmzi, Maya Nasir and Hassan Hosny
Four stars
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