War between Israel and Hamas: a few days before Ramadan, truce negotiations in the Gaza Strip are not “broken”

Difficult discussions. The US ambassador to Israel said on Thursday that truce talks in the Gaza Strip had not been “broken off” as the Hamas delegation left Cairo, where negotiations had been ongoing since Sunday. “There is no agreement yet. Everyone is looking at the approaching Ramadan. I can’t tell you this (negotiation) will be successful, but we cannot yet say that they are broken,” assured Jack Lew during a conference in Tel Aviv. “The differences are disappearing,” he said.

A senior Hamas official announced on Thursday that a delegation from the Palestinian Islamist movement was leaving Cairo, where it arrived on Sunday for truce talks, while Israel’s “initial responses” did not “meet the minimum requirements” set out by Hamas. Faced with a humanitarian disaster and heavy civilian casualties, the US, Qatar and Egypt are trying to reach an agreement on a pause in fighting ahead of Ramadan, which begins early next week.

Speaking at the same conference as the US ambassador, Gadi Eizenkot, a member of the Israeli military cabinet, confirmed that Hamas was facing “very strong pressure” from mediators to make a “counter offer”. “Then we can move forward and take a stand,” he said.

Hamas and Israel remain in their positions

Hamas demands, among other things, a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops before any agreement is reached on the release of hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. Israel, for its part, is demanding that Hamas provide an accurate list of the hostages still alive, but the Palestinian movement has said it does not know which of them are “dead or alive.”

The war in the Gaza Strip began on October 7 in an attack of unprecedented scale carried out by Hamas commandos infiltrating from the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, which the agency said killed at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians. The AFP tally is based on official Israeli data.

During the Hamas attack, approximately 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Israeli authorities say 130 people are still being held, of whom 31 are believed to have died, after more than a hundred hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners during a November truce. In response to the Hamas attack, Israel launched a military operation that has so far killed 30,800 people, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.