Negotiations are intensifying with a view to a new truce between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel, at war in the Gaza Strip, which Washington hopes to see concluded next week.
Two weeks before the start of Ramadan, regularly cited as a deadline, and while the death toll from the war approaches 30,000 deaths in Gaza, the conditions of this truce remained unclear on Tuesday, following a meeting in Paris between Americans, Qataris, Egyptians and Israelis and following indirect negotiations between representatives of Hamas and Israelis in Egypt and Qatar in recent days.
“We had said that Ramadan would be a point of contention, of confrontation, and that we were going to push for there to be a break before the start of Ramadan,” said Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari, during a press conference in Doha, said he had the “hope, without necessarily being optimistic, of being able to announce something today or tomorrow”. “We are all aiming for this goal, but the situation remains changing on the ground,” he added.
American President Joe Biden had affirmed the day before that an agreement on a ceasefire and a release of hostages could be reached before the start of Ramadan, which is due to begin around Monday March 11.
Egypt said in Geneva on Tuesday that an offensive by the Israeli army in Rafah, in southern Gaza, would have “catastrophic repercussions” on peace in the Middle East. “Any military action under the current circumstances would have catastrophic repercussions that would jeopardize peace in the region,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri said, urging Israel not to attack Rafah and calling for a ceasefire. immediate fire.
The United States announced $53 million in new humanitarian aid for the Palestinians on Tuesday. The US Agency for International Development, USAID, announced that aid would flow through the World Food Program and NGOs, as Israel and Western powers turn away from the UN refugee agency Palestinians, UNRWA.
Announcing the aid in a video broadcast from Jordan, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said this new assistance “must reach people in need.” “Aid workers on the ground in Gaza risking their lives to bring food to people who desperately need it must be protected,” she added. This aid brings to $180 million the total amount of emergency aid provided by the United States to the Palestinians since the start of the war.
Hezbollah announced on Tuesday that it had launched, for the second day in a row, a new salvo of rockets against “the Meron air control base”, in response to Israeli air strikes the day before on eastern Lebanon. .
For the first time since the start of the war in Gaza, the Israeli army on Monday targeted Hezbollah positions in Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold located in the east of the country of Cedar, killing two fighters, well beyond the regions borders usually targeted. The UN special coordinator in Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, responded on Tuesday by “urging an immediate end to this dangerous cycle of violence.”
