Israel said it was sending a delegation to Qatar for a new round of negotiations

Gaza:

A first aid ship plying a new maritime corridor from Cyprus began unloading its cargo of desperately needed food in Gaza Friday as Hamas proposed a new six-week truce in the war.

AFP footage showed the Open Arms, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday, towing a barge that the Spanish charity operating it says is loaded with 200 tonnes of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.

“World Central Kitchen is unloading the barge connected now to the jetty,” said Linda Roth, a spokesperson for the US charity that is working with Open Arms.

The Israeli military said it had deployed troops to “secure the area” around the jetty. The “vessel underwent a comprehensive security inspection,” it added.

The Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry said at least 149 people had been killed in the past 24 hours.

Witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in the southern Gaza Strip’s main city Khan Yunis as well as areas of the north where humanitarian conditions have been particularly dire.

As Muslim worshippers marked the first Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, thousands attended prayers in the revered Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, amid a heavy Israeli security presence and restrictions on entry.

“It’s the first year I see so many forces (police), and their eyes… Two years ago I could argue with them, but now… they’re giving us no chance”, said Amjad Ghalib, a 44-year-old carpenter.

In southern Gaza’s Rafah, the last major population centre yet to be subjected to a ground assault, AFPTV footage showed worshippers praying by the rubble of a destroyed mosque.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday he had approved the military’s plan for an operation in Rafah, where most of the Gaza Strip’s population has sought refuge, without providing details or a timeline.

The White House, which has said an assault on Rafah would be a “red line” without credible civilian protection plans, said it had not seen the plan approved by Netanyahu. 

“We certainly would welcome the opportunity to see it,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the United States could not support any plan without “credible” proposals to shelter more than one million Gazans.

‘Obstacle’ to peace

In negotiations aimed at securing a new truce and hostage deal, Hamas has put forward a new proposal for a six-week ceasefire and the exchange of several dozen Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, an official from the group told AFP. 

Hamas would want this to lead to “a complete (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a permanent ceasefire”, the official added.

The proposal would involve the release of some 42 hostages, who would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners at a ratio of between 20 and 50 prisoners per hostage, the official said, down from a previous proposal of roughly 100 to one.

Palestinian groups seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages during the Hamas attack of October 7, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 captives remain in Gaza including 32 presumed dead.

Israel said it was sending a delegation to Qatar for a new round of negotiations.

The White House said it was “cautiously optimistic” about the chances for a ceasefire but stressed that talks were far from over.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that things are moving in the right direction,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the Hamas proposal was “within the bounds” of what negotiators had been discussing in recent months.

The United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, has grown increasingly critical of Netanyahu over his handling of the war.

US Senate leader Chuck Schumer called for a snap Israeli election, describing Netanyahu as one of several “major obstacles” to peace in a speech praised by Biden.

“I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans,” the president said.

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party retorted that Israel was “not a banana republic but an independent and proud democracy”.

Dying ‘to keep families alive’

The United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine, with only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain Gaza’s 2.4 million people being let in.

With fewer aid trucks entering by road, efforts have multiplied to get relief in by air and sea.

Cyprus, the nearest European Union member country to Gaza, has said a second, bigger vessel is being readied for the fledgling maritime air corridor after the Open Arms completes its mission.

“God willing, they will bring food for the children, that’s all we ask for”, displaced Gazan Abu Issa Ibrahim Filfil told AFPTV.

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.

The ministry said Israeli troops opened fire from “tanks and helicopters” as Palestinians waited for an aid distribution at a roundabout in Gaza City on Thursday, killing 20 people and wounding dozens.

Mohammed Ghurab, director of emergency services at a local hospital, told AFP there were “direct shots by the occupation forces” on people waiting for a food truck. 

The Israeli military denied it had fired on the crowd. “Armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians were awaiting the arrival of the aid convoy,” and then “continued to shoot as the crowd of Gazans began looting the trucks”, an army statement said.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said: “People should not have to die while trying to keep their families alive. Distributing aid in Gaza should be done in a safe, dignified and predictable manner.”

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