Hamas said yesterday it was ready for a deal based on terms it said had been previously agreed, which it listed as an Israeli withdrawal, the return of displaced people to northern Gaza, and an exchange of Palestinian detainees for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has previously blocked progress towards a hostages-for-peace deal with his insistence that Israeli forces maintain control over the Philadelphia corridor, a buffer zone inside the Gaza-Egyptian border.
The Israel Defense Forces, meanwhile, appeared focused on emptying northern Gaza of its Palestinian population amid growing suspicions that Netanyahu's hard-right government intends to occupy the territory permanently.
The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said this week that Israel should occupy the Gaza Strip and halve its Palestinian population through the "encouragement of voluntary emigration". Smotrich said at an event on Monday night: "We can and must conquer the Gaza Strip. We should not be afraid of that word."
At about the same time, the agriculture minister, Avi Dichter, was telling a group of foreign correspondents that the ruling Israeli coalition remained focused on a "decisive victory" in Gaza. "Are we at the beginning of the end? Definitely not. We still have a lot to do," Dichter said, according to Reuters.
This story is from the November 28, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the November 28, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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