Pressure mounts on Israel and Hamas to make a deal before threatened Rafah offensive
An Israeli negotiating team arrived in Paris on Friday for talks about a potential ceasefire in Gaza in the latest sign of tentative progress towards an agreement that could end the five-month-old war.
About 150 of 250 hostages seized by Hamas during its attack on southern Israel in October were released in a swap for Palestinian prisoners during a weeklong ceasefire in November. The attack, which triggered the Israeli offensive in Gaza, also killed 1,200 people, mostly in their homes or at a music festival.
Hamas has seen that allied groups such as Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant Islamist movement, are not ready to risk all-out war with Israel to support it and has suffered significant casualties, even if no senior leaders have yet been killed in the Israeli onslaught.and answer accusations inside Israel that he has sacrificed the return of hostages for his own political survival, analysts say.
“No agreement has been reached yet about an exchange deal – responsible sources put the chances at 50% – but a resumption of negotiations appears to be near at hand. After almost a month of impasse, there is hope,” Barnea said. According to the document, Israel would maintain security control over all land west of Jordan, including the occupied West Bank and Gaza – territories where Palestinians want to create an independent state. Any rehabilitation of Gaza, much of which has been reduced to ruins during the war, is conditional on “complete demilitarisation”.
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