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Hamas says it’s waiting for Israeli response on ceasefire proposal

Hamas is waiting for a response from Israel on its ceasefire proposal, two officials from the Palestinian group said on Sunday, five days after it accepted a key part of a U.S. plan aimed at ending the nine-month war in Gaza.

“We have left our response with the mediators and are waiting to hear the occupation’s response,” one of the two Hamas officials told Reuters, asking not to be named.

The three-phase plan was put forward at the end of May by U.S. President Joe Biden and is being mediated by Qatar and Egypt. It aims to end the war and free around 120 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.

Another Palestinian official, with knowledge of the ongoing ceasefire deliberations, said Israel was in talks with the Qataris.

“They have discussed with them Hamas’ response and they promised to give them Israel’s response within days,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters on Sunday.

Israel’s government made no immediate comment on the timing of its deliberations.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing an agreement. Instead, it said it would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, a Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

A Palestinian official close to the peace efforts has said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the war.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns will travel to Qatar next week for negotiations, a source familiar with the matter said.

The conflict, triggered by an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas fighters, has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.

Hamas killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages in the worst assault in Israel’s history, according to official Israeli figures.

FIFTEEN KILLED IN GAZA STRIKES

Protesters took to the streets across Israel on Sunday to pressure the government to reach an accord to bring back Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.

They blocked rush hour traffic at major intersections across the country, picketed politicians houses and briefly set fire to tires on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.

Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage across Gaza, which has been largely reduced to rubble in the conflict.

Palestinian health officials said at least 15 people were killed in separate Israeli military strikes across the enclave on Sunday.

An Israeli air strike on a house in the town of Zawayda, in central Gaza, killed at least six people and wounded several others, while six others were killed in an air strike on a house in western Gaza, the health officials said.

Tanks deepened their raids in central and northern areas of Rafah on the southern border with Egypt. Health officials there said they had recovered three bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the eastern part of the city.

The Israeli military said on Sunday its forces have killed 30 Palestinian gunmen in Rafah during close combat and air strikes.

In Shejaia, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, the military said its forces killed several Palestinian gunmen, and located weapons and explosives.

The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said fighters attacked Israeli forces in several locations across the Gaza Strip with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.

Regional Conflict Intersects in Syria

As host of the key transit routes and operations Tehran uses to support Lebanese Hezbollah, Syria is a key battlefield in the burgeoning regional conflagration.

Israel has intensified its strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah-linked targets in Syria since the October 7 Hamas attack.

Syria has not joined other Iran-led Axis of Resistance partners in attacking Israel directly because of the weakness of the Assad regime as well as political differences with Hamas.

Imagine Hitler with Nuclear Bombs; Now Imagine Iran’s Mullahs with Nuclear Bombs

The Iranian regime is rapidly pursuing acquiring nuclear weapons. This breakout must be prevented. Iran is already supplying terror groups with ballistic missiles. Why wouldn’t it equip these groups with nuclear weapons as well? (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)

The Iranian regime is rapidly pursuing acquiring nuclear weapons. This breakout must be prevented.

Iran is already supplying terror groups — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — with ballistic missiles. Presumably to hide behind “plausible deniability,” Iran’s regime does not seem particularly shy about arming these militias abroad with advanced weaponry. Why wouldn’t it equip these groups with nuclear weapons as well?

The Limited Options for Managing the Iranian Nuclear Question

While persuading Iran to roll back its nuclear programme at this stage may be difficult, the US and its allies can and should seek to reinforce Tehran’s perception that a decision to weaponise the programme would increase Iranian isolation and insecurity.

In recent months, unsettling rhetoric from senior Iranian individuals over the country’s nuclear programme – alongside continued Iranian advancements in this area and escalating tensions in the Middle East – has highlighted the urgency of finding a resolution to the now decades-old Iranian nuclear question. The options available to the US and its partners for inducing a roll-back of Iran’s programme are limited, given that economic threats and incentives, as well as security assurances, will be difficult to make meaningful and credible. However, Iran still appears to perceive some benefit from maintaining a threshold nuclear programme rather than developing a nuclear weapons capability. The US and its partners should leverage remaining carrots and sticks to reinforce this assumption, making clear to Tehran that it would be worse off with a nuclear weapons capability than its current threshold nuclear status.

Video Shows Perpetrator Of Crossbow Attack Near Israeli Embassy In Belgrade Swearing Allegiance To Islamic State (ISIS) Caliph, Threatening To Kill ‘Jews’ And ‘Crusaders’ Everywhere

On the morning of Saturday, June 29, 2024, a man injured a policeman after shooting him in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. The officer returned fire, killing the assailant, who was named as Milos Zujovic, a native of the Serbian town of Mladenovac born in 1999. Zujovic had converted to Islam and began calling himself Salah Al-Din. The Israeli embassy was closed at the time of the attack and none of its employees were harmed.[1]

How Israel’s war on Gaza is testing Turkey and Azerbaijan’s ties

Analysis: While Turkey has halted all trade with Israel amid the Gaza war, Azerbaijan continues to supply Tel Aviv with oil.

Amid global attention on pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the world, notably on US university campuses, another significant boycott campaign has been brewing in Turkey, albeit against Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel.

Securing Lebanon to Prevent aLarger Hezbollah-Israel War andWider Escalation

As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah escalate, the specter of a full-scale war, with the potential to draw in the United States and Iran, demands the US’ immediate attention. The Biden-Harris Administration has tasked, in response, White House Senior Advisor Amos Hochstein with the responsibility of mediating efforts to de-escalate the conflict and bring stability to the Lebanon-Israel border.

Attacking Lebanon will prove to be strategic suicide for Israel

Like a wounded animal, vicious but aimless, Israel is lashing out at Lebanon. But, as Emad Moussa writes, Hezbollah won’t be deterred by wider regional war.

The prospect of an all-out war between Israel and Lebanon reached new heights on July 3 after the Israeli army assassinated senior Hezbollah commander, Taleb Abdullah, outside Tyre.