Israel and Hamas work on a new ceasefire in the Gaza war

As the AFP news agency learned from Hamas circles, Haniya, who lives in Qatar, wanted to talk to Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel "about ending the aggression and the war, preparing an agreement on the release of prisoners and ending the siege of the Gaza Strip".

It was also said that Haniya wanted to make "several proposals", including a "temporary one-week ceasefire" in exchange for the release of 40 Israeli hostages, including women, children and men who are not members of the army.

Before his departure, Hanija had met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in Doha, as can be seen in pictures distributed by Tehran. Details of the meeting were initially not available. According to sources close to the militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which is allied with Hamas, its leader Siad al-Nachala will also travel to Egypt at the beginning of next week.

In November, 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel were released in the course of a one-week humanitarian ceasefire brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the USA.

According to Israeli information, there are currently 129 hostages still in the Gaza Strip. At a meeting with the families of the hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that his intelligence chief David Barnea was working on the release of all the hostages.

As AFP learned from negotiating circles, Barnea met this week with the head of the US foreign intelligence agency CIA, Bill Burns, as well as Qatar's head of government, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Warsaw, Poland. The talks are reportedly continuing with the aim of "reaching an agreement on the release of the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip in exchange for a ceasefire and the possible release of Palestinian prisoners".

At international level, the UN Security Council wanted to continue its deliberations on Wednesday on a new resolution on the Gaza war with a call for a ceasefire. The planned vote had already been postponed twice. The members are struggling to find a suitable wording in order to avoid a veto by the USA, Israel's most important ally.

The draft resolution originally submitted by the United Arab Emirates had called for an "urgent and permanent cessation of hostilities". According to information from diplomatic circles, the amended version now only refers to a "suspension" of the fighting.

Israel and Hamas have been at war for more than two months. On 7 October, hundreds of fighters from Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the EU and the USA, invaded Israeli towns and villages and committed atrocities against civilians. According to Israeli reports, around 1140 people were killed and around 250 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.

In response, the Israeli army has since bombed targets in the Gaza Strip and launched a ground offensive. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, which cannot be independently verified, more than 19,660 people have been killed so far.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. The Israeli military reported house-to-house fighting and more than 300 attacks within one day. These were directed against "dozens of terrorists and terrorist infrastructures", including rocket launching areas and military control centers in Chan Junis in the south of the Palestinian territory.

Hamas reported attacks on the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Yunis, Deir al-Balah in the center of the coastal strip and the city of Gaza in the north. According to Hamas, at least eleven people were killed.

The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly dire as a result of the ongoing fighting: according to the UN, the majority of hospitals are out of action and almost 85% of the 2.4 million inhabitants have fled to the south of the coastal strip to protect themselves from the fighting. Half of the population is suffering from extreme or severe hunger.

On Wednesday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that a convoy carrying 750 tons of food from Jordan had reached the Gaza Strip for the first time. The Israeli Civil Affairs Authority in the Occupied Territories (Cogat) also announced the construction of a pipeline to deliver drinking water from a mobile desalination plant in Egypt.

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