JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated a demand on Sunday (Mar 30) for Hamas to disarm and for its leaders to leave Gaza as he promised to step up pressure on the group while continuing efforts to return hostages.
He said Israel would work to implement US President Donald Trump’s “voluntary emigration plan” for Gaza and said his cabinet had agreed to keep pressuring Hamas, which says it has agreed to a ceasefire proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Netanyahu’s comments were a recipe for “endless escalation” in the region.
Netanyahu rejected assertions that Israel, which has resumed its bombardment of Gaza after a two-month truce and sent troops back into the enclave, was not negotiating, saying “we are conducting it under fire, and therefore it is also effective”.
“We see that there are suddenly cracks,” he said in a video statement issued on Sunday.
On Saturday, Khalil al-Hayya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, said the group had agreed to a proposal that security sources said included the release of five Israeli hostages each week. But he said laying down its arms as Israel has demanded was a “red line” the group would not cross.
On Sunday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, health authorities in Gaza said at least 24 people, including several children, had been killed in Israeli strikes. Nine were killed in a single tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, they said.
Later on Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Service said it had finally been able to get access to search for rescue teams that had come under Israeli fire during a rescue mission in western Rafah, a week after the attack.
It said it had recovered 13 bodies from the scene, seven of them were Palestinian Red Crescent members, another five were from the Gaza Civil Emergency Service, and another was a United Nations worker. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Since Israel resumed its attacks in Gaza on Mar 18, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate areas in northern Gaza where they had returned following the ceasefire agreement in January.
Netanyahu said Israel was demanding that Hamas lay down its arms and said its leaders would be allowed to leave Gaza. He gave no detail on how long Israeli troops would remain in the enclave but repeated that Hamas’s military and government capacities must be crushed.
“We will ensure general security in the Gaza Strip and enable the implementation of the Trump plan, the voluntary emigration plan,” he said. “That is the plan, we do not hide it, we are ready to discuss it at any time.”
Trump originally proposed moving the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza to countries including Egypt and Jordan and developing the Gaza Strip as a US-owned resort. However, no country has agreed to take in the population and Israel has since said that any departures by Palestinians would be voluntary.
