Hamas has asked Egypt and Qatar for more clarity on terms of deal – reports
Hamas has asked Egyptian and Qatari mediators to provide clarity on the terms of the latest ceasefire proposal being discussed as part of negotiations with Israel, an Egyptian official told Associated Press on Wednesday.
The official, who has close ties to the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity in order to freely discuss the deal, said Hamas wants clear terms for the unconditional return of displaced people to the north of Gaza and to ensure that the second stage of the deal will include discussing the gradual and complete withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the entire Gaza Strip.
The official said the current deal didn’t fully explain who would be allowed to return north and how it would be decided.
The emerging phased deal includes the release of 33 civilian and sick hostages held by militants in exchange for a halt to the fighting and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Key events
As well as the protests at BAE Systems factories in the UK [see 10.50 BST], there is also a pro-Palestinian camp set up outside the Scotland’s parliament in Edinburgh.
As well as the camp itself, one protester has undertaken a hunger strike, which is now in its fifth day. In a statement they said:
After much time thinking and praying through this decision I have decided to partake in a hunger strike outside the Scottish parliament in protest to UK and Scotland’s complicity to the crimes of genocide happening in Gaza.
The decision to do this has come from a place of deep unresolvable grief. After 6 months of destruction and death, I’ve only wanted to scream, fight, and destroy in rage of the injustices in Gaza. Even with all this desire to rage I have always only found myself in a spaces of silence.
Not silence of inaction, that is not what I am meaning. But a silence of disbelief. Of disbelief of the overwhelming magnitude of the reality that is happening in Gaza.
Among the campaign’s demands are that the Scottish government apply pressure on the UK government to enact an embargo on all Israeli arm sales, and that local pensions funds and local Universities in Scotland divest from links to Israel.
Antony Blinken has posted to social media about his earlier visit today with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog. The US secretary of state said the meeting was to “discuss our support for Israel’s security and efforts to reach a ceasefire that secures the release of hostages,” adding “we also discussed the urgent need to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
I met with President @Isaac_Herzog in Tel Aviv to discuss our support for Israel’s security and efforts to reach a ceasefire that secures the release of hostages. We also discussed the urgent need to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. pic.twitter.com/8JF2m5yRUc
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 1, 2024
The court of King Abdullah II of Jordan has announced that he has departed for Italy and then the US. It said, in a post on social media, “the working visits comes within the framework of Jordan’s efforts to reach an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza, and stop the humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip.”
Three arrests have been made in London at a demonstration against UK arms sales to Israel. PA Media reports as Metropolitan police statement said: “We are policing a protest in Admiralty Place and Horse Guards Parade. Officers have made three arrests after protesters blocked access to a building. Protesters must stay within the law.”
Organisers have said more than 1,000 workers and trade unionists demonstrated outside BAE Systems sites in three locations, as well as the London offices of the Business and Trade department, with the aim of showing solidarity with Palestinian workers.
Speaking in Glasgow demonstrator Jamie – who did not wish to give a surname, said: “Our fundamental aim is for the UK Government to introduce an arms embargo, it’s the morally right thing to do. It’s been almost seven months of death and destruction in Palestine, and the idea that that is being committed by weapons that are being produced in our neighbourhoods is horrifying.”
France’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that there was still work to be done to secure a truce between Israel and Gaza after he was updated by Egyptian officials in Cairo on the status of negotiations.
“We came to coordinate our efforts for a truce. The messages given by France and its Arab partners in the region is that Israel pulls back on this offensive in Rafah,” Stéphane Séjourne said after meeting his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shukri.
He declined to say how optimistic he was of a deal being concluded, but added that if there were a truce he hoped that three French-Israeli dual nationals being held by Hamas would be on the list for release.
Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Gaza and Israel:
The US secretary of state Antony Blinken has met with Israeli leaders in his push for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas to impress on them that “the time is now” for an agreement that would free hostages and bring a pause in the nearly seven months of war.
Blinken, on his seventh visit to the region since the war erupted, said that Hamas would bear the blame for any failure to achieve a deal.
A truce could avert an Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering. Blinken on Wednesday also told families of hostages held in Gaza that Hamas needs to say yes to the deal.
Julian Borger
The US and Saudi Arabia have drafted a set of agreements on security and technology-sharing which were intended to be linked to a broader Middle East settlement involving Israel and the Palestinians.
However, in the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza and in the face of adamant resistance from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government to the creation of a Palestinian state – and its apparent determination to launch an offensive on Rafah – the Saudis are pushing for a more modest plan B, which excludes the Israelis.
Under that option, the US and Saudi Arabia would sign agreements on a bilateral defence pact, US help in the building of a Saudi civil nuclear energy industry, and high-level sharing in the field of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
Violent clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter demonstrations broke out at the University of California in Los Angeles. Here is our video report.
My colleague Chris Michael is live blogging the latest on that situation here.
A US vascular surgeon who left Gaza after a stint as a volunteer said on Wednesday nothing had prepared him for the scale of injuries he had faced there.
Speaking to Reuters, Shariq Sayeed, from Atlanta said he saw dozens of patients a day, telling the news agency:
Vascular surgery is really a disease for older patients and I would say I had never operated on anybody less than 16, and that was the majority of patients that we did this time around. Most were patients 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 years of age. Mostly shrapnel wounds, and that was something I have never dealt with, that was something new. And unfortunately there is a very high incidence of infection as well so once you have an amputation that doesn’t heal, you end up getting a higher amputation.
Ismail Mehr, an anaesthesiologist from New York state, who led the Gaza mission, told Reuters the volunteer medics were “speechless at what we saw” when they arrived in southern Gaza in April.
Truly everywhere I saw was destruction in Khan Younis, not a single building standing. I hope and I pray that Rafah is not attacked. The health system will not be able to take care of that. It will be a complete catastrophe.
Media in Israel and Lebanon are publishing outline details of the deal on the table for hostage releases and a pause in fighting in Gaza. It was initially published in the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar daily.
The details are quite intricate, and the Guardian has not independently verified the source of the document, but in an initial phase, three female hostages would be released every three days for the first 33 days, including soldiers. 40 Palestinain female detainees would be released by Israel in return for each female soldier. The IDF would agree to keep Gaza clear of all air traffic for between eight and ten hours on the days of the hostage release.
A second phase would start on the 34th day as living hostages, including male soldiers would be released in exchange for further prisoners. A third phase would involved the release of the bodies of dead hostages, and a five-year rehabilitation plan under which there would be a commitment for Palestinians not to build infrastructure for military purposes in Gaza or receive raw materials that could be used for such purposes.