Dozens killed in Gaza amid ceasefire hopes – DW – 01/15/2025

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa has called on the international community to maintain the pressure on Israel in the wake of a potential Gaza truce.

“The ceasefire we’re talking about … came about primarily because of international pressure, so pressure does pay off,” Mustafa told a conference in Oslo, Norway.

He said Israel must “be shown what’s right and what’s wrong, and that the veto power on peace and statehood for Palestinians will not be accepted and tolerated any longer.”

Mustafa was speaking at a meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which has gathered representatives of around 80 states in the Norwegian capital.

Norway was one of several EU countries that recognized Palestinian statehood last May, sparking anger in Israel.

“We need to move forward now towards a two-state solution. And since one of the two states exists, which is Israel, we need to build the other state, which is Palestine,” said Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, the host of the meeting.

“A ceasefire is the prerequisite for peace, but it is not peace,” he added.

United States General Michael Kurilla is in Israeli for talks with his Israeli counterpart Herzi Halevi, according to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

“The commanders held a strategic meeting that focused on the regional situational assessment and examined courses of action to address threats and developments in the Middle East,” read a statement, adding that General Kurilla arrived in the region on Monday.

General Kurilla is the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) which oversees US operations in the Middle East.

Representatives of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group allied to Hamas in Gaza, have joined the ceasefire talks, an official told the news agency AFP on condition of anonymity.

“A high-ranking delegation from Islamic Jihad arrived in Doha on Tuesday evening,” said the official, adding that “discussions are ongoing, focusing on the mechanism for implementing the ceasefire agreement and the names of Palestinian prisoners included in the exchange deal.”

Despite ongoing ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, 24 more people were killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night.

The deaths takie the Palestinian death toll over the past 24 hours to 62 and in the entire conflict to 46,707, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the besieged enclave.

The Israeli military said it had carried out multiple “precise” strikes against “terrorist operatives” overnight, but Gaza’s civil defense agency said that three teenagers and a seven-year-old boy were among the dead.

The agency said that a family home had been struck in Deir el-Balah while seven people had been killed in a strike on a school building which it said was being used as a shelter for displaced civilians.

The current war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a deadly incursion into Israeli territory, killing over 1,200 people and taking over 200 hostages. Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has razed much of the enclave and resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

Negotiations were ongoing in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday as mediators made a final push to agree a ceasefire and hostage-exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been intensifying efforts this week to broker a truce that would see an end to hostilities in the Gaza Strip, the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the return of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

After US President Joe Biden and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called on both sides to show “flexibility,” a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman said that talks were in their “final stages” and could lead “very soon to an agreement.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a meeting with top security officials late on Tuesday to discuss the deal, while Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar insisted that there is “true willingness from our side to reach an agreement.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the “ball is now in Hamas’s court,” adding that if the Palestinian militant group agrees, “the deal is ready to be concluded and implemented.”

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Hamas had “accepted a draft agreement” but also quoted an Israeli official who said that details were still being “finalized.”

“It’s right on the brink. It’s closer than it’s ever been before,” said Secretary of State Blinken.

mf/ab (AFP, Reuters, AP, dpa)