Hunger, hostages and the proximity of Ramadan mark the negotiation of a ceasefire in Gaza | – Archyde

The Israeli army brings to 14,000 the number of trucks that have entered the Palestinian enclave in those almost five months of war. This volume is lower than what arrived in a single month before October 7, when the 2.3 million inhabitants, the majority today displaced, hungry, thirsty and homeless, were not being punished with the attacks.
Given the need to face this crisis, Spain has announced that it will collaborate with the countries that drop aid from the air over Gaza. The Government will provide Jordan with 110 cargo parachutes of the kind that are being used to deliver material and food to the Gazan population, the Ministry of Defense reported.
After admitting on Thursday that the Israeli military opened fire, the army now claims that after “an initial review of the unfortunate incident, civilians were trampled to death and injured while raiding the convoy,” according to Hagari. “No attack was carried out by the Israel Defense Forces against the aid convoy” and “the majority of Palestinians were killed or injured as a result of the stampede,” the spokesperson concluded.

Meanwhile, the list of children dying of hunger in the enclave grows due to the blockade of humanitarian aid. There are 15 in recent days, according to local health authorities, and at least 10, according to Unicef’s count. “We fear for the lives of six more children who are suffering from malnutrition and diarrhea in the hospital’s intensive care unit as a result of the interruption of the electrical generator and oxygen and the weakness of medical capabilities,” said Dr. Ashraf Al-Qidra, according to a statement distributed to the media on Sunday morning.

Hopes remain in the negotiations to achieve a ceasefire of around six weeks, longer than the only one achieved so far, which was one week at the end of November. That would facilitate the entry of more aid into Gaza, as well as the exchange of those hostages for prisoners. “We have lost four family members and we do not want to bring back a fifth coffin,” said Sharon Sharabi during the event held by the families at the end of the march in Jerusalem’s Paris Square, near the prime minister’s residence. Among the 134 hostages who remain in Gaza there are Israeli soldiers of both sexes, children, women, the elderly, the wounded, and at least thirty dead.
But contacts with the parties have been going on for weeks without the agreement having yet materialized, with the mediating countries, including Egypt, Qatar and the United States, working on a proposal for a ceasefire of about six weeks. However, the hostage issue remains an obstacle to progress.
A US official, quoted by Reuters, stated this Saturday: “The path to a ceasefire at this point is clear. There is a framework agreement on the table that Israel has accepted. “Now it is up to Hamas to respond.” But the proposal does not seem to satisfy Hamas’s main demand for a permanent end to the war, in addition to leaving in the air the fate of more than half of the hundred hostages, men, who are not included in the categories whose release includes the draft of the new truce: women, children, the elderly and the wounded.

die of starvation

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The spectacular image of American parachutes cutting through the Gaza sky with aid packages for the starving population clashes with that reality on the ground. Compared to the 38,000 rations dropped this Saturday by the United States from the air, the Palestinian enclave continues to host hundreds of thousands of hungry people.
In the last 24 hours, 90 have been killed and 177 injured, according to the same Gaza health source. Thus, since October 7, fatalities in the Strip amount to 30,410 and injuries to 71,700. Outside of that count, the text of the statement adds, are the people who still cannot be rescued from the rubble of bombed buildings or abandoned buildings on roads, where the Israeli occupation troops prohibit access to rescue teams.

The “flour slaughter”

Egyptian mediators have suggested that these issues could be postponed to later stages of the negotiations, but a Palestinian Islamist source assured Reuters that their militants are still waiting for a “comprehensive agreement.”
Israel assures that it is waiting for Hamas to inform the identity of the kidnapped people that it is willing to release, those who are already dead in Gaza and its demands regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that it wants in exchange for each hostage. “Hamas refuses to give clear answers and therefore there is no reason to send the Israeli delegation” to the Egyptian capital, the Israeli newspaper reported. Yedioth Ahronoth. Hamas, for its part, continues to demand the withdrawal of the occupation troops, that they allow free movement of citizens in the Strip and that the displaced be able to return to their homes.
pressure is growing for Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire. The hunger that is spreading among the population of the Palestinian Strip, which was evident on Thursday during the tragedy with more than 100 dead around a convoy with humanitarian aid; The proximity of Ramadan, of special sensitivity for the Muslim world, and the demands of the families of the Israeli hostages in the hands of the Islamist movement mark negotiations that were resumed this Sunday in Cairo without an Israeli presence.
Ramadan is a holy month of fasting and reflection that commemorates the revelation of the Quran by the Prophet Muhammad. Achieving a ceasefire before the arrival of those weeks of special sensitivity for the Muslim world, with the population of Gaza terribly hit by the war, is a priority for the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Even ahead of the arrival of food, “the top priority is to have a ceasefire,” Mai Al-Kaila, ANP Minister of Health, declared to the Al Jazeera network. The minister has been on an interim basis since her resignation last Monday from her entire Government.
Israel, as in previous days, is trying to deny the blockade on the entry of humanitarian aid that the UN and humanitarian organizations have been denouncing for months, which insist on a growing famine. This Sunday, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said that they are trying to get help to civilians because the war is against Hamas, according to a recording broadcast through the social network X (formerly Twitter). He also insisted that Israel was not responsible for the so-called flour massacre last Thursday, when 112 people were killed, according to Hamas, during an attack while people were trying to access food trucks in Gaza City.

Thousands of people arrived in Jerusalem late Saturday night in a four-day march from the Gaza border to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a ceasefire agreement that opens the door to freeing the more than one hundred hostages held. They are still in the Strip after almost five months of war. In a country that has become a veritable pressure cooker, this is just one of the fronts open in the shadow of the conflict that began on October 7 with the massacre of some 1,200 people at the hands of Palestinian Islamists, who also became with about 240 hostages.