Key mediator Egypt proposes two-day ceasefire in Gaza and release of four hostages

RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (AP) — Egypt’s president announced Sunday that his country has proposed a two-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, with four hostages being held. Gaza would be liberated. There was no immediate response from Israel or Hamas as the final talks were expected in Qatar, another key mediator.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said the proposal includes the release of some Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza. The aim is to “advance the situation,” he said, adding that negotiations would continue to make the ceasefire permanent.

Talks on a longer, phased ceasefire have repeatedly stalled. Hamas wants Israeli troops to leave Gaza as a condition, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said they will stay until Hamas is destroyed. There has been no ceasefire since then The week-long fighting lull in November in the first weeks of the war.

Israel’s Mossad chief traveled to Doha on Sunday for talks with Qatar’s prime minister and CIA chief in the latest effort to end fighting and defuse regional tensions that have built up since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Because of these tensions, Israel is now at war with both Hamas in Gaza and Hamas Hezbollah in Lebanon, and openly attacking Iran, their mainstay, this weekend for the first time. Iran’s supreme leader said on Sunday that the Israeli strikes – in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack this month – “should not be exaggerated or downplayed”, while without calling for retaliation.

At a government commemoration event marking the Hebrew anniversary of the October 7 attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that “not every goal can be achieved through military operations alone,” adding that “painful compromises will be necessary are” to return the hostages.

At the same event, demonstrators disrupted Netanyahu’s speech and shouted “Shame on you.” Many Israelis blame him for the security lapses that led to the attack and hold him responsible for the failure to bring hostages home yet.

In Gaza, the latest Israeli strikes in the north have killed at least 33 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said, as an offensive in the hard-hit and isolated area. entered a third week. The UN Secretary General called the plight of the Palestinians there “unbearable.” Israel said it was targeting militants.

Netanyahu says attacks on Iran have achieved Israel’s objectives

Netanyahu said in his first public comments on the attacks that “we have seriously damaged Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles aimed at us.”

Satellite images showed damage to two secret Iranian military basesOne is related to work on nuclear weapons and was stopped in 2003, according to Western intelligence services and nuclear inspectors. The other is related to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran said a civilian had been killed, without details. Earlier it was said that four people from the military air defense had been killed.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, said: “It is up to the authorities to determine how to transfer the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime.” Khamenei would make a final decision on how Iran responds.

The UN Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on Monday at Iran’s request. Switzerland, which holds the council’s rotating presidency, said Russia, China and Algeria, the council’s Arab representative, supported the request.

Iran’s most powerful proxy is Hezbollah, which has increased fire on Israel in response to Israel’s ground invasion of southern Lebanon in recent weeks.

Two Israeli attacks in Sidon in southern Lebanon killed eight people and injured 25, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

The Israeli army said four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, without giving details. An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon injured five people in Israel, authorities said.

Dozens of people have been injured in a truck collision in Israel

A truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon near Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring more than 30. Israeli police said the attacker was an Arab citizen of Israel and had been “neutralized.” The rammings took place outside a military base and near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack but did not claim credit for it.

Tensions have soared since the start of the war in Gaza, and Israel has also carried it out regular military attacks on the occupied West Bank that have caused hundreds of deaths.

‘Distressing death rates’ in northern Gaza

The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency department said 11 women and two children among 22 were killed in strikes late Saturday in Beit Lahiya in the north. The Israeli army said it carried out an attack on militants.

Ministry official Hussein Mohesin said 11 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a school-turned-shelter in the Shati refugee camp in the north, leaving many injured. “Most of the injured are children and women, and most of them are in very serious condition,” he said. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Israel has been waging a major air and ground offensive in northern Gaza since early October, with Hamas militants said to have regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the latest wave of displacement.

Aid organizations have warned of a catastrophic situation. Israel has severely limited access to humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north say they are overwhelmed. The UN Secretary General noted ‘distressing death rates’.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023. They killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250 people. There are still about a hundred hostages in Gazaabout a third of whom were thought to be dead.

According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli retaliatory offensive. It does not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but says more than half of the dead were women and children. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The offensive has destroyed much of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its 2.3 million residents, often multiple times.

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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Magdy from Cairo and Krauss from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press reporters Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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