Blinken warns that Hamas proposes unviable changes towards a truce

22:00

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Hamas had proposed numerous changes, some unworkable, to a US-backed proposal for a ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but that mediators were determined to close the gaps.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan denied that the Palestinian Islamist group had put forward any new ideas. Speaking to the pan-Arab channel Al-Araby TV, he reiterated Hamas’s position that it was Israel that rejected the proposals and accused the US administration of accompanying its close ally to “evade any commitment” to a plan for a permanent ceasefire. in Gaza. .

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan maintained that many of the changes proposed by Hamas were minor “and not unexpected,” while others differed more substantially from what was outlined in a U.N. Security Council resolution on Monday that supports the plan presented by US President Joe Biden.

“Our view is that the time for haggling is over,” Sullivan told reporters. Hamas also wants written assurances from the United States on the ceasefire plan, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters. Earlier on Wednesday, Izzat al-Rishq, of Hamas’s political bureau based outside Gaza, said his formal response to the US proposal was “responsible, serious and positive” and “opens a broad path” for an agreement. .

Biden’s proposal calls for a truce and gradual release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war. At a news conference with Qatar’s prime minister in Doha, Blinken said some of the counterproposals from Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, had sought to modify terms he had agreed to in previous talks.

Negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been trying for months to mediate a ceasefire in the conflict – which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastated the densely populated enclave – and free the hostages, who are believed to be that more than 100 remain captive. in Gaza.

“Hamas could have answered with one word: Yes,” Blinken said. “Instead, Hamas waited almost two weeks and then proposed further changes, several of which go beyond the positions it had previously adopted and accepted.” The United States has said that Israel has accepted its proposal, but Israel has not stated this publicly.

Blinken said Washington would raise ideas for a postwar Gaza administration and reconstruction of the enclave in the coming weeks. “We need to have plans for the day after the conflict in Gaza ends, and we need to have them as soon as possible.”

Major powers are stepping up efforts to defuse the conflict, in part to prevent it from escalating into a broader war in the Middle East, with a dangerous flashpoint being the escalation of hostilities along the Lebanon-Israel border. .

Lebanese militia Hezbollah, backed by Iran, fired volleys of rockets into Israel on Wednesday in retaliation for the killing of a top Hezbollah field commander. Israel said it had in turn attacked the launch sites from the air.

Taleb Abdallah, or Abu Taleb, was the highest-ranking Hezbollah commander killed in the conflict, a security source said, and Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine promised that the group would expand its operations against Israel.

Both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early phases of the Gaza war, a UN investigation concluded Wednesday, analyzing the immense civilian losses. The conclusions come from two parallel reports, one focused on the Hamas attacks of October 7 and another on Israel’s military response, both published by the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI).

The body has an exceptionally broad mandate to gather evidence and identify perpetrators of international crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel does not cooperate with the Commission, which it accuses of displaying an anti-Israel bias.

The IOC claims that Israel obstructs its work and prevents researchers from accessing both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel’s diplomatic mission to the UN in Geneva rejected the findings. “IOC has demonstrated once again that all its members are at the service of a narrow-minded political agenda against Israel’s actions”accused Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva.

Hamas, meanwhile, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Reuters news agency. The reports, which cover the conflict until the end of December, conclude that both sides committed war crimes such as torture, murder or intentional homicide, attacks on personal dignity and inhuman or cruel treatment.

Israel also committed other war crimes, including starvation as a method of warfare, according to the report, which states that Israel not only failed to provide essential supplies such as food, water, shelter and medicine to Gazans, but “acted to prevent that anyone else could satisfy those needs.

Some of the war crimes, such as murder, are also crimes against humanity by Israel, according to the statement of the Commission of Inquiry, which uses a term reserved for the most serious international crimes committed knowingly within the framework of an widespread or systematic attack against civilians.

“The immense number of civilian casualties in Gaza and the widespread destruction of civilian property and infrastructure were the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with the intention of causing maximum harm, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and appropriate precautions,” states the statement of the Commission of Inquiry.

Evidence collected by these UN-mandated bodies sometimes served as the basis for war crimes prosecutions and could be used by the International Criminal Court.

The COI’s conclusions are based on interviews with victims and witnesses, hundreds of communications, satellite images, medical reports and verified information from open sources. Among the findings of the 59-page report on the Oct. 7 attacks, the commission verified four incidents of mass killings in public shelters, which it said suggested the militants had “standing operational instructions.”

It also identified “a pattern of sexual violence” by Palestinian armed groups, but was unable to independently verify allegations of rape. The 126-page report on Gaza stated that Israel’s use of weapons such as the highly destructive MK84 guided bombs in urban areas was incompatible with international humanitarian law “as they cannot adequately discriminate or between the intended military objectives and the civilian objects”.

It also stated that Palestinian men and boys were targets of the crime against humanity of gender-based persecution, citing cases in which victims were forced to strip naked in public in maneuvers “intended to inflict grave humiliation on them.”

The conclusions will be debated next week at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. The COI, made up of three independent experts, including its president, South African Navi Pillay, former UN human rights chief, was created in 2021 by the Geneva Council. Unusually, she has an indefinite term, a fact criticized by both Israel and some of its allies.

All are convicted of killing and maiming children and are part of an annual global list of offenders for violations against children. In a report to the UN Security Council, seen -, Guterres also singled out the armed forces of Israel and Sudan for attacking schools and hospitals, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad for kidnapping children.