The last possibility for a truce in Gaza is represented by the indirect negotiations underway in Doha, after the halt in recent weeks. The mediators would have warned of the risk that, if this round also fails, the talks would cease.
The spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the negotiations taking place on separate tables, mediated by the hosts and Egypt, and in the meantime the head of the Mossad has returned home, leaving the delegation. David Barnea's return appears linked to the need to fine-tune the Israeli position on the developments of the negotiations.
The mandate entrusted by the government to the head of the Mossad has precise "red lines" on the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released, the number of hostages to be released and on the permanent ceasefire in the Strip, as requested by Hamas at the end of the first of the 3 phases of the possible understanding.
The head of the Palestinian faction, Ismail Haniyeh, accuses Israel of "wanting to sabotage the negotiations" with the operation at the al Shifa hospital. An operation that continues with the military spokesman announcing the killing of "over 50 terrorists and the capture of around 180 suspects". Meanwhile, yesterday's phone call with Biden does not seem to have dissuaded Netanyahu from the operation in Rafah: «I told Biden in the clearest form» that Israel «is determined to complete the elimination of the Hamas battalions in Rafah» and that in the center of the Strip. "And there is no way to do it - continued the Israeli prime minister - without the entry of ground forces on site."
But the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave does not remain unnoticed, denounced once again by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, arriving in the region with stops in Saudi Arabia and Egypt but not in Israel: the entire population of Gaza is experiencing "serious levels of acute food insecurity", he remarked while the US asked to allow the director general of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, to whom Israel denied an entry visa, to enter Gaza.
For the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, «the imminent famine in the northern part of Gaza is an entirely man-made disaster. I reiterate my call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. We must act now to prevent the unthinkable, the unacceptable, the unjustifiable,” he wrote on
