A SENIOR member of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has said that there is no real will on the part of the United States to establish a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Osama Hamdan, who represents Hamas in Lebanon, stated on Saturday that the United States’ new ceasefire proposal does not include a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Hamdan noted that while the ongoing ceasefire negotiations have not yet mentioned which Palestinian prisoners would be released, the potential deal must guarantee clear criteria, including all Palestinian inmates’ freedom.
The top Hamas official also said the US is trying to give the occupying Tel Aviv regime enough time to perpetrate more atrocities and mass killings.
Egyptian sources, requesting anonymity, were quoted as saying on Saturday that indirect negotiations between representatives from Hamas and Israel on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will resume on Wednesday in Cairo.
Negotiating delegations of the three mediators – Egypt, Qatar, and the United States – and the Israeli team delegation will attend the talks scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, according to the sources.
Meanwhile, commenting on Gaza ceasefire talks underway in Qatar, Iran has warned about ‘the deceit and dishonesty’ of the criminal Israeli regime and its sponsor the United States.
Representatives from Egypt, the United States, and Israel are currently still in the Qatari capital Doha. The three mediators asserted in a joint statement on Friday that a ‘bridging proposal’ had been presented to Hamas and Israel, which is consistent with the principles of UN Security Council Resolution No 2735 that calls for an ‘immediate, comprehensive, and thorough’ ceasefire in Gaza.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured tens of thousands of others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
Meanwhile, the Israeli president, pressed by protesters who confronted him for not taking measures to return captives held in Gaza, has called for the removal of minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.
According to reports by Israeli media, in an unprecedented confrontation with anti-regime demonstrators that occurred on Saturday outside of the President’s Residence in al-Quds, Isaac Herzog said that ‘Kahanism needs to be removed’ from the cabinet.
The reference was to Ben-Gvir and other far-right ministers including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich who are generally tied to a fascist Zionist ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and his eponymous ideology, Kahanism.
They generally hold a view that Arabs living in Israel are the enemies of Jews and Israel itself.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have been harshly criticised for opposing an agreement that includes the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli captives and their persistence in prolonging Israel’s months-long genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip, where more than 40,000 Palestinians are killed.
Anti-regime Israeli protesters believe that Netanyahu and his cabinet are not doing enough to reach a ceasefire deal with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas to return Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held illegally in Israeli detention centres.
A video of the incident posted to social media showed the protesters gathered outside Herzog’s residence constantly interrupting and speaking over the Israeli president as he tried to outline the Israeli regime’s plans regarding the ongoing war in Gaza.
Herzog, an extremist himself, suggested at a press conference on October 13, 2023, that Palestinians in Gaza were legitimate targets.
Two months later, a photo circulated widely on social media showed Herzog writing the phrase on a shell destined to be fired on the besieged Palestinian territory: ‘I rely on you.’
Later on Saturday, thousands rallied across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other locations across the occupied territories to denounce the Israeli prime minister for obstructing a truce deal aimed at enabling the return of the captives held in the Gaza Strip.
Now is the time for the UK, US and EU trade unions to intervene and take strike action to insist that the state of Palestine must be established ‘from the river to the sea’ with Jerusalem as its capital!