From multiple directions. I concur with your assessment of the situation.
(The Hamas announcement appeared to take the mediators, and Israel, by surprise, after the latest round of cease-fire negotiations had appeared to break down completely following a Hamas attack near an Israeli border crossing that killed four soldiers Sunday)
Israeli forces took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, making their first ground incursion into the densely packed southern Gaza city where they have vowed to root out the last remnants of Hamas, an operation that angered neighboring Egypt.
en.wikipedia.org
An official from the Israel Defense Forces said infantry troops and an armored battalion gained “operational control” of the Palestinian side of the crossing. The official, who declined to be named in line with army protocol, said 20 militants were killed and three tunnel shafts uncovered in what he described as a “specific targeted operation” that was continuing on Tuesday morning.
The operation imperiled already fragile Israeli relations with Egypt, which has repeatedly warned Israel that military action on the border could violate a four-decade-old peace treaty between the two countries.
“Egypt vehemently denounces the Israeli military operation in Palestine Rafah, which has resulted in Israel controlling the Palestinian side of the border,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
It described the incursion as a “dangerous escalation” that was threatening cease-fire efforts, adding that the operation endangered the lives of the million Palestinians who depend on the crossing for humanitarian aid and a “safe way out for the injured and patients to get treatment.”
The operation came less than 24 hours after Israel dropped leaflets over the city — now harboring more than a million Palestinians, around half of Gaza’s entire population — ordering them to leave large parts of it. The United States has urged Israel not to carry out an offensive in Rafah without a “credible” plan to evacuate civilians.
But Israel appears intent on upping the pressure on Hamas, whose military capabilities it aims to destroy, while also giving itself additional leverage as it sends mediators to Cairo to reach a deal on freeing its remaining hostages held by Hamas.
Just hours before Israel launched its overnight attack,
Hamas said it would agree to a Qatari-Egyptian cease-fire proposal, reviving hopes of an extended pause.
It makes you wonder what Hamas claims to have agreed with that the Egyptian/Qatarian mediators offered it???
Israeli forces moved on Rafah after Hamas said it had agreed to a Qatari-Egyptian brokered cease-fire proposal.
apple.news
Oh, apparently, in the first of three phases, militants would release 33 women, children and elderly hostages, with three released every three days in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners (or 700, depending on the source), the official said.
On the 34th day, Hamas would give Israel a list of all remaining hostages???
At the same time, Palestinians would be allowed to return to their homes, Israeli troops would withdraw from the most populated areas inside Gaza and there would be a surge in humanitarian aid.
All military and reconnaissance aviation would cease for eight hours a day, and 10 hours on hostage-release days???
The second and third phases are less specifically spelled out in the written agreement, the senior Arab official said, and are the apparent crux of disagreement between Hamas and Israel. In the second stage, all additional hostages and agreed-on prisoners are to be released once arrangements are made for the return of a “sustainable calm” to Gaza.
But the two sides have differing interpretations of that phrase — first proposed by mediators in late February in an effort to bridge what has long been a seemingly irreconcilable gap between Hamas’s demand that Israel agree to a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and Israel’s insistence that any cease-fire be temporary, allowing it to eliminate what it says are the militant group’s last intact battalions inside Rafah.
During the third stage, according to the proposed deal, the two sides are to exchange bodies of the dead and begin a five-year reconstruction plan for Gaza.
Hamas would agree not to construct any military facilities or import materials used for military purposes.
I thought that was UNRWA’s role anyway?
The deal does not address Israel’s demands that Hamas’s military capabilities be destroyed, its leaders eliminated and that the group play no part in governing postwar Gaza.
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