The Netanyahu Benjamin government of the entrance of all humanitarian aid for the more than two million inhabitants of Gaza. It is not a collective punishment in retaliation because Hamas has breached the agreement of Alto El Fuego, but quite the opposite: for its insistence on sticking to what was agreed in December, now that Israel and the US try to change it. The prime minister has announced the cessation since this morning of “any entry of goods and supplies” to the enclave, on the second day of the Sacred Muslim month of Ramadán, in which the population celebrates as a family the rupture of the fast and decorates its tents. Hamas speaks of “cheap blackmail” and “blow” to the agreement, and asks for the intervention of the other two mediators, Egypt and Qatar. To this are added four Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, which put even more of relief just after being fulfilled – this midnight – the 42 days of the first of the three phases of the truce.
This Sunday the second should have begun. It is the one that implies the end of the war, the full withdrawal of the Israeli troops, the delivery by Hamas of all living hostages and the release of other hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, according to the text.
But Netanyahu has been boycotting his negotiation for three weeks, so the first phase has concluded without agreement on his continuity. Israel is for finishing. The Text of the Pact indicates that “all the procedures of the first phase” will continue as long as they continue to negotiate “the conditions of implementation of the second phase”, but has not happened. Israel has not begun to withdraw his border troops this week between Egypt and Gaza, as forced the agreement of the first phase.
At the last minute of this Saturday, Israel demanded that Hamas an extension of 50 days of the first phase, conditioned to deliver the first day to half of the 59 hostages (Israel gives dead at least 33) that he still has in his hands, of the more than 250 that the Palestinian militias took in his attack of October 7, 2023. Hamas would deliver the other half. The permanent fire.
It is, therefore, a kind of proposal to further postpone the dialogue on the second phase, which Hamas would arrive with 30 hostages in his hands, instead of 75, as would have happened on February 3, the date stipulated by the agreement. If Hamás accept it, he would continue to laminate his only negotiating trick without Israel fulfilling the commitment he signed in December: end the war in Gaza. In the first phase, Hamas delivered 33 Israeli hostages and five Thai (apart from the pact), while (mostly taken during the invasion of Gaza or imprisoned without charges) and withdrew from several positions.
Netanyahu has presented the 50 -day proposal as an initiative of Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, although it had not been made public before. The number of days coincides with the duration of Ramadan and, then, of Pesaj, the Jewish Easter, which will conclude around April 20. The US is, technically, one of the three guarantors of compliance with the agreement.
Israel Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has spoken on the subject at a press conference in Jerusalem with his Croatian counterpart, Gordan Grlić radman. He argues that he will not extend the first phase “free”. “We are willing to continue negotiations, including the second phase, in exchange for the release of hostages,” he said.
Hamas has described the suspension of humanitarian aid as “cheap blackmail, war crime and flagrant coup d’etat against the agreement” and accuses Netanyahu of trying to “impose political facts on the land”, as the demand for giving up weapons and exiles their leaders. The Islamist Milicia does not close in band to agree on the extension conditions of the first phase, to give time to agree on the transition to the second. In fact, his spokesman Hazem Qassem rejected in a statement on Saturday the “formulation”, not the possibility.
Since the beginning of the war in October 2023, following the attack of Hamas, Israel has used hunger as a gun of war. As stipulated, the high fire in a territory in which 96% of children from 6 to 23 months of age, pregnant and infants do not receive the necessary nutrients due to the low diversity of food, according to data from the so -called global nutrition cluster, an NGO alliance and UN agencies led by UNICEF, the childhood manager.
The Israeli military authorities encircle in 21,000 trucks with humanitarian aid that have entered Gaza during the truce. They have not fulfilled, on the other hand, the commitment to allow the access of caravans, as a temporary refuge of those who have lost their homes in the bombings.
Although logistics problems have hindered distribution, gazaties have gone from depending mainly on packaged food – with UN alerts about the risk of famine – to find more vegetables, fruits and frozen meat in the markets and distribution stalls. In Gaza’s videos, even the reopening of positions of shawarma.
Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance and main ultra -rightist support of the Netanyahu coalition, has defined the blockade of humanitarian aid as an “important step in the right direction” to complete, opening the doors of hell (and have added to their vocabulary the ministers of Netyahu), “as quickly and lethal to obtain the total victory.”
In this context, the day has also been particularly bloody, with four dead and six injured in different Israeli attacks in the strip. The Israeli army has assured in a statement that the troops “which can remain in a buffer zone inside the enclave in this first phase of the truce – attacked” several suspects “to those who” identified by placing an explosive device. “
