Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has proposed a two-day truce in Gaza that could pave the way for a long-term ceasefire, as the Israeli genocide has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in northern areas of the Gaza Strip in less than a month. .
El-Sisi’s proposal, which calls for the exchange of four Israeli captives held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, comes as thousands of trapped civilians face relentless Israeli attacks that have killed at least 50 people, including five journalists, since Sunday.
At a news conference in Cairo on Sunday, el-Sissi said the 48-hour lull in fighting and the exchange of prisoners would be followed by more talks in the next 10 days, in the hope that negotiators could reach a peace agreement.
Of the 251 captives captured by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli territory, 97 are still detained in Gaza, 34 of whom are believed to have died according to the Israeli army. More than 100 captives were freed during a week-long truce last November.
El-Sisi did not specify whether the plan had been formally presented to Israel or Hamas. But efforts to defuse the conflict have resumed in Doha, the Qatari capital, with the participation of the directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad.
There was no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas on the plan.
Egypt, alongside Qatar and the United States, has been negotiating indirect talks for months, without much success. Among the main issues preventing a breakthrough is Hamas’s insistence that Israel completely withdraw from Gaza, which Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected.
On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said “painful concessions” would be necessary in negotiations and that military action alone would not achieve the country’s war goals.
Tel Aviv Tribune senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said that with the United States, Egypt and Qatar involved in the negotiations, “there is a chance for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get something something more today than he would have gotten in June.”
But Bishara added that it was “unclear” whether the negotiations would result in a deal this time, saying “the continuation of the war is important” to Netanyahu “politically and personally.”
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv Tribune correspondents in Gaza said on Monday that the latest Israeli attack on a group of people in the Shujayea neighborhood of Gaza City in the north of the Strip killed at least three people. Another Palestinian was killed in another Israeli attack in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to the Wafa news agency.
Earlier, Wafa reported that Israeli forces struck the Asma school housing displaced Palestinians in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing at least 11 people, including three journalists.
In total, at least 53 people were killed by Israeli raids on Gaza on Sunday and early Monday, most of them in the north.
The Gaza government media office said the five journalists killed on Sunday were Saed Radwan of Al-Aqsa TV, Hamza Abu Salmiya of the Sanad news agency, Haneen Baroud of the Al-Quds Foundation, Abdul Rahman Samir al -Tanani of Sawt Al-Shaab and Nadia Imad al-Sayed, who has worked for several media outlets.
Their killing brings to at least 170 the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7 last year, according to the Gaza Strip media office. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), based in New York, estimates the number of journalists killed in Gaza at 131.
Palestinian-American journalist Said Arikat told Tel Aviv Tribune that Netanyahu and his cabinet had no strategy regarding Gaza other than making the territory “uninhabitable.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also expressed deep concern about the plight of civilians in Gaza. “The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in northern Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’ spokesperson said on Sunday.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, described the scene in the north over the past 24 hours as “horrific.”
“The situation continues to escalate and people are trying to reach out, crying, feeling abandoned, asking for food, water and medicine,” she said.