Qatari FM: Hamas-Israel truce to extend for 2 additional days

Hamas and Israel have agreed to extend the truce an additional two days, a spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, one of the mediators of the deal, said on Monday night.

Officials in Egypt, another key mediator, and Qatar have said over recent days that they were close to reaching a deal to extend the truce.

Under the terms of the prisoner exchange deal, which initially stipulated a four-day pause to hostilities, a two-day extension should see 20 more Israelis and 60 more Palestinians released.

International pressure and statements from both Hamas and the Occupation government have favored extending the deal. US President Joe Biden also said Sunday that he hoped the temporary truce would continue as long as captives were being released.

The third day of the truce, Sunday, saw the release of 13 Israeli women and children by Palestinian factions in Gaza, along with three Thai nationals and one Russian. In return, the Occupation released 39 Palestinian children who were held in prisons.

With that, a total of 39 Israelis have been released so far, along with 23 foreign nationals in total, while 117 Palestinians were freed by Sunday night.

The Qassam Brigades handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross the third set of its captives held in Gaza City, northern Gaza, where its fighters were fighting off the Occupation’s ground invasion, a sign of the group’s strong presence in the area devastated by Occupation bombing.

The Occupation military claimed before the truce that it was “close to dismantling” Hamas’s military operations in the north.

Yet Qassam also noted this week that four of its military commanders in the Gaza Strip have been killed, including the commander of the North Gaza brigade, Ahmad al-Ghandour.

Also taking the space of the truce as a morale-boosting opportunity, Occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an unannounced visit to the Occupation forces in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, without revealing the exact site he visited.

During the visit, Netanyahu promised that the Occupation offensive on Gaza will soon resume. “We are continuing until the end — until victory,” he said, describing a victory that comprises three goals: to eliminate Hamas, release all Israeli captives, and “ensure that Gaza will not go back to being a threat to the State of Israel.”

Meanwhile, with Egypt still largely responsible for facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza, which was to be substantially increased under the prisoner-exchange deal’s terms, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed on Monday that the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip remains insufficient, blaming the Occupation for obstructing deliveries during a meeting in Barcelona of the Arab-Islamic ministerial committee that sprung out of the recent summit.

Shoukry noted that the Arab and Islamic countries developed a draft resolution for the UN Security Council against these obstructions.

He also reiterated his warning that the Occupation’s war on the Gaza Strip is pushing for the displacement of Palestinians from their land, saying that countries that oppose the displacement are not doing enough to prevent it from happening. Egypt’s leadership has been clear in its rejection of the displacement of Palestinians to Sinai or elsewhere in the country.

In the meeting, the Arab-Islamic ministerial group also warned against any attempts to treat the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as separate regions — a proposal that the Occupation has put forth as part of its end-game for Gaza.