Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced on Sunday a proposed two-day truce and limited hostage exchange in Gaza aimed at securing “a complete ceasefire” after more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas.
The proposal includes exchanging four Israeli hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and would be followed by more negotiations within 10 days, Sisi said at a news conference in Cairo.
He did not say whether the plan had been formally presented to either Israel or Hamas.
Egypt, alongside Qatar and the United States, has for months been mediating indirect talks with little success.
Sisi’s intervention came with Israel continuing to pound the Palestinian territory while also fighting a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and having just launched air strikes on its major foe Iran.
The strikes on Saturday, the second time Israel has retaliated against Iranian ballistic missile attacks, triggered global calls for restraint.
An emergency UN Security Council meeting will take place on Monday at Iran’s request, with Tehran calling for it to condemn the strikes that killed four soldiers.
At home, Iranian leaders played down their importance, saying the strikes had caused only limited damage.
President Masoud Pezeshkian told his cabinet Iran did not want war but would deliver “an appropriate response”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking on the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7 last year, said the attack on Iran “was precise and powerful, achieving all of its objectives”.
Israel launched the strikes in retaliation for an October 1 attack by Iran, which fired about 200 missiles at Israel.
There has been public and diplomatic pressure on Netanyahu to do more to strike a deal to secure the release of the remaining captives held in Gaza.
His speech in Jerusalem was interrupted by shouting from relatives of victims of the Hamas attack in the crowd.
‘Painful concessions’
Israeli spy chief David Barnea was due in Qatar on Sunday for talks aimed at restarting negotiations towards a hostage deal.
Families of the hostages have called on the Israeli government to broker an agreement in the wake of the killing of Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar earlier this month.
Israeli and US officials as well as some analysts said Sinwar had been a key obstacle to a deal.
Earlier on Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said “painful concessions” would be needed in negotiations and that military action alone would not achieve the country’s war aims.
Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attack, 97 are still held in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Against the already charged backdrop, a truck crashed into a crowd of people at a bus stop in central Israel, killing one man and injuring more than two dozen people.
Police did not immediately say whether the incident, near the Mossad spy agency’s headquarters and other Israeli intelligence sites, was an attack or an accident.
Despite talk of negotiations, Israel continued to fight in Gaza and Lebanon.
There were overnight strikes in and around Beirut and multiple southern cities, with strikes continuing during the day.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least eight people were killed near Sidon, and three rescuers affiliated with a Hezbollah ally in a strike on a southern village.
The war has left at least 1,615 people dead in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.
The Israeli military said early on Sunday it had killed 70 Hezbollah fighters and struck 120 targets, while losing five of its own soldiers in fighting, taking to 37 the death toll among troops since the start of ground operations in Lebanon late last month.
‘Gaza is unbearable’
Heavy bombing also continued in Gaza. The Israeli military said it had killed another 40 militants in the territory.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern for the fate of Gaza’s civilians.
“The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in north Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’s spokesman said.
Speaking in Cairo, Sisi warned of famine and said it was “very important that aid enters as soon as possible”.
Israel several weeks ago began a major operation in the north of Gaza, in particular around Jabalia and its neighbouring refugee camp.
As the sweeping assault was ongoing, Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Sunday an Israeli strike on a school building sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least nine people. The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
At the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, Jihad Muqat mourned the death of his wife and two baby daughters whose bodies were pulled from under the rubble in Jabalia camp.
“My darling Lulu, she was three and a half years old and Sama was 12 days old,” he said, adding that he’d already had to bury his two-year-old Lara earlier in the war.
Israel launched the offensive in Gaza a year ago after Hamas’s October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
At least 42,924 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive on Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
The war has since drawn in Iran-backed groups across the region, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
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