A third division has been sent in as Egypt reportedly offers a new proposal.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Ceasefire talks are reportedly continuing even as the IDF expands the fighting in Gaza, bringing in a third division in the effort to pressure Hamas to release its remaining 59 hostages.
According to a Reuters report Saturday, Egypt has proposed a new timeline for the release of the hostages Hamas is holding and Israel’s full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, along with unnamed American guarantees.
The news agency said that, according to its Egyptian sources, “The U.S. had signaled initial approval.” However, Israeli officials said that Jerusalem had no knowledge of this plan.
On Sunday, Hamas rejected the “bridge proposal” that U.S. special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff presented 12e days ago, which would have extended the ceasefire deal that officially ended March 2.
The proposal offered that, in exchange for more Palestinian security prisoners, military quiet for 50 days, the resumption of humanitarian aid deliveries that Israel froze as soon as the deal collapsed, and final truce talks, Hamas would free 11 living hostages at the outset of the period and the other 11-13 at the end, along with the rest, who are all dead.
Israel had accepted the plan, and Witkoff put the blame squarely on Hamas for rejecting it, telling Fox News on Sunday that “This is on Hamas. The United States stands with the State of Israel. Hamas had every opportunity to demilitarize, to accept the bridging proposal.”
In accordance with the new Israeli policy to continue negotiations while Hamas is put under military pressure, the IDF injected a third division into Gaza Sunday after resuming its fighting last week.
Division 36, considered an elite force, was transferred from its recent activity in the north to Gaza’s southern tip, joining Division 143 in Rafah, which is still considered a major Hamas stronghold.
Division 252 is holding central Gaza, with the IDF resuming its control over much of the vital Netzarim Corridor that cuts the Strip approximately in half.
Other IDF forces started operating in northern Gaza on Saturday to “target Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and expand the security zone in the northern part of the Strip,” the army said.
Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to hold onto Gazan territory permanently if Israel’s demands are not met.
“The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel,” he said on Friday.
Israel has also scrapped the immunity it had provided until now to top Hamas officials running the government, in contrast to its military leaders.
Five days ago, the IDF assassinated, along with other officials, Gaza’s “prime minister,” Essam Al-Daalis. His successor, Ismail Barhoum, was killed Sunday night in a pinpoint airstrike on his room at a hospital in Khan Yunis.
