Hamas has put forward a detailed plan for a new cease-fire and hostage release deal with Israel, which will be discussed when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Wednesday with Israeli leaders.
Qatar’s prime minister said Tuesday that Hamas gave a “generally positive” answer to the latest plan for Gaza, but the Palestinian militant group’s response would effectively leave the militant group in power in Gaza and allow it to rebuild its military capabilities, a scenario that Israel adamantly rejects.
More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people is now crammed into the town of Rafah on the border with Egypt and surrounding areas, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Tuesday. The Palestinian death toll after nearly four months of war has reached 27,478 people, the Health Ministry in Gaza said.
A quarter of Gaza’s residents are starving and 85% of the population has been driven from their homes, with hundreds of thousands surviving in makeshift tent camps.
Currently:
— Yemen’s Houthi rebels target two ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with ballistic missiles.
— Israel arrests a Palestinian-American woman in the West Bank. Her relatives don’t know where she is.
— Senate Democrats push to require that Biden consult Congress on weapons sales to Israel.
— Qatar says Hamas gave a “generally positive” response to a cease-fire proposal.
— Find more of news agencies’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s the latest:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia says it won’t normalize ties with Israel without recognition of an independent Palestinian state and a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza.
The Foreign Ministry outlined its “firm position” in a statement released Wednesday, two days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Biden administration has spent much of the past year pushing for a potentially historic agreement in which Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel in return for U.S. defense guarantees, assistance in setting up a civilian nuclear program and major progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the latest statement, Saudi Arabia appeared to sharpen its demands.
“The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.
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