Negotiators will meet in Doha on Tuesday to finalise details of a plan to end the war in Gaza, after US President Joe Biden said a ceasefire and hostage release agreement he had championed was on the “verge” of being implemented.
Gaza ceasefire negotiators “on the brink” of a deal
Mediators gave Israel and Hamas a final draft of the agreement on Monday, an official with knowledge of the talks said, after a midnight “breakthrough” in talks that included envoys from both the outgoing US president and President-elect Donald Trump.
Biden said in a speech on Monday to highlight his foreign policy achievements:
“The deal … would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started.”
The US and Qatari leaders stressed the need to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas as soon as possible to return hostages to their families and provide relief to Gazans. At the same time, a ceasefire must be secured and humanitarian assistance must be increased.
On January 12, Biden’s national security aide Jake Sullivan said on CNN that Israel and Hamas are very close to a deal on a ceasefire in the region. He said the deal could take place before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
Israel kills 23 more Palestinians in Gaza
Amid continued progress in Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel continues its war in Gaza, killing at least 23 more Palestinians in overnight airstrikes in areas across Gaza.
A medical source at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah (central Gaza Strip) told Anadolu Agency that nine Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a flat, a tent and a cafe sheltering displaced people in the city.
In the southern Gaza Strip, 12 more Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in two Israeli airstrikes on two houses in the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah, according to a medical source.
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency that the Israeli army has intensified and intensified systematic operations to blow up houses and buildings in neighbourhoods in northern Rafah.
In Gaza City, in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the al-Daraj neighbourhood killed a woman and injured several others, the Civil Defence said in a statement.
The local Safa news agency reported that one of its journalists died from wounds sustained in an earlier Israeli airstrike on Gaza on Monday. His death brings the number of Palestinian journalists killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since October 2023 to 204.
Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote on X:
“Israel bombs another Gaza City school while insisting on a truce that it, also insists, will violate whenever it chooses. Seldom has the absurd been so brazenly combined with evil.”
Mohammed Sinwar becomes new Hamas leader
Mohammed Sinwar has become the new leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip.
Sinwar heads Hamas’s militant wing, the Izzeddin al-Qassam Brigades. Media reported that he is the younger brother of the former head of the Hamas politburo Yahya Sinwar, liquidated in October 2024 by the Israeli military.
Mohammed Sinwar has been active in favour of reviving the Palestinian movement since the Israeli military operation has undermined its fighting capabilities.
On October 17, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that Yahya Sinwar may have been eliminated as a result of an operation in the Gaza Strip. DNA testing later confirmed that the remains found at the site of the strike did indeed belong to the Hamas leader.
