The fighting has continued into Ramadan, but neither Israel nor Hamas can achieve much
Muslim month of fasting, was never going to be a joyful time in Gaza this year, but it was at least meant to be a hopeful one. For weeks Western and Arab officials laboured to strike a truce between Israel and Hamas before it began on March 10th. Palestinians in Gaza would have had a respite from five months of near-constant war. Dozens of Israeli hostages would have returned home. Diplomats hoped they could then turn the temporary ceasefire into a permanent one.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, did not agree. His emissaries struggled to reach him during the talks . When they did, just days before Ramadan, he insisted on a permanent ceasefire, a demand he knew that Israel would reject. Negotiators from Hamas grew obstinate. Asked to provide Israel with the names of surviving hostages, they refused.
As he has for weeks, Binyamin Netanyahu insists Israel will press forward. Rafah is Hamas’s last redoubt, he argues, and Israel must attack its remaining battalions. “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave them,” the Israeli prime minister said in an interview with Axel Springer, a German media conglomerate. On the ground, however, there are still no signs of an imminent offensive. Israel has withdrawn many of its troops to Gaza’s periphery, and to a corridor that bisects the enclave.
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