Hamas is claiming the second phase of the ceasefire must begin, which is the negotiation for a permanent ceasefire. The fate of Hamas, and the Palestinians, may lie in the finalized plan that emerges for the rebuild, with some nations, like the U.S., pushing for a Palestinian resettlement, and others, like Egypt, pushing for the Palestinians to remain in Gaza.
Israel is threatening to cut off Gaza’s electricity in a bid to get the rest of the hostages, including the dead, released. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Saudi Arabia to talk about the Gaza reconstruction plans. Reuters isn’t helping Hamas out, or its reputation, having falsely accused a victim of a Hamas attack as being a member of Mossad, a claim it later had to retract.
News24 | Hamas pushes for phase two of Gaza truce talks– www.news24.com
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Hamas reiterated on Sunday its insistence on moving directly into negotiating a second phase of the Gaza truce, as Israel announced it would dispatch a delegation to Doha for further talks.
Representatives of the Palestinian militant group met with mediators in Cairo at the weekend, emphasising the need for humanitarian aid to re-enter the besieged territory “without restrictions or conditions”, according to a Hamas press release.
The high-level delegation also stressed the need for “moving directly to begin negotiations for the second phase” of the deal, which will aim to lay the groundwork for a permanent ceasefire.
Rubio and Saudi Arabia’s MBS discuss Gaza reconstruction in Riyadh – The Times of Israel
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed the “reconstruction of Gaza” during their meeting in Riyadh earlier today, the State Department says in its readout.
Rubio thanked the Saudi leader for “hosting Arab countries,” the State Department says in an apparent reference to the summit Riyadh hosted for Arab leaders last month to prepare for another confab held in Cairo last week, where Egypt unveiled its plan for the post-war management of Gaza.
The Trump administration has called the plan a good start, while indicating that it doesn’t sufficiently address Hamas’s role, which Washington wants to be non-existent.
Israel says it is cutting off its electricity supply to Gaza– www.cbc.ca
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Israel says it is cutting off its electricity supply to Gaza. The full effects of that are not immediately clear, but the territory’s desalination plants receive power for producing drinking water.
Sunday’s announcement comes a week after Israel cut off all supplies of goods to the territory to more than two million people. It has sought to press Hamas to accept an extension of the first phase of their ceasefire. That phase ended last weekend.
Hamas has pressed to start negotiations on the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase instead.
Gaza has been largely devastated by the war, and generators and solar panels are used for some of the power supply.
Reuters beclowns itself, to Hamas’s benefit– thehill.com
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One problem with biased journalism is that it produces weak reporting. Another is that it can lead to the dissemination of outright falsehoods, even honest-to-God terrorist propaganda.
On Mar. 6, the global newswire Reuters fully retracted a report that had referred repeatedly to a victim of a Palestinian terrorist attack as a member of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency. The problem is there’s no evidence that the victim, Amatzia Ben-Haim, was ever in the Mossad, let alone an active agent at the time of his death.
Reuters, it turns out, relied entirely on the killer’s family for this supposed biographical detail, apparently making no effort to corroborate their version of events. When asked to explain how the original story was allowed to go to print despite serious and obvious flaws, the newswire replied to my inquiries with the same stock statement it had issued previously, that the story “is withdrawn” and that they “regret the error.”
It is unclear why Reuters chose to rely solely on the claims of the killer’s family that Ben-Haim was a Mossad agent, apparently without corroboration. It has made no effort to show its homework.
