Egypt’s Al Sisi Calls For Two Day Truce In Exchange Of Prisoners And Hostages (image- instagram/alsisiofficial)
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian President has proposed a two-day truce in exchange for hostages and prisoners. Cairo has made the announcement as part of the effort to defuse the devastating, more than one-year-long war in Gaza. Al Sisi believes it to be an opportunity for a long-term truce.
“We proposed a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip for two days to exchange four hostages (Israeli) for some prisoners (Palestinian), and then negotiations will take place over ten days to turn the ceasefire into a permanent truce,” El-Sisi said during a joint press conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Cairo.
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Al Sisi’s proposal came as the directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency arrived in Qatar for talks to end the genocide.
However, there has been no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas. An official briefed Reuters on Sunday that negotiations in Doha will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners.
According to Israel, around 101 of its citizens are still held captive by the Hamas group in Gaza, however, concern persists that many of them were killed in Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment and airstrikes across the densely populated region.
Meanwhile, the Israeli force has killed at least 53 people in Gaza and 21 in Lebanon on Sunday. On the other hand, Israel’s far-right finance minister has again called for hundreds of thousands of new Israeli settlers to establish “new cities and settlements deep in the West Bank,” the Times of Israel reported.
The United Nations has said that the plight of the Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza was “unbearable” and the conflict was being “waged with little regard for the requirements of international humanitarian law”.
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“The Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres) is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter, amid reports of families being separated and many people detained,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
