Israel Rejects Hamas Ceasefire Offer, Calls Movement's Demands ‘Delusional’

Roughly 1,140 Israelis were killed during the October 7 attack by Hamas, who also captured around 250 hostages. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 27,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of the ground incursion into the enclave launched by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Israel has decided against sending a delegation to Cairo, Egypt to continue discussing a ceasefire deal with Hamas, more than four months into its campaign against the group in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Hamas’ proposal “delusional” again, echoing comments he made last week. “The day after is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas,” he said at a press conference last week. “Continued military pressure is a necessary condition for the release of the hostages.”

The Israeli delegation returned from talks in Cairo on Tuesday, Israel now says they have no plans to return. “Netanyahu insists that Israel will not give in to Hamas’s delusional demands,” the Prime Minister’s office said. “A change in Hamas’s position will allow the negotiations to advance.”

According to a document seen by US media, the Hamas offer would see the return of all remaining hostages over a two-phase plan that includes an 18-week ceasefire.

Phase one would last 45 days and would see the return of all women, children, elderly and sick hostages in exchange for Palestinian women and children being held by Israel. As of November 2023, Israeli authorities hold nearly 7,000 Palestinians according to Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. More than 2,000 of those are held in “administrative detention,” which means they have been detained without charges or a trial.

Around 250 Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas during their October 7 attack, roughly 130 remain after a prisoner swap in November.

The second phase, which would only begin once the conditions for the end of military operations by both sides have been set and calm has been restored, would see the return of the remaining male hostages while a peace deal is negotiated.

Last week, fresh off his talks with leaders in Qatar and Egypt, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that “There are clearly nonstarters in what [Hamas has] put forward,” but did not specify what those nonstarters were.

Israel spent an estimated $7 million for a 30-second ad in the US during the Super Bowl, calling for the return of the hostages. At the same time, it launched its bombing campaign in Rafah, the only enclave left in Gaza where more than half of the Strip’s 2.3 million residents have fled to at Israel’s urging.

The Israeli hostage families forum, a group dedicated to advocating for the return of Israelis held by Hamas, decried the decision by Netanyahu’s government to pull out of the Cairo talks, calling it a “death sentence” for the remaining hostages.

“It appears that some members of the cabinet decided to sacrifice the lives of the hostages [while] admitting it,” the group said in a statement. It promised to hold a barricade outside the Kirtya Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv.

The Biden administration has been publicly calling on Israel to hold off on its ground operation in Rafah until a “credible” plan to protect civilians in the area is laid out by Israel. However, US officials have made clear in their public statements, and media reports indicate privately as well, that the US has no plans to punish Israel or cut off aid to the country if it proceeds.

Rafah is less than 60 square miles and before the conflict was home to about 280,000 people, already one of the most densely populated cities in one of the world’s most densely populated regions. Its population has since swelled to over 1.5 million as Israeli forces continued to drive the Gazan population further south. The borders of Gaza have been shut, and Rafah sits at the southern border with Egypt, leaving civilians with no place left to go.

Multiple countries, including Turkiye, Egypt, France and Germany have urged Israel to halt its operation on Rafah.

Netanyahu said on US television earlier this week that the civilians can flee back to the North, which has been flattened by the Israeli military. In late December, the World Health Organization announced that there were no functioning hospitals left in northern Gaza.

“I would like to see an Israeli official point to a place in Gaza that is safe for the Palestinians to move to, because there are none,” Journalist and the editor of The Cradle Esteban Carrillo told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday.