Hamas had proposed a four-and-a-half-month ceasefire in Gaza (File)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that total victory in Gaza was within reach, rejecting Hamas's latest offer for a ceasefire to guarantee the return of hostages still held in the besieged enclave.
Netanyahu renewed his pledge to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement and said there was no alternative for Israel other than the collapse of Hamas.
“The day after is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas,” he told a news conference, emphasizing that a total victory over Hamas was the only solution to the Gaza war.
Hamas had proposed a four-and-a-half-month ceasefire in Gaza, during which all hostages would be released, Israel would withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip and an agreement would be reached to end the war.
The Hamas offer, the contents of which were first reported by Reuters, is a response to an earlier proposal drafted by US and Israeli spy chiefs and delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the offer with Netanyahu after arriving in Israel following talks with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt, the countries that have acted as mediators. Blinken later met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
Israel began its military offensive after operatives from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on October 7. Gaza's health ministry says at least 27,585 Palestinians have been killed, while thousands more are feared buried under the rubble. So far there has been only one ceasefire, which lasted just a week in late November.
Israel has previously said it will not withdraw its troops from Gaza or end the war until Hamas is wiped out.
But sources described Hamas as taking a new approach to its long-standing demand to end the war, now presenting it as an issue to be resolved in future talks rather than as a condition for the ceasefire.
A source close to the negotiations said Hamas's counter-proposal did not immediately require a guarantee of a permanent ceasefire, but that an agreement had to be reached on an end to the war before the last hostages were released.
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