Security council to consider resolution calling for permanent ceasefire, release of all hostages; Israel sent formal response to US letter on Gaza aid issue
A senior Hamas official said Friday that the terror group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US President-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression.”
The comment came the same day Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a propaganda video of Israeli hostage Sasha Trufanov, and as the UN Security Council prepared to consider a resolution calling for a total ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
Speaking to AFP, Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim said, “Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if a ceasefire proposal is presented and on the condition that it is respected” by Israel.
He added, “we call on the US administration and Trump to pressure the Israeli government to end the aggression.”
The Gaza terror group has said it will not accept any ceasefire deal that does not entail a complete and permanent Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and has previously rejected several ceasefire proposals that it deemed insufficient in that regard.
Hostage video
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group published another video of hostage Sasha Trufanov, two days after it released a different clip of him.
The clip was the fourth video that the terror group has released of Trufanov.
It is unclear when the video was made. In the clip, Trufanov says that he is aged 28; however, he turned 29 earlier this week, his second birthday in captivity.
In the nearly two-minute-long video, Trufanov — in a statement almost certainly dictated by his captors in the Gaza Strip — asks Shas chairman Aryeh Deri to convince the government to agree to a deal for the hostages’ release, reminding him of the Jewish obligation to free all captives.
Terror groups have previously issued similar videos of hostages in what Israel says is deplorable psychological warfare.
Most Israeli media did not carry the video clips.
Trufanov was taken hostage along with three members of his family — grandmother Irena Tati, mother Yelena (Lena) Trufanova and his girlfriend Sapir Cohen — from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the October 7 Hamas massacre in the Gaza border town.
Trufanova and Tati were released by Hamas on November 29 at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Cohen was released on November 30 as part of a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Negotiations to free the hostages and reach a Gaza ceasefire have been at a virtual standstill for several months with no apparent horizon for a real resumption of talks.
UN to call for ceasefire
Nevertheless, the UN Security Council’s 10 elected members circulated another draft resolution demanding “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza along with the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
The Council’s 10 elected members — Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland, Algeria, Guyana, South Korea, Sierra Leone and Slovenia — circulated the draft after reaching the agreement.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, holds the key to whether the Security Council adopts the resolution. The four other permanent members — Russia, China, Britain and France — are expected to support it or abstain.
In an interview with The Times of Israel last week, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon criticized an earlier draft that has since been lightly edited in a bid to gain American support.
The earlier draft split the two demands for a ceasefire and hostage release into separate paragraphs, which were merged into one in the updated version. That was enough to convince the US to abstain on a similar resolution adopted by the Security Council in March, which called for an immediate ceasefire during Ramadan.
In June, the Council adopted another resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire based on the parameters that were being negotiated by the US, Qatar and Egypt, which envisioned a three-staged hostage release deal that would bring an end to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
But talks on this framework have all but fallen apart since then. The US and Egypt are still working to negotiate a hostage deal, and Washington is hoping that Qatar’s decision to ask Hamas officials to leave Doha will spark a breakthrough in negotiations. So far, though, none has come to fruition.
Accordingly, Security Council members are once again working on their own ceasefire resolution. Such initiatives have not made an impact on the ground in the past, but members hope that they will add pressure on the warring parties to end the conflict.
Danon told The Times of Israel last week that his office opposed the draft resolution because it doesn’t explicitly condition ending the war on the release of the hostages.
The US argued in March that merging the two demands into the same sentence was enough for it to interpret the text as a conditional relationship between the ceasefire and the hostage release.
The draft also demands immediate access for Gaza’s civilian population to humanitarian aid and services essential for their survival.
Additionally, it “underscores” that UNRWA, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees, “remains the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.”
The Knesset passed two laws last month effectively banning UNRWA’s operations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, which take effect in 90 days.
Jerusalem’s anger at the UN body has peaked since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which dozens of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated, including kidnapping and killing Israelis.
In February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.
The issue of humanitarian aid more broadly has been a frequent source of strain between Israel and the US.
In a Thursday call between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and new Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Blinken asserted a need to expand aid into the enclave, after the US announced earlier this week that Israel made enough progress on the issue to remain in compliance with US law.
Last month, the US gave Israel 30 days to take a series of steps to alleviate the Gaza humanitarian crisis in order to avoid violating US law, which bars the US from transferring offensive weapons to countries that block aid from civilians.
While Israel failed to meet several of the demands listed in the letter, the US appeared to give Jerusalem a pass after the administration saw its leverage dissipate due to Donald Trump’s election victory, given that the president-elect would have surely reversed any move to withhold weapons from Israel upon returning to the White House.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan revealed Friday that Israel has submitted a formal response to the letter. The response, which ostensibly laid out the steps Israel has taken and plans to take to address the issue, will likely be used by the Biden administration to adjudicate Israel’s compliance with US law moving forward.
Gaza fighting continues
Amid the ongoing fighting in the enclave, a recent Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed several Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror operatives, the IDF said Friday.
According to the military and Shin Bet, the airstrike killed Alkaman Abd as-Salam Khalil Anbar, who was responsible for Islamic Jihad’s rocket firing array in Gaza City.
The IDF said Anbar was responsible for rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza City, as well as being a “significant figure” in the terror group’s weapons manufacturing processes.
Other Islamic Jihad members, involved in rocket fire on Israel and troops in Gaza, were killed in the strike, according to the military.
Meanwhile, the IDF said it was continuing to battle Hamas operatives during an operation in the Strip’s northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun. Troops with the 162nd Division also located numerous weapons during the operation, the military said.
In southern Gaza’s Rafah, troops with the Gaza Division directed drone strikes against several gunmen who were trying to attack the forces, the IDF added.
The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from the enclave, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 375.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
