Cairo: Israeli forces killed at least 31 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, local hospitals said, as questions churned about US President Donald Trump’s peace plan aimed at ending the nearly two-year war in Gaza.
Hamas announced it would review the proposal with group members and other Palestinian factions before reaching a decision.
While the proposal offers an end to the fighting, guarantees the flow of humanitarian aid and promises reconstruction, the Palestinian militant group will have to disarm, something it has rejected in the past. Also, Gaza and its more than 2 million Palestinians would be put under international control for the foreseeable future.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backs the plan, and several leaders of Arab countries have applauded it.
Palestinians are sceptical of the peace plan
Many Palestinians in the decimated coastal enclave are wary of the proposal. Notably, the plan sets no path to Palestinian statehood and brings a so-called “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to supervise the administration of Gaza.
To some, that smacked of the colonial British Mandate over Palestine from 1920 to 1948, when the British ran the area.
“They want to impose their own peace,” Umm Mohammed, a history teacher who sheltered with her family in Gaza City, told The Associated Press. “In fact, this is not a peace plan. It’s a surrender plan. It returns us to times of colonialism.”
Mahmoud Abu Baker, a displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the proposal favours Israel and implements all its demands without giving concessions.
“(The proposal) tells that we, as Palestinians, as Arabs, are not qualified to rule ourselves and that they, the white people, will rule us,” he said.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, some Palestinians accused Netanyahu and Trump of attempting to solve the issue without any input from people on the ground in Gaza.
“It turned into a joke. They acted like they own the whole world, deciding, analysing and dividing things however they want,” said Mohammad Shahin, a Nablus resident.
Israelis bank on Trump despite doubt
Israelis visiting a memorial for the music festival where 364 people were killed during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, expressed scepticism that the proposal may pause the war.
Amit Zander, whose daughter, Noa Zander, was killed at the festival, said Trump was the only one with enough power to make a deal happen.
“Everyone pins their hopes on (Trump) … it’s up to Hamas. Israel wants it, and beyond that, it’s no longer in our hands,” he said.
“It’s definitely an effort to change something, but there have been efforts the whole time during this whole war and change hasn’t really happened, so I think it’s all up in the air,” said Adi Nissim, who was also visiting the memorial on Tuesday.
More than 30 Palestinians killed
Israeli forces killed at least 31 Palestinians on Tuesday, according to local hospitals. Al-Awda Hospital said Israeli troops opened fire, killing 17 Palestinians and wounding 33 others while they were attempting to access humanitarian aid in Netzarim, the Israeli-controlled corridor that bisects northern and southern Gaza.
An Israeli strike later in the day killed four people in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, the hospital said.
Israeli forces also hit two tents housing displaced Palestinian families in Muwasi, the stretch of tent cities along the Mediterranean coast that the Israeli military had once declared a safe zone.
One of the strikes killed seven people, including four women and a child, who had fled from Gaza City earlier this month to escape Israel’s intensifying offensive, Al Aqsa hospital said. The second killed a man, his 7-months-pregnant wife and their young child, Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the shooting or strikes. It said in a statement that over the past 24 hours, its troops killed several armed militants and struck more than 160 targets of Hamas infrastructure, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts.
Hamas is believed to be holding 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed by Israel to be alive. The militant group has previously demanded that Israel agree to end the war and withdraw from all of Gaza as part of any permanent ceasefire.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily report the death toll has surpassed 66,000, with almost 170,000 wounded since the war began.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run administration, does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its toll, but has said women and children make up around half the dead. Its figures are seen as a reliable estimate by the UN and many independent experts. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding its military infrastructure in civilian areas.
Israel’s offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza, displacing around 90 per cent of the population amid a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with experts saying Gaza City is experiencing famine.
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