The Times of Israel is liveblogging Saturday’s events as they happen.
US officials say truce talks appear on track after Gaza aid incident — report
US officials “familiar” with ongoing talks to secure a temporary truce and a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas tell CNN that discussions appear to be on track following the deadly Gaza aid stampede incident yesterday.
The unnamed officials say there are no immediate indications the delicate talks have been derailed, even as they appear to be at an impasse amid toughened Hamas positions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called “delusional.”
The US has been pressing hard for an agreement with US President Joe Biden saying earlier that he was “hoping” a del would by in place by Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month that begins March 10.
UN: ‘A large number of gunshot wounds’ among injured in Gaza aid debacle
A UN team visiting a Gaza hospital has reported “a large number of gunshot wounds” among dozens of Palestinians being treated for injuries sustained on Thursday during what Israel says was a crowd crush during an aid delivery in Gaza City.
UN staff, the first to visit Gaza’s north in more than a week, spent just over two hours at Al-Shifa hospital, where they delivered medication and fuel.
The visit comes in the wake of Thursday’s incident. Hamas blamed the IDF for the deaths and claimed troops opened fire.
The military said most of the casualties were caused by a stampede and being run over by the supply vehicles. Gunmen also opened fire in the area as they looted the supplies.
The army said it did not fire at the crowd rushing the main aid convoy. It acknowledged that troops opened fire on several Gazans who moved toward soldiers and a tank at an IDF checkpoint, endangering soldiers, after they had rushed the last truck in the convoy further south
“Al-Shifa hospital has reportedly admitted more than 700 people who were injured yesterday, about 200 of whom are still being hospitalized,” says Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general.
They also received the bodies of more than 70 people killed in the incident, hospital staff told the team which was comprised of representatives from the UN Humanitarian Office (OCHA), WHO and UNICEF.
Among the injured, the team reported “there was a large number of gunshot wounds,” Dujarric says, although he adds that he did not know whether the representatives were able to examine the bodies of those killed.
According to the area’s Hamas-run health ministry, the death toll stood at 115, with some 760 injured.
Israel said the casualties were in the dozens.
Biden ‘hoping’ for Israel-Hamas deal on truce, hostage release by Ramadan
US President Joe Biden says he hoped there would be a deal between Israel and terror group Hamas on a temporary truce and the release of hostages by the time of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on March 10.
“I’m hoping so, we’re still working real hard on it. We’re not there yet,” he tells reporters, as he left the White House.
Peace efforts can be advanced, even if parties not currently interested — EU envoy
Through the Preparatory Peace Conference, Brussels aims to build off the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative — which offered Israel full normalization with its Arab neighbors if it agreed to a two-state solution on the pre-1967 lines — and the Abraham Accords normalization deals — which saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco establish diplomatic ties with Israel.
The EU’s Middle East peace envoy Sven Koopmans tells The Times of Israel in an interview that the conference would also be an extension of the “Peace Day Effort” that the EU co-hosted with Saudi Arabia and the Arab League on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September.
“That doesn’t on its own give you the Israeli and Palestinian peace agreement, but it gets us a lot closer by showing what regional peace can look like in practice,” Koopmans says.
The EU official acknowledges that a ceasefire in Gaza and a release of the hostages being held by Hamas is all but necessary for the conference to take place, but he insists that the current Israeli government’s opposition to a two-state solution need not be the final word on the matter.
“It’s a very normal — albeit old-fashioned — approach to say peace isn’t possible because there is no partner, and then to do nothing,” Koopmans says.
“Maybe Mr. Netanyahu does not want it and surely Hamas doesn’t want it, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world does not want it or that the rest of the world cannot do anything to bring it about,” he asserts.
“Of course, we cannot ultimately have peace without Israeli and Palestinian leaders signing up for it, but we can effectively prepare the ground,” Koopmans continues, noting that Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught and the Gaza war that followed have complicated peace efforts.
But he argues that now is the time to pursue such efforts with global attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a peak.
The European diplomat acknowledges that any plan would not be immediately implementable, but he rejects multi-year efforts aimed at achieving a resolution to the conflict.
“The EU is not interested — I am not mandated to be interested — in a roadmap that leads us to five years down the line, when we know that this roadmap is never going to be completed,” Koopmans says.
EU envoy details plans for ‘preparatory’ conference to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace
A top European Union official offers new details regarding Brussels’ effort to host a “Preparatory Peace Conference” with regional stakeholders in order to advance a two-state solution.
The initiative is part of EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell’s 10-point roadmap for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which was leaked to the press in January.
In an interview with The Times of Israel, the EU Middle East peace envoy Sven Koopmans indicates that the confab envisioned by his boss will fall short of the international peace conference long sought by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“A big conference where everybody is expected to be present at the same time is currently unlikely to succeed. But what you can work on is a Preparatory Peace Conference where you bring together everyone — perhaps some in separate rooms and at variable times,” the EU envoy says.
The two conflict parties would be invited to the preparatory conference, but it need not be considered a failure if they refuse to show because foreign ministers from Europe, the Middle East and other countries interested in offering incentives for the parties to reach a two-state solution will be attending as well, says Koopmans.
“At the conference, you adopt a working plan to develop all the components of a comprehensive regional peace. This is different from the old-fashioned model — the Camp David model — where you have the Israeli leader and the Palestinian leader brought together by the American President,” Koopmans maintained.
Conference attendees will begin work on regional cooperation projects in a variety of fields that can be adopted on the day that a peace deal is reached between Israel and the Palestinians.
Koopmans points to the package of political, economic and security incentives that Brussels unveiled in 2013 to help support the peace negotiations being led by then-US secretary of state John Kerry. “I now have the mandate to build on that package and to explore what is possible also with Jordan, Lebanon and other main regional actors.”