Hamas says it’s ready and willing to call for another temporary truce with Israel. That ceasefire would include a hostage/prisoner deal exchange with Israel, but of course, the militant group also warned on Sunday that if its demands aren’t met, no hostage would leave the Gaza Strip alive.
“Neither the fascist enemy and its arrogant leadership… nor its supporters… can take their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance,” Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said in a televised broadcast, according to a report by Barron’s. “We have no choice but to fight this barbaric occupier in every neighborhood, street, and alley,” Obeida said further while boasting that Hamas has taken out 180 Israeli personnel carriers, tanks, and bulldozers. “The enemy’s holocaust aims to break the strength of our resistance… but we are fighting on our land in a holy battle.”
Israeli tanks are reported to have reached the center of the major southern city of Khan Younis, amid reports of some of the heaviest overnight fighting ever seen in this southern area of the Strip. A senior Israeli defense official has told Axios that the military expects that it will take three to four more weeks to completely secure Khan Younis and wrap up fighting there:
A senior Israeli official said Israeli Defense Forces “have made significant progress” in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, but that the operation in the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas leadership is located, “has just started.”
#Hamas has released a new video showing the Al-Qassam Brigades targeting Israeli soldiers and military vehicles in Khan Yunis. pic.twitter.com/evbmDJJqhG
— EHA News (@eha_news) December 10, 2023
Even as world pressure grows to stop the war, the United States ruling calls was the lone dissenter in voting down a Friday United Nations Security Council draft resolution calling for a ceasefire. The Biden administration has refrained from criticism of Israel’s seeming indiscriminate bombing campaign, saying it’s up to Israel to decide when they stop killing people in Gaza.
White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said days ago there the U.S. is not giving Israel any firm deadline. “This is their conflict. That said, we do have influence, even if we don’t have ultimate control over what happens on the ground in Gaza,” Finer said, according to a report by Axios.
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